EPISODE #85

You're listening to the school leadership reimagined podcast episode 85. 

How do builders like us make a dramatic difference in the lives of our students in spite of all the obstacles we face? How do you keep your vision for your school from being held hostage by resistant teachers, uncooperative parents, ridiculous district policies or lack of time, money or resources. If you're facing those challenges right now, here's where you'll find the answers, strategies and actionable tips you need to overcome any obstacle you faith. You don't have to wait to make a difference in the lives of the people you serve. You can turn your school into a success story right now with the people and resources you already have. Let's get started.

Hey Builders,

Welcome to another episode of the school leadership reimagined podcast. I'm your host, Robin Jackson and today we're going to talk about your school brand. You see, I've been doing a lot of work lately helping people build their own education consulting business, and we've been having conversations about brand. And it got me to thinking about branding, not just for business, but branding for schools. One of the things that I'm seeing a lot where people are struggling with trust, and transparency is typically you don't just have a trust problem, you have a brand problem. And the way I define brand is brand is what people say about you behind your back. Another way of thinking about it, it's how you're perceived by others based on their experience with you. And you have two very important brands that you have to think about, you have an internal brand, which is really the brand around your Buildership how people perceive you as a builder. And that's for the people who work for you, your teachers or if you're at the central office level, your teachers and your principals. 

You have an internal brand, and you have an external brand.

The external is the brand from the perspective of the people, you're serving the families and the community and the other stakeholders in your school district. So today we're going to talk about how you can build a rock solid school brand, both an internal school brand, and an external school brand. But before I jump into today's teaching, I want to tell you about a letter I got this week, I was so touched, it came out of the blue. And it came from someone who had attended builders lab two years ago, almost two years ago. And I remember him when he was at builders lab, he was pretty discouraged. And he'd actually considered not even coming to builders lab because the school where he was working was he wasn't even sure if they were going to make it through the year. It was struggling, the enrollment was going down. There were some other challenges internally. And he wasn't even sure if this parochial school was going to still be in existence. But he came to builder's lab, he did the work, he sat there and and thought through some of the things that we're going to be talking about on today's show about his vision, his mission, his core values for his school, he took into account all of the the issues that that that were plaguing his school right now.

He dug through them to figure out what was the root issue, he created a builder's blueprint, so that when he went back to work, instead of trying to put out every fire, he could just focus on the thing that mattered most. And a year and a half later, not only is his school still in existence, it's thriving, it's grown. And he was sweet enough to take the time to send me a note to tell me his success story. And what blows me away is that the more we do this work, the more we are starting to see the success stories come in people who come to builders lab, and they are facing some very serious challenges in their schools. And they did their last hope they don't even know how they're going to get through. And they do the work and builders lab, they they identify the root problem. So they're not overwhelmed by all the problems they're facing. They get to the root of it. And they deal with that they remove the obstacles that are getting in the way of their success. And a year later, two years later, the schools are different. Another principal I talked to recently she was saying, I wasn't sure I was even going to go back to my school because my my culture was so toxic that I just could not stay on my staff. They were making excuses all the time. They were blaming kids. And she used what she learned a builder's lab she went back to her school as she applied it. She started with core values. And from there she moved to a vision and a mission.

She got everybody on the same page within a matter of months. 

The toxicity that had been gurgling inside of her culture for years dissipated. And now she says, we have this healthy, thriving culture, everybody's energized by the culture. And, and and I can't wait to get to work every day. She didn't change her staff. She didn't change her resources. She had the same people, she had the same culture. But because she did things differently, the culture shifted, and the people shifted. That's kind of what you learn how to do a builder's lab, you learn how to take your school and turn it into a success story with the people you already have. You don't have to wait for a teacher to leave, you don't have to wait until you hire the right teachers. You don't have to switch buildings in order to see the success that you want to see. You can do it with the school that you have that that principal who wrote me this week, he didn't go back and get a new school, he didn't magically get new funding. He didn't, you know, magically get some miracle he went back and he did the work. And a school that was struggling a school that that that was struggling with low enrollment, a school that was struggling with, you know, just this, this burden sense of we're about to close a sense of doom, he went back, he applied what he learned. And that same school, those same people and those same challenges by removing them the right challenges.

