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Category: 9th Grade

Business 9, Lesson 175 – College Tuition

Throughout this course, Dr. North has touched on the topic of college many times.  Each time he advises skipping the first two years of college by taking CLEP courses and to only enter in your junior year.  Even then, he advises to do college from home if you are able to.  This way of college is much better than the traditional way as it saves your parents money.  In this essay, I am going to talk about would I be better off if my parents will give me a college graduation present: half of the money they presently plan to pay for my college costs.

Before I begin, I would like to state that Dr. North gave this essay prompt with the assumption that the student would follow his plan.  I personally think that this idea is a great one, however I unable to implement it.  CLEP exams are an American program.  Now that I live in Asia, and will probably be doing college in Asia, CLEP exams have no meaning to any college.  No college will accept CLEP credits.

But for the sake of the essay, let’s pretend that I go to an American college and I use Dr. North’s plan.

At graduation my parents give me half of my college tuition funds.  Would this benefit me more than them paying for my tuition?

Yes, I think so.  Assuming that I only pay for junior and senior year of college, I would have only paid half of what my peers did.   Then, when my parents give me half of my college funds, I will have gained the amount of money I paid. 

As you can see, my parents giving me half of my college tuition as a graduation present is better than them paying for all of my college experience.  With the money I can find my own apartment and have funds in my savings for when I join the workforce.

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Business 9, Lesson 170 – Things I Learned From Business I

For the past 170 lessons I have been learning a lot of different things about how to run/start a business.  But out of the many things I have learned this year, three things about starting a Business has stuck out in my memory.  In this essay, I am going to be talking about those three things.

Planning

Planning is an essential part of starting a business. 

When you have a business idea, you may be tempted to jump into it without much thought.  Dr. North says that a lot of young entrepreneurs get excited and start right away without thinking about how they are going to do it.  They think “I’ll start the business now and figure the rest out later”, but that is the wrong approach.

My business, which is an e-book, requires a lot of planning.  I cannot simply jump into it.  First, I need to write the book.  Secondly, find out what is involved when I want to publish my e-book to Amazon Kindle.  Then, find out how to create a cover.  Then, there is the issue of how I am going to advertise.  Only after I have figured all of that out can I start the process.

The good thing about writing a book is that it buys me time to do the research on the things I have listed.

Your plan does not need to perfect the first time you create it.  It does not even have to be good, it only has to exist. 

Like Dr. North says, a bad plan is better than no plan.

Setting Goals

You may be thinking, “setting goals is the same as planning,” and you would be somewhat correct.  In my mind, setting goals is a way of planning and should come after you have launched your business.

Setting goals are extremely important when doing anything, especially when you are starting a business.  For many people, they may read this and think “well you obviously need to set goals.”  But do you know how to?

When I first started the Ron Paul Curriculum at the age of ten, it was challenging for me to take full control of my school at first.  My Dad and I started to sit down every Sunday before the week started and plan what subjects I had to do during the week and what lesson I need to have completed by Friday.  As I have gotten older, I started to take more control of the planning.  Now, at age 13, my Dad and I still sit down every Sunday, but it is me telling him what I plan to do during the week so he knows what I am doing.

A lot of adults might not know how to set realistic goals when they have to do something.  I learned that it is better to set small goals instead of huge ones.

For example, let’s say that I launch my business on January 1st.  I can set small goals like, by January 31st, I will have ten customers.  Or, by the end of year I have made a minimum of $1000 from my business.

Smaller is better in this situation.

The Younger You Are the Better

In business it is better to start young instead of when you are older.  When you are young, it is safer to take calculated risks in your business compared to when you are older.  The young are tough, we can recover easily and we do not have much to lose.  You can also gain experience and learn things you did not know before.

Conclusion

As you can see, the Business I course had taught be a lot about how to start a small business.  Before I started the course, I already had a vague idea of how to start one.  But now, I feel that I know enough to start trying to begin a small business.

Thanks for reading!

Business 9, Lesson 165 – Advertising a Small Business

This week in Business, Dr. North talked a lot about how to convince a small businessman who uses Yellow Pages to switch to online marketing.  However, this piece of the course is outdated.  I do not know of a single business, big or small, that still uses Yellow Pages.  Today’s essay was supposed to be my plan for helping a small businessman switch from Yellow Pages to Google AdWords.  But seeing how this would be pointless as I will never use this plan, I will be talking about how I would advertise my business.

