Modern business terminology is foreign to many school leaders, but if you're going to step up your game in an increasingly competitive education marketplace, then you want to start thinking more like an entrepreneur and less like a principal or superintendent. One place to start is to consider what the students in your target market really want. Rest assured that,
No student goes to sleep at night dreaming about your School Excellence!
"Excellence" is the most common word used on school web sites, but that's part of the problem you have to figure out. How do you make your school more distinctive, creating a highly valuable education proposition to the students you ideally want to serve? You may have the best, most excellent school in the world, but that isn't necessarily the best way of growing enrollment.
Students will enroll in your school for a variety of reasons: a lifestyle, a price, a brand or image, an advantage, to be part of a special group, rejection of the status quo, and/or alignment with beliefs or values. Your challenge is to appreciate and understand these motivations, then determine if and how you can help them accomplish their dreams.
Top quality education is critical and its the level to which you have committed your leadership. It’s what you believe in and live for each day. As an education entrepreneur, however, the focus shifts to the desires and dreams of current and prospective students. How do you make your school relevant in this context?
Newsflash: Students rarely dream about your school
You are a means to an end. So, how can you align your dream school as a place to inspire their dreams? Despite what you may think, they aren't the same! Your students dream about a better life, of changing the world, about writing an amazing game app, about being a music star, or some other crazy possibility. Excellence is expected and hopefully delivered from your school, but as a pathway to a bigger goal.
That's why our mission is designing the school of your dreams to inspire theirs. Later this week we're going to share with you about a very unique opportunity to accelerate the growth of your school.
