Meeting the Business
A working jewelry business sat in the room, and every student got ninety seconds to prove they understood it.
Class recording
The lecture recording posts here after the class is taught.
Class summary
The Gold Trader — buying, selling, trading and upgrading on Allen Street in Springfield since 2010 — came to campus to be listened to. The class opened on a live clock and a plain statement of what the visit cost them: a covered shop floor, a drive, and a morning of a working business’s time. Then the three seats on a team were laid out, because a business can feel within ten minutes whether they are filled: the trainer holds the relationship, the scoper holds the problem, the builder holds the promise.
The body of the class was one instrument — a four-beat story every student tells in ninety seconds: the room you were in, the thing that was breaking, what you did, what was different afterwards. The fourth beat is the whole pitch, and it only counts if it lands on a surface this business actually operates: the counter, the bench, estate liquidation, or layaway. The class closed on the four questions a small-business owner holds and never asks out loud — is this wasting my morning, what does it really cost me, do they understand my business, and what happens to it in December — and on the rule that you answer them before they are asked.