Jeremy Weisz 20:24
I’m going to get back to building teams for a second. But just this conversation Ben makes me think, okay, when you graduated college, okay, what did you want to do? Because you’re not thinking, listen, I want to be an educational director. I want to, like, have to pivot a company because there’s cyclones coming, or because of COVID is coming. And for me, like, same thing, like, I went to school to be a chiropractor, and now I’m doing podcasts. So when you came out of college, and I remember you in high school, you were always in the AP English classes and everything. But what did you at that point, high school, college, what did you want to do?
Ben Jackson 21:05
I wanted to be a writer. There is no question about that.
Jeremy Weisz 21:09
What did that look like for you, like at the time, when you say writer, that could mean a lot of things?
Ben Jackson 21:13
Absolutely, a writer. I mean a creative writer, primarily a writer. I actually do two things. I thought about journalism, but I had seen I hadn’t had the greatest experience with journalism and journalists. If I wanted to go into journalism, I felt like I wanted to do it in a way that was more sort of in-depth, research-oriented journalism. I ended up really leaning toward creative writing. When I was in college, it became very clear that that would be the direction for me. I had a class for one with two important classes for me. One was in high school with Jeff White. I don’t know if you had a class with Mr. White, high school.
Jeremy Weisz 21:56
I was more sciences, the English math.
Ben Jackson 21:58
So I had a creative writing class with Jeff White. And that was mind-blowing, and opened up a lot. But then in college, I had a class with Lucia Berlin at University of Colorado. And Lucia would go on to achieve posthumous fame, like immense fame after her passing but when she was alive, she was relatively unknown. And so from her class, from other classes, I was like, I know this is the path for me. And right after college, I was already committed to writing and teaching. And so my whole path, from like upon graduation, all the way through till I was a director of the writing sign, was writing and teaching, and I did both primarily. That was my career path. I still am a writer and teacher. I just can’t allocate as many hours towards those pursuits.
Jeremy Weisz 22:49
Totally. No. So building teams, and I want to talk about Jennifer Lewis too, because you’re talking about part, there’s parts of the team, right? Which is the teachers, there’s the staff, there’s different things. So talk about Jennifer Lewis is an interesting path with The Writing Salon?
Ben Jackson 23:09
Yeah, I want to offer this path as like a sample of what happens at times, but also what is also extraordinary that can happen at our school. So Jennifer Lewis was a student at San Francisco State, and she ended up taking classes at The Writing Salon, and then over time, she became a teacher at The Writing Salon, I actually reached out to her directly and invited her in. And before she become a teacher, she was leading Red Light Lid, which is, they run an event series, and they also are press and so she edits works and publications. And so Jennifer had this pathway that came through, student to teacher at The Writings Salon, and then had a lot of success with Red Light Lit. She has a book herself called The New Low.
That’s, you know, pretty fresh out from black Lawrence press. And she’s an example of an extraordinary story. But also, this can happen at the writing zone, where we have students who come through our school. They excel. They’re very committed to writing and to the literary world, and generally they want to be pursuing the literary arts, whether it’s editing, running event series and then they go on to publish too. So, that’s a wonderful story. And Jennifer’s a dear teacher. She’s been teaching at The Writing Salon for five years, and she has a strong following of students as well.
Jeremy Weisz 24:46
Of course, you know, with building teams, one of my favorite books of all time is your dad’s book, 11 Rings, the soul of success. So I’d love to hear what. You’ve learned from your dad. I’m talking about Phil Jackson from building teams. I mean, he’s a master.
Ben Jackson 25:10
I talked about patience earlier. I think that’s such an important part of my dad’s ingredient in team building was applying a kind of a patient approach, allowing players, in his case, to flourish over time. One thing that I loved about my dad as a coach was that he didn’t yank a guy out when he made a mistake very often. I don’t know if you ever noticed that, Jeremy, but he wasn’t one of those coaches who were like, ah, you threw the ball away. I take you out. He’s like lets that player reflect on the floor and gives them the time to kind of refocus, because often what he finds is that just give that individual a little bit longer.
I know that that person, I have faith in that person. So this is another one, if patience is important, but faith too, I trust that you can pull this around and refocus and play at your optimal level? So I’m gonna leave you out there for a little longer, and I like to apply that to just be patient with people. You know, train them as needed, but don’t do it in a fashion that makes anyone feel like it gets too prescriptive, and then trust like, show them that you care and that you’re not going to be watching over them.
