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Did you know that homeschool families aren’t the only ones who benefit from Veritas Press curriculum? We have an entire service called Single Source that serves brick-and-mortar schools, too! Today, Gene Liechty joins us to talk about what Single Source is and how it makes curriculum purchasing easier for schools of all sizes. If you’re friends with a school administrator, be sure to send them this episode - they’ll thank you!

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.

Marlin Detweiler:

Hello again. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian Education. Today we have with us a longtime friend of mine, Gene Liechty. Gene, welcome.

Gene Liechty:

Thank you. It's great to be on the show this morning. And yeah, our friendship does go back a ways.

Marlin Detweiler:

It sure does. Tell us a little bit about your background personally and then how you got involved in classical education.

Gene Liechty:

Sure. Well, I sort of stumbled into classical ed after a career in advertising, both in front of and behind the camera for about 12 years. And that travel took me sort of around the globe. I settled into an ad agency in Baltimore, and the Lord led me into ministry, went to seminary, thought I was going to write about that.

Marlin Detweiler:

Sorry, I have my dog Mackenzie here with me. We're having to record in the car. We're on the road.

Gene Liechty:

I keep seeing him pop up, which is pretty funny. But after. Yeah, After attending seminary started planting churches, and that was the direction I was going to be in for the rest of my life. And of course, with church planting, you need to be doing some tent making. And so I ended up teaching initially Hebrew and Bible in a classical Christian school.

But when they found out about my marketing and advertising background, they sort of tore up my contract for teaching and they said, “What we really need is someone to do advancement and development work. So marketing and fundraising.” so I started working in that space. And although we've planted a couple churches, we've actually built more schools. And I got very involved with Classical Christian. That’s sort of my space. And of course Marlin, that's your space. Also with Veritas Press, although you probably yeah, that's, that's the shared space that we have.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah well you've become well known within the classical Christian school community as a go-to guy for fundraising and development– that's been a mainstay for you. I know you helped raise the money for the facilities at Kari Christian School and then also at Logos School in Moscow, Idaho. The school that's the subject School of Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning.

And now you're at Sandhills back in North Carolina, in the Pinehurst/Southern Pines area, one of my favorite areas, because it's so rich with golf. And so we get to see each other some in your home turf, which I always enjoy. Tell us a little bit about your family and that sort of thing, too.

Gene Liechty:

Sure. Well, we have my wife and I, Kimberly and I, we've been married for 28 years, almost almost 28 years. And we have four children between the ages of 20 and 24 now. So we had those are some pretty exhausting years. We were at one a year for four years straight. And so that was very fun. I don't remember much of it. We were tired a lot.

But yeah, so the youngest two are now in college and the older two are up and out. But they had the blessing and the benefit of classical Christian education. So the doors were wide open for them and lots of opportunities that they're still exploring as they go out and and make their way into the world.

And so that's been really rich and rewarding, spending time with the kids. We'd love to have a little more time. But my work, because you know, this Marlin, you and I both love our work. So the challenge for us is to actually back off a little bit. I think our wives could commiserate. I think they actually have commiserated over the fact that they have hard-charging husbands who see a great need in the country and feel compelled to meet it.

And in some ways, you certainly had that with Veritas Press. There was lots going on in Moscow, Idaho that was the wellspring of lots of things. But there were all these schools and they didn't have curriculum. And so you saw a need. You filled the need. I've done that several times as well. And so while I'm building, you know, behind me, we're building a 60 acre, $40 million campus here in Pinehurst now, which we're building for about 900 students pre-K to 12.

So it'll be a sizable classical Christian school. While I'm always honing my skills locally by physically being involved in a build, I'm really interested in serving a movement like you are. I'm interested in advancing that and it's great to have folks like you. Last night, Ben Carson was here. He took the stage. We had 1200 people that came and he's another man who in a different sphere, his is a little broader than just classical Christian, where you and I have been focused.

Marlin Detweiler:

You were kind enough to arrange for him to come on this podcast. So thank you for that!

Gene Liechty:

That's right. He was he was on recently, correct?

Marlin Detweiler:

I recorded him recently. But to be technically correct these are a little bit timeless, so this gets a little weird talking about this, but we haven't released it yet. But by the time this is released, it will probably have been released. So I have to be very careful about not pigeonholing the time frame for when we're recording because of those things.

Gene Liechty:

But you had the opportunity to engage him.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yes, absolutely.

Gene Liechty:

So, I guess that's that's part of it. And that's what brought us together: an interest in really advancing things beyond the local level. And you certainly are doing that. I mean, the number of folks internationally who depend on Veritas Press for product, for curriculum, to do the all important job of teaching that next generation to think rightly about the world in which God's placed them, that's huge.

My job is a little less well, depends on which job you're talking about. I always say it's a lot easier to raise the money and put bricks and mortar together than it is to teach. I don't know if I would still be doing it after 22 years if it was teaching in the classroom because it takes a lot out of you.

