As a premier middle school—a school that bridges elementary and high school—it is Millennium's obligation and purpose to properly prepare students for the best high school experience. Departmentalized education in math, science, social studies, and language arts prepares young students for the academic rigor of upper school. Additionally, Millennium School offers extracurricular activities and programs that support students' social and emotional growth.

This accurately describes Millennium School. No, it doesn’t.

Sure, you have departmentalized education with math, science, social studies, and language arts. But for high school preparation, is Millennium School the best? No.

Because Corrina and I talked to many in your community, and they said it wasn't. We think that this is actually really good news, because today you will see how Millennium School will do to middle schools what the iPod did to the MP3 market. You'll see how Millennium School will move from being a device into a lifestyle. You'll see how Millennium School positions itself to a newer, larger audience and a new set of competitors, and you'll see how Millennium School will be recognized as truly innovative.

From a customer point of view, who are the Millennium experts? The parents of Millennium students are the experts. They have both the experience of attending middle schools themselves, and they've also shopped for middle schools, and their child now attends a middle school. So we asked them, "Who would you turn to if Millennium School did not exist?"

Some of them said private schools. One said "friends." One said "Live Oak, Alta Vista." One said "home."

But check out these other answers. Many of these have nothing to do with a middle school. To add perspective here, someone shouldn't answer "church, sports and therapy" as a replacement for high school preparation. If logic follows, these parents don't see Millennium School as merely a bridge to high school. They believe it has greater value.

Let's also add a little reality here. These expert parents are what Jeffrey Moore described as innovators. They're a very tiny group, and they have a high tolerance for risk. Jeffrey also said that there is something fundamentally different between the sale to an early adopter and the sale to an early majority, and that is a big crux of our problem.

In economics, a familiar solution usually wins out over the perfect one. That's the rule about 84% of the time. They have a name for this behavior, and it's called "satisficing." Finding the perfect solution can be costly and time-consuming or beyond the cognitive processing capabilities of a decision maker.

So if the question is, "Where do I send my child to middle school?" is the easy answer "to an innovation lab, an educational institution that focuses on reimagining the middle school journey to create an empowering coming-of-age experience focused on holistic adolescent development that leads to a life of well-being"? Or is the easy answer "the middle school that gives my kid the best chance at a high school that promises the best chance at a good college"? Or is the easy answer "the school that my kid already goes to"? Or is the easy answer "the closest middle school to my home"?

Millennium School is the perfect solution for adolescents, but as a device that prepares a child for high school, it's not an easy solution. If Millennium School continues to sell itself as a middle school—the school that comes after elementary school and prepares you for high school—over time, you'll either lose enrollment or you'll have to adapt to the market and become a basic middle school preparing children for high school.

So will the future of Millennium School be to become a top feeder for Sacred Heart prep school? Or would you rather be known as the school that finds new ways to create value for families—in other words, as innovative?

There's an age-old truth about parenting as old as parenting itself: parenting is hard, confusing work, and as parents, we are often eager for people to tell us how to do it. American parenting trends emerge every few years with new buzzword warnings, and America has a long history of toxic individualism that blames mothers for systematic problems that fail to address the root issues affecting society.

When parents of Millennium School students say the replacement for high school prep is independent activities, resources for emotional support, the benefit of sports, the internal depth of art and music, community, guidance, or therapy, they're answering the question that continues to plague parents: "How do I raise a happy, well-adjusted, hardworking kid?" For such a basic question, the answer seems to be very, very complex.

As a device that prepares children for a high school experience, parents have been unsure about paying a LOT of money to Millennium School. But to feel like you've been a good father or mother, to feel like you're not going to fail as a parent? Parents would pay a lot for that, and they already do.

So let's reframe this.

What if I told you that starting today, as a parent, you won't need to send your child to one place for academics, another for social connection, another for community, and another for child therapy? What if I told you that you get all that, plus parent resources and parent support, all under one roof?

Millennium School is the place for parent reassurance. It's an easy solution for parents who want happy, well-adjusted, hardworking kids. As a high school preparation device? No. A standard middle school would never offer parents promising opportunities for positive adulthood plus resources—that's a big ask for a standard three-year school that believes they're just the best feeder to high school.

But what about San Francisco School? Don't they offer something like that? What about Live Oak, Alta Vista, or Friends School across the street? Don't they all seem to do similar things as Millennium?

This is my favorite part about positioning, about branding, about being a human being. This is the moment, my dear Rudolph, that we take your biggest weakness and make it your greatest strength.

This is where we position Millennium School where competitors' stretch would actually break their back. The San Francisco School, Live Oak, and Alta Vista—all your friends—are all K through 8, and they won't be able to refocus resources, money, and messaging on our new audience, because the best opportunity for positive adulthood starts in the middle.

Your guides, your students, your parents, the competition, and the city of San Francisco are all going to believe this statement, and it starts and ends with the brain.

The brain serves as a nexus of our physical, emotional, and mental experiences. Through it, we find our sense of self, our connection to others, our ability to navigate the world around us. The brain is where you connect your spirit, where you feel your heart, the home of the mind, and the driver of the body.