He turned a school around, he increased enrollment, and a school is thriving. That principle didn't fire all the teachers and hire new teacher, she didn't go to another school, she didn't bring in a new program, she simply went back to that school, realize she had a culture problem. Use the tools that she learned a builder's lab to address the culture problem, and get rid of it once and for all. And same people, totally different culture, same people. But it feels better. These people, the same people who are so toxic a year ago, are empowered and on fire and contributing to this healthy school culture. You see, a lot of people wait, they say, Well, I can't do this until I get funding or I can't do this, you know, during COVID, or I can't do this until I get a new staff. And so you are always the victim of your circumstances. And builders don't accept that. We bloom where we're planet we get building, right where we are, we don't wait until our circumstances change or people change or our funding changes, we get to work with the resources we have right then and there. And if you use the tools to build a ship, you can take a toxic culture and you can turn it healthy, you can take a school that's kind of stuck at good and make that school a great school, you can take a school that's about to close, and turn that school around so that it's thriving, you can take teachers who have been stuck for years, and you can get those teachers unstuck so that they begin to thrive in the classroom where their students thrive as a result, we're not waiting for somebody else to rescue us, we want to be our own heroes.

Do you need help with that because you feel stuck?

 Builders lab is a place you come to get unstuck. So Tickets are on sale. Right now we're having our next builders lab virtually in January. And don't let the virtual scare you because we have done something really incredible with builders lab, we have taken the magic of that live event. And we've made it work in a virtual environment. It is we call it builder's lab, the 360 degree experience because this is not a zoom meeting where I'm dragging you through slides or you know, it's boring, this is totally immersive 360 degree experience. Not only do you come to builders lab and you get amazing training, but you get ample time to take the training and apply it right there at builders labs. So I'm they're coaching you, and they're supporting you. Not only that, but when you come to build a site, we send you a builder's box, I love this thing. This is my favorite part of this lab, we send you a box with all the things you'll need and a couple of treats and surprises as well.

So you get this big box in the mail and you've got the stuff and we open it throughout builders labs. So we've got that there for you. And then not only do you get three days of just really this immersive experience, where you get to apply what you're learning right away, you get three months of follow up support. So when you get back to your school, and you try to take what you're learning at builders lab and apply it, we're there to support you. We're there to provide you with additional resources and coaching so that you don't get stuck so that you can see success so that your biggest obstacle that you face right now can be removed in the next 90 days. So please, I would love it if he joined me in builders lab in January and got it started. I would love to work with you in January and for February and March and April so that by the time we get to the summer, you're writing me letters like the letter I got Yesterday, and you're telling me your success story, and I can celebrate with you. That's what you want. If you really want to salvage this school year, if you want to turn your school into a success story, you need to kind of build a slab, we can work that out together. So go to mind steps inc.com slash builders dash lap. Okay, let's talk about your school brand. 

Most people think your brand is your logo, your colors, your website, your swag, that it's not your school brand.

Those are brand identity artifacts. But that's not your brand, your brand I was thinking of your brand is this is what people are saying about you behind your back. And so when you're thinking about your school brand, you have to ask yourself, what are people saying behind my back. And a lot of people don't realize this, but you actually have two school brands, you have an internal brand and an external brand. And while we may spend some time working on our external brand, how we're going to be perceived by the parents, and students and community members we serve, we spend very little time cultivating an internal brand, which is how people perceive our builder ship, how people perceive what work is happening in our building. And because we neglect our internal brand, we miss a tremendous opportunity to build trust, and to build credibility with our staff. So I don't want you to talk about your logo or your tagline or your colors, that's not your brand. What I really want to ask you is when people think about their experience with you, your school, what are they saying? What what are the for your external brand? What are the parents telling other parents about their time in your school? What are your students saying, when they interact with students who go to other schools about their experience in your school?

