#32 – You Need to Think of Your School as a Business

Attract More Families

Thinking of your private school like a business

Length: 7m 14s

***Warning- This article may infuriate some of you***

I’m going to touch on a dangerous subject today, but I feel the risk is worth it. I also know that some of you will quit following this blog, unsubscribe from Facebook, YouTube and my email list. But those who leave are the ones I would never be able to help anyways, so I’m okay seeing you leave if you feel you need to.

YOUR PRIVATE SCHOOL IS A BUSINESS

I know you want to think of your school as an educational institution, and it is. I will never question that you are helping grow our children and providing a fantastic service that cannot be found anywhere else.

However, you need to view your school as a business regardless of whether you are for-profit, non-profit, not-for-profit, church school, charter school or anything else. Only by seeing your school as a business can you make the right choices that will ensure your ability to continue to help educate children.

If any public schools were to start thinking this same way we would see a vast improvement in their abilities and much more competitive landscape. Luckily they don’t think that way, but you can.

BUSINESS IN NOT EVIL

Thinking like a business leader does not mean you need to be evil or make choices only based on money. That is not what business is about. Sir Richard Branson illustrated this great in his book, Screw Business As Usual: Turning Capitalism into a Force for Good. He showed that having a business that cares about its people, the society, and the world creates a better company.

However, let’s face it. If your school is not making money at some point you will run out of funds to continue to be the best school in your area. You will not be able to upgrade your campus and teaching tools. You will not be able to afford the best teachers and staff.

THINKING LIKE A BUSINESS

What does thinking like a business look like?

First, it means looking at each choice you make and seeing if it will provide a positive ROI or Return on Investment. What this means is for each choice will you get more back in the end than what you put in? If not then you probably shouldn’t take that path.

Thinking like a business also means thinking long term. You have to think about your choices will affect you both this year but also in ten years. Will you be better off or would another choice be better?

Third, to think like a business you need to reflect on how you can expand and grow your school. In business, as in life, nothing stay constant. Things are either grow or decaying. Business leaders understand this, which is why they are always looking for new ways to grow their business.

You need to be thinking the same way. If you are not looking at new way to grow your school, your school is decaying. It is only a matter of time before it becomes too old and weak to survive and you close the gate of a final time.

By thinking like a business leader, you will help to ensure your school can continue to do what it is there to do, which is grow and inspire our children. Keep up the good work, and think like a business leader.

Transcript:

Hello again, this is Devin Murray with Attract More Families, your source of private and independent school marketing ideas and help. Today I want to talk to you about a concept that is going to ruffle some feathers and probably get a couple of you to unsubscribe from the podcast, or the email list, or quit reading my blog. I’m sure I’ll probably get even one or two emails from some of you, and that’s okay. But I want to discuss this with you because I think it’s really important and I think you’re going to learn a lot if you actually focus on the concept here and not just rule me out right off the bat. All right, so with that kind of warning put out there, please listen and please don’t just discount what I’m saying because it’s not what you want to believe.

All right, so I was having a conversation with one of my clients the other day, and I’ve been kind of pushing this gentleman quite a bit into making some marketing changes and making some enrollment growing changes as things are progressing. He keeps pushing back on me. I finally sat down with him on the phone and said, “What really is the issue?” After some questions and after some digging, he finally came to the words, which obviously I’m not working on very well today either. He finally came to the words that he was looking for, and it was the fact that he resented the fact that I was trying to look at the school as a business. He wants to look at the school, and he firmly believes, and I trust most of you believe that the school is about education. You all got into education and running schools because you wanted to teach, you wanted to educate kids. There’s a reason you felt that you needed to open a private school or work for one of them.

It’s not the easiest job in the world, it is a lot of work and quite frankly, education is a very unloved job across the board in our society anymore. But you did it, and you’re there, and you want to believe that the school’s about education. When I come in as a marketer and I start talking to you about, “We need to run this lie a business, we need to track our numbers, we might need to move some staff. We might have the right person in the wrong chair, we might need to have some people change chairs. We might even need to have some people leave, we might just not have a chair for that person anymore, and we might find that we don’t even have the right chairs. We might need someone who runs the marketing, someone who runs social media, and there’s no one on our staff who can do that, so maybe we need to bring someone in to do that.”

That’s a business concept. But my point about talking about your school and the education environment as a business, is that’s how we get the results, right? When I talk about the bottom line, I know I ruffle feathers when I talk about how we can increase tuition, how we can increase the student body and that’s going to add to the bottom line. The bottom line is not a bad thing at all, because that bottom line is what actually gives us the ability to do everything that we want to do. All right? If we don’t have any money coming in, how do we keep the lights on? How do we pay the teachers what they’re worth? I’ve yet to come across a school that says, “You know what, my teachers make too much money, I’d love it if we could have less enrollment so I could cut their pay in half.” Nobody ever says that.

I never hear anybody say, “Our facility has everything I could ever possibly want. There’s nothing on my wishlist that would take money.” All right? Everywhere I go they’re always like, “I wish we could pay our teachers more. I wish we had the funds to upgrade our facilities, to upgrade our school, to get computers for every kid, to get laptops, tablets for every kid, to get Smart Boards in every room, to improve the gym, to improve the theater, to improve the classrooms.” Everywhere I go people want to grow and increase that. Well that takes money, that’s where that bottom line comes in. By thinking about a school as a business, we can go ahead and increase that bottom line.

Now I’m not saying we have to take it, that’s a bad thing, that we’re just going to hand it over to an owner or hand it to somebody else. No, we’re going to take that money and we’re going to do something with it. We’re going to allow that bottom line to feed everything else that we need, and that’s why I talk about your school as wanting to run it like a business and wanting to market it as if it really was a business. Because that’s how you’re going to get the results that you want. All right? I hope this has helped you understand that you need to look at your school as a business, you need to run it like a business. Even if it’s a profit, a for-profit, a non-profit, a not for profit, doesn’t matter. You still need to think about running it as if it really was a full business.

Look at the bottom line, look at your numbers. Those numbers will tell a story and by improving those numbers you’re going to be able to provide greater benefit to your community, to your students, and to your parents, and to your staff. All right? Please do not get upset at me when I talk about marketing and running the school as a business. I still believe wholeheartedly in education, which is why I work with this group. I could work anywhere I wanted to. I choose to work with independent and private schools like you because I really think that that’s where the future of education and the future of our country and our society is heading, is making sure that kids are educated great. Even if we have to run it as a business. All right? This has been Devin Murray with AttractMoreFamilies.com, your source for private and independent school marketing ideas and help.

Please be sure to check out and if you’re listening to this on iTunes, make sure you subscribe and like it. If you’re reading the blog, make sure to come back, keep watching it. All right? I try and get stuff up here every couple days. And if you have any questions or would like any help, feel free to drop me a line. You can call me, my phone number’s up on the website, it’s probably down here at the bottom of the screen. You’ve got my email address, you’ve got the website, also feel free to instant message me on Facebook, I’m there all the time too. Anyways, take care, this has been Devin Murray and have a wonderful and tremendous day. Bye.

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