Since the 1970s when I was a teacher I have maintained that we should
teach young people practical skills for having their own business instead of
teaching them to work for someone else. At that time they were just putting a
toe in the water by showing pupils how to make out cheques. Big deal!!
Think back to what
you learnt at school.
Did you learn how
to write a book and take it through to publication and market it?
Could you design a
product, find a manufacturer, cost it for production, work out profit margins
and follow it through to marketing?
Did you learn
anything by importing and exporting goods?
How would you
construct a good workable business plan?
How would you
finance a business? What do you know about interest rates, contracts, public
liability insurance and national insurance?
How would you
approach the various Council departments to find out what restrictions or rules
apply to your proposed business?
I’m not suggesting
that all these points should be studies in great detail but at least no child
should leave school without the basic understanding of how to go about running
a small business for themselves. It doesn’t make any economic sense to wait
until a person is unemployed and then expect them to start looking for an
alternative to being jobless.
How many good ideas
have withered away because someone not knowing how to take the first step in
developing the project?
Keeping children at
school for increasingly more years is just a political ploy to keep the
unemployment figures down. It increases vandalism because youngsters who are
more mature now than ever before become frustrated when they are prevented from
getting on with their lives doing something productive and actually earning a
living.
At last Government
is being dragged away kicking and screaming from this ridiculous idea of
shovelling everyone into university with the promise of a better income and
lifestyle at the end of it.
A) It’s a false
promise as many are now discovering for themselves.
B) The majority of
occupational training is best served by apprenticeships or learning on the job.
For example, we
want our nurses to be highly trained but the old idea of taking in student
nurses straight from school and allowing them to work with in-service training
to higher positions. I know nurses today who have been to university and
consider themselves too highly qualified to do menial and often unpleasant
tasks for the comfort of their patients. E.g. They didn’t go to university to
end up wiping someone’s bottom, emptying bedpans or listening to a complaining
but probably scared patient.
No way! They are
there to do medical things.
I hope you get my
drift. Education – school – should be where you find out what you need to cope
with your future whatever life throws at you.
The ethos of the
school I attended as a child was ‘Our job is not to teach you a lot of facts but to show you how to find the facts you will need to
discover in the future’.
It was with this in
mind that I have devised ‘Prospecting
For Gold’. The aim is to take you through from the point where you are
trying to find some way of making a little extra money to creating your own
business. You might want to stay as a small one person operation or expand to a
multinational concern. The basic principles are the same. You should have been
able to learn these at school but it’s not too late.
‘Prospecting For
Gold’ is a monthly programme that you can stop or pause at any time you want. That pause facility is what
makes it different from other programmes which allow you to stop at any time
but if you want to resume the course you have to go back to the beginning
again.
Why don’t you have
a try it? It could be the best £27 you ever spent even if you decide to stop at
the first instalment.
‘Prospecting For Gold’ is a monthly programme that
you can stop or pause at any
time you want. That pause facility is what makes it different from other programmes
which allow you to stop at any time but if you want to resume the course you
have to go back to the beginning again.
Why don’t you have a try it? It could be the best
£27 you ever spent even if you decide to stop at the first instalment.
Theodora Cochrane is the author of
Prospecting For Gold which is a business course designed to help budding entrepreneurs to take the first steps to success and to offer helpful suggestions to successful entrepreneurs who are looking for opportunities to climb a few more mountains.
See more at www.showme-financialfreedom or email freedom@percydale.com