In this situation, my ‘business’ will be my self-published e-book that I am currently writing and I am the businesswoman who needs to advertise her business.

My plan for advertising is to go on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok to promote my book.  Since my book is YA (young adult), and the target audience are teenagers, I feel that social media is the best way to reach them.  I intend to emulate other authors who have done similar things for their books like Chloe Gong, author of YA book These Violent Delights.

On my account, my videos will be about my writing process, little snippets from my book to get people interested, character aesthetics (I have noticed that people like videos like these), and many other different types of videos to get people interested in my book.  From an article I read, you can find it here, they mentioned to take advantage of any audios or hashtags that are trending at the moment.

As you can see, I already have a plan for how I want to advertise my e-book even though I have not finished writing it yet.  While Dr. North talks a lot about using Google AdWords, I feel that if I did that I would not be able to reach my target audience or get much attention.

Thanks for reading!

Business 9, Lesson 160 – A Bob Bly Style Advertisement

THE TRUTH ABOUT GOOGLE ADWORDS

Dear Reader,

Many businessmen try and fail to use Google AdWords for their small businesses. 

Does this mean that Google AdWords is a horrible program to use?  No!  These businessmen simply do not know how to utilize it.

Do not make the same mistake as them.  I highly advise you to give the program a chance.

Here is why:

  • Google is the biggest search engine in the world, making it the best option for marketing your business.
  • It is possible to use multiple keywords at the same time.
  • Your ads will appear at the top of the page, allowing it to get seen immediately.
  • Can reach viewers through their Gmail inboxes.
  • Monitoring who clicked on your ad and which keywords generate the most traffic is easy with Google AdWords.
  • You can see how long a visitor stayed on your page and how many pages they went to.
  • All of the work can be done from the comfort of your home.

Are you convinced yet?  Or do you want to start but don’t know where to begin?  Worry not, because I have the perfect solution for you!

I ask you to read Ultimate Guide to Local Business Marketing by Perry Marshall and Talor Zamir.  Click here to see their book.

Still not convinced?  Here are five more reasons to start using Google AdWords today.

  • You can limit how far your ad will go (eg. 10 – 20 miles from your location).
  • The design of the ad is entirely under your control. 
  • Google AdWords is one of the most inexpensive platforms out there.
  • Running the ad by yourself is easy and simple.
  • You have the ability to instantly alter or pause your campaign.  Regardless of the time of day, you can change keywords, designs, or anything else you might want modify.

Don’t wait!  Start your free Google AdWords account today!

~Sophia Elahi

English 9, Lesson 175 – “So What?” In an Autobiography

This week I finished reading my last autobiography for the 9th Grade English course.  After watching all of Dr. North’s video lessons and reading the assigned autobiographies, I learnt one very important thing about writing autobiographies.  In this essay, I am going to talk about what that thing is.

When writing an autobiography the author must always have one question in mind.  “So what?”  Whenever they decide to talk about a certain event they must always be thinking “so what?”  What’s the point of this story?  Will it be interesting to the reader?  Authors that keep these questions in mind produce the best and most enjoyable autobiographies.

For example, when I had to read Henry David Thoreau’s autobiography about his time living on Walden’s Pond, it was tedious.   Thoreau would spend paragraphs upon paragraphs talking about insignificant topics that do not interest the reader.

But while reading Jim Lehrer’s autobiography in the beginning of the year, it was fun to read his book.  The stories he told was entertaining and had meaning to later parts of the book.  The stories he would tell from his childhood were so entertaining that I doubt the reader would mind if the story did not relate to a later topic.  For example, in the first chapter of his book he told the story of how he accidently wet himself as a young boy while playing on a pinball machine.  Once the incident happened, he panicked and ran to hide in the bathroom, where his father found him.

As you can see, writing an autobiography is not as simple as writing anything and everything from your life onto a page.  The writer always has to keep the reader in mind.  By always thinking “so what?” the writer will not only keep the reader’s attention, but will also make their stories unforgettable.