Community Training - Well Suited to this Day and Age

They say that if you want to live a happy life, find something that you love to do and turn it into a business. The caveat of course is that you have to be real good at what you do. Half ass won't cut it as a business because people are very choosy about what they purchase - they want quality.

I have been a teacher and an advocate since I was knee high to a grasshopper or big enough to put the sheep in at night. I've always had a heart for anyone who wasn't able to advocate for themselves. More than once, I've been called upon to straighten something out.

"Can you call so and so....?"  or "That don't seem right to me..."

That's how the conversation would begin. And next thing you know I'd be on the phone trying to get it straightened out.

When it was suggested that I go into business, I had absolutely no idea what I would possibly sell. Most of the favours I did for people weren't ones I charged for. They were examples of me using my gifting for a good cause. After all, we couldn't have some big corporation taking advantage of a little guy.

I love to teach. When I was a mechanic, I enjoyed learning new things and sharing those with others. As a rebar apprentice I would learn how to tie steel in the daytime and share what I learned with other local folk. After all we all wanted to get hired on with the Hibernia Project to make a few big bucks
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I always thought that people could learn all kinds of stuff if teachers could learn to put the information into understandable chunks. The same held true whether I was changing the oil on a bus or tutoring at Law School. When someone wanted to give up in exasperation because they "couldn't do it", I'd reframe it in terms that they could digest and next thing you know, that "aha moment" would happen for them.

The highest praise came from a young tradesman who said "Debbie,  you don't make us feel stupid." I never did get that because I couldn't imagine a teacher worth their salt ever making anyone look stupid. I've always felt that if a student wasn't learning, I was somehow not delivering the information correctly.

I decided to open PeopleCan Training because I could see that there were courses that the community could use. I have lived in a lot of places and I found that there was a gap in the community when it came to programs that I would have wanted to learn along the way. I would offer some of those.

So many business folk I speak with tell me that they had no idea what they were getting into when they began and I get it now. I'm almost at the half year mark and the scope of what I have undertaken is just becoming clear to me. It was quite an undertaking.

I don't regret it yet. I haven't quite got the marketing mix down. I've rolled out programs that worked and others that didn't - it's been a real trial and error. But each day someone comes in with a problem and I can feel my heart leap - I'm doing what I love one day at a time. PeopleCan is morphing into something valuable and I'm changing right along with it.

We live in a strange economy - people need to become more self sufficient - we have so much untapped potential. I want to facilitate the kind of growth in people and in the community. I want to help people say "I did it. I really did."

I love what I do and often I feel like pinching  myself and wonder how I once again ended up in a pretty amazing space.