Internet Marketing and Home School Entrepreneurship: Part II

Home school lends itself to entrepreneurship - and Internet entrepreneurship especially - in that home school children universally learn to manage and budget time, learn to move ahead at an ever quickening pace and usually gain incentive for personal excellence because studies are tailored to their individual needs and problem solving. Entrepreneurship progresses the same way. Personal incentives and the need for excellence drives entrepreneurship. Also, Christianity drives the character toward good stewardship of time and resources. Homeschool provides the opportunity and the environment. The Lord provides the blessing. Great mix - as many are beginning to discover. Most home schools don't emphasize entrepreneurship because of imagined "immense start up costs" or simply through lack of vision and know-how. This is where Internet marketing can literally plug the gap. As an internet marketing specialist, I find opportunities everywhere. True entrepreneurship finds problems others need solved, and finds a solution. For example, going on a vacation doesn't have to be only play. I know someone who was vacationing in North Carolina. He found a place that offered genuine antique stained glass windows for decoration. As an Internet Marketing Specialist, he got his laptop, did his internet research, found the going prices nationwide, threw up a quick mini sales site, bought the windows, and found a market - all before he left the vacation area. The point is, wherever he traveled, he could take advantage of almost any opportunity as it came his way. That's true entrepreneurship. Home school students can be taught to learn how. He is a home school father who does teach his students. I know him well. Who doesn't know someone in business - almost any business - who has said: · "I have a website but I don't know how to get clients to it" (Getting clients is precisely what an Internet Marketing Specialist learns to do for his clients.) · "My website has been up for years and hasn't ever brought one person through my door". (Having a site is much different from "getting found" by search engines, directories or qualified customers.) · "I don't know how to use the internet for my business" (My home school daughter does. She's 14. That can be learned.) · "I know I'm leaving money on the table without the Internet". Question: Where can you go to access about 50 million people, in less than an hour, for about 10 bucks? If you don't know, then, yes, you are leaving opportunity (and money) on the table. · "But I've heard people get scammed on the Internet" People get scammed everywhere. But the Net is now ceasing to be the wild, wild west it once was. It is now a well organized - and massive entrepreneurial community. · "I have a business and I need client leads. I am paying a lot to get those leads now, but I don't know how to use the Internet to get the quality leads I need". The Internet is role reversal to offline business. There you seek the customer. On the Net, they seek you. You must learn how to be "found." That's the new entrepreneurship paradigm. (That is exactly what is taught my students.) · "I have a home business but I don't know how to get customers". Nuts. Call me. · "I don't have a product" You don't need a product of your own to market on the Internet - I am NOT kidding. Neither is my home school daughter. · Incidentally, and this should go without saying, such entrepreneurship does not replace academic preparation, learning and skills. Entrepreneurship, home school, and Christian faith all combine to take advantage of the capacity to reach people - in my case, through the Internet - so as to help them in their businesses or other problem solving issues (entrepreneurship is problem-solving). Home school is a great place to start. Imagine, a child educated with a business of his/her own as they graduate. That's a goal in our home school. How about yours? Oh, I almost forgot. If you read Part I, where you were asked to name the one skill area the vast majority of small businesses do not know how to even begin, did you figure it out in this second article (entrepreneurship is solving problems others can't solve without your help)? If not. Reread. No business can succeed without this one skill area which is the very essence of entrepreneurship. In fact, you cannot have entrepreneurship without this skill area. Do you know what it is? "No"? Then reread. Or, you can go ... "Yes"? Then what are you doing with it?

by Wayne Sedlak