Jeremy Weisz 26:27
Yeah, it’s funny when you say that, but I it’s not something that I necessarily noticed, personally, but yeah, the patience, the faith and trust, anything else, I know we were talking before we hit record about some of the things that happen on the side, not even on the court, possibly.
Ben Jackson 26:54
Specifically with like my dad or?
Jeremy Weisz 26:58
Yeah, exactly.
Ben Jackson 27:01
On this side. Well, my relationship with my dad was, there were chapters in my life where I was closest to my dad, and one of those time periods when I was closest to my dad was when way before the NBA, like because when he was involved in coaching the NBA, he was not the most accessible individual outside of the summer times but before he became the coach of the bulls, so we’re looking at 87, he was coaching, what his friend Charlie Rosen called the cockroach Basketball League, the CBA. And you know, he’s coaching the Albany Paterns, and then we’d go as a family to Puerto Rico, and he’d coach summers in Puerto Rico, in the league out there. And so what I learned from him was just like, ultimate grit, like, just believing, being passionate about what you want to do, and being up for an adventure with your family to do it too, because we’re all like, we’re on that journey with him, and it was very exciting. And so I appreciate that a lot about my dad, his willingness for adventure, and also, like, he was ambitious in an interesting, like, subtle way, yeah, but incredibly competitive, as you could imagine.
Jeremy Weisz 28:25
I’m assuming you watched the last dance. I did. What were some of I don’t know if you remember, what were some of your thoughts? I mean, that brings me back to I remember, and I was telling you before, I have certain memories, and I’ve, like, just spotting memories from growing up, and one of them when we were at your house, and then we actually and wanted to play basketball, so we went to the bird o Center at like, midnight. And I guess I didn’t tell my mom that I was staying at your house, and so she called and woke your parents up. I think it was a night before, like, a very important game. And I’m like, you can’t do that. And she’s like, I don’t care. I need to know where you are or whatever. But I remember the bird of sound, just totally empty, shooting around now, they have like, youth leagues there, so anyone could go there. And I used to play like, Sunday mornings until I, like, sprained my ankle like 12 times, was playing on Sunday mornings at the Berto center. But what came up for you, any memories or thoughts when you saw or watched the last dance?
Ben Jackson 29:32
What was so special about watching the last dance was showing a part of my childhood and my dad’s life to my kids, actually, it was their one access point into that time period in the 90s. And then, like last dance didn’t cover, but they’ve gotten glimpses of the 2000s with makers, but they were so my kids were so excited to watch grandpa.
Jeremy Weisz 30:02
What were their thoughts? What did they think?
Ben Jackson 30:05
Well, my daughter, Maylease is a gymnast, and she’s like, I want to be famous. And so we kind of had to talk about that, like, what does that mean, and how does one become famous? Maybe. And it’s sometimes, it often is entirely out of your control. So we had interesting conversations about lifelong pursuits and values.
Jeremy Weisz 30:31
It’s sort of like a Be careful what you wish for scenario, right? What were some of the conversations around your thoughts around someone who says, oh, I want to be famous.
Ben Jackson 30:42
I think I want to just let her know, well, why? You know, what is it that you want? And my daughter has a performative side to her. She likes to be in front of an audience at times, but she’s also can be shy and so I think what she found was an opportunity to take the spotlight, and so I was like, so why would we take the spotlight? Let’s think about what it is that we’d want to do. And she loves to dance. She loves to be tumbling in gymnastics. And so I’m like, let’s commit to the joy of the practice, and then the fame might come out of it, but if it doesn’t, it’s all right, you’ll probably recognize it. Especially in my industry, fame doesn’t happen very often in the creative writing world, and so we’re often putting ourselves in situations where we make choices that and when I say we like writers, teachers, individuals in the literary industry, we’re making choices that don’t bring a lot of money to us. They don’t bring a lot of fame. And so we do them because of a real burning desire.
Jeremy Weisz 31:59
Yeah, no, I love that. I do want to talk about the evolution of the services when you took over, because you’ve had to pivot. You’ve been forced to pivot. But talk about just pre-COVID. What were some of the services that were offered? And then we can talk kind of post-COVID too.