I remember once I worked, one of my first jobs was at a high school. And I remember even when I was signing my paperwork to get signed on to the school, I went to the central office to sign my final paperwork in a sec. You know, what, to the desk and, and the office I was supposed to be in. The Secretary asked me the name of the school I was going to and I told her, and she said, Oh, well, that's cool is that's a challenging school. Now she's trying to give you some advice. But what she was really doing well, she was repeating the brand for that school, that school had developed a brand for being a challenging school. Right. Not only was that brand did that brand exists with a central office and with the parents and families who served it. It existed with the students, I remember telling the schools that these boys were rough housing in the hall one day, and I said, Guys, what are you doing? What is wrong with you? This is not how we behave.

The student said, "Dr. Jackson, come on, you know we are a ghetto school."

So that brand had filtered down to the students to the point where students govern their behavior based on the brand that the school carried. And so brand is not something you can afford to neglect. brand is something that you have to pay attention to, because it affects everyone's behavior. It affects how people perceive your school, it affects whether or not people want to come work in your school, it affects whether or not people want their children in your school, your brand is very important. Here's something else. We don't just have an external brand that's outward facing, we have an internal brand. I was working with a school district a couple of weeks ago. And one of the challenges that I think the central office was not aware of was that when I was working with the principals and the teachers in that district, they all said the same thing. The folks in central office, they're not transparent. They make decisions behind closed doors. They don't tell everybody they're making decisions, therefore they can't be trusted. That was the internal brand that was going around the district about those folks up in central office, central office thought that they were developing a brand of radical transparency.

They kept saying we're radically transparent. And I'm saying you may think you're being radically transparent, but the brand that you have established amongst your teachers and your principals is one that is about not being transparent, not being trustworthy, not being a credible resource. And because of that there was a kind of us versus them undercurrent happening in the district. There were a lot of pockets of toxicity growing as people became more and more dissatisfied with the transparency, they saw a rise in, in complaints to the union, all because of the brand. So your brand is very important. You can't afford to neglect your brand. So ask yourself this question. What is your school brand? What brand are you creating for your school or what brand already exists for your school? Not what brand that you try Are you trying to put out there, but what's the brand of your school. And if you don't like it, then let's talk about how you can change it. So one of the things that we teach is that we teach that your school brand, really is the intersection between your vision, your mission and your core values. I know you're probably tired of hearing me talk about it by now.

This is why having a viable and compelling vision, mission, and core values is so important. 

It's not just important because it ticks the boxes on the things that leaders quote, unquote, are supposed to do, it's really critical that you have a strong and compelling vision, mission and core values, because they begin to shape your brand. Here's what I mean by that. So your vision, remember answers the question, what are we building, it tells people, this is what we're headed towards. So when you have a vision, that you want to build a place where 100% of the students are proficient in math by second grade, that establishes something that that tells me something about your school, or 100% of your students will graduate with a viable and confirmed post secondary option that tells me something about what you're building as a high school. And it also starts to distinguish you from a lot of the other high schools out there. The next thing is that your mission says this is why it's important. And what you're really saying is, this is why this vision is important to us. The more you talk about that the more you're your mission and vision are connected that way, the more you begin to really quantify the impact that you want to have on your community. And that begins to create a brand for your school. Because you think of when you think about schools, and you think about how you think about schools, one of the things that we often say is, well, that school those kids are high fliers, and that school or that school, all those kids go to Harvard, there's an impact that your school can have on the community.

