Straight-up strategies to boost your business's bottom line. No jargon, just results.

I help Shopify apps in the age of AI — 

Nail your positioning so users don't scroll past your app. 

Land more clients, find product-market fit, optimize you onboarding and UX funnels, optimize your app store listing to attract and convert more paying clients and create revenue generating pipelines to grow ARR.

Get a free audit for your app here: https://audit.ohadmichaeli.com

Ohad Michaeli

Open any Shopify app listing.

Now scroll past the tagline. Past the description. Straight to the screenshots.

That's what merchants do. Every time.

Your feature list? They didn't read it.
Your keyword-optimized description? Skipped.
The pricing section you agonized over? They'll check later, if the screenshots don't bore them first.

I've watched merchants evaluate apps. The mouse goes straight to the image carousel.

Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. Decision made.

If your first screenshot is a settings page or a generic dashboard, you've already lost them.

They're not trying to understand your app. They're trying to feel whether it solves their problem.

Screenshots aren't illustrations of your features. They're the entire pitch.

The description exists for people who already decided to install and want to double-check. That's a small group.

What's your first screenshot showing right now?

Ohad Michaeli 🫧

Helping Shopify apps get more clients with the power of AI

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Most SaaS founders overthink pricing.

Per-product fees. Usage tiers. Feature gates. Add-on charges.

By the time a merchant finishes reading your pricing page, they're exhausted.

And exhausted people don't buy.

They bookmark. They compare. They never come back.

Complicated pricing doesn't show sophistication. It shows indecision.

You haven't figured out what your app is worth, so you built a pricing calculator instead.

Customers cluster around predictable price points. Always have. Always will.

You don't need 7 tiers. You need 2, maybe 3.

Make it inevitable for customers to move between tiers as they grow/shrink. You earn more. They don't churn when they hit hard times.

Drop the per-product pricing. One number that makes sense.

Simple pricing removes the barrier between thinking and buying.

If a 10-year-old can't explain your pricing, you're losing deals.

♻️ Share this with your network if you find it helpful. Follow me for more content on Shopify app growth strategy.

Open your Shopify App Store ad campaign dashboard.

Now look at your keyword list. Actually look at it.

When was the last time you did that?

Most founders set up campaigns once. Pick some keywords. Set a budget. Walk away.

Then they wonder why installs are expensive.

Your campaign is bidding on keywords that made sense 6 months ago. Before your positioning changed. Before you knew what merchants actually search for.

You are paying for clicks from people who will never install.

Set it and forget it works for slow cookers. Not for ad campaigns.

The Shopify App Store changes. Search behavior changes. Your competitors update their keywords.

Your campaign doesn't know any of that.

I'm not saying ads don't work. They do.

But only if someone is actually managing them.

Pull up your keyword report right now. Look at what you are actually paying for.

What did you find?

Most academic leaders get the title—but not the tools. I know, because I’ve been there.

For over two decades, I was a professional musician (a tubist)—performing on five continents, collaborating with Olympic-caliber artists, and serving on faculty at several institutions.

Then I made the leap—from the stage to senior leadership.

I loved performing and teaching.
But I discovered that my greatest strengths were in building teams, designing better systems, and helping others succeed.

That led me to accept a leadership role directing a comprehensive School of Music at the University of Memphis:

➔ 80+ faculty and staff
➔ 400+ students
➔ 75 community partners
➔ 300 annual events
➔ A satellite campus

Very quickly, I saw a challenge many new academic leaders face:
You’re handed major responsibilities—with little preparation for the leadership side of the role.

Budgets and policies can be handed to you.
But building trust, managing conflict, and leading with clarity?

That's harder.

Through mentorship, coaching, and trial by fire, I learned to build people-centered systems that reduced the chaos and moved our school forward.

Together we:
➔ Planned and opened a $40M Performing Arts Center
➔ Modernized curriculum for professional opportunities
➔ Achieved record applications and enrollment
➔ Hired 50+ faculty/staff, increasing diversity and talent
➔ Established new international partnerships
➔ Expanded community engagement

Most important of all, we built a phenomenal team of people—faculty and staff who led the school forward.

Today, I help academic leaders do the same. 

I serve as Dean of the School of Music at Baylor University and as a coach and consult, work with leaders who want to: 
➔ Fix broken systems
➔ Build stronger teams
➔ Lead with clarity, strategy, and balance

Ready to feel confident in your leadership?

➔ DM me if you’d like more details
➔ https://meet.kevinsanders.me/intro/meeting

Kevin Sanders

The most toxic faculty member on your campus didn't become that way overnight.
Your institution trained them.

A dean recently told me about a faculty member who'd been undermining college decisions for years. Missing deadlines. Ghosting committee meetings. Making colleagues miserable.

My first question: "What happened the first time they did this?"
...Long pause.

"Well... nothing, really. We reassigned their committee work. Someone else covered their advising load. We just... worked around them."

And there's your problem.

Individuals don't sustain toxic behavior in a vacuum. They do it because our systems enable it—sometimes even reward it.

