We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Greg Smedley-Warren. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Greg below.
Greg, appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
I am a full-time classroom teacher in a public school, so I understand how overwhelming teaching can be. That’s why all three of our companies are centered on helping teachers, supporting students, and making teaching easier. If we can help one teacher reach one child, we succeed. We succeed if our planners or virtual professional development offerings inspire a teacher to love teaching again. We want to make our profession better for everyone, and that desire drives our companies each day.
Greg, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I have been a teacher for 20 years, 17 years in kindergarten. About 14 years ago, I started a blog called The Kindergarten Smorgasboard to share what I was doing in my classroom. About six months later, I discovered that you could create teaching resources and sell them, so I thought I would try to make up the money we spent out of pocket each year for my classroom. That’s how TKS was born. The growth and success of TKS have been organic because we never set out to have a business, let alone three different businesses. I wanted to share my passion for teaching and pay for stuff for my classroom. The Kindergarten Smorgasboard is an educational consulting company, so I create curriculum resources for teachers to use in their classrooms. I also share videos of my lessons, ideas, and projects for classrooms and tips to make teachers’ jobs easier. That mission to help teachers and inspire teachers is what drove us to start our second company, Elevate Your Classroom. Elevate offers professional development for educators both in person and virtually. When we started Elevate, we intentionally kept our conference small and intimate. We held a 1-day conference for 250 teachers, all run by my husband, myself, and some loyal friends. When we realized there was a void in the space of professional learning for early childhood teachers (pre-k-2), we decided to step into that space. We grew Elevate into the only professional development conference exclusively for early childhood. Now Elevate in-person is a 3-day conference, and our conference welcomes over 10,000 educators in person and virtually. Finally, we wanted a way to help teachers with organization and planning because the organization was not my strong suit. We purchased our planner and stationery company, Berteau and Co., 3 years ago. Berteau is a stationary company offering teacher planners, weekly planners, notepads, binders, and other products (they’re not just for teachers!). We launch new designs and products each year based on teachers’ feedback and requests. All three companies work together to make teaching easier, from lesson planning resources, classroom ideas and activities, professional development, and organization.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Like most companies, we had to pivot when the Covid pandemic hit. Teachers were teaching virtually and didn’t need our regular PDF resources. They needed digital resources and someone to share how they were teaching virtually. Initially, when schools were closed, we started offering free twice-weekly webinars. These were a huge success and opened the door for us to offer our ELEVATE virtual conferences. We also began offering our teaching resources in digital format so teachers could use them in the virtual space. But one event really set us apart in the virtual learning space. Our school district starts earlier than most districts across the country, so when we had to start the school year virtually, no one really knew how to do it or what it would look like. On day 1 of virtual kindergarten, I set up my phone and recorded my two-hour virtual class. That first day of kindergarten was taught completely virtually. We shared the video, and it went viral because teachers needed to see what virtual teaching looked like, so we were able to step into that void and support teachers.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
My cofounder/business partner is my husband. This began as a hobby when I started blogging and creating resources for teachers. I would teach all day, then at night and on weekends, work on the blog or create resources. Eventually, Jason started helping. We both had full-time jobs, so we would work until late at night on TKS. We realized that we couldn’t keep that up if we wanted to grow, so we set a goal, and if we hit that monthly goal for several months, Jason would leave his corporate finance job and work full-time for our company. That goal was met much quicker than expected, and Jason came on full-time. Now, he is the CEO of all three companies and manages our employees, marketing, customer service, my schedule, and more!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thekindergartensmorgasbaord.com, www.elevateyourclassroom.com, www.berteauandco.com
- Instagram: @kindergartensmorgasboard
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kindergarten.smorgasboard.7
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@gregsmedley
- Other: TikTok: @kindersmorgie