Your vision and your mission define the impact you are trying to have on that community. And that can begin to establish both your external brand and your internal brand. It works for your external brand, because it tells signals to everybody you serve. This is what we are building together. This is why it's important, this is the impact that our work is going to have on your lives. And so now when I when I when I interact with your school, I'm looking to see does my interaction with your school, lead me to having that impact is that impact that you're trying to have something that I really want, and that begins to create a brand. So in addition to your impact, the next thing that creates your brand is your individual identity, what makes your school unique and different from other schools out there? What if this is integral to your identity, the way that you establish your identity is the combination of your vision, here's what we're building, and your core values, here's the role we play, here's how we're going to build that thing. here's the here's what we're going to do. So two different schools could be like we want to have, we want to have all of our students proficient in math by second grade, that they can both have the same vision. But one school has a set of core values that involve making things joyful, finding the joy in the work, and another school has a set of core values that are really about being problem solvers, which means that my core values tell me how I'm going to achieve my vision, what is the role that we're all going to play.

If I have a set of core values that are about being joyful, then the pathway is going to involve a lot of joy. 

If I have a set of core values that are about being a problem solver, the pathway to achieving that very same vision is going to look different, because now I'm looking at classrooms that empowers students to solve their own problems, I'm looking at a staff that feels empowered to solve its own problems, that we can both get to the same goal. But our core values will chart very different pathways to get into that goal. The combination of your vision and your core values creates a unique identity that that is, is singular to you and to your school. And so you that's what helps you stand out. And that's also what else make your school brand distinctive from other school brands out there. This is really important, especially for those of you who are in parochial schools, or private schools or charter schools, because your job in those schools is that you have to attract students and families to your school. And it's not just about attracting the students and families. You want to attract the right students and families to your school. The better you can identify who you are, this is what we're building. And this is how we're going to build it the role we're going to play in building that the more distinct your identity becomes and the more you can stand out from all of the other options out there. And those of you who are in public school who who are starting to see your your your your students siphoning off to private schools or charter schools Again, the better you can establish this is what we're building.

This is how we're going to do that, the more you can begin to attract students to your school, because you have a unique identity. So your brand is not only about the impact that you're going to have, it's about the identity you establish. And then the third piece of your brand is that you your brand is about your integrity. You see, a lot of people say we put students first. But do you really, in the day to day activities? are students really first in your decision making our students really first and you're planning? And in most cases, the answer is not really, your integrity is do my actions aligned with my words. And it comes from having a very deeply rooted mission of why this is why we do this work, and having core values that are non negotiable, that says, This is how we do the work. If what I do as an employee in this district aligns with the mission, I'm doing the right work, I'm doing it for the right reasons. And then core values, I'm doing the right work the right way, then I'm acting in integrity with our brand. What I see happening a lot with schools is you establish a brand, we are a school that that we're all means all except for all really doesn't mean all in the day to day practice of that school or that district. So when you have people doing the right work mission, I'm doing work that's on mission, and you have people doing it the right way, core values, I'm doing work that aligns with our core values, then we are, we're not at cross purposes, we have integrity and our actions, what we say aligns with what we actually do on a day to day basis, the combination of your impact your identity, and your integrity creates your unique brand.

That is true, whether it's an external outward facing brand, or an internal, inward facing brand. 

We have to make sure that as we're building a brand, it all starts with your vision, mission and core values. You know, I've been saying this for a while, I wish I had something new and fancy to say to you, but I don't. Having clear vision mission and core values is critical to just about every other work you're going to do in your school as a builder. Builders recognize that we have to do that first. And then once you do that, a lot of this other stuff that other people are struggling with becomes easy. I say all the time. The hard part is helping you figure out your vision, and your mission and your core values, once you figure that out. achieving them is easy. And the reason that most people never achieve a vision is because they don't have a clear one. The reason that most people never live out the core values is because they haven't had those hard conversations about what your core values really mean. And what makes them non negotiable. The reason people get off mission is because they have a mission that's vague and unclear, rather than create spending time to have a mission that is truly clear and compelling. The reason that that that people never achieve their goals, the reason that people get off the track, the reason that people get frustrated and have toxicity in our cultures, the reason that people get stuck at good and never get to great. It's always goes back to your vision, mission and core values. So we have to start there first. And the byproduct of that is you can establish a strong brand.

