Episode 8: The Teacher As Enterpreneur with Dave Burgess
How you can reach Dave:
Twitter person: @BurgessDave
Twitter chat: #TLAP for Teach Like A Pirate, Monday nights at 9:00
Instagram: DBC_INC
Blog: daveburgess.com
Transcript:
(transcribed by kayla.r.fainer@gmail.com)
Melissa Milner 00:09
Hi, this is Melissa Milner. Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. The goal of this podcast is to help you explore your passions and learn from others in education and beyond to better your teaching. The Teacher As... will highlight uncommon parallels to teaching, as well as share practical ideas for the classroom.
In this episode, I interviewed Dave Burgess. Dave taught for 17 years, spoke around the country and eventually wrote Teach Like A Pirate. Now he and his wife are very successful publishers. Dave shares his journey from teacher, to author, to disrupter of the publishing industry, and he encourages us to put our messages out into the world. Please enjoy my interview with Dave Burgess. Welcome to The Teacher As..., Dave.
Dave Burgess 00:55
Hey, thank you so much for having me on the show, Melissa. I'm glad to be here.
Melissa Milner 00:58
What would you like The Teacher As... listeners to know about you?
Dave Burgess 01:02
Well, I live in San Diego, California most of the year. And I'm a 17 year educator, taught in the classroom for 17 years. I'm an author and now also a publisher of education books.
Melissa Milner 01:14
How many books now have you published?
Dave Burgess 01:18
We have screamed past 100. So we're well past 100 books now.
Melissa Milner 01:23
Wow, that's amazing. I'm sure you'll talk more about that. Can you share your path from teacher, to author, to publisher?
Dave Burgess 01:33
Absolutely. So it started as I was a classroom teacher for many years. One day, my department chair came in, met me for lunch and he said something that changed my life. He said, you know what, I just got put on the Professional Development Committee for the district. And I thought to myself, how cool would it be if you put together a workshop based on some of that crazy stuff you do down in your room that nobody understands?
But then, Melissa, he paused. And he said, but you know what? I'm not sure you can, because I think that your success in the classroom is kind of you. I think it's personality driven. I'm not sure it's something you can teach other people. And he just kind of moved on. And so I took that as a challenge. I said, sign me up to do that workshop.
And I signed up to do a full day workshop for the peers of my district and drove away from that meeting going, oh my God, what have I done? I don't have a workshop. I don't have any of this written down. I don't have it organized. And so I got relentless about writing down everything I do in my classroom that I thought was successful. But that wasn't good enough, because that's what I do.
And I took a step back further and tried to come up with, where did these ideas come from to begin with. And every time I traced it back, I came back to some similar things, some questions I was asking. And so that became kind of the root of the original workshop, which eventually spun into the book. But I think there's a couple things that are important there. I said yes before I was ready.
So if I had waited to be ready to do my workshop and be prepared to do my workshop, I probably never would have got it done, right? I said yes, and then that put the pressure on me in order to put the time in and to really organize my thoughts and to do it. So grab opportunities and say yes to opportunities when they arrive. Because if you wait to feel like you're going to be ready, you're not going to ever feel that way, right?
And then the other thing is it forced me to become much more intentional about my teaching. So I always encourage people to do professional development. Sign up to present, whether it's in your school, in your system, at local conferences, national conferences, whatever. Sign up to be a presenter. And then when you have to take what is sort of your secret sauce, your magic recipe, and organize it in such a way that you can teach it to other people, it's so amazing how intentional that makes you become, how reflective you are on your practice.
And so I became a much better teacher once I started to present to other teachers. Because I said like, hey, how come I do this? How come I do do this? Why does this one work, and why doesn't this one work? So that was kind of the start of the journey initially to become a speaker.
Melissa Milner 04:04
You were probably already a reflective teacher, you know? You probably were very reflective about your work, but this turbo reflected you.
Dave Burgess 04:16
Absolutely, yeah. It took me kind of to that next level. And a lot of things that maybe I was stumbling across and I had learned just through hard knocks, it allowed me to make, oh, this is why. I understand this now. And it may be able to replicate it. And so the amazing things that had happened in my classroom, which I'd maybe stumbled across, now I was like, oh, I understand why that was so successful.
I understand why that drew kids in. I can replicate that and do it in additional lessons in bringing that stuff in. And so then after, I presented in my district, and then I just had this almost evangelical zeal for the message. I said, I want anywhere where anyone will listen to me to talk about these ideas. I submitted conference proposals all over the nation.
