Teach Business Today #1

Online businesses, community, and remote work

Hi there!

Welcome to the first edition of Teach Business Today.

If this is entering your inbox without any idea why, let me explain.

I’ve rebranded Senior High Hustle to SeanHopps.com. The blog content is all there, but I’ve added a few new goodies:

• I want you to know me instead of a brand. I’ve added some information to help you with that.

• My favourite business education resources.

• The introduction of my weekly newsletter, Teach Business Today (which you’re reading now).

Because you signed up for blog updates on Senior High Hustle, you’ve been automatically added onto my newsletter mailing list.

Every Monday, I will send you some of the coolest things I find that you can implement in your classroom. You don’t have to be a business teacher to use these. I plan to explain the ways that each can be used in any content area.

I won’t bore you with details any further. Let’s get into the good stuff.

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The Best Biz Takeaways This Week

The Permissionless Apprenticeship

Jack Butcher shared a tweet explaining why you should do things for people you admire instead of asking for permission.

People learn in different ways. They also consume content from different mediums. Sometimes the best source material will never be found by the right person if they can’t focus on reading long-form content or watching a full documentary.

In order to provide value, you must create. Why wait for someone else to do it?

I challenged my students to identify someone they look up to and repurpose their content in another form.

If they are happy with their result, I hope they share it with the source. Otherwise, they’ve practiced a skill that they can perhaps monetize later in life.

Best case scenario: they open a line of communication and develop potential mentorship through social media. I’m hoping I have to update the article I previously wrote on this topic.

If you’d like an example, here is James Simpson doing it on Jack’s course.

Zero to $1

Jack makes his way into the first two takeaways for good reason.

Making your first dollar on the internet is one of the best motivators to continue with entrepreneurship.

Maybe you don’t think you have a monetizable skill or no one knows who you are.

Neither of those is true. All it takes is a bit of self-discipline and risk.

Everyone can provide value to others. Sometimes it’s better to take the plunge before you’re ready like Aaron did in the example.

I still don’t think my writing is good. However, I uploaded a few articles and earned my first dollar on Medium.

Encourage your students to take a shot at this. Help them identify how they can share value with others and find ways to take the plunge.

My entrepreneurship students did this with our online store and were able to make money despite COVID-19 causing class suspensions.

Side tip: If you’re teaching entrepreneurship, frame the first dollar every student makes. I promise they’ll find increased motivation from your positive encouragement.

How to Crush It on Twitter

David Perell and Matthew Kobach are two of the best people to follow on Twitter. They know how to leverage the platform for business growth, and are willing to share their secrets with others.

Most of our students love social media. However, they spend more time consuming than creating. We need to show them the benefits of flipping that.

If students are serious about building an audience on any social media platform, I encourage you to share this resource. It is a long watch, but it’s informative and has a lot of takeaways for any social media platform.

I have one student using it to build her photography following on Instagram.

Teachers in different subject areas can use this as a resource for a writing assignment. Have students share ideas related to the curriculum in 280 characters or less. It’s tough to get a point across in such limited space, but that’s how the best Twitter influencers work.

Big Tech Shifts to Remote Work

With major companies like Facebook and Twitter embracing work from home, we are bound to see more companies follow suit.

What does this mean for our students? Global competition.

If future employers are looking to hire you to work from home, what is stopping them from hiring someone from another city, country, or continent?

This article can be a great case study to have students do a self-audit and identify what they need to work on for the future.

It can also be used to discuss the traditional current work culture. Do many of us need to be in an office or physical space to complete our work? Many of us are proving that to be untrue. I bet opinions will differ for various occupations.

Every remote work job could have an increase in competition. It’s a scary thought, but it’s something we need to prepare them for.

The Conversation

Seth Godin presents an idea that goes against what most teachers practice while working at home.

Don’t teach in real-time. Instead, have a conversation.

The harsh reality is most of our students aren’t paying attention during our scheduled online classes. This isn’t the learning they’re used to, and not how they’re conditioned to use their technology (if they’re lucky enough to have it).

Most of what we are doing during Zoom/Google Meet sessions can be pre-recorded and watched when a student can engage with it.

No forced responses. No awkward questions. No dead silence after you prompt them.

With a bit of structure, you can move the conversation to a relevant topic.

I schedule classes to give them “unstructured” conversation time. They think its off-topic, but a lot is steered towards things I want them to show understanding in.

My entrepreneurship students talk about their breakthroughs and how they achieved them. My marketing students talk about some of the best things they’ve seen on social media and why it stands out.

These classes produce engagement in learning equivalent to the physical classroom.

If you’re still teaching, try this method for a week. Send your lectures out as recorded videos and schedule a time where students can come and create conversations.

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Please leave a comment or send me an email at sean@seanhopps.com with any feedback you have. I plan to improve upon this newsletter each week with things you want to see.

Until next week,

Sean