When enrollment falls short, the instinct is often immediate. We need more marketing. We need more inquiries. We need more applications. But marketing isn’t always the real problem.

In this episode, I sit down with Tom Sheppard, Founder of 20 More Students, to talk about how independent schools can better diagnose what’s really happening when enrollment numbers start to shift. Tom argues that today’s schools are facing a convergence of forces, from changing family expectations and new school models to affordability, specialization, and questions around return on investment. Simply asking the enrollment or marketing office to “do more” may not solve the underlying issue.

Together, we explore how enrollment, retention, marketing, program, data, and the family experience all intersect, and why sustainable enrollment requires a much broader institutional conversation.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• Why the first question after “We need 20 more students” should be “What are we actually trying to solve?”
• What marketing can and cannot fix when enrollment is struggling
• Why schools may need to rethink the traditional generalist model in an era of specialization
• How Millennial families are changing conversations around value and ROI
• Why retention should be proactive rather than reactive, and what eighth-grade attrition may be telling schools about their high school experience
• How teachers can help families see value through everyday conversations about their individual child
• Why strong, longitudinal enrollment data matters, and what to do if your school doesn’t have it yet
• One number, one conversation, and one family question schools can use to better understand their enrollment health right now

Tom closes with a reminder that while the challenges facing independent schools are real, he remains optimistic about schools that are willing to work across departments, ask difficult questions, and rethink what the independent school model can become.

Your athletics program may not have changed dramatically in the last decade. But everything around it has.

NIL (Name, Image, Likeness). Changing college recruiting and eligibility. Club sports. Specialized training. Sports academies. Rising parent expectations. Families today have more options, more information, and often very different expectations for what a strong athletic experience should provide.

So what does that mean for independent and private schools?

In this episode of the Mindful School Marketing Podcast, Aubrey talks with Mike Marich, founder of Mindset Curated, about why schools need to look beyond wins, losses, championships, and college commitments and think more strategically about the role athletics plays in the overall school experience.

Mike brings a unique perspective to the conversation as a former college athlete, independent school marketing and communications director, athletic director, and coach. Together, Aubrey and Mike explore how the changing athletics landscape affects not only athletic departments, but also enrollment, retention, marketing, and the way schools communicate their value to families.

Even if your school would never describe itself as an “athletic powerhouse,” athletics can be an important part of how students find belonging, how families experience your community, and how prospective parents evaluate your school.

The bigger question is whether your school is being intentional about the experience it wants to create and whether your marketing actually communicates that experience.

In this conversation, you’ll hear about:

• Why Mike believes we’re seeing a “flight to quality” in athletics
• How club sports, specialization, college athletics, and parent expectations are changing the independent school landscape
• Why schools should evaluate athletics based on more than wins and losses
• Mike’s 4 C’s of coaching: culture, communication, connection, and craft
• How athletics can support enrollment and retention, even at schools without highly competitive programs
• Why misalignment between athletics, admissions, marketing, and school leadership can create problems for families
• What schools should consider before adding new sports or programs
• How marketers can tell better athletics stories by capturing everyday moments, relationships, growth, and student development
• A simple way school leadership teams can begin auditing their athletics programs now

One of Mike’s biggest challenges to schools is simple: be strategic about your programs, own the narrative around why you offer them, and invest in the people who lead them.

Because families don’t just need to hear that you have “great coaches” or a “great athletics program.”

They need to understand why it’s great, what their child will experience, and what makes your program worth choosing.

That framing comes directly from Mike’s emphasis on going beneath generic claims like “great coaches,” using the 4 C’s to evaluate programs, and showing the real moments of connection and development happening away from the scoreboard. He also repeatedly connects clear expectations and alignment among athletics, enrollment, marketing, and leadership to stronger enrollment and retention outcomes.

Families aren’t just Googling “best private school near me” anymore. They may be asking AI detailed questions about their child, comparing schools across multiple platforms, reading reviews, watching videos, and researching your school for months—or even years—before they ever fill out an inquiry form.

In this episode, Aubrey talks with Heather Burchfield and Moira Anderson of Truth Tree about what this changing enrollment journey means for school marketers and admissions teams.

They explore how schools can make sure AI—and families—understand what truly makes them different, why generic claims without proof are becoming even less effective, what happens inside the “dark funnel” before a family inquires, and how Google, Meta, YouTube, retargeting, reviews, and website content work together.

• Why AI is becoming more like a personal advisor for prospective families
• How to “own the narrative” with proof, testimonials, credentials, and specific outcomes
• Why the inquiry form is a lagging indicator, not the start of the relationship
• How the “dark funnel” is changing school enrollment marketing
• Where Google, Meta, YouTube, and retargeting fit
• What metrics to watch before enrollment numbers come in
• Practical changes schools can make right now

And Heather and Moira leave listeners with a few simple “Monday morning” actions that can immediately strengthen a school’s digital presence and enrollment experience.

As we kick off a new school year, I’m bringing back one of our favorite conversations, a live panel recorded at the Small School Leaders Conference. It captures something I hear constantly from small school marketing teams: the reality of being one person, or maybe one and a half, trying to keep up with an ever-growing list of channels, campaigns, and expectations.

