"This Is a Calling, Not a Job" — 25 Years in Mission-Driven Leadership | Heath Einstein, TCU

[0:16]  Welcome back to another episode here on the Heart Hustle Podcast. I decided today I wanted to start off with a little bit different. I'm going to start off with a good question. Are you ready?

[0:24]  I'm ready.

[0:25]  All right. You said people either enter higher ed because they want to replicate a positive experience or prevent someone else from having a negative one. Which one are you and why?

[0:35]  Oh, that's such a good question, Ephra. I think that I would be the person who had a really positive college experience and I wanted to replicate that for others. I know that not everybody has that, and I wanted to be able to take what I experienced, what I learned through my four-year undergraduate journey, and, you know, shower that out to the rest of the world.

Um, I am by nature a really positive person. I think the world gives us a lot of reasons not to be positive, and I've just always had that glass half-full approach. So I take that same mindset when I'm working with our families and those around me, our staff, and we try to create that positivity for others as well.

[1:23]  I love it. And I think when we first spoke, I mean, first good answer. I love it. I love that we got to start off and you were so ready for it. This is a 25-year-old calling, man. And when you just mentioned like really having good experiences, you were a tour guide, an orientation leader, deeply engaged in everything campus had to offer.

What was it about your own college experience, man, that made you say, "Yes, I need to give this to other people"? Like, I know we kind of highlighted some, but what else were you experiencing?

[2:05]  I think what I was experiencing was what so many people experience at that stage of life, which is independence. I made the decision to go pretty far away from home. I grew up on the west coast, went to college on the east coast.

Um, and it made coming home for the weekend impossible. In fact, I think I only would come home typically once a year. We couldn't afford for me to be traveling back and forth very often, and I had to find my way.

Um, I had a lot of people helping me. None of us go through life alone. None of us go through any experience entirely alone. We know that there are others around us if we are capable of looking to others if we want to do that.

And so for me, it was I've got all of these new shiny things around me. It was like, what am I going to take part in? And I remember that first semester in college being overwhelmed, to be honest with you, about all of those possibilities and having to divide up my time in a way that would allow for me to not fall through the cracks academically because I knew that was my number one priority in going to college. But I also wanted to avail myself of the social experiences that really can help us grow and thrive.

[3:11]  I love that, man. And clearly you love what you do because I spoke to you last time, and there was just this energy. Today is the same energy.

Uh, we just talked about a little bit prior some of the brags, right, these universities having, but you guys hired a cool brag as well recently. Could we talk about that brag that you guys just happened last night?

[3:31]  Absolutely. So, just last night, our star basketball player, Olivia Miles, was selected number two overall in the WNBA draft. This coming on the heels of our women's basketball team making it to the Elite 8 for the second straight year.

I mean, TCU is known for many, many things, one of which is our prowess on the athletic fields. Um, and our women's basketball team is no exception to that. So, we're really proud of Olivia Miles, as well as Marta Suarez, who was also drafted last night in the WNBA. So yeah, our horned frogs go everywhere.

[4:06]  That's cool, man. How does that make you feel, man? Just knowing that when we talk about kids and feeling that experience, just that is seeing some top athletes come out of the school. I can imagine individuals that also leave with top offers for different job offers. What's some of the things that get you so excited? This is definitely one of them, but what else gets you excited about all this?

[4:28]  Well, I think you're spot on. I mean, the athletes get a lot of attention, and for good reason. I mean, they bring a lot of exposure to the university.

Um, but you know, we'll have thousands of students who graduate each year, and they're going on to do some of the most dynamic things you can think of around the world, from technology to the energy industry to the political landscape. There's no exception, and I get a front-row seat to see this all happen, which is really awesome.

And the best part is I get to see so many of these students when they're in high school and then walk with them through their journey and then see them on the other side.

Um, I was just in Kansas City a couple of weeks ago for an event that we were hosting, which brought together stakeholders, including prospective families and prospective employers and alumni. And I got to see a student who was our student body president several years ago. She was really active in our admission process. She was one of our featured speakers for our campus visit program, and now she's an attorney and thriving and about to get married.

So, it's really fun to be able to see people who walk this journey, the same one that I was privileged enough to walk through some decades ago now, and see how their lives have unfolded in similar ways and in some cases in different ways.

[6:04]  Did you say, I can't remember if you said it was different because you went to the school. Your daughter's at the school, right? If I'm not mistaken.

[6:14]  Yeah, my daughter is a first-year student here at TCU.

[6:17]  And did you have family prior to you going to TCU too, or was it just you?

[6:19]  Oh gosh. No, we had no other connection to the university before I started working here.

And in fact, I remember coming here for the first time. And I don't know if you've ever been on our campus, but it's a stunning campus both in terms of its physical beauty, but more importantly in the people who are here.

Um, and the people who are here are the reason why I come back day after day and year after year. Uh, and it struck me the very first time I visited campus. Not only is this place drenched in purple—that's our purple and white school colors—but everyone here is just so genuinely friendly.

And I'll use the following to illustrate that point. If you were to go on any college campus and ask someone to point you in the direction of a building, let's say you want to know where the library is, on a lot of college campuses, I mean, people are genuinely friendly. They'll say, "Absolutely. Go down the street, hang a left, it'll be your first building on the right."

At TCU, if you ask someone that question, they will walk you there. That's the ethos of the place. And I remember being here for the first time and seeing that and thinking, well, this must be a facade. People aren't actually like this all the time.

[7:31]  Yeah.

[7:32]  And now I've been here almost 14 years. And it's true. People are just like that all the time.

[7:35]  Almost like scary nice.

[7:39]  Yeah. Like scary nice. If it wasn't a negative term, I would use the word cult, but it's not a cult. It's just people are really invested in others. They see others before they see themselves.

[7:50]  What was it hard to sell your daughter on it, or was she kind of gung-ho because she grew up in the experience? I could imagine you were always there at these experiences. It was kind of easy.

[7:58]  Well, I didn't even try to sell her on it, to be honest with you. I wanted her to create her own path, and if that was going to be somewhere else, my wife and I were fully supportive of that for her.

She came to us and said, "I really would like to be at TCU." And we said, "That is great. We're going to go visit other schools as well, and therefore you'll have a really confident sense of your decision. We don't want you to look back on this at some point in the future and regret coming here because you didn't have a taste of what else might be out there."

[8:28]  Yeah. And your wife also went to TCU?

[8:30]  She did not. No.

[8:31]  Oh, neither of us went here undergraduate. Now, I'm actually enrolled here right now in a doctoral program.

[8:38]  Okay.

[8:40]  Because what I've learned is after being here for almost 14 years, they don't just give you honorary degrees for time served. So, I actually have to get a degree if I want to be able to promote this place as having gone through the student experience. So, I'm finishing up my first year right now.

[8:55]  You got to kind of practice what you preach, right?

[8:57]  Exactly. That's exactly right.

[9:00]  Oh man, that's cool. I asked a question, man, just because I've kind of was that individual. I was going to school part-time, maybe one or two classes a semester. I was working full-time, kind of in that survival mode.

Um, so I probably missed the whole campus experience. How does your team think about the student like that? Someone who's there but not really there?

[9:21]  Yeah, we think about that a lot. And we think about that a lot because the reality is that what you're describing is what many students in this country experience.

Um, and while college, if you go back to the founding of universities in the United States, college was not always designed for that type of individual. You think about it in the colonial period and really for most of the history of higher education in the United States, it was designed for the sons of aristocratic white people.

And over time, things have shifted, but our intentions have shifted sometimes faster than the design of our institutions have shifted.

[10:07]  Copy.

[10:07]  Um, and so if you look at the numbers, we have what I call now post-traditional students. The term non-traditional students has been used in the past.

And I actually just in a class the other day, we were talking to a really interesting gentleman by the name of Manny Gonzalez, who works in advocacy for Western Governor's University. He's also a trustee at Austin Community College.

And he posed this term post-traditional because when you use the word non-traditional, you're centering traditional as if that's the norm. And somebody who's outside the norm is othered. So, I like this idea of post-traditional.