Ben Jackson 32:18
Okay, so I’ll start pre-COVID. And also include, like, when I took over The Writings Salon in 2016, teachers weren’t even getting contracts. So it was a handshake operation, and I recognized it, soon enough, I was like, I got to get contracts. I got to get this stuff going. And at the same time I was expanding services. So one thing that I made sure to do was, when Jane Underwood passed away, she was a poet also, and I was like, okay, we have to make sure that we have a Jane Underwood poetry prize. I just think, let’s remember her. And I’m happy to say the Jane Underwood Poetry Prize is now, it’s been going strong Since 2017 and we’re open to submissions now and until December 1. This is a way to get your work out there. So that was one thing that we did, services also, as services.
But when you talk about services, I could, I could also look at, when you look at our website there and you see the services, we also concretized and expanded our one-on-one services that we provided to writers so they could have mentorships, more easily. It was just in the past. It was a little abstract how we worked with individuals when they’d come to our school and I was like, oh, this is something we really need to concretize and make sure that there’s a system in place for it. We also built out an event series that would allow, kind of regular readings. There’s nothing up right now. Just had our reading. We don’t have our fresh winter.
Jeremy Weisz 33:49
I was looking at all the classes, yeah, yeah, events.
Ben Jackson 33:56
What else we did was we made sure now if we get to COVID, and then let me go to post-COVID. Now, because I’ve, kind of, I think I’ve talked a lot about pre or maybe let me get to during COVID, while we’re in COVID.
Jeremy Weisz 34:12
So really quickly, pre-COVID, you kind of, I guess, created these pathways for people. Maybe it wasn’t as clear, there wasn’t as much of a system when someone came in, and so someone comes in now there’s like, these direct pathways, and there’s a system for what they get before it was probably maybe on feel like someone come in, maybe there wasn’t a complete structured system or pathway, because Jane was probably just like intuitive. She knows, okay, you need this, you need this, and you kind of structured it so it made easy for people to kind of look in, see what bucket they fit into, and kind of follow that path. So now COVID hits.
Ben Jackson 34:55
Well said, Jeremy, and COVID hits. And I also want to add that we’ve been. Running about a when we’re at our height, we’re running about 150 classes a year. There’s a big operation, 400 students were coming through each season. So COVID hits. We’re at our highest point ever, actually, winter of 2020, when COVID hit, we’d had like 450 plus students coming through our school. We’re highest revenue we’ve been earning, we’ve been actually increasing, on average, year over year, 20% since I can so it’s like 2016 to 2020, COVID hit someone and I was like, All right, what are we going to do? So we did the most nimble. Everyone was thinking.
Exactly, I mean, industry was asking the same exact thing, what are we going to do? And as nimbly as we could, we pivoted online across all classes and ran essentially all classes online for a period of time, about a couple years, until we could gradually move into San Francisco. We let go of our Berkeley location, and we relied on classes like daily right round robin that protected us during those times when we anticipated kind of a contraction. So the round robin is a class that Jane designed 20 years ago. It’s a class where it’s hard to call it a class, but I’ll put quotes around it. You have to write every day for a period of time, either three weeks, six weeks or eight weeks.
You write from a prompt that the facilitator of the class we’ll give to you, you have to set a timer for 12 minutes. You can’t write any longer than 12 minutes, or you can, but you can’t share more than 12 minutes. There’s also a word limit that you can share. Then after you do that, you send it to a partner that you have and the partner responds with only encouraging comments. You do the same for your partner. You respond to their right each day with encouraging comments. Each week, you get a new partner. There are other aspects of the class, but that’s the core of it. Now, what people say about is they say, one person said, this is an antidote for writer’s block, because this system that’s been created around writing ensures that you’re writing every day.
Jeremy Weisz 37:25
We need this at the top. I need that quote at the top here, like if it was looking at the video. We’re looking at the round robins, like your antidote for writer’s block. Anyways, keep going.
Ben Jackson 37:40
I mean, I love this one from Dale Benson by the Dale Benson had taken this class maybe 50 times. Wow. So people were finding was that, in some cases, it was the way they could write it all. It was their pathway to writing, because the structure that was set up was so clear to them, they it takes all the guesswork out of writing. You have to write. There’s a set time when you’re doing it. A lot of people would say, Okay, I’m just going to write in the morning. They’d have their patterns. And you’re also a part of a community. And that’s the core of the writing side, I think, is that we know that writing can happen alone, and it often does. But what writers benefit from most is when they have an opportunity to share and get feedback, and especially with early drafts encouraging feedback, because then there’s this loop that happens where it’s like, all right, I can do this again tomorrow. I can do this again the next day. It’s very hard to be a writer in and experience a silence that happens afterwards. And so we’re eradicating that silence.
