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Your last culture-building moment of the year is already underway — and most principals are about to waste it. It's April. The energy has gone flat. Your teachers are still showing up but everyone is running on fumes. And somewhere in the back of your mind is a thought you haven't said out loud: I'm not sure this year went the way I wanted it to. I've watched principals turn around brutal years in the last six weeks of school. I've also watched great years fall apart in a bad June. Both are possible right now — in your building. What you do in the next six weeks doesn't just close out the year. It writes the story your staff and students carry into September. In this episode I break down:  Why the end of the year shapes how people remember everything that came before it — The Meaning → Moment → Memory framework that turns a forgettable June into the most powerful culture-building opportunity you have left  Two specific moves you can make this week — one for your students, one for your staff — that change how they walk back through your doors in September 🤔 QUESTION OF THE DAY: What does the end of this year need to prove about your school? What's the one thing you want your staff to believe about themselves when they walk out that door at the end of the year? This episode came from this week's 100% Principal Newsletter where every Friday I send you one thing you can take straight into Monday that will actually move the needle toward 100%. Join me at https://100percentprincipal.com.

Every morning you walk into school with a plan. And by 9am it's gone. You're constantly interrupted, constantly pulled into decisions that aren't yours to make, constantly the person everyone is waiting on before they can move. You probably think you have a boundaries problem. You don't. You have a systems problem. And those two problems have completely different solutions. I was on a podcast recently where the hosts threw every crisis scenario at me they had — low morale, declining scores, surface-level compliance, staff resistance. And every single time I kept arriving at the same answer. Not because I was being stubborn. Because it's the only answer that actually works. In this episode I'm going to show you exactly what's happening when a Builder slips back into leadership under pressure — and what you have to build right now so your school stops running on you. In this episode I break down: — Why good principals lose their 100% vision under pressure — one reasonable decision at a time — The real reason your staff keeps pulling you into every meeting and waiting for your green light — What the difference between a time problem and a systems problem actually means for your school — The specific move you can make this week to start fixing it — not next semester, this week 🤔 QUESTION OF THE DAY: Where is your school running on you right now instead of on what you built?  This episode came from this week's 100% Principal Newsletter — where every Friday I send you one thing you can take straight into Monday that will actually move the needle toward 100%. Join me at https://100percentprincipal.com.

After eight years, this podcast has a new name, a new format, and one very specific focus: principals who have decided that 100Percent student success isn't an aspiration. It's something they're going to build. In this first episode, I'm telling you exactly what The 100Percent Principal Podcast is, who it's for, and what you can expect every week when you show up. Whether you're a sitting principal, an aspiring one, or a district leader who supports them, there's something here for you. Subscribe to the newsletter at 100percentprincipal.com and I'll see you April 15th.

For the last four weeks I've been naming something you already knew but couldn't say out loud — what's happening with your students, your teachers, your communities, and why everything you were trained to do feels like it's working less than it used to. Today is the final episode of this series. And I have two things for you: the answer you've been waiting for, and an announcement I've been sitting on for a long time. I'll give you the answer first. The announcement comes at the end — and no, before you say anything, I know what day it is. This is not a joke.

The teacher you were trained to lead and the teacher standing in your building right now are not the same person, and nobody told you that. That's why in this episode, I'm  going to show you exactly who the New Teacher is, why the tactics that used to work have stopped working, and what it actually takes to reach a teacher who evaluates authority, interrogates truth, and is no longer defined by the profession the way teachers used to be. It's not you. It's not them. It's that the old playbooks no longer work. So you can stop blaming yourself, stop blaming your staff, and start building a school worth committing to #LikeABuilder.

I've spent eight years watching brilliant, dedicated principals do everything right — and still hit the same invisible ceiling. More effort. More initiatives. More of themselves poured into the work. And yet the results plateau, the staff drifts back, and in the quiet moments nobody else sees, the principal starts asking the most dangerous question in education: if I'm doing everything I was trained to do… why isn't it working? In this episode, I'm giving that ceiling a name — the Leadership Ceiling — and I'm going to show you exactly what it looks like in your building, why it has nothing to do with your ability or your effort, and why the principals who finally break through it don't do it by becoming better leaders. They do it by deciding to build #LikeABuilder.

Are you doing everything you were trained to do and still feeling stuck? The problem might not be you. It might be the playbook. In this episode, I'm naming the three forces that have converged to make school leadership harder than it's ever been: widening academic gaps that didn't go away when the headlines did, community instability that walks through your front door every morning with your kids, and financial resources that are shrinking just when you need them most. Then I'm going to show you why the traditional leadership playbook, even when you execute it beautifully, was never designed for a moment like this one. If you've ever wondered why working harder isn't moving the needle, this episode will help you see the real problem—and start thinking about your work differently #LikeaBuilder.

This month marks eight years of this podcast — and instead of celebrating with a highlight reel, I want to do something more honest: tell you what these eight years have actually changed in me. I started convinced that the biggest problem in schools was a failure of imagination. What I've learned since is harder, more uncomfortable, and more useful than that. So, tune in for a very real examination of what I've learned, what has surprised me, and where we need to take the work next #LikeABuilder. 

Are you really sure your staff believes in your 100% vision — or are they just saying what sounds right in the staff meeting? In this episode, I'm sharing a simple but powerful diagnostic I call the Struggling Student Test: four things you can observe this week that will reveal more about your school's true beliefs than any survey or walkthrough ever could. Once you know what you're really dealing with, I'll show you why the answer isn't more motivation — it's smarter systems, so you can make sure every struggling student gets what they need no matter how any individual teacher feels on any given day #LikeABuilder.

Right now, schools everywhere are ramping up test prep, adding review sessions, and trying to make sure nothing slips through the cracks before testing begins. In this episode, I'm breaking down the three biggest mistakes I see schools make right before testing season and show you how these mistakes quietly undermine results even when everyone is working hard. Plus, I'll show you exactly what to do instead so your efforts actually pay off. You'll hear a smarter, more strategic way to approach these final weeks so you and your students can go into this years' tests with clarity and confidence because you've directed your team's energy where it matters most #LikeABuilder.

By this point in the school year, I see the same pattern play out over and over again: a system isn't working, so we compensate. We work around the gaps, carry the weight ourselves, and tell ourselves it's just what this season requires. But over time, that compensation drains our capacity, and eventually, it drains something even more dangerous: our belief that a better solution is possible. In this episode, I talk about that "compensation cycle," how broken systems train us to survive instead of replace, and why awareness alone doesn't lead to action. If you've ever known something needed to change but felt too depleted to even imagine a different way, this episode will help you step out of the compensation cycle and start building real success #LikeABuilder. 

We all love a good redemption story in schools—the students who struggle for years and finally turn things around. Those stories make us feel good. They also let us avoid a harder question: why did success take so long in the first place? During Coaching Week, that question kept coming up for me, and it forced me to look at how deeply we've normalized struggle and delayed success in the systems we call "good." In this episode, I challenge the idea that suffering is a necessary part of learning, examine what our favorite stories reveal about our expectations, and explore what changes when we stop centering heroics and start interrogating design, #LikeABuilder.

I see this pattern over and over again: capable principals implementing solid ideas, working hard, and still feeling like progress won't hold. When that happens, we usually assume the problem is us—our clarity, our follow-through, our leadership—or we blame the moment we're in. In this episode, I unpack a harder truth that explains why so much good work fades, even when the strategies are sound. If you've ever wondered why effort keeps increasing but results don't, this conversation will help you see your school (and your role) differently, #LikeABuilder.

I know I sound obsessed with vision, but in this episode, I'll explain why I can't stop talking about it. You see, everyone says you need a vision—but very few people can explain why it actually matters once the real work starts. In this episode, I unpack what a vision really does when things get messy: when district priorities shift, when parents push, when politics creep in, and when you're genuinely unsure what move to make next. Plus, I'm sharing the 4 reasons vision matters more than you think. Two will surprise you. One is about what YOU get out of this, not just your school. So if you think vision is a luxury that can wait until you've got everything else figured out, think again. Tune in to discover what happens when administrators finally get a true 100% vision #LikeABuilder. 

If you've ever felt like you're working incredibly hard but not actually building toward anything meaningful, you're not crazy, and you're not alone. You might be operating with a borrowed vision without even realizing it. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through the four types of borrowed visions: vision by compliance, vision by comparison, vision by inheritance, and vision by avoidance. By the end of this episode, you'll know whether your vision is borrowed, and more importantly, you'll understand why that matters. None of these feel wrong in the moment but that's what makes them so dangerous. Because once you see the difference between borrowed and owned, you can't unsee it and you can finally start building what you truly believe in #LikeABuilder.