Greetings from Raleigh, NC and Happy 2022! I am down here attending the USASBE entrepreneurship conference, which has certainly had its challenges with the pandemic and weather. They have done a great job of streaming the conference and keeping everyone safe that is in person. One thing that I continue to appreciate with these educational conferences is how collaborative everyone is by sharing ideas, teaching methods and tools to help all of our students. Having spent most of my career in business, those trade conferences never shared ideas as everyone was a competitor. It has been great to be both part of GCEC, our entrepreneurship center community and USASBE, the entrepreneurship teaching community. The only difficult issue is trying to then implement all the great ideas from these conferences. One theme that has come out of both conferences is the importance of experiential education as a part of entrepreneurship education. Many of the exercises and tools that have been shared involve bringing the real world into the classroom, which continues to have an impact on our students. One of these tools provided a matrix where you answer the following questions:
- Passion; what you love to do?
- Expertise; what you are good at?
- Need; what the world needs?
- Compensation; what you can be paid for?
These are great questions that I encourage each of you to jot down 3-5 thoughts under each question and then reflect on how this lines up with your current career path. Ultimately, if you drew circles around each question with your answers and determined where those circles intersect, you would find YOUR sweet spot. Whether that spot results in a career shift, new business idea or life reflection, I think it is a valuable exercise. Certainly, if your sweet spot does result in a new business idea that reflects all these questions, please visit us in the CEC so we can help you further develop that idea/dream! So, look out students, I am coming back with a new list of tools from this conference! I hope 2022 is a safe and great year for everyone.