So let's talk about how you do that. How do you establish a strong brand? How do you establish a brand that actually can help move your school forward or your district forward? Well, let's talk about the difference between an external brand and an internal brand. A lot of people want to jump straight to the external brand, because you're trying to recruit students because you're trying to change perceptions of your school in the community because you're trying to take your school or district to some sort of national prominence. And so we immediately jump to the external brand. But when you do that, it will soon collapse under the weight of your day to day work. So what builders do is they don't worry about their external brand until they get their internal brand straight first. Remember, builders don't say go, they don't say let's go builder, say calm, which means builders step out first. So if you are a principal, it means that you work on your internal brand with your admin team first, as a principal, if you're single principal in the school, then it's a personal brand. It's who you are. Do you have a clear impact? Do you have clear identity? Do you have clear integrity? Do you know what your personal vision mission and core values are and how they intersect and create your personal brand? If you're an admin team, have you sat down as an admin team and had that conversation?

This is our school vision. This is our school mission, and even though we have school wide core values, are we aligned with it? 

It's the work that we do behind closed doors aligned with those core values. And if it isn't, then you need to get into alignment. If you're at the district level, have you sat down with your with your Superintendent Have you sat down With your cabinet or your executive leadership team, if you are a department head at the district level, have you sat down with the people in your department and done this work, establish a vision for your department or your section or for your executive leadership team created a mission about how you're going to achieve the mission of the district, and establish internal core values that govern the work you do together every single day. If you haven't, I strongly urge you to do that. Because that is the first step towards establishing an internal brand that builds that, that credibility and trust so that other people, when you invite them to come, they actually will see that invitation as inviting and will actually join you. So that's the first step you have to do that work internally. And I think this is a step that a lot of leaders Miss, they worry about their external brand. And their internal brand is a mess. And as a result, they don't have the credibility with their staff, for their staff to trust them, that they're that they can actually achieve that vision or live out that mission and those core values. I remember the first time that I really started working on this vision, mission and core values while I was still an administrator. And we did the hard work, and we spent two months working on core values, it was excruciating, I'm not gonna lie to you. But it was excruciating. Because people got impatient.

They were so used to solving everything in one meeting. All right, let's just wordsmith a vision statement, slap it on the wall and get back to the real work. So it took two months for people to realize, no, this is the real work. And at the end, we established these core values. But that was only the first step, just having a list of core values wasn't enough having a vision and a mission wasn't enough. Now we have to align our work by it. I remember I was the master Scheduler. And in years past, people will come to me and say, it really be nice. If I could have this schedule, I tease all the time and say, you know, I used to be able to be bribed, if you bought me gobstoppers, or the little teeny miniature snack size stickers, you could get you could get the schedule, you want it if if I can't make it work. Once we had these core values, I no longer could let people get a schedule they wanted the schedule had to align with our core values. First, there were a lot of lips poked out a lot of people mad until they saw that I was doing that consistently across the board. And in years past, people would sneak into my office, try to look at the board and try to see you know, what kind of hits they were going to take this year, the department or whatever. Once they saw that my schedule was going to align with the core values, people stopped checking in, they stopped checking up on me and said they trusted my schedule. And I put the schedule out. And I talked to people about how this schedule align with the core values. People shrugged, and they said, okay, make sense. I didn't get the pushback around this master schedule that I usually got. When we started having conversations and post observation conferences with teachers that focused on our vision, our mission and our core values, rather than on our district teacher evaluation instrument.

Those conversations got richer, teachers started opening up and becoming more receptive to our feedback. 