And if any conference in any state said, yeah, you can come do your pirate thing here, I got a plane ticket out, got a hotel room. I bought a conference registration, and I went and did my thing. Nobody knew who I was at this point. I was just a crazy guy walking around these conferences dressed like a pirate, right? And so I think that's another key piece of this is that people say, well, I can't get people to hire me to speak.
Hire you to speak? That's not how it starts. You don't start getting paid. You start by getting your message out in front of people, and you hone it, and you craft it and you get exposure. And you have to build a platform and network and have some people following your message before you can eventually get paid. And so don't get things twisted.
People come to us all the time and say, hey, I want to write a book. And then I want to go around and speak about it. And I say no, no, no, you've got that backwards. Go and speak, and then write a book. And then you have a chance with real eyes, a real audience staring at you to see what resonates, what doesn't resonate? What slide are they taking a picture of? What questions do they have after you're done? When you look at your social media feed after you present, what are people excited about? What are they repeating?
And you get a chance to hone craft and build and shape that message before it gets onto the printed page. Like what's on the printed page is there. So first shape and hone and craft your message through whether it's blogging, whether it's speaking, whether it's podcasting like you're doing right now. Whatever it is, get your message out in front of people, and then you'll see whether you have a book.
Melissa Milner 06:37
Right. So then how did you get from book author to being a publishing house basically?
Dave Burgess 06:44
Yeah, so when I was speaking, I spoke for years and years, sometimes people-- they see the tip of the iceberg of someone's journey. They see the part that sticks out of the water that looks spectacular, but they don't see the stuff under the water. So I traveled and spoke for six years.
Melissa Milner 07:05
Wow.
DaveBurgess 07:06
About Teach Like A Pirate before I ever started writing the book, six years I was out in the circuit going to every conference I could possibly go to to talk about Teach Like A Pirate, okay? And then I remember, to this day, it was in a coffee shop in Washington DC at the NCSS Conference, a publisher had just sat in on my session. They wanted to meet with me, they offered me a publishing contract.
I went straight up into my hotel room, Melissa, and I googled publishing contracts. Because I thought she was trying to cheat me. And then when I googled publishing contracts, I came to find out she was not trying to cheat me. That's what they look like. And to me, the only thing missing was a ski mask and a gun. I just couldn't believe it.
It's like, wait a second, I'm gonna write this book. It's my intellectual property. I'm gonna travel around to speak about it. I'm gonna build a social media platform. And you make how much money, and I make how much money? It made no sense to me, and they wanted to take creative control of the project. They wanted to remove the edgy things. They wanted to do all these different things to my project that I didn't want done.
And so after doing a ton of research, and I just researched everything I could about the publishing industry, about self publishing, about all these different things. And we decided we did not need to sign that contract or any of the other contracts that were being offered. We formed our own publishing company, Shelley, my wife, Shelley and me. And we published Teach Like A Pirate right from the kitchen table. Right off a laptop at the kitchen table is where we published this book.
And so that's that's how it all started. And then in the process of learning how to spread our message, we learned a ton of stuff. And this is like so surreal to tell you this. But this little book, I wrote it, a lot of it at night after everyone had gone asleep at the house after teaching all day. Published it from the house right at the kitchen table off a laptop. And now this little book, it's translated into Korean, two forms of Chinese, Russian, Spanish. We sold around half a million copies of it from our house.
Melissa Milner 09:02
That's awesome.
Dave Burgess 09:03
It's been this wild ride. And then what happened was once Teach Like A Pirate took off, and people were seeing this pirate thing everywhere, people started to contact us and say, how are you doing this? I don't understand. You don't have a big publisher. How is this book everywhere I look? And we would consult with them, tell them exactly what we had done.
But there were still things that were kind of holding people back. And so then this was the key next step. We said, you know what? I think we should disrupt this industry. We did it with our book. So why don't we do the same thing from our house with their books?And so when you see an industry that's based on an outdated model, that means it's time for it to be disrupted.
And the publishing industry was based on an outdated model. And publishers were walking around like they have all this leverage with their contracts. Because it used to be that they were the gatekeepers. You had to have that big publisher in order to get your book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble or whatever.
But now we know that's not where the books generally sell right now, right? If your book's on Amazon, you're for real, and anyone can be on Amazon. And so they don't have that leverage anymore, but their contracts don't reflect that.
And so we said, you know what? We're going to honor authors, we're going to give them fair compensation. We're going to give them creative control. We're going to allow them to tell their story. And we're going to amplify the message of people who were not used to having their messages amplified: classroom teachers, practitioners, principals still in their buildings.
You don't have to be-- you don't have to have a whole list of research studies to your name. You're out there doing it on the front lines. And we want to know what's successful for you right now in your classroom, right now in your principal's office, right now in your role as superintendent.
