President's Event | What does an Entrepreneur | CEO do? Week 11
As usual, Patricia Maben and I were out and about this week. On Thursday, we hosted a client President's event at The Warf in DC. and conducted an enrollment workshop on a client campus. If you are following us on this journey, you will see that we are hands-on, engaged leaders. We are practitioners; we dig into the numbers and develop paths to get better results. This is our passion and why we founded 3E.
The President's event, like most, highlighted the best of higher ed and the challenges of higher ed simultaneously. The best of higher ed was evident in leaders who care about students, have invested much of their lives in this great mission of education, and desire a bright future. The challenges of higher ed are that larger institutions with strong positions are continuing to gain national share, and smaller schools struggle to find their place in the ESPN world we now find ourselves in.
That said, there is hope. Over 80% of 3E clients of all sizes and locations have grown their applications and deposits in the past six years. It's not easy; it is a challenge, but we have proven you can win by doing things differently. Think Savannah Bananas. (look them up if you don't know their story).
At the end of this event, I approached our lead waitress. I asked her, "What's your story?" She said her name was Seven. She graduated high school in MD and worked and lived in DC. She hopes to attend a Christian college to become a nurse or physician's assistant. As fate would have it, a President from a Christian college in MD with those programs was in attendance. Her name is now with their enrollment team. You can find hope and inspiration all over if you look for it.
We moved to a campus on Friday for an enrollment workshop. What a great team we encountered, tremendous energy and willingness to dive into the details. Our focus was to help them right there in that meeting with observations and actions to improve results starting next week. We opened up Common App and and their CRM and found interested students hidden in files and locations not being worked. Step one is accomplished, and they can win more now. Step two was to develop a plan for the next cycle to fuel double-digit growth within a tight budget. We made clear progress on this and we took several action items that need more digging into. A very productive day.
What happened earlier in the week?
--We reviewed client results.
--We reviewed detailed data needs for a flagship client.
--We had a working session on 3E IPEDS Admissions dashboards.
--We wrapped up a high-level brief of our first retention solution.
--We reviewed our quarterly budget and new product investment progress.
--We held one-on-ones with exec team members.
--We prepared for several sales meetings.
--We sent client sweatshirts to several 3E Difference Makers. (team members)
It was a full week, productive week. Thank you for joining us on this journey.
You can learn more about The Institute for Higher Education here:
Patricia Maben and I are the co-founders of: