Educators, It’s Time to Pivot
Hi, I’m new here, but…now is not the time to panic. While I’m on this soap box, let me introduce myself, I’m Ron Johnson 5.0 aka “Ronnie 5Stacks” and I’m going through my 5th cycle of my ‘Rising Phoenix,’ curating entrepreneurial experiences in New York, and expanding into Los Angeles this summer.
I’m originally from the Midwest, but I’ve been in Brooklyn, NY for 13 years. After working six years in corporate advertising, I quit my job to open a restaurant that would become the #1 restaurant in Prospect Heights and Top 100 Places to Eat in Brooklyn. In two years, two months and sixteen days later, the restaurant had taken a turn for the worst. In a moment of rebirth, I got baptized (again) and started to run marathons. With a new perspective, I made the difficult decision to close the restaurant and return to corporate advertising. After a string of disappointments in the corporate world, including being fired twice, I now find myself being called “Mr. Ron” by middle school, high school, and college students throughout New York City, and I couldn’t be more fulfilled. Today, I’m completing my first year of creating and launching my own youth entrepreneurship programs, Shark Sessions and Pop Up Academy. I would say that “I have no idea how I became a teacher!” But I do. I taught myself how to pivot.
You may be wondering, “what makes me qualified to teach anyone about entrepreneurship?!?” My gut response is to tell you to, “ask your mother.” But I won’t do that because God is still working on me.
This is what I know, Flint has lost the auto industry. Flint became the poorest city in the country. Flint became the most violent city in the country. Flint, MI is going on six years with the water crisis. And how is that even possible, given that The Great Lakes is responsible for providing 80% of its water to the United States of America and Flint is surrounded by three of the five lakes.
The United States of America has pledged almost a billion to rebuild Notre Dame within 24 hours. Jeff Bezos is donating $10 Billion to global climate change. And Nestle Waters is located two hours away from Flint. And yet, Flint still does not have water... in the United States of America (You can google all that.)
OK, focus Ronnie… the point that I am making is that I'm not worried about the actual water crisis. The bottled water and the water filtration systems are good for now (Thanks Jaden Smith!) but it’s not going to reverse the long term effects of lead poisoning that our youth are going to suffer from, once things turn around. Lead poisoning will negatively affect academic performance, graduation rates, and employment. Behavioral and learning disabilities will interrupt the development of Flint’s youth. And if I believed in conspiracies, I would say the results of poisoning the children of Flint would create a profitable prison pipeline. This would clear out space in the city of Flint, allowing for the continuation of gentrification, speeding up the urgency of a solution to the water crisis. Too bad, Flint’s youth isn’t enough to make that happen, but I digress.
FLINT is the reason why I teach youth entrepreneurship. And as an entrepreneur facing many setbacks, maybe I can relate to a great city like Flint. And here we are, me and the people of Flint, still standing! We have entrepreneurs like Peter Deppe and his micromobility company Kuhmute that are pioneering Flint’s rebirth. And to be very clear, NFTE (National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship) is doing amazing work with schools across the country and I owe Steve Mariotti (Flint native) a huge ‘thank you’ for his book The Entrepreneur’s Manifesto. This book is a huge inspiration for the work I’m doing now.
Today, has officially marked one year since I began my youth entrepreneurship programs and just as I was getting started, coronavirus takes kids out of schools! If I’ve learned anything from my years of taking hits, it’s that now is not the time to take a break, it’s time to pivot.
I have built many amazing relationships with organizations and other after-school programs just to hear the tremble in their voices at how the coronavirus is putting everything on hold for the foreseeable future. I have had several meetings scheduled last week just to be rescheduled or cancelled due to this pandemic. And while I do realize that we should be following the CDC’s guidelines for safety, I am simply recognizing the consequences this pandemic has created. Educators are scrambling to create online content for youth to continue learning once they return from spring break, creating just enough to hold them over until this pandemic concludes. That is the major problem my friends!
Imagine if you were taught about ‘forks in the road’ and ‘detours’... and not ‘dead ends.’ At the surface, this coronavirus pandemic is hurting our education system, but it’s not a dead end! This is not the time to scramble, panic, pause, or retreat out of fear.
If the youth are one of our greatest assets then we need to apply the same theory with buying and selling stocks. You don’t move your money out when the market is down! This is the time to buy, this is the time to invest! The worst thing we can do with our education system is move our money and investments out of the account. After-school educators like myself depend on the school system to provide our services. Therefore educators and students suffer, because the education system has failed to implement a real online infrastructure to support their students.
We need to stop treating e-learning as a band aid solution. And I totally agree, online content can never replace on-site education, but it will enhance and elevate the academic experience beyond the classroom and ‘the corona.’ The school system hasn’t changed in 200 years, and it takes a pandemic for our schools to pivot, and take education online. Now is the time!
Here’s the deal about pivoting, if you’re driving down a familiar street for 200 years, and you look in the rear view mirror, you will see all the storefronts, restaurants, salons, mosques, and schools you’re used to seeing. When you meet a detour (‘the corona’), you can pullover, stop and stare at the detour or you can continue to make progress by making a turn. Once you turn and begin to accelerate on the new path, you’ll look in your rearview mirror and everything you are familiar with will be gone. It is out of view. (Turn to the person to your right and say “out of view.”) The familiar spaces that we became comfortable with over the last 200 years are no longer safe anymore. What matters the most, is what’s ahead of us and the new opportunities we are approaching. We may even realize that this detour gets us to our destination faster than our old routine!
Courage is recognizing fear and walking (driving) towards it. It’s the least we owe our youth, and Flint, Michigan.
Entrepreneurship taught me that there will be setbacks along everyone's journey. How we respond to setbacks dictates how we face challenges/opportunities in the future. This has been the journey for Flint, Michigan, millions of entrepreneurs (that have not quit), and now the education system. The coronavirus is the breakthrough moment when academic institutions respect the detour and make the conscious decision to pivot, and continue moving forward. So what does pivoting look like for me? I’m taking my entrepreneurship programming online which includes custom made modules like: Madison Starts a Business (Part 1 of 6), Shark Tank/The Profit Watch Parties, online quizzes and games, and online resources for creating business plans, learning about pitch preparation, profit margins, and proof of concept worksheets.
I don’t teach entrepreneurship to youth to only become business owners. I selfishly want to be the reason why a kid gets their first internship or starts their first pop up shop. If a highschool student is interviewing for their first job without work experience, but they know how to read a profit and loss statement, they have something to bring to the table. I want to increase graduation rates, close the opportunity gap, and get students through college. And if it makes them an extra buck along the way, that’s the bonus. This is why I teach youth entrepreneurship because...
Flint, Michigan still does not have water.
