This week I was honored to be joined by Chris Lauder, founder of The Dublin Academy of Education.I owe a great deal to Chris and his company personally, as they helped me to realise my potential in the leaving certificate last year.  The same can be said for the thousands of students who have been through the school's doors since its inception. 

In this wide-ranging conversation, Chris and I delve into the origins of The Academy and how he grew it into what it is today, among other things.

Here are a selection of my key takeaways from the conversation:

On The Power of Good Teaching

“That was really eye opening in that it just takes the right mentor, the right coach, the right teacher who can really help you realize your potential.... I think that is really strongly overlooked in society.

Teachers are kind of, in my opinion, not looked at seriously enough. And in terms of their importance for developing young people, teachers often give them glass ceilings over their head. They create limiting beliefs in there about what they're capable of, and that really can hold them back in life.

And I kind of look at how much potential is in all these kids in our school. I'm like the only thing that's holding them back in many cases is the limiting beliefs they have about themselves. And I think teachers are the key in many cases to unlocking it academically…

…the interesting thing about having a small success academically is it spills over into other areas of life. It kind of helped me ask the question: ‘If I could do that, what else am I capable of doing?’ You know, and that's a really powerful question.And that's really what we try to do with the Academy is you start with kids' academics and you start showing that they're capable of more than they think.”

The Origins of The Academy

“We couldn't be engineers- There were no jobs and we didn't want to be engineers anyway. And the backup plans to go into our family businesses were gone as well. So we kind of had nothing to do. We had a bit of a blank canvas, which in hindsight was probably the greatest thing that ever happened to us.

…we were racking our brains, trying to come up with an idea to start a business and Brian, all the way through college did one-on-one maths grinds and he was unbelievably popular. His phone was ringing off the hook and he did around 20 classes a week, travelling between them on his motorbike. And so I remember saying, rather than you doing them all one-on-one, would you just rent a room somewhere and conduct a class?…

…And he said, he taught about it, but he never got around to it. So I said, why don't we start doing that? And that’s literally how ‘The Dublin School of Maths’ was born.

The Academy’s Genius Freemium Model

“We were losing out on customers because we had no reputation. Nobody knew who we were… So Brian and I came up with this idea, let's give it away for free. Like, let's just let people come and see how good Brian is. And once they see how good he is, they'll pay for the classes…

…People couldn't understand how we were giving away free a free three day math course… people thought that was great! I remember 300 people turned up for the free three days and, out of the 300 people, like 150 of them just signed up when the three days were over…

…It worked really well. Because we had no reputation, people worried about paying for something... Whereas if you give it to them for free and show them value, show them how good it is, be transparent, what you're offering, and then they get the value, then they sign up. And so that really helped transform our growth from there.”

On The Benefits of Privatisation

“I think one of the issues with the public system on the issues with the world overall is that if you give someone a job that they cannot be fired from, that they're completely protected from losing, it breeds contentment on it breeds a lack of engagement in some people. And what happens is, you know, bad teachers are just kind of left to their own devices, in a lot of ways.

And principals can't get rid of them because they're protected… Unfortunately, students lose out because a bad teacher can have a massive impact on their life…

And if you're an amazing teacher in the public system, it's very hard to get those awards because you're on a scale, you're limited by what's around you.

You're constrained in that respect, whereas a place, a fully private institution or the sky's the limit, you know, the better you teach, the more impact you can make on the better you can do economically.”

How Chris Gets Better at What He Does

“One thing I want to try and get better at is my psychology. Tony Robbins, who's a big hero of mine, says, ‘success in life is 80% psychology and 20% mechanics.’

So what he means is it's 80% of success is what you think, what's going on in your head and 20% what you actually do mechanically. So the actions you take and so on and so forth. So my goal is to try on have the best psychology I possibly can. And the best way to have a good psychology is to feed your mind quality information.

The interesting thing about your brain is if you start spilling information into it, you know, more and more, every single day, good information starts coming back out. You'll start talking differently. You'll think differently. You'll act differently. And so every day, what I try and do is whether it's read and or listen to stuff, I'll try and consciously put at least 30 minutes a day into learning”

You can check out the full conversation here.

Thanks for reading.

Best,

Will

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