I Built Something for First-Year Leaders. Want to Test It?
An Early Look at Leading for the First Time
For the past three months, I have been building a tool for new vice-principals and principals. Today I am handing it to you before it is finished.
That is on purpose, and I will explain why in a minute. First, what it is.
What I Built and Why
When I coach first-year administrators, the same pattern shows up over and over. The job arrives all at once. The support arrives in fragments: a mentor meeting here, a PD day there, a book someone hands you in October that you will not open until July. What is missing is not information. It is a steady, structured way to make sense of the year while you are living it.
Leading for the First Time is my attempt to build that. It is a twelve-month reflection companion, delivered as a simple web app. Each month follows the actual shape of a first year: the September scramble, the long February middle, the June reckoning. Each week, you get a short prompt designed to help you debrief the week you actually had. Your responses are private to you, and by June they add up to something I wish I had after my own first year: a record of your growth, written in your own words while it was happening.
The prompts come out of thirty years in BC schools and a lot of hours sitting across from new leaders. The hard parts of year one are remarkably predictable. That is the most hopeful thing I know about this work.
What You Are Actually Getting
What you will open is the working version, not the polished one. The full launch will come in a week or two. Between now and then, I want real school leaders inside the tool, finding the rough edges before paying members do.
That includes the checkout. When the app launches, it will be an $99 one-time purchase, and the purchase flow is one of the things I most need tested before I trust it with real money. So your access runs through the actual sign-up and payment process, with one difference: you will use a test card, and nothing is charged. Not a cent. You are walking the same path a real buyer will walk in a few weeks, which is exactly what lets you tell me where that path is rough.
In exchange for all of this, I am asking for your eyes. Tell me what landed, what felt clunky, where you got stuck, what you wished it did. Reply to me at kevin@howtoprincipal with anything you notice, large or small. Several of you have shaped past projects with your feedback, and it has always made the work better.
How to Get In
Go to lft.howtoprincipal.com
Enter your email address and click to sign in
Check your inbox for a magic link and click it. (A magic link signs you in without a password. One click and you are in.)
At checkout, use this test card:
Card number: 4242 4242 4242 4242
Expiry: any future month and year
CVC: any three digits
This is a test card. Nothing is charged.
Once you are through, open Month One
If the sign-up or the checkout misbehaves at any step, that counts as feedback too. Reply and tell me what happened and where.
Where to Start
When you get in, feel free to take a full test drive. If something breaks, you’ve done me a favour.
And if you are past your first year but you know someone who is just starting, forward this along. New administrators almost never ask for help in September. This is a way to put something in their hands early.
Thanks for being the first ones through the door.
Kevin