I talked to my aunt last night. She’s a kindergarten teacher, and she mentioned that she’s going back to work corralling screaming 5-year-olds.
I haven’t been following the local corona news, so this was a surprise to me.
Sure enough, starting next week, all kids up to grade 4 will be back in classrooms throughout Croatia. “Enough is enough,” frustrated parents must have been saying, and the government eventually caved in.
But here’s the thing that got me wondering:
If spending each day with your kids at home gets tiring for the majority of parents… can you imagine how tiring a teacher’s job must be?
Not one kid… not two… but 25 or more? And not for the next few years until your kids become more independent… but for life, each year the same thing?
And on top of this, teachers don’t even get paid well.
I think it was Matt Furey who first brought this fact up in connection with marketing. He used the fact that teachers don’t make any money to warn against over-teaching in your emails.
Instead, Matt’s advice was to motivate, inspire, and entertain.
I can definitely agree with this. But I would add that teaching can work and it can work well.
The key though is to educate your prospect about his problem, and the specific nuances of why he hasn’t been able to solve it so far.
In other words, don’t tell your prospect HOW to solve his problem… tell him WHY he hasn’t been able to solve it until now.
And then of course, you still have to do some selling. But if you’ve done the teaching bit right… the selling should be easy, because your solution will fit like a hand into your prospect’s problem glove.
I realize I’m contradicting my own advice with the past few sentences. That’s why this email won’t make any money. Not a noble thing, if you ask me. Hopefully, you will be smarter and more disciplined about spilling your teaching — and doing some selling – in your own emails.