59. School Marketing Tasks & Tools For Summer
Revamp your school’s communication approach with advice and cutting-edge tools in the newest installment of Mindful School Marketing. Tune in as we delve into the art of refining your school’s marketing and communication strategies, while also enhancing the effectiveness of your efforts through strategic scheduling practices. Join us as we explore innovative ways for school administrators to rejuvenate and unwind during their well-deserved summer breaks.
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About Tara Claeys & Aubrey Bursch:
Tara Claeys is the founder of Design TLC – a professional website agency for small schools. She’s passionate about helping organizations provide enriching experiences for children by creating a great first impression online. Aubrey Bursch is founder + CEO of Easy School Marketing. She’s also a mom, lover of green smoothies and Peloton, and podcast host. She is passionate about supporting small + independent schools to increase enrollment, retention, and revenue.
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Show Notes
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00:00:00
You. Welcome to mindful. School marketing. Your goto podcast for personal and professional growth. We’re school marketers business owners and moms passionate about connecting other school professionals with tools and strategies for success.
00:00:14
We love solving problems, exploring new ideas, and thinking outside the box. Let’s transform your school and life starting right now. Welcome to mindful. School marketing. I’m Aubrey Bush.
00:00:25
And I’m Tara Clays. Today we’re not having a guest. Instead, we’re going to put our heads together, and we’re going to talk about summer plans. Because it’s just summertime starting. Schools are getting out now or anytime any minute.
00:00:40
And so we’re all excited for summer, and we wanted to share aubrey and I are going to share some ideas that we have for schools, some tips and tools for the summertime. So, Aubrey, are you ready for summer? In some ways, yes. In other ways, I’m not prepared. I’m sure many families feel that way.
00:01:03
What about you, Tara? Yes, well, I don’t have young kids at home anymore, so summer is kind of like the same as the rest of the year, except the weather is really nice. But I do still have a mindset after raising two kids, I do still have a mindset of treating summer as sort of downtime combined with refresh and kind of just an opportunity to approach work differently than I approach it for the rest of the year. So I’m really excited that we’re going to talk about some things related to summertime projects for school markom people and some thoughts that we want to share with them that have worked for us in the work that we’ve done with schools and for me on websites. So we’re going to start by talking about overall planning and organizing.
00:01:56
So kind of you have the opportunity to, when it’s not quite as busy and there aren’t as many people around, to just take a pause and kind of start planning and thinking about the next year, and that’s starting up in the fall. So, Aubrey, what are some thoughts that you have on things that school marketing, communications people can do over the summer in terms of planning and organizing things? Absolutely. Well, as we all know, working in schools, we always think there’s going to be all this downtime, but there typically isn’t. And when we’re in the weeds during the school year, it’s hard to take a step back and really think, hey, what are those things that we need to be working on?
00:02:39
Or what should we be planning? And stuff like that. So summer is a wonderful opportunity for teams to get together and have what I call like, planning retreats or planning sessions, where basically they get together, they’re outlining the year, the initiatives, all the events that are happening. They’re delegating tasks, setting timelines, and they’re determining, what are we accomplishing this summer, too? What has to get done this summer so that we’re not crazy in the fall.
00:03:06
It’s also a great time for teams to get together and talk about, get clear on the goals, their tasks and the roles. Because oftentimes in the middle of the school year, you don’t have the time or the energy to gather everyone and really have those thoughtful discussions. So really taking a step back, even if you’re doing like a little retreat, you could do it off campus somewhere just so that you all have a clear focus and clear intentions going into the school year. It will make your fall so much easier. So that’s one thing that we always recommend schools do in the summer is take that time because you’re going to need it for the fall.
00:03:44
So that’s one of our main things that we recommend. I love that I do that in my own business, too, working with my team and kind of taking a step back also and just thinking more holistically about what’s coming up and what we want for the next year. Well, I’ll share something related to planning and this is also a tech tool that I’m going to talk about as well. But looking at Google Analytics. So I know that many schools don’t look at their Google Analytics throughout the year because it just falls off the radar.
