Welcome to The Open House Podcast, where Rocky and Sage Lewis talk independent school marketing, enrollment, and the technology reshaping both.
In episode one, we explain why — after running a digital marketing agency together since 1999 — we’re deliberately moving away from the retainer model and toward helping schools bring this work in-house. We talk about what “AI in-house implementation” actually means: connecting the tools you already use (your SIS, Gravity Forms, Google Analytics, Constant Contact, FACTS) through APIs into a secure, centralized database your AI can read from, so reports, lead follow-up, and annual reports build themselves.
We get into a real case study — automating meal and lodging data for the Center for Anthroposophy’s renewal weeks, replacing hours of manual export work with a nightly email to the chef — plus why nobody actually uses HubSpot, why the annual report is always the first thing to get dialed in, and why marketing is always the first budget line schools cut when it shouldn’t be.
With birth rates down and independent school enrollment under pressure, the real strategic shift is from marketing churn to retention. Our take: cut the consultant, keep the budget, and get out of the computer business so you can do the human work only you can do.
