The metaphor that best describes my classroom at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy is a laboratory–day after day, class after class, we are testing our hypotheses, reproducing experiments, and most importantly, trying. Over and over again, with variations along the way.

This school year marks my eleventh year of teaching a foundations of entrepreneurship course and the course has changed dramatically over the years, based on the best practices seen firsthand in student impact. If we were doing the same projects now that we were back in 2014, that would be problematic for any subject area, much less the teaching of the entrepreneurial mindset.

One of the recent and most significant additions to this experience has been the “Sales Project.” After the students complete their personal growth plan (which takes the bulk of the first month of class), they embark on the sales journey which always produces surprising results. I’ll not be going into specifics of the project in this newsletter, but know that the best way for any sales project to be worthwhile is to help students do two primary things:

1. Understand the primary concept of value and

2. Communicate that value clearly to a customer

Throughout this experience, students come to understand not just how to sell something, but they come to realize the incredible significance of value–everything is an exchange of value. Even and perhaps most importantly the value of attention. What I choose to divert my attention with is essentially my vote in the value of that thing, whether it be a Netflix show, a TikTok video, or a book. What I choose to spend my money on is the same thing–a communication of the value I place on how that product or service will improve my life.

For a mind-blowing element to this project, we consider how every financial exchange is essentially an exchange of part of the customer’s life–the customer has to go out and exchange their own time (a piece of their life) to get the money that they are now giving in exchange for the product or service you are selling. When our students take this into consideration, it changes how they view their own sales pitch.

I ask them to sell a product or a service to a customer and I give them one primary rule: the customer cannot be someone that they know. The customer cannot be a family member, a friend, or some other person with whom the student has a previous working knowledge. They need to sell something to someone they don’t know–and they need to do this by understanding the true value of their product or service and then communicate that effectively in order to close the deal.

Let’s Go!

RESERVE YOUR SPOT NOW

Grab one of these limited spots for the CHCA Entrepreneurship Symposium

The 2025 CHCA Entrepreneurship Symposium on March 6 and 7, 2025 will bring together Christian school leaders from around the nation to explore meaningful and impactful entrepreneurship programming designed to engage students, rally communities, and supercharge donors.

And spots are limited, so ACT NOW.

Email Stephen Carter ([email protected]) to RSVP and reserve your spots.

CONTACT STEPHEN