When we went to the hiring fair that spring, we trashed our entire hiring system that we've been using for years, we wrote new interview questions, we set up our interviews differently. We screen candidates differently. And as a result, we looked for candidates who believed in our mission, who who who believed in our vision, and who believed in our core values. And we got that we looked at that over experience. That wasn't, you know, I wanted to have the right certification. Yes. But I wasn't impressed if you were 10 years in the classroom or a first year teacher, I wanted to know, what was your vision? What What did you here's our vision Do you buy into it? I wanted to know if your teaching style aligned with our brand. And when it did, those were the best hires we had. Those were the people who came in and made our school better and expanded what we could do with our school. We had no quote unquote, lemons that year, because we're very, very careful. I remember, I was hiring for an English teacher and I was assistant principal at the time, but I was in charge of the English department. And my principal kind of let me take over the hiring. And I went down to central office and look through all of the resumes and I interviewed 15 different people. And I just kept telling my principal, nope, not yet. He said, we're going to lose the good people. If you don't hire somebody soon, we're going to get an involuntary transfer. You've got to hire somebody that's a habit found someone who aligns with our school core values yet I haven't found somebody who kind of fits with our school brand yet. And he gave me a deadline. And I'll never forget this.

By about four o'clock the day before the deadline they had given me to hire somebody. One of the the guidance counselor's in our building came to me and said, You know I've been I've been thinking about this. I have a friend who works at another school. She's an credible English teacher, but she's not in the pool because she's happy where she is. But I was thinking she really aligns with our core values, and I think you should call her. And I called her and I convinced her to stop by the school. And I sold her on our school brand. This is who we are. This is the impact that we're trying to have with students. This is the identity that that shapes us and makes us who we are. This is our how we operate with integrity. And because she heard our school brand, she chose to join us, I hired her, she, we dived we hired her, she turned out to be an incredible addition. In fact, I think she was the best candidate, she wasn't even in the candidate pool. But I was able to, to attract her to our school, because of our internal school brand. If you get this right, then you can begin to attract the staff members who want to work at your school. Because at your school, you have impact, you have a clear identity that attracts people, and you have that integrity. So your internal brand, if you do the work around that, if you do the work to align everything in your building, to your vision, your mission and your core values, the internal brand becomes so strong that the wrong people in your building will say I can't work here and they will leave on their own.

You don't have to get rid of anybody! 

The right people who can take your school far, but the people you dream about working with become attracted to your brand and want to work in your school, if you get your internal brand, right. If you get your internal brand, right, you don't have to worry about trust. A lot of people say, Well, you know, we need more trust. Trust is a byproduct of alignment to your vision, mission and core values. You could have vision, mission and core values. But if you don't align your everything you do in your school to your vision, mission and core values, people won't trust you remember, one of those three eyes is integrity. Integrity says everything I do is on mission and aligned to our core values, or we don't do it. Now, if you did that consistently, and transparently, you will get trust. So when people say we need trust, I can't just snap my fingers and deliver trust to your building. But I know how you can get there. If you're doing work, that's an integrity, if you're if you have a brand that is that that has integrity, especially an internal brand that has integrity, you'll get trust, you'll win that the credit, you'll win the trust of your staff, you will establish your credibility amongst your staff. And when you have that, everybody goes out. And you're speaking with one voice, you have individuals but everybody's aligned. The schools where I've seen this happen, I remember one of the first schools I worked with when I started mine steps was a school that was that was failing, and the district and the district had hired me to work with its eight worst performing schools. And I remember this one school, I went into it, and it had a brand of, you know, just chaos. I mean, there was trash in the halls because we're skipping class, teachers were, you know, kind of fighting the administration.

They have like a billion different initiatives going on none of them working successfully, it was just a mess. In fact, I remember my first visit to the school, they were so disorganized about what they were going to do because the district had hired me and said, okay, Robin is going to be working your school on this day, and that they didn't plan the day correctly was a mess. I was like, This is gonna be horrible. But I sat down and talked to the principal. And I said, Let's start with your internal school brand. And start with your vision, your mission, your core values. We sat down with the the admin team and the instructional coaches and we worked on the internal school brand. And then we aligned everything to that. They had 11 different new initiatives going on, we cut it down to four. They had everybody was going into classrooms, he was pushing that. But their feedback was all over the place, we got their feedback aligned using micro slicing, they were trying to put out fires, we stopped putting out fires and focus on the real problems. And we eliminated the real problems. And within a matter of months, the internal brand began to change because now all the administrators were on the same page. It didn't matter who came in your classroom, you are getting this same feedback. So they get their feedback aligned, they get their feedback process align with their core values. every meeting, they talked about the vision, mission and core values and the agenda was organized around what are we going to do to achieve our vision? Is the work we're doing still on mission and are we aligned to our core values and where are we out of alignment. And within a matter of months. Here's what I started noticing when I would visit that school, no trash in the hallway. Kids were in class teachers. We're engaged, this will say large high school staff. And within a matter of 18 months, any classroom, you walked in, you saw rigorous instruction happening, you saw engaging instruction happening, even the teachers who I thought will never reach this teacher turned around.