Here's what enabling looks like:
- Deadlines become suggestions because we don't enforce them
- Colleagues quietly pick up the slack instead of speaking up
- Research stars get a pass because they bring in grant money

The 'fix' isn't fixing the person. It's fixing the system.

Ask yourself:
- What makes this behavior sustainable?
- Do I actually have the tools to enforce consequences?
- What would real accountability look like here?

👉 How many "difficult" people on your campus are actually just people who have been taught that bad behavior works?

If you're ready to stop managing around difficult people and start building systems that actually work, my newsletter The Academic Leader's Playbook is for you. Every Saturday, 600+ campus leaders get practical frameworks they can read in 4 minutes or less
.
Link in the comments 👇

Academic Dean & Leadership Coach | Helping Leaders Navigate Change, Build Teams & Stay Human | Artist by Training

Here's how new leaders burn out fast:
They treat every piece of criticism like a five-alarm fire.

One complaint? Shift priorities. 
Hallway grumble? Rewrite the system. 
Critical email? Change the policy.

I've been here before.
Someone would mention they were frustrated with advising, and by that afternoon I'd have a meeting scheduled with an asst. chair and two advisors.

To me, I felt like I was being responsive. Collaborative.

What I was actually doing?  Managing noise.

It took me awhile to learn that not all feedback is equal.
Some comments are real problems that need solving. 
Others are just people having a bad day. 

And if you try to fix everything to be liked, 
you'll exhaust yourself chasing ghosts while actual patterns go unaddressed.

The bigger your team, the worse this gets.

The best leaders I've worked for don't react to every signal. They look for patterns. They ask: 
- Is this one person's frustration or a systemic issue? 
- Is this feedback coming from three people or thirty? 
- Has this come up once this month or every month for a year?

Research backs this up. A study in the Journal of Higher Education (Vol. 92, Issue 3) found that reactive decision-making—prioritizing immediate fixes over strategic planning—leads to lower morale and increased faculty resistance over time. Because people learn they can't count on consistency.

What builds long-term trust isn't instant action. 
It's thoughtful, measured response.

👉 What's one complaint you're glad you didn't immediately act on?


If you're tired of second-guessing every decision, The Academic Leader's Playbook helps campus leaders cut through the noise in 4 minutes every Saturday. Join 600+ campuses. Link in the comments 👇

"We support our people."
Everyone says it. It's in the statements. 
The speeches. The meetings.

But when the moment comes? 
- A 30-second class recording taken out of context
- Research on a controversial topic
- A personal social media post
- A difficult decision is scrutinized from above

Too often, we see that support evaporate.

Today's issue of the Academic Leader's Playbook: 
Where Did All the Courage Go?

I've been wrestling with whether to write this one. But the more conversations I have with faculty and staff across the country, the clearer it becomes: 
We're in short supply of something crucial.

It went to 600+ campuses this morning. 
Not subscribed yet? 

Get practical leadership insights in your inbox every Saturday. 
Link in the comments. 👇

Not knowing how things are “supposed” to work can be a huge advantage.

I’m not talking about glorifying inexperience.
But recognizing that expertise can carry outdated assumptions.

Research supports this: 
A 2004 study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that newcomers are more likely to propose innovative ideas because they aren't bound by established team routines and social norms (Choi & Levine, 2004).

Meanwhile, veterans can dismiss novel ideas because they conflict with “how we’ve always done it.”

Here’s what I’ve seen faculty accomplish precisely because they didn’t know any better:
🔹 Replacing a $200 textbook with open educational resources
🔹 Building cross-departmental partnerships that “don’t exist here”
🔹 Launching student-run social media accounts because no one told them it wasn’t their job

We have to periodically question our own rules.

- When someone says “That’s just how it works,” ask “why.”
- Break patterns on purpose. Test it. Document what happens.
- Listen to fresh voices. When someone asks, "Why don’t you just...", pause and consider it seriously.

Most real progress in higher ed starts with someone brave enough to ask:
"Why not?"

Protect your curiosity.
Leverage others' fresh perspectives.
Build the thing no one else sees yet.

What’s a higher ed “rule” that you think deserves to be questioned?

If you’re leading a unit where tradition and innovation are constantly at odds, you’ll love The Academic Leader’s Playbook—my weekly newsletter for leaders who want to build cultures that honor both fresh thinking and institutional wisdom. Link in my profile.

#HigherEdLeadership #AcademicLeadership #FacultyDevelopment #LeadershipDevelopment #ChangeManagement

3 things search committees don't tell you (but I will):

1. That "perfect" candidate from the job posting? Doesn't exist. Trying to be them just makes you forgettable.

2. Your quirks matter more than your polish. Authentic passion is what people remember—not your rehearsed performance.

3. The questions you ask are just as important as the answers you give. This is your life decision too, not just theirs.

A new issue of The Academic Leader's Playbook just went out to 600+ campuses: What Nobody Tells You About Leadership Interviews

How to prepare like crazy—and still show up as yourself.

Link in my profile.