00:04:21
But it’s a good time to check in on your Google Analytics. Just take a look at it and you can export the data into a spreadsheet or just look at it from a higher level at the content that’s being visited the most often on your website. Look at the traffic on your website for the last year and see when the spikes are happening. So that you know when you should make sure, extra sure that your website content is updated. So just get a glance at your Google Analytics.
00:04:48
You don’t have to dive deep and spend a lot of time, but just make it a habit to just check in on it in June when you have the opportunity to start thinking about the next year and what your goals might be. That’s a website internet related organizing thing to think about. Oh, I love that. First of all, how many times do I hear school marketers say, I don’t have time to check my Google Analytics or I’ll do that later and every month go by, so it’s good to have that be a reminder, hey, let’s check it now because that can inform so many of your decisions moving into the school year. So great tip.
00:05:22
Tara. The next tip I have in terms of overall planning and organizing is batching. So I’m a big believer in batching. For those of you who don’t know who batching what batching is, it’s really like condensing all related tasks and executing them at once. So one thing that we recommend is when you’re thinking of like this summer, I always really identify that time right before school starts when faculty and staff are on site and on campus, but they’re not actually with students because the school year hasn’t started.
00:05:56
This is the time to capture all those videos of faculty and staff who are on campus so you can use them throughout a year. So I always ask I batch a ton of videos, like what they love about the school, what they’re excited about for the year, what their favorite projects are, if you have a theme or word that year, I always like to ask faculty and staff about that and you can take photos for them with them as well. In addition, you can batch a lot of different things. Like I always have the faculty and staff fill out a form that includes testimonials, written testimonials about the school so that I can use them at graphics in social media throughout the school year and in all sorts of communications. So it’s a wonderful time to batch all that during faculty and service.
00:06:41
So you can start planning that out now and execute during faculty and service before school starts. In addition, batching all your copy for certain things like annual fun copy can be batched all the copy for print and digital things can be batched this summer so you don’t have to worry about in the fall. It will make your life so much easier. So we’re big about batching here. Also your social media content and calendars, all that can be taken care of really during the summer and at least outlined so you have a plan moving forward.
00:07:12
What about you, Tara, do you like to batch? I do like to batch. I also really like to multitask, which is kind of the anti batching way to do things. But yes, I’m a pretty organized person, so I think batching is really a very effective way and to be productive and also clears your mind, I think when you start thinking about things that way, it’s also really helpful as well. Okay, so when we’re talking about batching, one of the things you can batch is website planning, right?
00:07:45
So thinking about your goals for the website for the next year after you’ve checked your Google Analytics, taken a peek at it, and seeing when your peak times are for visitors to your website and what your peak content is on your website? What are your goals for next year for updating that or highlighting that content in some way, using it, sharing that content more on social media, promoting it in different ways. So that’s one thing you can do is use that information that you’ve gathered from Google Analytics to just lay out some goals for the website. Maybe your website needs a major overhaul or a refresh. Put that into your plan so that you know that you’re going to be working on how you’re going to accomplish that.
00:08:27
And if you don’t have a big website project or a refresh that you need to do, just planning out your monthly check ins. And so I like to tell everybody who runs a website, whether it’s a school or a restaurant or a law firm, whatever kind of website you should look at it. You need to take a look at your website and just make sure that it is working properly and that there’s nothing really weird happening that can happen sometimes, or that information that you forgot to take off is still there. So I always say maybe the first day of the month or the last day of the month if you wear contact lenses and you change them out monthly or whatever kind of thing you do otherwise on a monthly. Basis add to that list just looking at your website, going to your home page, going to a few of those top pages that people visit.
00:09:13
You’d be surprised. Sometimes things just stopped working, something got turned off or somebody else was working on the site and did something that broke something. So take a look at your own website. That’s a really important thing you can do is schedule those checks. Take that summer, take five minutes to just create a recurring event on your calendar where it’s check website for five minutes.
00:09:35
That’s all. I love that it’s so important. I was just on a site the other day for a school and their book a tour link led to no tours available. And I’m like, are you not taking students anymore? And they’re like, no, we want students.
