1-Hour Entrepreneur | How & Why I Created This Free Video Course
— Links to access my course for free are at the bottom of this article —
Many people who become entrepreneurs have no idea what they’re getting into.
Some are accidental entrepreneurs while others pursue this path with purpose.
Many newbies are not prepared for the tsunami of decisions that they have to make each day — and they end up making costly mistakes. Often these mistakes are basic and avoidable.
Mistakes might slow you down or could take down the entire business — yikes!
Check out this excerpt from Inc Magazine:
You might think the above happened when Branson was just starting out as a young entrepreneur in his 20s. Nope. He was in his 50s. More than 10 years after he became a billionaire.
It seems Branson was lucky enough to have strong business models and competent employees to avoid the big mistakes that can happen when important business concepts are missed (or maybe the mistakes did happen, but they survived anyway).
But most entrepreneurs are not so lucky.
The reality is that this happens all the time with entrepreneurs.
And the risk is that one wrong decision could kill the business.
How To Avoid Common Mistakes
I’ve always believed that the best way to prepare for entrepreneurship (and a career in business in general) is to actually run a business. But since that’s too costly and time-consuming to do in the real world, the best option is to play a realistic simulation.
That's why pilots learn to fly airplanes using flight simulators and the military trains in simulated battles.
We can do the same for business.
An entrepreneurship instructor and facilitator recently shared this on LinkedIn about the GoVenture Entrepreneur simulation game:
"My students have had opportunities to test out business ideas, pitch to investors and work with several subject matter experts from our entrepreneurship ecosystem but none of those experiences compared to what they gained from running their virtual business. Video Games in Academia can change lives!"
But what if you can’t play the game yourself?
There is another option — just watch.
Watching people play video games is a thing — a big thing. Twitch is a multibillion-dollar service where people watch other people play video games. While you’re reading this there are 2 million people watching videos right now on Twitch and over 50 million hours of video will be watched today.
And there’s YouTube. A Google search for the “Legend of Zelda” video game returns over 18 million video results.
People enjoy watching other people play video games.
Equally important is that all games are educational because our brains are always learning. It doesn’t matter if we are shooting aliens, flinging angry birds, or leading a guild into battle, our brains are wired to learn — I demonstrate this in this video.
Just Watch
Some years ago, I experimented with this idea of game-watching by launching a video course that teaches accounting. The secret to this course is that I play a business simulation game while demonstrating accounting in the context of running a business. This approach enables me to teach the basics of accounting in just 29 minutes — yes, 29 minutes.
Here’s a student review that captures the success of this methodology:
"Do yourself a favor and get this course. The theory taught in your classroom (at college) will deplete your mind of any curiosity you have in learning Finance (accounting).
This course is engaging and intuitive. It is immersive and your mind is actively making sense of accounting concepts dynamically. This course uses an inside-out approach to teaching accounting. As in, you already are in a business situation and accounting concepts are projected onto this situation.
Ugggh.. wish I had someone tell me 2 years ago to get this course. I can tell you with 100% certainty that if you can't sit through lectures passively and want to quickly grasp fundamentals, this course is what you have been always looking for."
The success of the accounting course led me to do it again — this time for entrepreneurship.
My objective is to allow anyone to discover and experience the fundamentals of entrepreneurship in just 1 hour. And at no cost — the course is free.
Here’s a list of everything I’m able to cover in that time:
The total running time of the core content ended up being just over one hour. I would have liked to have an extra 30 minutes, so perhaps in the future I'll create the 90-Minute Entrepreneur :-)
To round out the course, I also included some startup guides and videos as bonus content.
Entrepreneurship is such a broad topic that I'm curious to discover how well this new course will be received.
If you want to give it a try, it's free — here are two options:
- On my website — businessXP
- On Udemy — Udemy
For Instructors
If you are an instructor or instructional designer, a key takeaway here is that you can create an effective learning experience simply by having your students watch you play a game — or by having another student play the game while everyone watches.
As you play, take on the role of a coach to make observations, ask questions, and spur discussion.
I've done this with youth and adults. I once did it in a room with 350 middle school students — it was amazing.
If you want to give this a try with one of my GoVenture simulation games, contact me for a free trial.
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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com