Before we go any further, I want you to watch this primer from UniSA:

"We used to think the shaping of brain wiring systems tapered off after early childhood, but neuroscience tells us the brain goes through another rapid phase of change from age nine to 14, a second window of opportunity. Early adolescence is a crucial period for brain development where many challenges begin to emerge. It is also a time of opportunity when rapid changes can be harnessed to set adolescents on a positive path. Puberty initiates intense hormonal changes when the brain is forming better and faster connections between systems, improving the ability to make decisions, solve problems, understand consequences, and gain more control over emotions and behavior. At the same time, the adolescent brain goes through a period of greater sensitivity to social evaluation and emotional reactions, increased sensation seeking, interest in social relationships, and exploration of identity all begin to emerge. Early adolescence brings on broadening experiences, acquisition of new skills, and formation of social networks that will have lasting impacts for the rest of a young person's life."

Let me illustrate this a bit more. Fred and George are identical twins with similar personalities, and sometimes their mother can't tell them apart. In sixth grade, as the window of opportunity opens for the shaping of the brain's wiring system in the frontal cortex, Fred attends a local middle school, while George goes to Millennium.

Despite receiving similar education, their experience is different. Millennium School offers whole-self education, authentic connections, experiential learning, and guided mentorship. In ninth grade, both twins end up going to the same high school, and about a month in, they both fail an academic test.

Millennium School's George sees the failure as an opportunity to learn and improve. He seeks feedback from the teacher, increases his effort, and tries new study approaches. His brother Fred attributes the failure to a lack of innate talent. He avoids seeking feedback, decreases his effort over time (believing that more effort won't change the outcome), and develops a negative attitude towards academics.

Fred has acquired a fixed mindset that limits his growth and potential. It leads to anxiety around academics and a self-fulfilling prophecy of underperformance—a battle that he will wage for the rest of his life.

George's gift from Millennium School was having a growth mindset established during the prime opportunity to seal shortcuts for behavior. Millennium School instilled a love of learning, developing resilience, promoting self-awareness, and emphasizing the learning process over outcomes. The supportive environment encouraged him to embrace challenges, view feedback as an opportunity for growth, and develop holistically across academic, social, emotional, and physical domains. This compounds positively throughout his life.

Millennium School's positioning is simple. Your new, large audience consists of anxious parents. You are not a middle school anymore. You're early adolescent education that helps alleviate parents' fear of failure and anxiety. You're the only school that focuses on the prime window of opportunity, because neuroscience tells us that early adolescence is the time to do this. You do this because you, me, parents, and society all desire the world to be filled with happy, well-adjusted, hardworking adults.

Your position is not to be a device from elementary school to high school; your position is to rid parents of anxiety by presenting them with a new, unencumbered lifestyle. You educate to the specific needs of an adolescent brain to support a parent's long-term goal of a child that grows into a happy, well-adjusted, and hardworking adult.

That means that all the work that you've put into this brand, everything that you've done that we've had conversations about—none of it changes. You still do the stuff that you've been doing. These are still the four ways you speak to the specific needs of a middle schooler who will be an adult. These are the four things you do in a tight three-year window that will influence a child's adult ability to think and plan, control their impulses, and regulate their emotions. From the positioning perspective, these are the four ways you alleviate a parent's anxiety and give them hope that they made the right choice for their child.

With this positioning, you're not a device that moves elementary kids into high school. You're a lifestyle for parents who want happy, well-adjusted, hardworking kids. You have a new audience of anxious elementary school parents who yearn to be seen as good mothers and good fathers. You have a new set of competitors: instead of middle schools, they will be support groups, therapists, churches, and TikTok influencers handing out parenting advice. And you will now be seen as a truly innovative school.

You're not out there selling freezers to Alaskans. The freezer you sell saves their food from getting too cold, because the best opportunity for a positive adulthood starts in sixth grade.

So why will this work? Emphasizing the critical role of the brain in shaping a child's future decision-making, impulse control, and long-term planning abilities makes the positioning salient and relevant to parents. Discussing the brain's development from a scientific perspective, backed by research, appeals to parents' intellect and emotions and taps into their authority bias. Framing the early adolescent years as a critical window for brain development creates a sense of urgency for those three years. Providing concrete examples of how Millennium School supports brain development makes the benefits tangible and easier for parents to understand.

We can stop the presentation right now, or—by focusing on the critical development stage, linking experiences to future outcomes, highlighting unique value, leveraging loss aversion, and appealing to emotions—we can make the city of San Francisco question how educational choices shape their daily lives.

Does the idea of San Francisco talking about Millennium not appeal to you?

If you're a middle school, you're a feeder to a high school. If you're the best middle school in the world, you're not an innovator—you're the best feeder to a high school. But if you change adult behavior during middle school, you're an innovator. Context makes a difference.

What you will see here is a peek of an ad campaign that highlights the crucial role of early adolescent education in developing essential life skills like emotional regulation, impulse control, and executive functioning. The headline draws parallels between a common adult challenge and its roots in early adolescent development to illustrate a possibly embarrassing impact for a parent. This connection helps parents understand the long-term effects of early adolescent education, making the importance of a supportive and nurturing environment more salient. This subtle appeal to loss aversion can motivate parents to take action.

By positioning Millennium School as uniquely focused on the early adolescent brain, the ads appeal to parents—and really society as a whole—and their desire to provide the best foundation for children's future success and well-being.

So to the question that nearly every parent asks, "How do I raise a happy, well-adjusted, hardworking kid?" the satisficing, simple solution for an anxious parent is early adolescent education at Millennium School.