00:09:49
I’m like, Will your book a tour? That’s a problem, right? And they know because they don’t use it. So that’s such an important thanks Tara, for sharing. So my next thing is your communications calendar.
00:10:04
So we know communication is so important, yet a lot of our communications are either done on the fly or we sort of know the loose schedule around it. But this is a time to get really clear on what communications go out, when the purpose of those communications, and to map out that entire plan, right? I always say this is a plan that should be shared with your faculty and staff, with your departments and with parents. So everyone should know when the head of school email goes out, when your weekly newsletter goes out, the day specifically the time when teachers send emails and how can you make those emails look templated that are templated and that make sure that they share similar things so there’s no weird. Like the third grade teacher includes 50 pictures and great detailed descriptions.
00:10:54
And then the fourth grade teacher is like a one sentence email with one photo. So get consistent with your communications. So this is a time to map all that out and really get specific on your expectations for that and mapping out. When is all that going out? When are the parents associations sending their emails?
00:11:10
Is it combined? How are you going to do that? When is annual fund and all your fundraising or event emails going out and all your events, all those communications, even survey communications, all that mapping that out on a calendar is going to help you all so much to make sure that your families aren’t receiving five emails a week. Because that’s one of the chief complaints we hear from families is they feel overwhelmed, they can’t find information and then they blame the school for not communicating even though the schools communicated it, but it’s just been over communicated in different forms. Yeah, that’s related to the website check too, right?
00:11:47
So just keeping that in mind as well. Absolutely. Do you have another tip you’d like to share, Tara? Sure, yeah. The other thing that’s almost related to this kind of whole scheduling and planning idea is having a plan for word of mouth strategy.
00:12:04
So user generated content, what can you do? Maybe this is something that you already do, but if not, what can you do to engage your student population, your faculty population, your alumni population in creating some content for your website? So if you are creating a content strategy for social media, maybe add in that maybe once a month or once a quarter you have some content actually added to your website that is created by students or by members of your community. That’s a great one. I mean, I think that helps on so many fronts because you’re creating this content and then you can repurpose that on so many different channels.
00:12:45
So I love to hear that tip. That’s a great one. Tara my next tip is to really utilize in service as a tool for marketing education for faculty and staff. So in service is that week before school starts, usually for faculty and staff to come together. This is a time when marketing departments should really be involved both like getting to know faculty and staff, but also making sure that they are educating their faculty and staff on what their marketing is.
00:13:21
So what does this look like? So usually when I do this for schools, it’s like an overview of what’s happening in independent school space, then how this particular thing impacts schools, and then the plan, like the marketing team’s plan for the year, and then how teachers and staff can help. And then how marketing will support teachers and staff to help them help. Right. Because we don’t want to just hand it over.
00:13:46
We have to say, oh, we’re going to make this easier for you. So that might be templates, reminders, tech training, et cetera. We’ll cover your recess duty while you write your newsletter, something like that. And then giving faculty and staff time during the workshop for teachers and staff to meet up and say, how are we going to get this done? When are we going to set aside time in our schedule to write that weekly newsletter to parents or something like that?
00:14:09
That is fantastic and that is a really good use of summertime. Now I’m going to transition us to our next topic, which is on tech and tools. So Tara, can you kick us off with tech and tools? Of course. One of my favorite things.
00:14:23
Right? So we use WordPress for our website building at Design TLC, but there are many different platforms that schools use that are really helpful in making your website run well. So one thing that you can do is review your current technology that you’re using for your website and other aspects of your enrollment funnel, taking a look at what’s working for you. It’s a really good thing to do. And I’m going to let you talk a little bit also about exploring that the software.
00:14:59
You want to talk a little bit about that? Oh, of course, yes. So exploring software, this is a great, absolutely wonderful time to explore software because you have the time to figure out, hey, what are our needs and where do we have a lot of trouble this year? Like, where did we spend a lot of time? There are so many amazing software tools out there that can make your life easier.
