The Importance of Having Teachers on our Team - Happy Anniversary, Alissa!
Team Letter | August 12, 2024
Aug 12, 2024
Happy Monday, Alpaca!
WOW last week was crazy! New customers, 4,000 packs, new software launched, and OH so much crinkle. First off, THANK YOU for pulling together to get Back to School packs out the door. It won’t always be this crazy, I promise! And we have so many opportunities to improve our process, our products, and our delivery to customers. At the end of the day, we can be so grateful to have so many principals and teachers who LOVE Alpaca. Just read some of these comments from some of Alpaca’s most longstanding principals from last week:
“I had Alpaca the previous year and it was something teachers look forward to. It was always a happy moment when they open their gifts. Thank you for adding our student support staff and making staff feel special!”
“Thank YOU so much! Alpaca Day ALWAYS brings a smile to our staff! We LOVE it! :)”
The downside of last week was that it was a REALLY crazy week – and we missed celebrating a pretty important milestone – Alissa’s One Year Alpaca Anniversary was August 7!!!
But we don’t miss opportunities to celebrate, so a few days late, we’re here to do some big celebrating of our resident educator, Queen of Little Wins, Procurer of Lunch and Groceries, and Alpaca’s Biggest Swiftie (which is REALLY saying something!), Alissa!
The best way I can explain Alissa is that she’s the person I want to be when I grow up.
She is willing to try everything.
She is consistent.
She has extraordinary intuition about what teachers need, like, and care about.
She is literally good at everything she sets out to do, and she sets out to do quite a lot.
And you can see it every single day at Alpaca.
She’s willing to try everything.
When Alissa started a year ago, several things weren’t yet in place – our Little Wins newsletter, our resource library (and therefore our demand generation engine), and our Principal Pack program. Without hesitation, when asked to help conceptualize and then execute on these ideas, Alissa just got to work. She taught herself Canva, took feedback and input, and just started publishing valuable content for principals and school leaders.
She is consistent.
When I say I want to be Alissa when I grow up, this is why. Alissa not only said “yeah, let’s launch a newsletter and a resource library and a principal pack,” she backed it up with never missing a week. If it was in my hands, we’d have 4 resources and a newsletter that comes out once every 2.4 weeks-ish. But Alissa knows the importance of consistency with our customer, so she makes a plan to publish great content and value, every single week. It’s so impressive – I look up to it every single day.
She knows educators.
My intuition about what teachers are looking for, how they want to communicate, or what will serve them best is often wrong. It’s because I’m not a teacher, and because I apply my own communication styles to our customer. Alissa doesn’t let us do that, and we should thank her every day. Her resources sometimes sound funny in my brain (it took me about a month to remember what “vertical planning” means), but they sound exactly right to teachers and principals.
She is just so good at it.
You could be consistent, willing, and tapped into our customer voice, but if your efforts don’t add up to results, it doesn’t have the same impact. Alissa is making an impact. In a customer call with a new district last week, the Superintendent mentioned that she has a new elementary principal this year, who she sent our website to check out. The principal came back and had downloaded a dozen resources, signed up for Little Wins, and said to the Super “OMG are we getting Alpaca this year?!?!” That’s a principal who is won over on Alpaca before ever, ever receiving a pack or a survey. That’s Alissa’s impact.
And as if we needed charts and numbers to prove it, here’s one that tells the full story. This is a chart of downloads of Alpaca resources in the past year, basically since Alissa started:
Yes, your math is correct – Alpaca resources have been downloaded 7,700 times in the past year! None of this would be possible without Alissa’s consistency, willingness to try new things, and clear knowledge of our customer.
Alissa, we’re beyond lucky to have you on this team, and beyond grateful for your first year of incredible work. THANK YOU for your light, character, homemade treats, hard work, dedication, and occasional spotting of sweet, sweet June.
Happy Anniversary, Alissa!!!
♥️
Kb
PS: As I was editing this letter, Alissa and I texted about a set of packs that went to a residential address instead of their intended school. True to form, Alissa jumped in the car with Kaitlynn, went to investigate, found the missing packs, and brought the person we accidentally delivered them to a snack. If that’s not Alissa, I don’t know what is.