Opening Day of Summer Institute: Becoming an Entrepreneur & Attendee Insights
July 28th, 2010
by Mark Sklarow, Executive Director, Independent Educational Consultants Association
The first full day of the IECA Summer Training Institute has been a whirlwind of activity—and it’s only 11:00 a.m.! This morning Lisa Bleich led a session 
on becoming an entrepreneur. Since most attendees have backgrounds as guidance counselors, university admission directors, LD advocates, or family therapists and such, the idea of using those skills to open and manage a successful small business was a scary topic. Lisa, however, made the topic understandable and manageable. She talked about “the 7 Ps,” an extension of the traditional “4 Ps” she presented as an assistant professor of marketing.
The “7 Ps”: Product (your consulting services), Price (what you will charge and how), Place (where you will deliver your services), Promotion (how you will get the word out about your services), Positioning (How you want others to see your services), Presence (online), and Personalization (how you will meet the unique needs of clients).
Yesterday afternoon attendees explored their own insights as to what the profession of educational consulting is all about. In the work they did an amazing job of noting the importance of communication, understanding the whole child, gaining the institutional knowledge necessary, building a network of experts, gaining business know-how, and the need for an ethical core underlying all else.
This morning in a “get acquainted” exercise with my mentor group (smaller sub-groups of attendees), participants grabbed a random item from a box. They had to explain how that item could be related to educational consulting. This was just a fast, fun exercise but their responses were so creative and clever, I wanted to share some:
Paperclip: consultants must be organized in order to help students achieve their goals.
Seashell: we must remember that each child is as unique as each seashell.
Rubber band: we must work to achieve a balance between bringing things together and being flexible in our approach.
Hot sauce: one of our challenges is helping students to try something new, the way hot sauce changes the flavor.
Clothespin: for consultants there is a laundry list of things we must do to accomplish our goals.
Flashlight: we help to illuminate the path of a good educational match.
Stone: with so much going on, we need to help students remain grounded and mindful.
A multicolored twist of plastic: we bring the different strands together into a unique whole.
Ball: like a ball we never really know where a student will bounce—where the process will take us.
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