00:15:22
So we’ve been doing a lot of demos with different software lately to see how they can help schools. We’re not affiliated with any of them, but we just did a Parent Square demo where this is an app that consolidates parent communications forms. It takes up a lot of different other softwares and combines them in one so that it’s like an all in one place for parents and staff to go to communicate was very interesting. So maybe consider demo there or with other apps. We also love scheduling softwares for both.
00:15:55
Scheduling for both social media, email. There’s also just scheduling in terms of tours and appointments. So there’s calendar, acuity, but just thinking about what sort of software you can use to make your life easier in that. So we have a lot of schools that like loomly. I like going to AppSumo as Tara does.
00:16:19
Thank you so much Tara, for that. I love AppSumo. AppSumo, you can get software for super cheap, so don’t spend a lot of money, just go AppSumo, have some fun. You can get a great scheduling tool. You can get so many different things.
00:16:33
So definitely highly recommend AppSumo. And then consider for enrollment management, are you tracking I know so many schools, especially small ones, that are tracking their enrollment via multiple spreadsheets and stuff like this, and it’s just not sustainable. So consider some sort of enrollment. Like, first explore your current systems like your SIS and stuff like that. Figure out if there are any options in there that you can utilize.
00:16:56
And if not, consider additional software like Inquiry Tracker, Gigi Storm, or other software that can help you with that. And then the last thing is photo sharing software like Vidagami, Homer, Map, there are so many out there, but that just gives you an option to share photos with parents so that they can stay connected to what’s happening in their child’s classroom. What about you, Tara? Yeah, that’s a perfect transition to another tech tool tip, which is Instagram. So you can add Instagram to your website.
00:17:30
And I highly recommend that schools do this because it’s a way to show really fresh content on your website without having to go into your website and create fresh content. So most schools are using Instagram and they’re doing a great job of putting great images and branded content on their Instagram. And you can embed that into your website so it will show up on your homepage or another page of your site and really looks good and allows you to have fresh photography on your site as well. So that’s a great tip. Another one I want to share is and I mentioned Google Analytics, and so if nobody’s heard about this Ga Four or Google Analytics Four, it is going to be taking over Google Analytics in just a couple of weeks from when you’re hearing this.
00:18:21
So you have to have it connected. And just a little update on how that’s going. We see so many alerts now if you go into your universal analytics, you get this big countdown that pops up that looks super scary and they’re asking you to make sure that your setup is complete. And you have to manually go in and check these boxes saying that you’ve completed these different steps even if they’re not relevant to what you’re doing. So it’s very annoying and I think Google is not handled this well by most people’s assessment, but it’s a given and you have to do it.
00:18:57
So you have to set up Google Analytics for in your Google Analytics platform. It’s a new property, it’s a new version of Google Analytics. And I’ve talked about it, I think we talked about it on the show a few times. There’s lots of information out there if you just Google it, but it’s something that you have to do. And so that’s one of the first things that you should be addressing from a tech and tool standpoint this summer.
00:19:24
When I mentioned, the first thing I mentioned was checking your Google Analytics and I held off on mentioning Ga Four until this portion of the show because it’s more of a tech tip. But you really have to check that and make sure that it is connected because you will not have any analytics data after July 1 if you don’t have it connected. So, yeah, I can’t stress that enough. I think that is, this is like the thing that people both dread and put off to the last minute. So I’m sure that countdown on Google Analytics is not stressing anyone out.
00:19:57
So good tip. Tara. My last tech tip is project management. I’m a big believer in project management. Tara, I know you probably are as well, but a lot of schools could benefit from it.
00:20:10
So often they have meetings about everything they email people about everyone everything and they’re like, how’s that project going? When really we could have that all in project management. And so that you would know what the tasks are and you’re not trying to think them up every year, especially if it’s an Irrepetitive event or initiative. And you’re just really having the thoughtfulness behind planning by putting everything that you’re doing in project management. So this is a wonderful thing to do over the summer.
00:20:39
You can onboard your team. You can have a great session where you’re all loading your project management tool. So you’re set to rock and roll in the fall and you are able to really take advantage of everything project management has to offer. So the number one question I get asked by schools is which project management tool should we use? First of all, use one that you’ll actually use.
00:21:02
Second is I’m all about not spending excess money. So Blue blue is a project management tool that has been free for schools. I believe it still is. So find a tool, and that means because otherwise it can add up. Like every user you add on to one of those tools, if you choose traditional tools, really breaks your marketing budget.
00:21:23
So choose a tool that’s affordable. Also you can find this on AppSumo as well. Some great options there, too. How about you, Tara? What’s your tech tool?
00:21:32
I use project management software, and I’ve tried a bunch of different ones. And even if you just start small and just use like Google tasks or something like that just to kind of get your feet wet, I find myself sometimes I forget to check my project management system. So whatever is working for you, it just doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of time setting something up if you’re not going to put it into your workflow. So that’s really important. One more tech tool that I’ll mention which is related to website stuff is a tool called Ubersuggest and also hand in hand with Google search console.
00:22:08
And this is related to search engine optimization for your website, understanding how your website is performing in terms of the technical hoops that it needs to go through to help you rank higher in Google searches and also to look at what keyword terms you’re ranking for what queries people are using to find you. So Ubersuggest.com is a free tool that you can use. It can run a site audit for you and point out any errors that are on your website. We’re going to talk about that next. And so just check out Ubersuggest as a tech tool to add to your arsenal.
00:22:45
With all the other things that we’ve mentioned, let’s talk about now fixing errors and checking on things that are related to your marketing communications program. You want to start off, Aubrey, with a top level thing here. Absolutely. So wow. I mean, everyone wants to fix errors.
00:23:08
No, it’s not really on their top of their list, but it should be something they do during the summer, right? So one thing that we always encourage schools to do is look at your online digital presence. Like, check Google your school, see what’s coming up, right, what’s happening on your review sites. That’s always a good thing to check because there can be some surprises. You have a disgruntled family leave your school at the end of the school year.
00:23:29
Did they write a negative review? Let’s find out. These are really good. Also, we did a whole podcast on Google Reviews. So are your Google reviews frozen?
00:23:39
Check out our podcast to find out why and what you can do about it. But these are things you should be looking at and just have an understanding of what’s happening. When you Google yourself and what’s happening on your view sites, this is the time to check it out and start making a plan to fix it if necessary. What about you, Tara? Absolutely.
00:24:01
So I mentioned the site audit. So if you use a tool like Ubersuggest and you do an audit, it will tell you some things that need fixing on your website, most likely. And so you can take a look at that and it will also suggest how you can fix those things. One kind of error that is pretty easy to fix if you want to add some time in this summer to fix broken things on your website. Broken links.
00:24:23
So brokenlininkcheck.com you can put your website URL in there and it will spit out for you any links that are broken which can impact the user experience of people coming to your site, as well as how Google views your site and how it ranks your site. So fixing those broken links, whether they’re links to a news article from your local newspaper that ran ten years ago that is still present on your site, but broken link, or whether it’s a page that’s been deleted or changed on your site and is linked from somewhere to the old address, those broken links are not good. So you want to fix those. Some other things to fix are again, if you’re checking your website monthly, you may find some things just automatically, but tweaking your home page so that when people come back to your site in the fall, it doesn’t look exactly like it looked in the spring. Change the photos on your home page, especially.
00:25:16
Put some new, fresh photos there. Maybe change your call to action for the beginning of the year. Change the headline. Those are some things that you can do. They’re not necessarily broken, but they’re things that you can update and fix on your site to make it a better user experience, make it fresh and new.
00:25:34
So you can also just check for things that need updating on your site so that they’re not broken in the fall. Your new school year calendar, any faculty changes that have happened, staff and faculty changes that have happened, and then also your tuition page. Make sure that you’ve updated any changes there as well. So use the summer to go over that content and make sure that you’ve updated that. I recommend keeping a list of the things that you update this summer if you haven’t before, so that next summer you know what you need to automatically go and update.