Jeremy Weisz 38:49
So Ben, this sounds totally obvious when you say it, but you came up with it. And it’s not obvious until it’s created, right? So what’s interesting about it is, how did you even come up with this because it wasn’t there before, right?
Ben Jackson 39:04
Jane Underwood came up with it and created and designed it and did it. It was mailed initially. So if we look back 20 years, the Round Robin was an exchange of letters and interesting. Recognized what this was. This takes a lot of the best features of The Writing Salon and just drops it into a class. What she recognized was that writers aren’t actually committing to the practice. That was a great concern for Jane, and she understood that there are a lot of weight like you could give them a daily prompt and sure they’ll write every day, but if they don’t have someone on the back end, they don’t have a sense of community then, and so then they’re just getting in daily prompted. There are a lot of actually places you could go online and find tons of places to get a daily prompt for your writing practice, but the chances of actually sustaining a practice through that daily prompt isn’t very high because there’s not a way to integrate it with community.
So what we did was change it, which she just said, okay, gonna build that community element on the back end, you have a partner who’s responding, it can only be encouraging. And it was fine-tuned over, this is part of the patience that maybe could be a theme of our session. The Writing Salon has experienced incremental growth year over year, and a lot of it was from just total, total patience. There are not many writing schools like us that exist in the United States that are a for profit model. In fact, we’re one of the few, very few, who can do this and make profit. And the round robin is one of the reasons why we’ve been able to make profit.
Jeremy Weisz 40:44
What are people looking to get out of it? Right? Because everyone has something different going in. Why do people want to, like, what are they trying to achieve for themselves? Because people have gone through this, like you said, like 40 times that’s a lot.
Ben Jackson 41:05
So for this particular class, everybody who takes this class is either loves writing or is on the cusp of loving it and often taking it solidifies whatever joy they experience, it is pure pleasure. It’s pure creativity. I’m a writer who goes through the full process from composing to proofreading at the very end, much of my time is in editing and proofreading, which I have a lot of passion for, but only a select group of people have, like, a real passion for that stage of writing, but many people, and myself included, have a passion for that early part, and are hungry for it, like that raw inspiration, that sense of anything’s possible. And so we’re tapping into that need for people, I think that everyone, a lot of people, have, and maybe you have yourself. Jeremy, it’s just desire, even with your science about anything your background that’s different, like you want to tell your story, you want your voice to get out there. It’s a pleasurable experience doing that.
Jeremy Weisz 42:14
Yeah, I was talking to I did a series where I had some of the top direct response marketers, copywriters on the planet on and there was a bunch of them that said, what has helped me improve is a daily practice, and some of them would actually just copy successful sales letters by hand, like they don’t even write anything. They just literally copy it by hand and by osmosis, kind of learn what works. Is interesting, but it was a daily practice of doing it every single day. I’m curious on the pricing. How do you come up with the price? I mean, it’s super affordable for anyone. Now, how do you determine pricing?
Ben Jackson 43:05
The pricing for Round Robin is different than for any other of our other classes. Because some people will come in and say, this is a steal, and other people will come in and it is actually, it truly is. But what people if they haven’t read the actual description, you know? And this sometimes happens, but they’re like, I’m not actually getting much instruction from Kathy or, like, the facilitator. I’m not getting that direct instruction from a person, from an expert, teacher. I’m getting feedback from peers, and so we say, we’ve essentially built out on this structure for you to be able to commit to your writing practice. And that is something that it has a different outcome that has the absolute value, and like, you’re not here to necessarily publish a book that people do use the round robin to complete books, and have used it. And a woman, Susie Parker, early on, it’s essentially use the writing.
The round robin is a key way to get her work written. Many, I’d say dozens of books have probably come out of this class. So in terms of pricing it, we do have to make it friendly to the people who have taken it for a long time, because we know they’re gonna be signing up again and again for it. So we want to go like, we want our returns. They’re the strength of our community. So we, whenever we do price increases, it’s very gradual with round robin. And in fact, the writing side has always made a point of being accessible to everyone. So if you’re looking around our website and you think of the Bay Area, our classes are very affordable generally across the Bay Area, and in even comparison, other Bay Area schools. That is essential for us, we also have an Access Program, which is something that I started shortly after. It took a little bit of time. It did really, really cool us until 2020, but the Access Program was a way for people who don’t have the capacity to pay for our classes to come in and benefit from The Writing Salon.
