Where Business Model Change Actually Starts

Sometimes the simplest questions open up the most important conversations.

I was leading a webinar recently for SPARC, an organization doing meaningful work to help schools make auxiliary programs a strategic part of their overall mission, when someone asked about the possibility of freezing tuition in certain grades.

It's the kind of question that sounds narrow but points to something much larger. Behind it was a real concern about sustainability, competitive positioning, and what levers a school actually has available when pressure builds.

That question steered our conversation toward a theme I come back to consistently in my work with school leaders: before you pursue significant changes to the business model, start by getting the most out of what you already have.

The Case for Starting Inside

There's a natural instinct, when a school is feeling financial or enrollment pressure, to look for a new initiative. A new program, a new market, a new partnership. Something additive that can move the needle.

Those strategies can absolutely work. But they're harder to execute, and riskier, when the foundation underneath them is still leaking.

In more than 100 conversations with independent school leaders, I've found that the most successful business model improvements tend to start not with dramatic external moves, but with a thorough internal review. A disciplined, honest look at how current revenue is being generated, where expenses are being carried without sufficient return, and what resources are being underutilized.

This kind of examination isn't glamorous. It doesn't generate the same energy as announcing a new program or a capital initiative. But it's where real, durable financial health tends to get built.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Indian Creek School: From Deficit to Surplus

Indian Creek School's financial turnaround is a clear example of what focused internal optimization can accomplish. By controlling spending with discipline and identifying revenue streams that had been underutilized or overlooked, the school moved from running deficits to generating surpluses.

That shift didn't require a major programmatic overhaul or a capital campaign. It required an honest look at the numbers and the willingness to act on what the review revealed.

Applewild School: A Foundation That Made Growth Possible

Amy Jolly's work as Head of School at Applewild School illustrates the sequencing that makes expansion sustainable. Before pursuing significant growth, she started with optimization, working through revenue and expenses in detail to establish a stable foundation.

That groundwork is what made the next chapter possible. Applewild went on to expand its boarding capacity and double its revenue, but those results were built on a base that had been carefully prepared. The expansion wasn't a leap of faith. It was a logical next step from a position of operational clarity.

Why Optimization Comes First

There are two reasons I consistently encourage school leaders to start here before moving to more ambitious business model changes.

The first is stability. When a school has done the internal work of understanding its cost structure, identifying its strongest revenue streams, and tightening operations that have drifted out of alignment, it's a more resilient organization. It can absorb disruption and pursue opportunity from a position of strength rather than scrambling.

The second is culture. The process of examining and improving what already exists builds an organizational habit of rigor and honest self-assessment. That culture is exactly what you need when it's time to make harder decisions. Teams that have practiced incremental, evidence-based improvement are better equipped to handle larger change when it comes.

Trying to skip this step, going straight from pressure to major initiative, tends to produce one of two outcomes: the initiative underperforms because the foundation wasn't solid, or the organization stalls because it wasn't ready for the complexity the change introduced.

A Practical Starting Point

For schools that want to begin this kind of internal review, the Business Model Retreat is designed precisely for this moment. In a single focused day, your leadership team and board build a clear, shared picture of where the school's business model is strong, where pressure is building, and what opportunities are worth prioritizing. It's not about generating a long list of new ideas. It's about getting honest about what's already there.

For leaders who want to develop the financial fluency to drive this kind of analysis on an ongoing basis, Moonshot Lab provides the coaching, peer community, and tools to build that skill systematically.

And if you want a baseline read on where your school stands across the competencies that support this kind of strategic work, the Business Competency Self-Assessment is a ten-minute starting point worth taking.

One Question Worth Sitting With

The tuition freeze question that came up during the SPARC webinar was really asking something deeper: where do we have room to move, and what should we do first?

The answer, in almost every case I've seen, is to start inside. Understand the model you have before building a new one on top of it. The schools that take that step seriously tend to find more opportunity than they expected, and they're in a much better position to act on it when they do.

What's your take on where business model change should start? I'd genuinely like to hear how you're thinking about this at your school.