I’m joined by three marketers who live in that reality every day. Lori Kriegel from Wooster School, Andrea Jenkins from St. Luke’s Episcopal School, and Barb Doyle from Renbrook School sat down with me to talk through what they’d outsource if they could, where they’d put extra budget, and how AI has actually changed their day-to-day work. It’s an honest, practical conversation, and a great one to have in your ears as you set your priorities for the fall.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• What each of these small-shop marketers would outsource first if they could wave a magic wand tomorrow
• Where they’d put the first dollars if their marketing budget doubled, and why people usually come before ads or tech
• The systems they use to stay consistent with content without recreating the wheel every week
• How AI has changed their competitor research, blog writing, and daily workload, and where they’re still being careful
• What’s actually working right now with paid digital advertising, and how they measure it
• Why having a tribe of fellow school marketers matters as much as any paid partner
• How they get teachers and staff involved in capturing content without adding to their plates
• Their approach to marketing phones, photo storage, and keeping everything organized

As we head into a new school year, this is exactly the kind of episode I want school leaders to hear early. I sat in on Jason Craige Harris’s session at the LeadTeam Summit, where he broke down what it actually takes to build a strategy for culture that works, and I left that room energized in a way that stuck with me.

So when he joined us on the podcast, I wanted to go even deeper. Jason is a strategist, mediator, and mindfulness teacher who spends his time helping leaders navigate conflict and uncertainty without losing themselves in the process. We talk about what resilience actually requires, the difference between reacting to a moment and being ready for one, and how the small, consistent practices we build in private show up in how we lead in public.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• Why “powering through” isn’t real resilience, and what actually builds it
• The balcony metaphor Jason uses to get perspective in the middle of conflict
• How naming an emotion can measurably calm your nervous system
• The two types of practices, routines and in-the-moment resets, that keep leaders grounded
• Why schools tend to swing between all transaction and all relational, and what the middle looks like
• The pre-action and post-action reviews Jason recommends before big decisions
• What separates teams that bounce back from teams that just survive

Every spring, schools pour weeks of staff time and thousands of dollars into a gala or auction because that’s what has always been done, even as the return on all that effort keeps shrinking. Barbara Barron joins us in this conversation to talk about why that model is running out of road and what a school might do instead if it actually let it go.

We also get into how many separate asks a family absorbs in a single school year before the annual fund even launches, why alumni giving looks so different for day schools than it does for boarding schools, and what it actually means to bring mindfulness into a fundraising conversation instead of running through a script.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• The approach Barbara uses to get marketing, development, and admissions rowing in the same direction
• Why galas and auctions have some of the lowest ROI in school fundraising, and where she recommends looking instead
• How alumni giving realistically differs between day schools and boarding schools, and why that changes the strategy
• Why the months leading up to the annual fund can quietly work against it
• What actually gets a school’s email opened when families are drowning in their inbox
• Why being a little imperfect in donor communication builds more trust than a polished message
• How reframing interruptions as “the work” changes what a fundraising conversation feels like

Andrea Gribble manages social media for around 85 schools across the country, so she’s usually the first person to notice when something is shifting for school communicators. In this conversation, we get into the real tension a lot of schools are sitting with right now, how to protect students from deepfakes and misuse without disappearing from social media altogether, and how to keep posting consistently without leaning on AI so much that everything starts to look the same.

We also get into the pressure to make every post perfect before it goes out, and why that instinct is often the thing holding school marketers back the most. Andrea shares what has actually worked in her own small district, from a photo that was never supposed to perform well to a reel strategy that took almost no equipment and reached more people than her page’s follower count would suggest.

In This Episode, I Discuss:

• Why treating student photo permission as strictly in or out is easier to manage than a mix of exceptions
• The small details, like identifying names or labeled desks, that can quietly turn a simple photo into a privacy risk
• What is fueling parent concern about AI-generated content, and why an AI-made flyer can cost a school its branding
• Where AI can genuinely help with social media strategy, beyond just writing captions
• Why an imperfect, in-the-moment photo can outperform a planned, polished post
• The mindset shift behind “posted is better than perfect and unpublished”
• Why reels do not require a professional camera, a large following, or a complicated plan to get started

There’s a version of busy that gets worn like a badge of honor in schools. Wearing a lot of hats, doing more with less, the kind of overload that gets praised right up until it doesn’t.

Rebecca Malotke-Meslin, founder of Pleasantly Aggressive Coaching and Consulting, coaches women leaders in schools and nonprofits, and she’s watched this pattern play out over and over; that instinct to keep giving until something breaks. We get into why over-delegating feels like dumping work instead of building trust, the real reason women hesitate to ask for a raise when their role quietly expands, and what a script for saying no can actually sound like.

• Why wearing a lot of hats becomes a badge of honor instead of a warning sign
• The physical toll Rebecca has watched play out with her clients, including stress-related autoimmune diagnoses
• Why over- delegating so often feels like dumping work instead of building trust
• What to say when your role expands but your pay doesn’t
• The story we tell ourselves about school budgets that isn’t actually true
• Rebecca’s approach to saying no without over-explaining yourself
• The one conversation every head of school should be having about roles and responsibilities
• Why Rebecca sees caregiving as a resource, and who gets to decide how much of it you give