God's built me for what I'm doing in my space. And then also the work that we get to do together to serve schools nationally here with Single Source.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, let's talk let's talk about that a little bit. So basically, this goes back maybe 15 years. We have had, goodness, probably more than a hundred relationships with publishers. And it dawned on me that we could put together a buying arrangement to satisfy the classical Christian school community by providing a single place for a school to purchase curriculum.

And even if it wasn't something that we carried, we could get it for them because of the relationship that we had, making it easier for the school. But I'm stepping on the toes of what you do for Veritas. And so, tell us a little bit about how you see what we call Single Source and your involvement in it, and where you see it going.

Gene Liechty:

Sure. Well, yeah, a tremendous Single Source not only provides schools with the time savings, you're focused on that right? A school doesn't have to call 20 or 30 publishers and have the curriculum dribble in over the course of a summer and hire someone. And this is where the savings comes in– hire someone just to do that as part of their job description.

We not only take that off of their hands, but we also, because of our relationships, your relationship publisher to publisher with all these other schools, there's a tremendous monetary savings as well. So the time and the money saved by using Single Source for all of your curriculum purchasing, it's a no-brainer. At this point, I'm working with schools that have been with us for so long because retention has been good, but we've been working with them so long, they actually confessed to me that they don't remember how to do it on their own anymore. And so that's that's just where we want everybody.

Marlin Detweiler:

Well, I don't suppose that would be too hard for them to relearn that, but it's nice for them to feel that way. And I guess the continuity that we're looking for.

Gene Liechty:

That's true. But we really do seek to serve them and to be a blessing because we all know school budgets can be tight. The money that they save in Single Source can be used about 50 different ways in the school as they're trying to meet budget with tuition dollars, which is always a goal of any school.

So it's sort of funny how this happened. I didn't even know initially when I was out West that Veritas Press had been offering this service to a number of schools, sort of regionally. But beyond regionally. And I had 20 or 30 schools that I was serving in a different part of the country. And so when we came together, it actually proved to be a much stronger service that we could provide.

You had a much bigger warehouse, and so we've been able to grow it. As a matter of fact, this year I know right now, and I'm going to be out there again this spring, but I believe that we'll be adding 20 or 30 at minimum by 2025, but up to 30 new schools that have never had the blessing, the Single Source service as a part of as a part of the work and the wealth of what they do.

I love it. I guess I've been to I know more than a hundred heads of school at this point in the last two weeks. I visited seven classical Christian schools in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. And it's just great to go out there and meet these folks that are laboring day in and day out, just like we are down here in Pinehurst.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah. List, if you would, the advantages to being part of the Single Source you mentioned, saving time and saving money maybe with some. Well, I don't think because it could change. I guess you need to be careful about quoting numbers. But there are also some other advantages, too, in terms of, well, I'll let you list them. You know them better than I. And you can list the benefits that schools realize from this whole process.

Gene Liechty:

Yeah, well, we also have consulting that we offer. So a lot of schools, especially some of the younger ones that are trying to figure out, you know, just take math curriculum for instance, there's Saxon and Singapore, there's Math in Focus. When it comes to Latin there's so many besides Latin for children with Classical Academic Press there, there are all kinds of options.

And so folks want to know, well, what are the differences? Which ones should we be going with? And another question that we can uniquely answer is what are most schools doing? Schools, it's funny, they don't really talk to each other. Academic deans don't have these conversations that people in my advancement world do. And so we're able to say, well, look, 70% of the schools are using X, and we believe this is why.

So, to have Eric Vanderhoof as part of the team and other consultants that are part of the part of the package you get when you use Single Source has been a tremendous blessing for schools older and newer. So that's that's just one of them. The other thing is the relationship.

It's a soft advantage, but it's a real one. We become friends, right? We enjoy the relationships and folks love the fact that it's it's just it's so simple. It's it's me and it's Jennifer. It's I and one other person. All the curriculum ordering. You don't need to talk to anybody else. It all arrives at your door.

And here's – and this that leads to another advantage when you order on your own through a publisher, you don't always know. You get all these boxes, and they're not labeled in the way that you would appreciate them being labeled. And I know as an administrator how they need to get dispersed down a hallway and into classrooms and things.

So because we're administrators of schools, we know we know what you need. We also understand your budget cycle. We know that when you order in June for a delivery in the next academic year, you're ordering for fall, winter, spring of the next academic year. We know you don't have the budget to pay for your curriculum upfront like publishers would require before they ship.

So we leverage the terms that you have because you're such an established publisher, and we can allow our schools those 30-day net terms upon delivery, which is a tremendous blessing for the business office at a school. So again, those are just a couple more benefits, but they're really significant.

Marlin Detweiler:

How significant is it to be able to time delivery for a school? In the summertime, they tend to be operating a little bit more with a thinner staff and that sort of thing. Do the schools find that significant?