Post-traditional students make up a significant percentage of undergraduate students in the United States. More than 40% of students at the undergraduate level are older than 22. We think of everybody as being 18 to 22 on a college campus, right? But that's not actually the case.

Almost 70% of students while they're in their undergraduate coursework will hold a job. So trying to go to school and have a job at the same time, that's the majority of students.

Roughly 40% of students are in school part-time. They're not full-time students. So we have this image in our mind of the sort of prototypical college student as being right out of high school, going full-time and not having to work.

By the way, one in five undergraduate students has a child. So we also have parents on our campuses as well.

So to answer your question, we have to think about all of those students and think about meeting those students where they are, not where we are. It used to be really easy. We presented TCU as this institution and you either fit or don't fit.

Well, as the demographics in our country shift and demographics around the world shift and who are the folks who are attending college, we need to think about expanding our tent to make sure that there's space here for everyone and that when they are here, they don't feel like they're just barely getting a foot into that tent, but they have every opportunity to stand right in the middle with everybody else.

[12:20]  What have you found over the years that has changed like the way that we communicate with them? I could probably be one, right? You also mentioned like meeting them at where they're at. I can imagine that at one point emails were working; email is probably not the thing anymore.

Like what has that looked like and evolved into, especially at the level of higher ed where sometimes it trails a little bit, but we do have things like AI, you know, that could really be very helpful in how we stop doing the most repetitive things and start doing things that we love.

[13:04]  Ephra, when I was visiting my parents' home a couple of years ago, I discovered the materials that the colleges that I applied to were sending me, and they were VHS tapes.

Okay, that was the if we wanted to learn about a college, what you had to do first of all, you had to write a letter to the college and say, "I'm interested in knowing more about you." You got on a mailing list, and then they sent you materials.

And in my case, it was VHS tapes. Okay? Now I don't even have a device that would allow me to watch that anymore, but it tells you how far we've come, right?

So then in the early '90s, direct mail started to become a really big thing. You saw it not just in higher ed, but like in politics. You'd see campaigns just like pelting families with direct mail.

And those direct mail pieces, and again, colleges used them as well. They were all the exact same. Everybody, no matter who you were, no matter what your address was, no matter what your life experience was, you and I would get exactly the same piece of mail.

As if what we were looking for in a college was identical.

[13:55]  Okay.

[13:55]  Over time, and it took a long time to get here, we started to try to personalize those materials a little bit.

Um, it started with just adding a first name. So, it would say, "Dear Heath."

[14:09]  Yep.

[14:10]  And then whatever it said, "Dear Ephra," and it would say whatever it said. Now, again, messages were identical, but you could open up a piece of mail and it said, "Oh my gosh, it's mailed directly to me. They know exactly who I am."

[14:19]  Okay.

[14:20]  Then we start to see colleges segmenting their information as we began to learn more and more about each of our audience members.

Maybe we had a couple of pieces of information. Maybe we knew that there's something that you liked, a sport you're interested in, a hobby that you have, a major you're thinking about, and we could have messages that were mostly the same, but we would plug in a little bit of variable information.

Well, we're now at the point where colleges have hundreds of data points on each person who's in our prospect pool, and we can create these extremely personalized messages.

And technology, specifically AI, gives us tools to do that such that no two people are getting the exact same message. Because again, what you're looking for in a school is going to be entirely different from what I'm looking for in a school.

Um, and even people who grow up near each other may be interested in totally different things.

And so as colleges learn more and more about students, we get to this extreme personalized experience.

Now, I think about this in Netflix terms, okay? Or any other streaming service. When you go on to Netflix and you log in, it remembers exactly what you logged in last time and what you were viewing.

[15:52]  Yeah.

[15:53]  Um, it has your entire history of viewing, and it will suggest shows for you based on that viewing history.

[15:59]  Yep.

[16:00]  Okay. And you don't have to log in the next time and tell them all those shows again. It knows.

So there's this sort of algorithmic experience that's happening when colleges communicate to students again using AI technologies.

[16:15]  For people of a certain generation, that seems really creepy, right? That we know all these things about you.

[16:20]  Yeah.

[16:22]  Uh, for me, like that seems really strange, but the reality is that for students who are digital natives and who grew up with social media, it's second nature to them. It's expected by them.

In fact, if I were to give a student something that was not relevant to them, they would immediately discount my institution. They would say, "You don't know me. Why would I be interested in you?"

[16:48]  So, um, it's completely turned upside down.

Um, but I think ultimately this kind of curated experience is actually really helpful to students because if I can observe what parts of our website a student has been on—let's say they've spent 35 minutes looking at our financial aid page—well, that signals to me I better be communicating what our financial aid packages look like to students, how they can learn about us early, what kind of grant funding is available, what kind of other supports either at the institutional, state, or federal level are available to students.

Because if I don't, if I just tell them about academic programs or co-curricular activities, they're out.

It's very clear what's going to be a major point for that particular student is financial support.

[17:41]  So data has become more important than anything nowadays because you mentioned that curated experience.

Funny that you say that because I was talking to another leader yesterday, and she mentioned the same thing. It's like you know Netflix curated your Spotify, curated your Amazon shopping list.

So it's like yes, the school has to also kind of play that curation, and it's we're in a space where it could definitely be done as long as one data has been accumulated over time, but that we're also accumulating the right data.

Um, and I think that's, you know, it's kind of crazy to even think, and I've been having this conversation recently, is that people do not think that a computer science is not a thing anymore or just kind of that field is going away because of AI.

But it's everything we're saying data. Someone has to understand that. Someone needs to understand how to input that; someone needs to know how to prompt that.

So, there's still so many factors on the need there. But are you guys also seeing a decline in people just going down that field because of AI?

[18:43]  No, for us I would say not yet. Um, and I think it's for the reason that you stated.

Um, you know, there is this fear that AI is going to take everyone's jobs. And I don't think it's going to take everyone's jobs, but it's going to shift what jobs are available.

Um, and our job as educators is to prepare students for that world that's awaiting them after they graduate from our institutions.

So that is why you're seeing colleges all over the country embed AI into their education. And it's not just going to be, well, if you're somebody who's interested in technology, therefore you need to learn it.

No, we all need to learn it. You could be an English major, you could be a religion major, you could be something a major in the fine arts.

You still need to understand how this technology is going to impact your industry and how you can, to your point, ask all the right questions, prompt it so that it's going to give you the answers that you want.

So, I think that we will see a shift just as we've seen shifts over time in many different ways.

Um, but this is definitely one of those inflection points. I don't think there's any question about that.

Now, we've talked a little bit about what colleges are doing in the technology space in terms of the recruitment of their future students.

Um, and the point I would want to add to that is I think the best colleges are thinking about how they infuse that to the full experience.

So, it's not just about how do we get students here, but what are we doing with students when they're here and how are we using technology to understand the student experience?

Um, and are there possibilities for us so that we're able to retain students and graduate students?

Because I think about the role that I have, and yes, I need to make sure that we have students who are entering the institution each year, but I also work with folks around campus to make sure that our students are persisting throughout their four-year journey or five or six, depending on how long it takes, and then ultimately graduating from this institution.

[21:04]  Yeah, I think it's right online, right? The retention, the engagement, the admissions. Someone like myself that left school, what it would look like if in the CRM, I'm tagged as someone that has not been showing up for three months.

What does that engagement look like? Right? So, it's like we are definitely getting in a place where maybe we're seeing declines, and I think that's a lot of schools are seeing this, and it's kind of becoming a stressful thing where they're seeing that decline.

But it is right. How are we thinking creatively to get our students back in and just more involved because they feel community?

They start to talk about it more like there's a trickle effect to all this.

But I do think higher ed, the nonprofit, healthcare, a lot of these industries have sometimes adapted slowly to change.

[21:42]  Yep.

[21:43]  Um, and I think now with AI, there's still that people are scared, right? But there's people like it looks like at TCU, you guys are not scared. You're grabbing it by the horns and saying, "Hey, let's figure this out."

So, it's actually pretty cool to think about.

[21:57]  I think the challenge is that it's very easy to get overwhelmed because there is so much out there.

I mean, I take calls and get emails every day from dozens of people who work in the edtech space and say, "I can solve all your problems. Give me 30 minutes. I'll solve all your problems."

And it's hard to be able to sift through all of those services that those companies provide and figure out, okay, which one is actually going to solve the problems and which one are going to solve my problems, right?

Because I don't dispute you might be able to solve somebody's problems, but that might not be mine.

So, we have to tread carefully. We can't just jump on the first thing that comes out.

And of course, anytime you're dealing with an institution the size of TCU, where we have 13,000 students and we've got thousands of employees and we've got many divisions and academic units, it can often lead to siloed behavior.

Um, and that's why we have leadership who are saying, "Nope, we're going to do this in a really thoughtful and strategic way."

[23:09]  Love that, man. And I just love the work that you've done personally because I think the last time I don't know if it was you personally or just your team, you talked about coming back from India recruiting students.

Um, I can imagine there's a crazy perspective that comes with the work that you're now sitting across a family on the other side of the world who sees TCU as a life-changing opportunity.

What is that perspective? What does that do?

[24:42]  I've had the really good fortune to get to travel to many places in the world to try to promote our institution.

Um, and I did go to India very recently. It was my third visit there.

Um, and this trip was unique because it was a combination of meeting with students who may be interested in the university and also meeting with universities to try to explore potential partnerships.

Um, and those partnerships could exist on a number of fronts. It could be that we're working toward faculty exchanges or taking students on a short-term study abroad trip or creating pipelines where students who complete their undergraduate degrees at Indian universities could have entry into our graduate programs here at TCU.

So, there were a lot of different permutations of what those partnerships could look like.

But to get back to your question, Ephra, the conversations that I have with students are immensely impactful bi-directionally.

Um, because of course I'm trying to help them understand the life-changing impact that TCU can have on them, but I'm also getting to experience what that means from my perspective as well.

And it's a privilege to be able to be on that journey with those students as I've shared earlier.

And I'm thinking about one student in particular who I met with on my very first trip to India now almost 10 years ago.

At that time, we were interviewing students for a full scholarship to the university, a full tuition scholarship.

Um, and I met many, many students there. They were all competing.

Um, and we ended up giving several at least partial scholarships, but there was one student who really stood out above the rest.

Um, and ended up getting a full scholarship, a full tuition scholarship to the university.

He came to TCU, was brilliant, did four years here.

Um, and I was able to stay in contact with his dad during that time, and in fact, his dad would help us on these webinars when we would try to recruit future students from India, talking about the perspective of a parent seeing his son being at a college on the other side of the world.

Um, and eventually that student graduated with a business degree and getting to work in the oil and gas industry here in Texas.

Uh, and it was just so cool to see that story come full circle.

So, it's really fun to do that.

Um, but you get to see when you go into another country and not just talk to somebody on the phone or see them in a video conferencing type format, but you get to see them in their environment and break bread with those people and talk about their fears over the course of several hours, not just 10 minutes.

Um, you really get perspective about other individuals, their cultures, and how they can bring that experience to bear on your campus community.

[26:38]  You could just tell you love what you do. Anything that you've said, man, is you say it with a smile and just like it excites you.

And then last time we spoke, you said you consider this a privilege and not a profession. When did that shift happen for you? What does it look like on a hard day?

[26:56]  That's a brilliant question. Um, I don't know that I can pinpoint exactly when that happened to me.

Um, but I have a sense of when roughly when it happened. So, I've been doing this for about 25 years, and my exposure initially came from being a student working in the admission office at my alma mater and then getting to go back and work there for three years in the undergraduate admission office.

And at that time, my thought process was I think this is going to be a good profession for me in which to develop a set of skills that would be highly transferable so that when I figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life, I'll be put on a path towards success.

Right? So in admissions, you know, you get to travel. You have to learn how to work within a budget. You have to manage your time really well. You learn how to speak publicly.

Um, you know how to speak in one-on-one settings.

Um, there are just a lot of skills that you build.

Um, and then after a few years, my wife and I decided we wanted to move.

And before I had an opportunity to get a job in admissions, I got a job working at a high school in the college counseling office.

So, essentially, I was working on the flip side of the same coin. Instead of helping students get to college on the receiving side, I was more on the sending side.

And that was really eye-opening for me because I got to see families in moments that ran their emotional spectrum—the highs of getting into the school they want or the lows of not getting in and the challenges of having to write and rewrite those essays and apply for financial aid and maybe getting into the university but not being able to afford it.

I mean, there's a lot that goes into the process.

And I think it was in those moments when I realized that it became a calling more than just a job where you clock in and clock out.

[29:00]  So for me, when I became more of a senior-level person, it was very important that I try to help our younger staff understand that this can be more than just a job, right?

Um, it doesn't have to be, but it certainly could be their calling as it has been for me.

[29:49]  You being on both sides of the coin, parent engagement, I mean, you continue to just mention parent engagement through the process of even college. It's also very crucial, right?

When we talk about curating an experience, it's like not only do we have to curate an experience, but also keep the parent in the loop because the parent is also kind of the ones that hold the accountability at that perspective, right?

So, we're in a sweet space, man, where people that are in the higher ed space.

I was talking to another leader, and he was like, "Man, I just think, you know, it's just common sense."

And it's like, "Yeah, but maybe everybody doesn't have common sense, right? Like, common sense is not so common type stuff."

[30:03]  I don't know who you spoke to, but I had a boss once who used that exact same phrase. And it's really true, but you're right about the parents.

Um, parents or guardians have a tremendous influence in where students ultimately decide to go.

Now, of course, that's not 100% of the time. Um, there are students who have other people who have greater influence, but on the whole, the parent is still the most influential person or people in a student's college-making choice.

And that is why colleges who are successful at bringing in the right number and the right kind of student that they want are very successful at engaging with the parents early on and, by the way, keeping that engagement going through the college experience.

And that's a little bit different from the way it was when I was in school and certainly before that.

I mean, I don't know that my parents ever had any contact with my institution aside from writing a check or coming to see if like a choir performance I was in every once in a while.

But other than that, it's not like they were calling professors and saying, "Hey, can you help my student with X, Y, or Z?"

And now parents are very involved.

And it's a tightrope that we all walk because there are legal protections that students have, and there's information that we can't necessarily provide a parent as much as they would want it.

But the point is now we have an entire staff who's dedicated to family and parent programming.

[31:44]  How is that across like the board, just universities picking that up, having to add the department just because over time it's become that?

[31:50]  Exactly. Yeah. That it's just a sort of a societal expectation.

Um, and it's interesting because I'm thinking about my own college experience to call or interfere in my experience in any way.

And you would think then when I became a parent, I would remember that experience. And yet people of my generation tend to be a little bit more involved than our parents were.

[32:17]  Yeah.

[32:18]  You know, we thought we were grown. We didn't need anyone's help, right? We're in college now.

But yeah, I mean, but even think about it. We should have probably had some assistance, right?

That journey we should. Yes, we should have.

Now, I worry that the pendulum swings too far, right? And therefore, what you are seeing is people, young people who graduate from college who maybe not have figured out that whole independence thing, and it makes transitioning into post-college difficult.

So, I think we'll eventually figure this out, but we might not be quite there yet.

[32:51]  I'll tell you a funny story. I used to run, I used to be a general manager, and sometimes not the employee would call out, but the parent would call out for the employee.

And I thought to myself, excuse me. Like, why is that you really sitting here controlling the child that much?

As you mentioned, it could be a good thing or a bad thing because it really could hurt somebody on what it looks like out in the work field, right?

Like you couldn't be taken serious if your mom's calling and saying, "Hey, my son is sick. He can't come in to work."

I'm going to have to go find somebody else. Okay. Clearly, this is job not for you.

[33:25]  Right? Exactly.

[33:26]  So yeah, it is pretty one of those crazy times.

Um, and you got to find what that balance is.

But it looks like you guys are definitely doing a good job, man.

As we wrap this up, man, I really want to talk. There are so many people in your space, and I know Heath that you probably have people even in TCU that may feel this way, but for higher ed listening right now and feeling the pressure of declining enrollment and wondering if they're doing enough, what do you say directly to them?

Because I think some people are kind of, as you mentioned, this tightrope right now.

[33:58]  It's a really tough time in higher ed for a lot of different reasons.

Um, and certainly there are many headwinds that we face.

Um, the concept that people in my position know very well is this idea of what we call the enrollment cliff.

I mean, it's not exactly a cliff, but it is a declining environment in terms of the number of students who are graduating from high school in the United States.

And when you add to that some of the political pressures that are causing a decline in interest from international students and questioning of the value of higher education, the ROI, all of that, it can be a really tough time for folks who are in my position or just senior leadership at universities as a whole.

And the message I try to preach is that ultimately we're here to change lives.

And if you keep that north star of trying to find the students whose family trajectories you can change with your decisions and the experiences that they can have on your campuses, then things will probably be okay.

You know, if you create this value proposition in the market, then students will want to come to your institution.

Um, that doesn't solve all of the world's problems, of course, but I think having that genuine human connection is really critical in a crowded market space where a lot of colleges are just saying what they want to try to get students to enroll and maybe not being genuinely and authentically who they claim to be.

Um, the students and the families see that, and ultimately they—as our former chancellor likes to say—they vote with their feet.

And a college will know when families don't buy what you're selling anymore.

So if you can continue to create unique experiences for families, then the families will be there.

I always say people do business with people, right? So it is very hard. You have to sell that person, and now you're not even selling a student; you're selling really the parent that is then going to sell the student.

But you also got to sell the student a little bit in the mix of it all.

[36:19]  Yeah, you got to be really good at this.

[36:23]  Well, I don't know if I'm really good, but I've been doing it for a long time. They haven't fired me yet.

[36:28]  That's why you've been doing it for a long time, actually.

So can you talk about doing it for a long time? I'll leave with this last question, man, as we start to wrap things up.

Um, if you could give one leadership advice to younger Keith, what is that one leadership advice that you've learned over the years?

[36:56]  Um, that's a really good question. I think the advice I would give my younger self is to stop and pay attention a little bit more.

Um, you know, I think all of us when we're on that career ladder, we're always thinking about what's ahead and not necessarily thinking about the present.

Um, and so I would tell myself to experience the present as much as possible because those experiences have value unto themselves, not just as a means to some other end.

[37:38]  I mean, that's good in higher ed, man. That's just good in general, right? A lot of times we're chasing, chasing, chasing.

But when do you really look and say, "Wow, look what I got"?

Yeah. You know, or look what I'm doing right now that is just as amazing as what amazing things I'll see in the next three years.

[38:13]  I just had one of my editors say that to me, like something I guess I would think would be big, right?

But to me, it was just like, "Oh, that's a small thing."

And he's like, "Do you know how big that is?"

But it's because we weren't living in the now and seeing like, holy crap, like we were chasing this moment, and look at here, you know, instead we're looking at what are we going to be doing for the next three years from now.

[38:57]  You got to stop and celebrate the wins along the way.

[39:02]  Yeah, brother. Uh, where can people find more information about the school? Are you on LinkedIn? Maybe they can also just kind of reach out to you on LinkedIn if you're on there.

[39:06]  Absolutely. I welcome anyone contacting me on LinkedIn. Um, it's just you use my name there. There are no other Heath Einstein, so you can search for me.

Um, and you can learn more about TCU at www.tcu.edu. Um, there's lots to share. We have a great university located in Fort Worth, Texas, so easy to get to from wherever you are.

Uh, we're 35 minutes from DFW airport if you're flying in from somewhere else. And we have, as I said before, a gorgeous campus. So, we want everyone to come and visit.

Um, and yeah, I so appreciate this.

[39:57]  And if you want to experience the purple flood, probably go to the socials where we'll see nothing but purple.

[39:02]  You got it. Exactly.

[39:03]  There you go, brother. Well, listen, thank you so much for your time, man. It's definitely a pleasure.

For those that are watching, continue to like, subscribe, and comment so we can have more amazing conversations like this because every time we do, we pour back into those that may have not known a lot of these resources are in their backyard.

Heath, thank you so much. My name is Ephraim. I'll catch you guys on the next one.