We often prepare students for careers that we’ve never had.
And that's not a problem—unless we pretend we don’t need help.

Faculty bring deep expertise. But not always industry fluency.
Professionals bring real-world relevance. But not always teaching skill.

Programs still reflect what worked 20 years ago—
even when entire fields have transformed.

30 years ago, schools trained artists to be teachers, performers, and scholars.

Today, the creative economy includes UX design, media production, and digital entrepreneurship.

These aren’t fallback careers. They’re booming industries—and we often leave students to stumble into them post-graduation.

And we see this everywhere career paths have outpaced the curriculum.

The goal isn’t to make faculty experts in every career path.
It's building partnerships that bring industry voices into the classroom before students leave it.

But that requires faculty to say something uncomfortable:
"This isn't my lane—but let's build a bridge to someone who lives in it."

That sentence is harder than it sounds. 
It requires intellectual humility. 
It challenges the expertise we've built our careers on. 
But it's also the only way to keep programs relevant.

What's the best industry partnership you've seen that actually prepares students for where they're headed?

p.s. My weekly newsletter The Academic Leader's Playbook helps you navigate strategic shifts like this—both the tactical moves and the emotional weight. Practical insights every week, no fluff. 

Link in the comments 👇

Effective leaders make popular decisions, right?
Wrong.

You'll make decisions people hate.

And the best decisions for students, the institution, or the long-term?

They’re often the most uncomfortable in the short term.
- They stir up resistance.
- They disrupt routines.
- They ask people to give up something.
And they don’t come with applause.

Here's a framework that can work:
✅ Name the real problem (not the symptom)
✅ Show your work (who was consulted, what data you used)
✅ Own the trade-off (don't pretend there isn't one)

Do that consistently, and eventually people say:
“I don’t love it. But I get it.”

And in leadership, that's what actually moves things forward.

What's an unpopular decision you've had to make that was for the common good?


And if you're navigating these moments regularly—
you'll want my weekly newsletter, The Academic Leader's Playbook. 
Every week, I break down the leadership challenges no one talks about openly: how to make unpopular calls, build teams that function when you're not in the room, and lead with clarity when the path forward isn't clear.  

Link in the comments. 👇

Today is retreat day with 20 of our school leaders.

Looking forward to what comes out of this room today!

What’s something you wish you had more unstructured time to explore with your team?

I don't see this in leadership books:
The most essential skill for sustainable leadership isn't strategic thinking or conflict management.
It's forgiveness.

And I'm not talking about the kind people ask for.

I'm talking about the forgiveness you extend to people who will never apologize.
- The colleague who took credit for your idea.
- The faculty member who undermined your decision in a meeting.
- The senior leader who promised support and vanished when things got hard.

Here's what two decades in higher ed has taught me:

If you wait for apologies before you let things go, 
you'll carry every slight, every betrayal, every disappointment 
until it crushes you.
And I've seen that happen to good leaders.

Forgiveness isn't about them. 
It's about you.
It's about refusing to let someone else's behavior determine your capacity to lead with clarity.

And research backs this up. 
A 2019 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that leaders who practice forgiveness experience significantly lower levels of burnout and higher job satisfaction—because they don't waste cognitive energy on resentment.

The math is simple:
Every grudge you carry takes up space that could be used for strategic thinking, mentoring, innovation, or rest.

The hard part?
Forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting. 
It doesn't mean trust without accountability. 
And it definitely doesn't mean allowing bad behavior to continue.

It means this: 
I see what happened. 
I'm choosing not to let it define how I show up tomorrow.

The leaders I admire most have this in common:
They don't pretend people are perfect. 
They don't ignore dysfunction. 
But they also don't let bitterness become their operating system.

Because you can't build a healthy culture while nursing old wounds.

So here's my question for you:
👉 What would change in your leadership if you stopped waiting for apologies you'll never receive?

P.S. If posts like this resonate, my weekly newsletter, The Academic Leader's Playbook shares hard-won insights that help academic leaders move from reactive to intentional. Link in comments 👇

Search committees don't want the "perfect leader."
They want someone real who can actually do the job.

But most candidates spend the entire interview trying to be flawless—
and it costs them.

The job market for higher ed leaders asks impossible things:
- Be vulnerable while maintaining professionalism
- Sell yourself while staying humble
- Prepare extensively while appearing natural

It's exhausting. 
And if you're in it right now—drafting applications, prepping for campus visits—you know exactly what I mean.

This week's issue of The Academic Leader's Playbook is for you: 
What Nobody Tells You About Leadership Interviews

Inside:
🔹 Why "no one can relate to perfect"—and what that means for your interview strategy
🔹 How to balance thorough preparation with genuine presence
🔹 The questions that reveal if this is actually the right fit for who you're becoming

Here's my question: 
How many leadership candidates are losing jobs because they're trying to be who they think committees want—instead of who they actually are?

If you're preparing for a leadership interview, this one's for you.

Goes out tomorrow morning to 600+ campuses. 
You can subscribe in the comments 👇

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