Tag / students

by Nathan Coumbe

Everything is marketing. Everything is sales.

That’s the premise.

Even on the smallest scale, we are marketing and selling. It might not be products but rather ideas or ways of thinking and being. 

If I have an idea about how people can behave or change to improve their lives, to become the best possible versions of themselves, it does no one any good unless I can persuade them to adopt the ideas. That means that I have to sell to them.

“Making is insufficient. You haven’t made an impact until you’ve changed someone.”

– Seth Godin, This Is Marketing, p. xiv

Marketing and sales are both about influence; each of us must influence others to create change (we will get into the ethics of influence in another post).

Leadership in the modern age is sales and marketing. During the Industrial Age, a leader told an employee what to do and that person either complied or left. In the Knowledge Age, a leader must influence those who follow. You can still attempt tell people what to do, but it rarely leads to enrollment and willing compliance, without which high-quality work does not occur. However, influencing them – by empathizing and understanding what they want, feel, need, and believe, and then having the courage to let them know your ideas for progress – this sort of leadership brings others willingly to your way of thinking. (It also potentially creates better ideas than either party came up with on their own.)

Every career requires sales and marketing. A psychologist is both a salesperson and a marketer. If they do not market, they do not get patients. She cannot rely on her credentials to bring people into the office.

A teacher is marketing each time she sets foot in the classroom. If she cannot get her students to come with her, if she cannot get them excited and willing to go on the learning journey, her knowledge and expertise are useless. She must influence them.

If you coach people on how to level up their careers, personal lives, or get past negative scripting from earlier life periods, you must sell them on the ideas you present. If you fail to do so, or do it poorly, you have failed to create change or the desire for it in the other person. 

Regardless of whom you seek to influence, you must always begin by understanding them, their points of view, their wants, desires, worries, fears, and problems. That is always the first step to influence, and influence is marketing.

We all must influence others to make change happen, and if everything is marketing and everything is sales, you might as well learn to do it well.

Start with this book here.

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by Nathan Coumbe

This one is just for me

(These are simply thoughts I needed to work out yesterday. Feel free to skip today’s post, as it is rather selfish. However, if you, for whatever reason, read all the way through this post, think about where all the signs in your life are pointing; ask yourself why you are hesitating going down the road.)

What do you do when all the signs are telling you to go a certain way? Why don’t you just go?

All the aptitude tests, interest assessments, and personal inventories tell you to go do this one thing, but still you hesitate.

Is it because you don’t know the next step to take? No, because you know the next step – get a graduate degree.

Is it because you don’t know the field in which to get the degree? Maybe…you do have trouble choosing between your varied interests.

Is it because of what you read and hear? Perhaps so.

“Professors don’t make a lot of money.”

“Most professors are adjuct, so they have work at multiple schools without receiving benefits from any of them.”

“Colleges are slowly dying – it’s hard to get a job at one, and it isn’t the most secure form of employment anymore. The cost of college is keeping people away, and the student loan crisis is going to cause all of them to fail.”

“You may be teaching in a field you love, but the students might not care about the material.”

“Half of the Ph.Ds out there are working in fields unrelated to their studies.”

Or perhaps it’s internal. Students are borrowing small fortunes without thinking to study things (or party but still somehow get the grade) that won’t guarantee them a stable job and a livable wage. That is something in which I cannot, in good conscience, involve myself.

Is it because you might have to stop working, taking a severe pay cut in order to attend?

Are you afraid you’ll fail? Perhaps you are worried you might get the degree, but you won’t be good enough/smart enough/talented enough/hard-working enough to be the best, which means you might not be sought out by the people who need the expertise you went to obtain.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Getting the grade

Students are so driven to get the grade that they will cheat on tests and assignments. 

Why?

Because we’ve taught them that the grade, not the learning, is important. 

If all our emphasis is on the grade, then of course they are going to cheat. Or cram. Or do just enough to get by.

“Will this be on the test?”

What is the end goal of education? Is it getting good grades, or imparting knowledge, skills, and wisdom to students?

If it is the former, then don’t be surprised when students cheat, cram, and stumble their way through class. 

If it is the latter, if the “why” behind education is learning rather than grades; encouraging curiosity and leadership rather than compliance; expect to gain willing enrollment from those in your charge. 

What is school for?

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