00:26:05
So if you know it’s the tuition page and the faculty page and an FAQs page, that those are the pages that you update every summer. And then the last thing to look at in terms of errors or fixing things, and this is going back to SEO is your alt text on images. So if you have alt text missing, your audit will probably show you that. So you can go in and update or add alt text to your images, which makes them more accessible for people who use a screen reader, but also can help with your SEO results. And then also adding or customizing or updating the meta descriptions, which is what the search result shows when your website comes up.
00:26:44
When someone says a search and you can optimize that message that shows up, those first two sentences will automatically pull from the first sentence or two of your web page within the Google. Google will do that on its own, but you have the opportunity to go in and customize that and make it more compelling, which will improve the number of clicks that you get when you come up in a search. So customizing your meta descriptions. Something else you can add to your summer list. We’re making it long, but we’re wrapping up, so put that on your list of things to do, maybe down towards the bottom of your list.
00:27:18
It’s not a super high priority, but if you’re trying to look for some things to do and fix over the summer, that’s a good one to work on. Okay, the last topic we’re going to talk about, because we are mindful school marketing, is some mindful things for the summer. So, Aubrey, why don’t you start out with an idea for mindfulness task for the summer. And a task is probably not the right word. Be mindful about this task.
00:27:46
Okay, so this is going to be a hard one, but it’s not going to be a new one to anyone’s ears. It’s to unplug. Like, how hard is it to unplug? It’s super hard. So as school leaders, the only way we can come back and fall refresh refreshed is if we have actually taken the time to unplug.
00:28:05
And I am practicing when I preach this summer, which is hard because you want to check the email, you want to respond, you want to support, but at some point in time, you have to step away and take that time to really unplug and be present, which is my other thing, is be present and spend time. With those you love. This is a wonderful opportunity to do that. So that’s my recommendation for being mindful this summer. What about you, Terra?
00:28:33
Yeah, for sure. All of that. And I think taking a break, taking a vacation, even if you’re not completely unplugged stepping away from your normal environment and taking a break as well, will allow you to come back a little bit more refreshed and able to tackle some of these other things that we’ve talked about doing over the summer or in the new year. So let’s try to all focus on a little bit of mindfulness and self care this summer so that we can start the new year fresh and revitalized. Absolutely.
00:29:09
Speaking of summer, summer vacation, before we say goodbye, because we love talking about books, let’s talk about our summer reading lists. Aubrey? Let’s tell people what we’re reading. Absolutely. So, as usual, I’m like some of our guests, and I have 50,000 ideas, but what am I actually going to read?
00:29:29
So these were a couple that caught my eye.
00:29:34
We’ll have to have a fall check in to see if I’ve done all of them or what else we did for our summer reading. But my first one is Speak. Find your voice, trust your gut and get it from where you are to where you want to be. By Tunde or Tune Day from Peloton I say Tune day, too. So when I saw it was written by her, I was like, oh, she’s awesome.
00:29:55
And it got super good reviews, which I’m always I like to look at reviews, but it says it takes us through each step of the Speak acronym, so surrender Power, Empathy, Authenticity, and Knowledge. So I guess she shares lessons from what she’s learned over the years about body image, like how she successfully transitioned into what she is today and how to live a joyful life. So I was like, that sounds inspiring. I’m always up for an inspirational read. So that’s one of mine now.
00:30:27
You want to share one of yours? Sure. Well, actually, why don’t you do all of yours and all this? Awesome. Okay.
00:30:32
So the next one I did. So I like to have a little bit of everything, right? So using behavioral science and marketing drive customer action and loyalty by prompting instinctive responses. So this probably doesn’t sound like a summary to you all, but I’m always interested in how does everything work? If we’re thinking about behavioral science, how does that work in relation to marketing and communications?
00:31:00
And so this book got great reviews, and I’ve heard a lot about it, so I’m excited to see how we might apply this to school marketing, because that’s how I’m always I have my brain. And, like, you read something that might not be about the industry, but you can apply it to it. So I’m excited about that one. And then the last one on my list, which is my list, is very long, but we’re only including a few is built to move. And this is really about being able to move your body without hurting.