This is something we’re really proud of. Again, dozens, if not more than 100 people have come through our access program and been able to take classes here without perhaps having that opportunity. Otherwise, before that, we had scholarship setups, but the Access Program really made it clear and accessible.
Jeremy Weisz 45:48
You were talking about books Ben, so I want love for you to talk about Jing Li.
Ben Jackson 45:52
Jing Li is a great story of an individual who came to San Francisco from China. Grew up there, and she was walking around a book fair in San Francisco at Fort Mason, that part of San Francisco, and came upon a booth that was a Writing Salon booth. This was back in the days of Jane Underwood, and at that booth, there’s these words, like anybody can write, right? Like anybody can do this. And she went up to Jane the director, and she’s like, is this even accessible to me? Can I do this? I speak English as a second language? Can I do this? And James is, of course, come on in, it’s for everyone. Jing Lee ended up taking multiple classes at The Writing Salon and published her memoir The Red Sandals after all those classes.
And what she said she wanted to do is, obtain a sense of like self-worth over time, she said that like it had been hard to come here from China and to feel like she wanted to have a sense of accomplishment somewhere, and to get her story out, have her voice be heard, and this was her opportunity to do it. And so we’re so proud of Jane. This is one story from The Writing Salon, but students will come here and be working in a second language and have a lot of success like her.
Jeremy Weisz 47:32
I’m gonna, Ben, we were talking about post-pandemic, right? And so one of the pieces, one of the parts your website that I was on was the all classes, right? And so there is kind of intermixed, uh, different things, obviously, from online to in-person to kind of hybrid, asynchronous, so you want to talk through just a few of the current items that we’re looking at here.
Ben Jackson 48:02
Sure, Round Robin is its own class. So we separate that off. We think of it as a generative writing class where people can produce a lot of material that happens entirely remotely and asynchronous. There are spin-offs of the round-robin that are remote and synchronous. But then, for the most part, when we’re online, we’re working with Zoom, live video conferencing. Probably about half of our classes take place online by zoom. Then there are classes that are on a platform called Wet Ink that’s specifically for writers. It’s an asynchronous class that allows writers to work according to their own flexible schedule and still commit to a class. It’s great opportunities.
Jeremy Weisz 48:58
What are some of our popular asynchronous ones?
Ben Jackson 49:01
The Creative Writing workshops, the big seller where it sells out most of the time. It also, we have to cap them at 10 because there’s a lot of work for the instructor in those classes. Because those classes are designed to be essentially a place where students will come and polish their work, and so they’re getting peer feedback and instructor feedback, and it’s really kind of focused critique there. Another type of class is San Francisco class, where people come in person, and we have a lot of offerings in person. That is the direction we’re headed more right now, in terms of expansion, as we speak, there’s actually a couple things in the works that we can talk about, if we want to around how the writing sound envisions itself into the next year.
Jeremy Weisz 49:52
That is interesting. Ben, you say that because the way I’m thinking, okay, COVID hits. You go a lot. It online, and I found certain companies just kind of keep going down that path, and you’re saying, actually, our growth is going to come with in person.
Ben Jackson 50:13
I’d love to talk about this, what we found is that our community coalesces around our in-person classes in a way that is like most dear to us, that it is also aligned with the students values. There’s something about that connection that happens in an in person setting that’s very hard to replicate on Zoom or otherwise. So we love the accessibility and convenience of zoom and remote asynchronous classes, but we also believe that some of the best opportunities that we have for connections are available to us in person. And in fact, a lot of us just, frankly, miss that in person connection. And so coming out of the pandemic, people are still in 2024 people come to us and take classes for the first time. Like I forgot what this was like. I haven’t taken classes in-person in five years. Now I know what I’ve been missing, and they’re just hungry for more. So we’re recognizing that our Berkeley students really want Berkeley. They’re like, oh, we want to be in Berkeley. We don’t want to drive across the bridge to San Francisco. So we’re sensing a need very clearly in our community to set the groundwork.
Jeremy Weisz 51:36
I was listening to been a talk on this person who was an expert on AI and one of the things that he was talking about is, what will AI not replace? Which I thought was an interesting question, and that was one of those things, was what you’re talking about. It’s that kind of that connection, the people connection, right? Yeah, he was talking about robots, autonomous vehicles, all this stuff. But that was an interesting question that was kind of posed. So I can see that.