It all started with that internal brand being solidified.

That school went from being one of the worst schools in that district, to having a new external brand of being the place you want it to be. It became one of the best, most innovative schools in that district. And in fact, that just that school won a $5 million grant that allowed them to do more innovation for their ninth graders coming into that school and develop ninth grade academies. And they were able to win that grant, because they had an aligned internal brand, that changed their external brand that made people want to invest in that school. This wasn't a grant that you give to failing schools and hope that they're, you know, going to, they're going to turn things around. This was a grant given to schools that that that these funders wanted to take a bet on. And because they believed in the work that was happening in the school. So if you can adjust your internal brand, if you can get your internal brand aligned, if you work on that, first, the external brand will follow. If you have a school right now, and people look at your school, and they say, that's a good school, it's not a great school, but it's an OK school, but you want to be known as a great school, one of the best schools in your district, work on your internal brand.

If you have a school that has for years been plagued with toxic culture and chaos and, and failure and you want other people to see your school as a as a thriving successful place. Work on your internal brand. If you have a school that is known for its its athletics, but not as academics, and you want to change that, so that your school is being seen as a comprehensive school that where every student can thrive, work on your brand. If you have a school, like the one I worked in, where people look at your school, and they say, oh, that school is a ghetto school, and that school is a gang school, that school is a lot of fights. And you want it to become a school where everybody feels safe. And it's a thriving school community, work on your internal brand. You see, it starts with you the builder. And if you're not willing to do the work of thinking about your vision, mission and core values, and aligning everything in your school, to your vision, mission and core values, then you deserve the brand you have. But if you're willing to do that work, you can create and build a powerful internal school brand that gets everybody your staff aligned everybody, your staff doing the right work. And it trickles down to the point where people start to perceive your school differently, because it is different.

Remember, your brand is people's perception of their experience
with you. 

If you want to change people's perceptions of your experience with you have to change their experience with you. And the only way you can do that is you work on your internal brand first. And then as you do that, you can start to transform your external brand, like a builder. That's it for today. But if you want to work more on your school brand, please come join me at builders lab. One of the things we do Day One is we get your vision straight, we help you work on your mission and your core values. And then we start getting everything you do aligned to your vision, mission and core values. So by the time you leave, you have the tools to begin that work of changing your internal brand so that you can build a powerful external brand experience for your students and their families. Remember, at builders lab, we help you turn your school into a success story with the people and resources you already have. Again, you can get your tickets at mindstepsinc.com/builders-lab.

All right, I'll see you next time. 

Hey, If you're ready to get started being a builder right away, then I want to invite you to join us at builder ship University. It's our exclusive online community for builders just like you where you'll be able to get the exact training that you need to turn your school into a success story right now with the people and resources you already have. Inside you'll find our best online courses, live trainings with me tons of resources, templates and exemplars and monthly live offers. office hours with me where you can ask me anything and get my help on whatever challenge you're facing right now. If you're tired of hitting obstacle after obstacle and you're sick of tiny little incremental gains each year, if you're ready to make a dramatic difference in your school right now, then you need to join Buildership University. Just go to buildershipuniversity.com and get started writing your school success story today.

I'll see you then!

Thank you for listening to the School Leadership Reimagined podcast for show notes and free downloads visit https://schoolleadershipreimagined.com/

School Leadership Reimagined is brought to you by Mindsteps Inc, where we build master teachers.