00:31:30
And you think this is like, for old people, but no, it’s for anyone who moves their body. I mean, it’s amazing. Our bodies are miracles, right? They’re awesome. But how often do we what happens when you lose that mobility and stuff like this.
00:31:42
So I love this idea of this book about figuring out how to improve how your body feels and boost your overall quality of life. Make sure you’re not stiff. And I mean, think of how many hours those school leaders sitting in their chairs and stuff like that, or in awkward teaching positions where you’re bending over trying to help a student. Let’s make sure you can still move your body. So this is a good one.
00:32:06
I hope it turns out well. What about you, Tara? I love that. Yeah, I’ve got a few. One thing about summer is I know people.
00:32:14
Probably if you’re like me, you driving more in the summer because you may be taking road trips on your vacations or maybe you’re on a plane. But I like to do audiobooks, and I find them to be a really helpful way to read a few books at a time. So that’s what I’m doing right now. So I’ve already started this one. It’s called lighter.
00:32:34
Someone gave this to me as a gift by Young Pueblo. It’s lighter. Let go of the past, connect with the present, and expand the future. For me, I find there’s a recurring theme in a lot of the self help type books that I read. And this one is is really it’s resonating with me a lot in terms of focusing on the present moment.
00:32:54
And also, I tend to dwell on mistakes that I’ve made in the past, and so trying to commit to changing that core belief and that mindset is something that I’m finding this book to be helpful with, along with some other things that I’m doing in my own mind. Another great nonfiction book that I’m excited to continue reading is The Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control a Path to Peace and Power by Catherine Morgan Schaffler, who joined us for a podcast episode that I believe is airing after this one. Maybe not. Maybe it already aired. Who knows?
00:33:33
So I’m really excited about that episode and I just really loved this book. As somebody who has self proclaimed perfectionist, to take pride in that instead of to apologize for it is a really great, empowering way to look at being a perfectionist. So super excited to finish reading that one because I had started reading it when we chatted with Catherine, and actually, I believe that it already will have aired by the time this show comes on. So hope that you enjoyed it. And then I am trying to also work in some nonfiction books, and those are the ones that I actually listen to more than read because they don’t take quite as much concentration.
00:34:16
But I do have a book that I’m going to read as nonfiction. It’s very long, and I don’t remember where I read about it, but it was on the list of top books you should read, but you can’t find it anywhere. So I actually bought it from a used bookstore, and it’s called beyond the Bedroom Wall a Family Album. And it’s part of a series, I think. I don’t really know much about it, but the author is named Larry Wood, I think.
00:34:43
But it’s a family saga, and it’s supposed to be just so beautifully written. I’ve seen all the reviews are really high, but it’s not in print anymore. So I’m looking right now on Amazon, and a paperback version is $109. So I got it on a used books website, and I’m hoping that it is all it’s cracked up to be and maybe I’ll report back on it. It’s like, 600 pages.
00:35:08
So it will be a very long book, and it will probably take me all summer to read. But I’m excited to explore something somewhat unknown. I love it. I’m so excited. I can’t wait to hear your report on that book.
00:35:20
And don’t buy the $100 copy, people.
00:35:24
No, it was very hard to find. Yeah, you can find them less expensively from used booksellers. Anyway, well, this has been really fun, Aubrey. Yes. I’m excited.
00:35:37
I wish I did for the summer. I am, too. And I’m excited for our school leaders to rest, relax, read some books, and then also have the energy to implement some of these tips that we discussed today. So, yay, school leaders, you did it. You completed your school year and now enjoy the summer.
00:35:53
Yes, enjoy. That’s the most important thing. Enjoy your summer. Enjoy your time. All right, thanks for joining us today.
00:36:00
Have a great summer. Bye. Thanks for joining us on the Mindful School Marketing podcast. We’d love it if you pop into itunes and leave a review, five Star Preferred, let us know how you like this show. It helps us improve what we’re doing and helps other finites too.