So we were looking for practitioners and trying to amplify their voices. And so this was not a group that had been generally publishing before. And so we were offering them an opportunity to get their message out into the world.
Melissa Milner 10:55
It just seems so natural that you ended up falling into this kind of publishing work.
Dave Burgess 11:01
Yeah, I think an important quote, one of my favorite quotes is from Seth Godin. And Seth Godin's quote is: "Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself." And I think that is so true, now more than ever.
And I mean, your example of this right here with doing this podcast., no one shows you to do a podcast. No one's selected you to a podcast. You didn't have to raise your hand to do a podcast. You didn't have to be hired to do a podcast. You said, I want to do a podcast, I pick myself. I'm gonna put my message out into the world. I'm gonna interview these people, I'm gonna bring their message to the world. I'm gonna amplify their message. And so you start a podcast.
Well, that's the way the world works now with social media, and with podcasting, with blogging, with the ability to self publish. You can go into all these different things. The gatekeepers no longer have that power. This is Seth's quote, so I'll give him full credit. But reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself. You can choose yourself.
Melissa Milner 11:58
Yes, wow. So of all the work you've done, what's your proudest moment?
Dave Burgess 12:03
That's interesting. I think what I'm most excited about is the movement from spending all my energy spreading my message and transferring that energy into spreading the messages of other educators. I'm a big believer in following your energy. And so when I first started, my energy was in coaching.
That was my gateway drug into education as far as a coach. All my energy was thrown into coaching, I couldn't get enough of it. That was the kind of thing that I would do even if I wasn't paid to do. That was the kind of thing I was interested in. I couldn't wait for all my other work to be done, because I wanted to get in to work with my coaching.
And so that's a thing that you should watch for is, hey, what is it that you can't wait to finish all your other work so you can work on this? That's a good sign of what you should be focusing your energy on, right? And so then it became teaching. And all of a sudden I was a little less interested.
My energy was moving from coaching to teaching. I left the coaching behind and really dug in and focused on teaching. And I was staying up late at night, I was working and it didn't seem like work. Because that's what I wanted to do at that moment, and that's important. And so it slowly became my message.
Now, gosh, I do want to prepare these lessons. I do want to teach. But also, I'm really excited about developing this workshop and going and doing this conference this weekend. And it kind of started to split my focus and attention. I had to decide, alright, what am I going to do here? I feel a little conflicted.
And so I said, you know what? I need to dive into this message and spread my message. So I dived into that. And then that transfer from realizing that, hey, I didn't write, I never tried to write the Encyclopedia of Teaching. I knew that my story wasn't the only story out there, right?
And so then I was like, you know what? Now my time needs to be spent finding other people and amplifying their messages. I think that's kind of the thing I'm most proud about is how many other educators have been able to share their work with the world through what we do with Dave Burgess Consulting.
Melissa Milner 13:57
Yes, absolutely. It's amazing what you've done for so many people and the people reading those books, not just the ones who wrote them.
Dave Burgess 14:04
Oh, thank you.
Melissa Milner 14:06
What are you zooming in on right now with your work?
[ZOOMING IN SOUNDBITE]
Dave Burgess 14:12
So much like most of the world, what we have been doing is trying to be innovative, creative, flexible, adapt to the changing landscape of education and business and just the world around us with the pandemic, of course. And so we've had to move our programs into virtual spaces.
So I've had to say, I'm very much a person who loves and enjoys going around and doing the show, doing the live programs. And I've learned over many, many years how to generate enthusiasm, energy through live programs. And it's okay, now I have to learn a new skill set. I have to learn how to become more charismatic on a virtual flat screen. I have to learn techniques in order to transfer energy through a microphone and through videos through a video camera now.
And how am I going to take my program, which had live demonstrations and audience interaction, and still try to generate something powerful through a virtual place? And that's, of course, what a lot of educators and teachers are doing right now with their content. And I'm trying to help them through that through various Zooms and trainings and stuff like that.
And then also helping our authors learn how they can move their programs into a virtual space, and how we can continue to successfully run a publishing business in a new world and help educators. And deliver content to educators which is relevant for where they are right now, which is often distance learning, remote learning.
And so one of the things about this pandemic is it's thrown everybody into the position of being a learner. So as educators, we're used to putting our students in the position of being a learner. We're kind of comfortable with what we do.
But then now this, all of a sudden everyone is going into being a learner at the same time. And I think it gives us a lot of empathy for students. And because oh, wow, this stuff is hard. And so I think that's one of the things that's come out of the pandemic. So that's kind of where our focus is right now.