Gene Liechty:

They do. Some schools, you know, now I have to say, and we work with, you know, we're dependent on UPS, yellow freight, and all these distributors to get it right. And so we provide all the tracking. They know exactly what day the curriculum is going to arrive. If they say, look, we're out the first two weeks in July, it's mandatory vacation. Our school does that. No one's on campus for one week. We make sure we don't deliver during that period. So, yes. So we can work with the school’s time sort of a thing. And yeah, it's another– Marlin that is another that is another benefit.

Marlin Detweiler:

One of the things that we've tried to do, and when we have the information that's needed is box things according to classroom arms. Do schools find it helpful to know this box belongs in say Room 201 and take it there before it's even opened?

Gene Liechty:

They do. And the bigger the school, the more significant, of course. And we even will break it up. A lot of schools are on multiple campuses, so I visited a school last week that's going to be using our service for the first time. And their K-6 is on one campus, and their upper school, their logic and rhetoric, is three miles down the road. And they said, can we have separate deliveries?

And I said, “Absolutely.” I said, “We have a number of schools that do that.” So we can deliver to multiple campuses. And furthermore, on the ordering form, if you provide us with the information that this is first grade, this little house on Plum Creek goes to a first grade classroom, then we'll add that to the label on the exterior of the box, the grade, and the contents. The contents are actually a little more significant. And the number of books. We triple-count, and we encourage them to count as well.

Marlin Detweiler:

We really feel like between you and your team and then our operations team and the warehouse team, we've really gotten a system down. That makes it so easy. I don't know why a school would ever find it better for them to not. We provide better pricing, better service and ease of ordering and delivery, and it's been a lot of fun to see you develop all that in conjunction with our warehouse staff and those folks, and it has been a real blessing to manage it.

And it's interesting, when we got into the business, I had no idea how big the homeschool world would grow to, and that's far more significant than our school business. But boy, have you grown it in various significant ways. And it's always fun in the early spring to start seeing those orders come in and to hear your stories of schools you talk to, what significant percentage when you talk to them, and how quickly they see the benefit and jump in. Maybe this session of Veritas Vox will leverage your time a bit and help those schools that haven't heard from you learn about it. So maybe people who see it will share it with someone.

Gene Liechty:

I hope so. I know that, yeah. Getting back to what you said, our retention with Single Source is very good because it doesn't take long for a school to start experiencing the blessing of outsourcing all the ordering to folks who know what they're doing and will deliver with a smile. It's actually just a lot of fun. This is part of advancing the movement, strengthening the school through saving them time and money.

It's very much a part of what we got into this for. I've only been doing it 22 years. How many years have you been?

Marlin Detweiler:

Veritas Press started in 1996. And we've been offering online classes… goodness. Since I think 2005, I don't know the year. So it's been quite a while. We were very early on. Both being a curriculum provider and then offering online classes.

Gene Liechty:

You guys were really pioneers.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's a fair word to use to describe us. We love what we do, and I love working with you. You're you're a lot of fun and you really understand the school mentality and the people that you work with there. And it's been a real good fit for us to be part of the multifaceted career that you have.

Gene Liechty:

It's yeah, there are a lot of plates in there all the time, but it's great to be. It's great to have hitched my wagon to you all. And I look forward to continuing. It's going to grow. The challenge is just making sure, you know, you want to you want controlled growth. We want to make sure that we can continue to bless with a great level of service, everybody that we bring on.

And so, you know, there are there are some limitations, of course, Marlin, you always like to go bigger, but there are challenges with going bigger. They can be met, but there are challenges that go with it. So when I talk about adding 25 or 30 schools, listen, give me a call. You can find me on the Veritas Press website under “About Us”. And then you scroll down and you'll see Single Source click on that and shoot me an email through that online subscriber service that we've got. And I'd love to serve you, but yeah, we're bringing on a controlled number because we want to make sure that for every school that we serve that they can truly look back at us and say, “This advanced us well.” This was a blessing for us. That's that's why we do what we do, what we do.

Marlin Detweiler:

At a very practical level. It's kind of fun to see the warehouse during what we call Single Source season. Three shipping days, a pallet for every school. Some schools have multiple pallets all set up in the warehouse portion that is left for space. Unless we have something like this to attend to and to see those pallets, the stacks on the pallets, the stacks.

Gene Liechty:

And one thing I want to say, when you said multiple pallets, it brought up something that I haven't said. Some schools are concerned that they're not big enough or that, you know, they're not worth our while. And I want to counter that here. I'll be serving schools this year that have over a thousand students. We have lots of schools are growing. Praise God, they're growing. But we'll start with schools that are in their first year and they have 30 to 50 students and they need curriculum, too. And we're confident that these schools are going to grow. And so we want to serve everyone, big and small. So never hesitate to call because you feel like, we have a we have a minimum of 1,500 dollars on a Single Source order. And we all know how expensive curriculum is. So it doesn't take very long to get to $1,500.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah. It the way the system works, it really doesn't matter what the size of the school is, we're able to serve big and small.

Well, Gene, thank you so much for joining us today, folks.

Gene Liechty:
Thank you.

Marlin Detweiler:

Absolutely. You’ve been listening to Veritas, Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Hope to see you next time.