Ben Jackson 52:13
What’s interesting, Jeremy, to spin off of that too, is that, like our school, has grown the most in two ways. There are two ways that we grow. Word of mouth is so key to our school, and then retention of student that’s different from word of mouth, retention of student primarily through direct engagement, such as email campaigns that are coming from us. So we know that actually that growth that we’re looking for happens best through our in person classes, through Round Robin and through our more intimate online classes.
There’s another intimate online class that I want to point out, which is mentorships that we offer, and they’re often in poetry, where it’s one on one and it’s online, but it’s a replicating an experience that one might have in a low residency MFA program, where you’re sharing work with an instructor, but you’re also writing letters to that teacher. And so this is exchange that happens that’s really intimate and meaningful, and people just take that over and over again, because It’s intoxicating to have that kind of personal relationship with an acclaimed author.
Jeremy Weisz 53:27
One that sticks out to me. I don’t know why. It just does. I wonder if it’s popular, is the story mapping one? That one looks really cool, because I feel like it’s, you know, first of all, if you’re not looking at the screen, you’re listening, it says, got an idea for a novel, a movie or TV series. I mean, how many times have you heard someone like, I have this movie that I want to write? So I don’t know. Is this one a popular one, or?
Ben Jackson 53:49
Absolutely good college? Good college? Yeah, it’s very popular story mapping. And Kate comes out. Kate Montgomery, who teaches this class, has a screenwriting background, and story mapping is one that can also bring all genres together, most genres. So screenwriters will come in, fiction writers, certain novelists, might come in as well. And then, in their times, people working on a memoir, well, they’ll come in. I just think, like, how do I actually structure this thing? It’s kind of hard. I’ve got all these experiences so, but it’s primarily fiction and screenwriting and, yeah, I mean, it’s exciting to be in the mode of watching your idea unfold. And I think what we find happens sometimes is that our students can stop, well, when they come to us, they have the idea, and we just don’t want them to stop at the idea. And so this is one of the best next steps to allow that idea become a reality. Of writing the story is really, really hard because it takes a lot of patience, a lot of commitment and effort. And so if you have the blueprint for many people, like a story map, you’re more likely to be able to do it eventually.
Jeremy Weisz 54:54
Yeah, I’m curious. You mentioned obviously word of mouth. But early on, is there some evolution from the marketing perspective? There’s flyers, early on, neon flyers. And then you said, you know, obviously you do email marketing and other things. There are any other methods you use to just get the word out?
Ben Jackson 55:20
Yeah. I mean, we are committed to approaches that include, there is a social media touch, but I want to be clear that we’ve recognized our capacity on social media and we haven’t. I don’t think that a lot of our best accomplishments in the marketing sphere have come through social media campaigns, and some of it has to do with a gateway problem. We don’t have a lot of resources. We don’t have a lot of income that we can bring to marketing, and marketing is a science. It takes a lot of work to go through the data and also build the campaigns that are really appropriate and beautiful. And we’ve had our beautiful campaigns. We know when they work a lot of what we do is more like we’ll build an event and we’ll build a campaign around an event. So like our 20th anniversary event five years ago, just building momentum towards events is exciting for folks. And you say, hey, come to our event. We’ll do like a raffle or whatever, and you’ll be able to get a free class out of it. We just did a bingo bash at our 25th anniversary event a month ago, or several weeks ago, where we said, hey, let’s like, winners of bingo. We’d never done this before. We just experimented.
You can listen to a reading right now. You’re going to hear some words. Fill out your bingo chart as you hear any of those phrases words, maybe you’ll be the winner. And you can get 25% off a class on our 25th anniversary year. And so we do stuff like that. That’s fun, fun for us, and isn’t quite as data-driven. Yeah, and we also build connections with our local writers. I mean, I think that’s so important for us. So, whether we’re at reading series, our teachers are connecting with their students and other writers, we’re taking a more personalized approach. We just haven’t been able to do that as much in like social media or other marketing methods, with a very personalized approach. One-on-one, like the best way actually to get sign ups, we found, and I was when I was a teacher, I was doing this, I just email that student that I think is the best candidate. I love that about the writing salon, that it’s so personalized like that.
Jeremy Weisz 57:41
You know what’s interesting, I love that idea around building a campaign around an event, and I think anyone could do that. And that’s again, it also builds just a deeper connection when you’re in person. And also, I didn’t think of what you just said, which is, teachers, right? These teachers are maybe teaching in other places, maybe they’re doing other things, and they’re probably spreading the word. So you kind of have a fleet of these teachers out in the universe going back and going, oh, I also teach here. You should take the storytelling class or whatever. So there is that inherent word of mouth because of the community of the teachers too, right?
Ben Jackson 58:19
Right. And I want to speak about that relationship with teachers, because this is crucial. Many of our teachers have been at the running salon for a decade or more. This is unusual in, I mean, I think in a lot of workplace settings, but also in the literary industry, where there’s a lot of turnover and there’s also a lot of burnout. The art teachers, so they’ve been around for a long time, and so they also feel a sense of commitment. Though it’s not like, it’s not where they’re like, oh, I have to do this. It’s what they’ve recognized over time, like this works for me and for The Writing Salon to be out there and getting the word out. So we cherish them. They’re almost interesting brief, because they’re somewhere in between an independent contractor and an employee. They exist in this realm between the two.
Jeremy Weisz 59:14
They’re kind of like family, I guess after 10 years right now.
Ben Jackson 59:17
Yeah, from a personal standpoint.
Jeremy Weisz 59:22
Yeah, there’s certain things you do with the culture of the teachers. Like, I know we talk about building an event, and that’s kind of for the students. What kind of stuff do you do for the staff or the teachers? Are there any certain events or things you do just to maintain culture with the team?
Ben Jackson 59:43
Yeah, we have teachers gatherings that will set up, and those will be a mix of opportunities to connect with each other. And also have trainings. At times, the trainings might be more recently, trainings around access like, how do we make our class accessible and equitable, there are times when we have to think about is there a sense of fairness with how we’re offering feedback to students, and that goes a long way. So the teachers gatherings are special, but they were hard during the pandemic. I mean, we were kind of checking in over zoom, in other areas of the country, you know, we may have listeners who are coming in from all over the country. In the Bay Area, we were experiencing a lockdown a little more intensely, I think, than other areas.
And so when we would come together on Zoom for a long time. And it wasn’t until like last year 2023 that we could re-engage in a way that felt very personal, in person, with our teachers. So the touch was different. I have to say, it was hard for them and for us, especially from like 2021 to early 2023 to feel as connected as we used to. Because before that, they were like moving. You know, when we’d move into a new location, the teachers would be in moving with us, giving a helping. It was all hands and also, you know, we compensate when we felt it was appropriate, but there were times when they just wanted to help out. And that’s what I would do when I was a teacher too at The Writing Salon.
Jeremy Weisz 1:01:27
Ben, I have one last question for you before I ask you. I just want to thank you for it’s been I’ve been excited for this for a long time, and so I want to encourage everyone to check out writingsalon.com to learn more, obviously, if you’re in the Bay Area, but they do have online classes also, they’re asynchronous or with the group. So check it out. I have a really hard question for you, okay, your favorite books? Okay, and it could be genres, right? Fiction, non-fiction, maybe business leadership. I’m curious, what are some of your favorite books?
Ben Jackson 1:02:13
Okay, I wanted to start with, like, just poets all because I read a lot of poetry, and so I’ll talk about poets. I mean, it all started for me with John Keats. So I have to shout out to the romantic poet John Keats, who wrote all those beautiful ODEs. So if you go out there and pick up anyone from long, distant past, check out John Keats. But other poets who I admire, and, you know, books that I’ve loved include, well, most recently, I want to bring it recent. More recent, Jeremy. I love Martyr by Kaveh Akbar. It’s just a beautiful book. And he’s a poet who came to the novel writing and just produce this gorgeous book this year.
So I want to I celebrate that one great book, other like, just poets that I’ve admired, because I want to, with poetry we don’t know we I kind of think about the whole work Elizabeth Bishop, someone who’s been important to me, but more recent poets who I admire, living Rick Barrett, who’s a teacher of mine and beautiful writer just put out Moving The Bones. So that’s his latest. Also really admire Rowan Ricardo Phillips. He’s doing some very cool things with a sort of a line that feels very classical and graceful. Ron Ricardo Phillips has a new book called Silver. That’s wonderful. So those are some you know, the favorite books, one that’s a one way in for me to look very recent and then to the very distant past.
Jeremy Weisz 1:03:58
Any others, as you’re running the business, right? I know, from a craft perspective, you are have probably, that’s how I figured it’d be a very difficult question to answer, because you have a lot of favorite books, I’m sure, so the craft side, and then what about just from as you’re, like you’re doing all these things, like building teams and running the business and in those kind of things. I don’t know if there’s any on that side.
Ben Jackson 1:04:26
I like Outliers right by like Malcolm Gladwell, like stuff like that, that that allows an opportunity to think about why things happen on margins. And I also appreciate books that are kind of more religious oriented for business purposes. So one book that comes to mind is, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind that my dad introduced me to when I was young. It’s by Suzuki Roshi, that’s one where I think, with business leadership, a lot of the important work that we do is actually internalizing, no reflecting, taking those moments to think about why we’re going to make a decision and then, and then, of course, executing afterwards. But I care about, those moments of contemplation before execution. And that kind of book helps it. Of course, it talks about Zen practice, but it also allows you to think about how to speak carefully with others.
Jeremy Weisz 1:05:37
I wonder. I haven’t checked this out. Go ahead.
Ben Jackson 1:05:41
And it’ll kind of lead with intentionality.
Jeremy Weisz 1:05:46
I should have looked that up. I wonder, does your dad have like, a recommended reading list, or did he give you one growing up?
Ben Jackson 1:05:52
He recommends it’ll go back to, like, the Bible, just a touchstone starting point. He also just gave his grandson a Bible and reading Genesis, which is a book called from Marilyn Robinson, but he recommends Shinra, Suzuki Roshi, yeah, his work ends in my beginner’s mind. He brought that to me. The Opening The Head of Thought is also another book that he’s really appreciated. His reading list. He would give a reading books to his players. Maybe you may recall that, and it you know, varied widely what he would give so, he’s got his joys, and I’ll say sacred hoops too. I actually read Sacred Hoops recently. I hadn’t read it before, just to be honest, and Sacred Hoop.
Jeremy Weisz 1:06:59
Shame on you. I think I read it in high school, or whatever I forgot when he came out with it. But yeah.
Ben Jackson 1:07:04
And Sacred Hoops was actually also very helpful from a business standpoint too, from leading a team. So I appreciate Sacred Hoops.
Jeremy Weisz 1:07:14
You mentioned Malcolm Gladwell. I love his stuff. I just listened to Revenge of The Tipping Point, which is kind of — it’s not really a remake, because it’s a totally different, you know, different stories in it than the original tipping point. But it was fantastic as well. I forgot to ask all the Michael Jordan stories, you have a Michael Jordan story?
Ben Jackson 1:07:37
I mean, yeah, I do. I guess there one of, I mean, I just go back to the first time I saw MJ play live, which was in 1987 and it was before my dad was coaching the bowls, so I had no idea that he would actually be involved with the organization. At that time, we went to the Boston Garden. So we lived in New York at the time, in Woodstock, New York, went to the Boston Garden. Then it’s a funny story. We went to eat right next to the garden, and my dad pulls out a paper and he goes, he’s just like, looks disappointed, like, what’s up to add it, and he shows me Michael’s stat line from the game the previous night. They played against the Hawks, and Michael had put down 61 points the night the day before, right? So it’s like, don’t like, just be careful with your expectations. Today, he just had the — Adam wants the Nicks to win, of course. So we go into the garden, and Michael had 17 points.
It was probably one of his, like, kind of lowest point total of, maybe lowest point totals of the season. But he was visibly, I mean, he’s a superhuman, but he was also visibly exhausted from the prior night’s work. So he didn’t get as much playing time. But what happened after the game is also really special. I mean, this was something that I just really admired about Michael Jordan. It’s like after the game we waited to go see him and perhaps meet him and get his autograph. So kind of I’m waiting along in this tunnel with my mom. It’s just the two of us, and he comes out, and my mom approaches him, and I’m sort of standing back a little bit, and she’s like, can we have your autograph? And he’s like, I’m sorry, ma’am, I have to catch the bus. But it wasn’t like didn’t feel like at all, like I’m actually didn’t feel like he neglected anything. He was the kindest individual to her.
He was just so respectful and calling her ma’am, like I hadn’t heard anyone really call my mom Ma’am. So I just appreciated that the way he approached my mother, I thought it was very gentlemanly. And after that day, I have many memories of Michael Jordan, but that first one of his kindness is just so dear to me, because I’ve seen Michael like competitive to a point where he’s raging and like, very intense. And I loved that moment of, like, just the softer Michael, too.
Jeremy Weisz 1:10:32
I love that. Ben I want to be the first one to thank you. Everyone check out writingsalons.com and more episodes of the podcast, and we’ll see everyone next time. Thanks so much.
Ben Jackson 1:10:43
Thanks Jeremy.