Melissa Milner 16:17
You're like a musician, as far as you can't go to that convention and share your work now. So you have to do it online.
Dave Burgess 16:25
Yeah. So it's been just kind of a growth process. I think sometimes disruption-- of course, it's been horrific and tragic, especially when people have been directly impacted. But there are some things that we can draw out of this that I think that are going to, as we move out of the pandemic, hopefully at some point soon, I think there are some things that we can draw out of it that's gonna make the education system better.
Melissa Milner 16:51
Yes. Here's my fun question. What's your favorite movie, and why?
Dave Burgess 16:56
This is a tough one. I even have a tough time picturing what this is going to be. This a little bit like asking you to choose your favorite child.
Melissa Milner 17:03
I know, right?
Dave Burgess 17:06
People do that all the time. They say like, what's your favorite hook that's in Teach Like A Pirate. I'm like, oh my god, you're asking me to choose amongst all my children. You know, there's a movie that is kind of obscure that I like called Rize, R-I-Z-E. And it's a documentary, and it's about a guy named Tommy the Clown from Los Angeles area and how he started this whole movement of clown dancers.
And it has a bunch of things about krumping in there, as well, and the differences between those two groups and how this sprung out of the locations that they were growing up in and looking for ways to express themselves. And it starts with opening scenes of like the LA riots and then moves out of that and tells the story of Tommy the Clown. So it's R-I-Z-E, called Rize. And so that's a little obscure. Most people have never seen it, independently made documentary film.
Melissa Milner 18:17
It sounds awesome. I wonder if it's available on Netflix or HBO or something?
Dave Burgess 18:22
Yeah, not sure. I have the DVD, but I'm not sure if you can stream it or not.
Melissa Milner 18:26
And why is that your favorite movie? Was it just inspiring to see people be creative that way?
Dave Burgess 18:32
Yeah, I think it's people have to find a way to create their art. And we think of art as kind of music and painting, but that's not the way it is at all. Art is sharing your voice with the world, right? You have to find ways to express yourself from the circumstances that you come from, share what is unique about you.
That's always what I tell educators. What is unique about you, your particular strengths, your talents, your voice that you add to what you do in your classroom is what will make you most powerful and effective as an educator. And so there's no recipe that you can follow. There's nothing like that.
It has to be a combination of you taking what's inside of you, finding what's inside of your students and then tying it into what's going on in the world around you as well. Teach Like A Pirate in a lot of ways, I tell people, it's a mindset. How can I use that mindset? Looking around the world and saying, how can I use that? What are kids into outside of school? How can I use it inside a school?
What are my particular strengths and talents that I have as a human being? And what are my passions and loves? How can I bring that into my teaching? What is the event that's going on in the world around me right now that's drawing everybody in? And how can I bring that into my classroom to make school relevant?
And so it's always looking around the world and saying, how can I use that? And so here's this guy, Tommy, who started a movement actually. That's the other thing I love about it is he's just one guy. But all of a sudden what he was able to do through his passion, through his creativity, he was able to start a movement. And so that's something that I think inspires me about it as well.
Melissa Milner 20:13
Yeah, it fits you perfectly. So how can people reach you to learn more about the work that you do?
Dave Burgess 20:19
Okay, so I am all over social media. If you are a Twitter person, you can find me @BurgessDave. My name is flipped around, @BurgessDave. The hashtag people often use to talk about the ideas is #TLAP for Teach Like A Pirate, #TLAP. It's a worldwide community. If you're an Instagram first person, find me at DBC_INC, so DBC_INC on Instagram, and I blog at daveburgess.com.
Melissa Milner 20:47
I hope everybody checks out not only your book, but the TLAP Chat, #TLAPChat is fantastic.
Dave Burgess 20:55
Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's great. It's kind of a community of educators, like minded, coming together to inspire and uplift each other.
Melissa Milner 21:03
Thank you so much, Dave, for taking the time out to talk to me.
Dave Burgess 21:06
It was my pleasure to join you.
Melissa Milner 21:08
If you enjoyed this episode, and have not done so already, please hit the subscribe button for The Teacher As... podcast so you can get future episodes. I would love for you to leave a review and a rating, as well, if you have time. For my blog, transcripts of this episode and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner. And I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates.
I am sending a special thanks to Linda and Lester Fleishman, my mom and dad, for being so supportive. They are the voices you hear in the Zooming In soundbite. And my dad composed and performed the background music you are listening to right now. My intro music was "Upbeat Party" by Scott Holmes.
So what are you zooming in on? I would love to hear from you. My hope is that we all share what we are doing in the classroom in order to teach, remind, affirm and inspire each other. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap!