IAM1192- Founder Provides Services to Students of all Abilities

Lindsey Wander is the Founder and CEO of WorldWise Tutoring as well as the Founder and President of the nonprofit Educate. Radiate. Elevate. Both companies provide services to students of all abilities in all subjects. Her mission is to provide quality instruction that is deliberately intertwined with learning and life skills so that their students grow into confident and independent lifelong learners who become competent and conscious leaders. Her highly educated and experienced tutors provide effective lessons that can be in-person or online, individual or small group, and cover a multitude of subjects in one session.

• CEO Hack: Delegating out tasks
• CEO Nugget: Take problems as a sign of the need to re-invent and get excited about it
• CEO Defined: Creating jobs that people love and that bring them joy

Previous episode on IAMCEO podcast: https://iamceo.co/2021/04/27/iam988-founder-helps-students-grow-to-be-competent-and-conscious-leaders/

Website: https://www.worldwisetutoring.com/

WWT: https://linktr.ee/WorldWiseTutoring
E.R.E.: https://linktr.ee/EducateRadiateElevate

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Transcription

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00:23 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:51 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I'm super excited to have another great guest on the show. Lindsay Wander of WorldWise Tutoring. Lindsay, It's great to have you back on the show.

01:01 – Lindsey Wander

Thanks for having me back.

01:03 – Gresham Harkless

Super excited to have you on. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Lindsay. So you hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Lindsay is the founder and CEO of WorldWise Tutoring, as well as the founder and president of the nonprofit Educate, radiate, and Elevate. Both companies provide services to students of all abilities and all subjects. Her mission is to provide quality instruction that is deliberately intertwined with learning and life skills so that their students grow into confident and independent lifelong learners who will become competent and conscious leaders.

Her highly educated and experienced tutors provide effective lessons that can be in person or online, individual or small group, and cover a multitude of subjects in one session. She was also a guest on episode number 988 of our podcast. So love that we get the opportunity to have you back on here about all the awesomeness that you've been doing and working on. Lindsay, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:53 – Lindsey Wander

I'm ready.

01:54 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more of an update on everything you've been able to build everything you've been doing. Can you tell us a little bit more of what I call your CEO story?

02:04 – Lindsey Wander

Oh, gosh, it's been a lot since the last time we talked. The world is in a totally different place. So because my business is so dependent on what's going on with families and the school system, which is changing constantly. We've had a lot of changes as well. But I think that we now at least have lost the degree of uncertainty. We've kind of just embraced, all right, uncertainty is the certainty, I guess. People have really been more adaptable and open to the idea of seeking out alternative learning experiences that perhaps they might not have considered before. So with that, business has been good in that regard. We have so many incoming clients with so many unique needs, some things I haven't seen before.

And I thought at this point, you know, 10 years later, I'd seen it all and I've had some really interesting ones. We're also at a point where we have schools that are contracting us out now to do courses with the students, which I'm happy to do because I always have seen us as an extension of support for the schools. I think that for schools, it wasn't like a good look for them to refer out a tutoring company, but I'm trying to kind of get the message across, like we're not, you know, taking away from what's happening in the school. We're actually trying to help them to become better students and better learners and supplement what you're doing.

And I think that a lot of schools have really opened up to that idea, which I'm very thankful for. With nonprofits, we're starting with students next month. So our first round of students, our tutors are completing their training this month. We're onboarding students to get ready for next month. So that's very exciting as well. You know, it's going to be our first time with students. So there'll be some, You know, I'm sure adjustments and you know, I'm a flexibility I'll have to have on our end. But when it comes to the tutoring, I have that pretty much handled. It was all the other nonprofit stuff for the past year that has finally the dust cleared and we're in a good place now.

04:15 – Gresham Harkless

Could you take us through a little bit more about what you're doing there, how that has evolved, and how you're serving the clients from both aspects?

04:22 – Lindsey Wander

Well, one of the things that I was actually looking forward to with the changes I've been able to embrace in the past year is that finally, I think people are kind of getting it. But education is more than just grades and test scores. Like I think parents, a lot of parents have started to ask themselves, what is really important for my child to learn here? Not only that, I think they've seen firsthand, in a lot of cases that their child or children are lacking some very vital skills that you need for life, while they might be getting an A in class, you know, they're still they're learning has some holes in it. So I appreciate that people's attention has been brought to that because now I can be much more transparent in what we've been doing all along.

Before I used to call it just learning in my skills and I still kind of do. But now for those who are ready to hear the deeper messaging, I bring in a lot of metacognition, which is thinking about how you think. We do a lot of executive functions, which is the nitty gritty of getting things done. For executives who are listening, it's training youth to be able to do what we do in terms of delegating and running and planning and prioritizing and all these things that we're kind of expecting them to figure out, but they don't have the brain wiring yet to do that. So we actually can coach and teach them to do that. Then also a lot of interpersonal skills, which I think is kind of a misnomer because people think that means being social, which it's not, you know, there's, there's a component of that, obviously, but it's also you know being a critical thinker being a leader advocating.

All these other components really help you to be a mover and shaker in the world. When it comes down to it, you think of all those, none of them have anything to do with a math equation or memorizing the state capitals, whatever it is. So I think a lot of parents have started to really reevaluate and reimagine what education should look like. And it's about time because the way our current education system is set up, it was established during the Industrial Revolution, which was all about rote memorization. Everyone does the same thing, pump them out, pump them out. It just doesn't work anymore. We need creative problem solvers. We need people who think outside the box and who aren't going to just kind of do the same thing over and over. So having learning be more student-centered instead of adult-led, having it be more tailored to the students, you know, maybe using AI and technology to do that. I think, you know, everything that's happened the past year has opened people's minds to that and brought attention to it, which I'm very thankful for because we needed to get everything shaken up in the education world.

07:06 – Gresham Harkless

Would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of sets you or your organization as a part of Mixed with Unique? Is it that ability to, I would say, not just see that, but also know how to implement that and quote-unquote teach that and tutor and coach and help people to do that, whether it be a student or a parent, do you feel like that's what sets you apart and makes you unique?

07:26 – Lindsey Wander

Absolutely, because I think a lot of education just focuses on the brain. I don't know how you can't address their heart their mind and their soul. You can't get a kid to care about this math test if they're feeling anxious about what's going on in the world around them. It just, how? So yeah, we have to look at children holistically as human beings, not just vessels to dump information into. I think that's definitely something that we do, which isn't very typical of a lot of tutoring companies.

07:58 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I would say tutoring companies, I feel like most organizations and probably people in the world, I say so often that we forget about the human aspect of business. I think we forget about the human aspect of life. A lot of times we just kind of, whether we're working at a job or whatever it might be, you go through the motions and you forget about that human aspect, you understand that, hey, maybe you're not gonna do as great as you could do on that test. Maybe you're not gonna excel at your position or your job because you are frustrated, you are scared, you are, and all those things play a big part. So to try to ignore that is to try to ignore, you know, the essence of a person and the essence of life, I think.

08:34 – Lindsey Wander

And I think it would come out later in some other ways. So my tutors know it's OK to do mindfulness exercises with the students. It's OK to talk about stresses and anxieties. Yes, you're teaching calculus or biology, but it's okay if they want to have a conversation about what's going on with politics in the world. Heck yeah. Talk about it with them and hear them out. Let them have a voice and show them that their opinions matter.

09:01 – Gresham Harkless

So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:11 – Lindsey Wander

Oh, I mean, I don't know if I've said this before, but I'm, I'm a big advocate of delegating out tasks. It is very hard in the beginning to relinquish control and to think someone's gonna do it as well as you're doing it and honestly, to set up the system so that someone else can take over. Because sometimes it's more work to get the system set up than to just do it yourself. But you have to look at the bigger picture. You have to see that this isn't just the time I'm spending now. I need to project 5, 10, 15 years into the future. I can't keep spending my time doing these things when I should be doing these other things.

So delegating tasks to people that it's not that you can't do them, it's more other people can do them maybe better They like doing them more, which is interesting. A specific example would be with my assistant, you know, the little nitty gritty spreadsheets and to-do's and the processes, she loves that stuff, you know, and so being able to give her the opportunity to complete, you know, the tasks along the way, not only take stuff off of my plate, but it's also kind of checks and balances like she catches things I miss because she knows the system so well now and it should only be with This assistant I have now has only been with me a few months.

It was just a matter of having everything really set up very clearly in the beginning, which takes time, but it's worth it. You know, looking back, that was worth it. Cause now I have freedom. So delegating is major. I know we make excuses all the time about lack of time and lack of money, but you're going to stagnate yourself if you don't find ways to put other tasks out and allow more time and opportunity for you to do what you're really good at and help your business grow.

11:00 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely love that So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice and might be something you would tell a client or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:12 – Lindsey Wander

It's tough being a CEO and owning a business. There's a lot of ups and downs. It's very easy to, like I said before, not just take that personally, but also to get yourself stuck, you know, in a rut of what's going on, everything around me isn't working. So I would say understand that this is how it is. There are ups, there are downs, and it's going to happen. You have to find a way to ride it out. I look at the downs as a way to innovate. So when I see things, and then I start seeing myself go down that incline, I'm looking around going, what is it? What is causing this? It's often nothing to do with my business.

It's something external. So I start talking to other people in the field and I start, you know, trying to do some research and figure out what is this. Even talking to my clients, about what's going on and coming up with solutions for it, having that discussion now, and I'll highlight that with clients too, would this be a solution for that problem? Then start to implement that and you ride back up again. So it's rather than take those lows as an indication that you're failing, I think you should take it as an indication that something's going on and you need to maybe reinvent a little bit and get excited about that aspect that something new is coming and this is going to lead to your next incline.

12:37 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Lindsay, What does being a CEO mean to you?

12:48 – Lindsey Wander

I would say for me, it's creating jobs that people love and that bring them joy. So I'm always seeking out, we're as business owners, you know, or CEOs hyper-focused on our clients and our customers, but we can't forget our staff and make sure that this is an environment and an organization they wanna stay with is key. So coming back to that humanity piece, what is it that they need? Is it professional development? Is it that word of support when something's going on with them? Is it more opportunities and pushing them further and further?

You know, whatever it is, each person has individual needs, and make sure that you're creating something that they love to do. Cause that will trickle to your customers and your clients. It is something that I think is often overlooked. Like I love the messages of, oh, I love this job, or, oh, thank you so much for understanding. Those kinds of things are just as empowering as the ones where the students are, oh, I passed my test. So we can't forget about our staff.

14:03 – Gresham Harkless

Lindsay truly appreciates that definition. Of course, appreciate you for spending some more time with us. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic again, so to speak, so that you can tell us a little bit more about anything else that we didn't talk about. Of course, how best people can get a hold of you, find out about all the awesome things you're working on with your business and the nonprofit as well.

I would say something that I haven't mentioned before is now that the nonprofit, as I said before, that dust has cleared in terms of its establishment and we're good. We got everything laid out, our foundation. I am really looking for people to join. So to join our advisory or our fundraising committees, to join our board, to be a professional volunteer. I think sometimes people think when you volunteer it entails just going to, I don't mean to say just, but going to a soup kitchen or, you know, playing with dogs at a shelter, which is important. But

14:52 – Lindsey Wander

there's also, you know, if you're an accountant or a marketer or do something with website development, we need you, you know, you, This is helpful to us. So you can also volunteer your professional services. So I have been so lucky to have such a great network of support with the nonprofit and people who are interested in the mission but also want to give back. I just want to continue to build that because it helps us to be a better organization overall but also we better serve our community in that way by having the community involved.

So I think that that's a big part that I would like to get the message out and if you're interested you can go to eretutoring.org and there are all kinds of options like donate, join, volunteer, and intern. I have a lot of opportunities there for all ages, even high school students if they want to do some remote volunteer opportunities. Lots of things we need. So I will readily accept anyone who's willing to help.

15:54 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. We will definitely have those links and information in the show notes. Definitely, as you said so well, I think so many times we can get boxed in about how we can volunteer, and how we can use our gifts and our talents, but there are so many different ways. I love that you open up those, you know, those virtual doors and those probably physical doors as well too, to those people to be able to kind of use their gifts, their talents, the things that they're passionate about in order to support a phenomenal cause. So thank you so much for taking time out again, of course, doing everything that you're doing. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the way.

16:21 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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