12. The Simple Startup with Rob Phelan
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Hey Designers,
Today we are talking to Rob Phelan, the author of The Simple Start Up. Rob shares how he turned a problem that he saw in his curriculum into a real-world opportunity for his students and for himself.
Entrepreneurial projects can help with thinking skills, engagement, intrinsic motivation and a fail forward mindset. They teach students that the locus of control to solve their own problems is with them. Creativity and innovation come at the intersection of disparate ideas.
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Mentioned in this episode:
The Simple Start Up by Rob Phelan
The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
Simple Path to Wealth by JLCollins
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Connect with Rob Phelan
www.twitter.com/asimplestartup
www.facebook.com/thesimplestartup
www.facebook.com/groups/thesimplestartup
www.instagram.com/the_simple_startup
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Read the transcript for this episode below. The transcript was created with AI, so there may be errors.
Rob Phelan 0:01
Yeah, it's that designing your life like what do you want your life to look like? What changes do you need to put in place to get you closer to that goal? And what what changes can you make right now that's the other part. Like, don't wait until you're retired to start living your life like you should be able to start doing that now, with some small changes and design your life the way you want it to be. It's such an important thing to say it sounds really simple. I know it sounds really simple. Believe me, I know. But it is something that if you approach it with that mindset of You know what, I can do this, I can learn how to do this, you will find a way to do it. And there are there are lots of pathways to take. There isn't just one which is nice.
Michele Schmidt Moore 0:42
Welcome to design lessons, the podcast where we design our teaching days to be fulfilling for us and irresistible to our students. I'm Dr. Michele Schmidt, Moore, and instructional design is my superpower. Each episode, we will take actionable steps to create great teaching days, we'll focus on mindset, real world opportunities, and critical and creative thinking for us and our students. So whether you're on your commute to school, walking your dog or doing the dishes, let's start designing. Hey designers, today we are talking to rob feelin the author of this simple startup, Rob shares how he turned a problem that he saw in his curriculum into a real world opportunity for his students and for himself. Before we get started, I am so excited to plan Season Two of design lessons helped me shape it just for you take 10 seconds to take a two question survey, sharing your number one challenges with teaching right now. And as a thank you for listening to the podcast. And for taking the survey, you will be entered into a giveaway for a Starbucks gift card. And you can find the survey right in the show notes that are located in the podcast player that you're using right now. Or you can also find them at Michele Schmidt moore.com slash podcast slash 12. Since this is Episode 12, and now let's meet Rob.
Rob Phelan 2:17
Michele, thank you so much for having me. My name is Rob Phelan I am a high school math and personal finance teacher in Frederick, Maryland. I live with my wife, Amanda and my 14 month old son. And we see I'm in my seventh year of teaching now. So I did my undergrad did my master's went straight into teaching. And seven years later, here I am. It's been a really fun journey, lots of learning experiences along the way, I have gone from being just a actual star as a physical education teacher. That's what my degree was in, and then it moved to math, and then it moved to personal finance as well. So it's been a little meandering journey to get where I am today. But I'm excited to share the story with your listeners today and hopefully, open up some new ideas for how they can maybe add some stuff into their own classrooms implement some change in their own lives. I think there's a lot of great stuff we can chat about.
Michele Schmidt Moore 3:09
Now that sounds really, really wonderful. So you're the author of the simple startup. And I was curious kind of how you came to create it and and sort of what was sort of the driving force behind that.
Rob Phelan 3:22
So the simple startup is a workbook that was designed to guide students and teachers through the process of starting a business. The reason it came about was I was teaching personal finance and for the personal finance curriculum I teach entrepreneurship is a large part of that. And I think we'll talk about this in a couple minutes. But I approach personal finance through the lens of financial independence, which is the point where you're going to have enough in your assets and passive income to cover the cost of living for the rest of your life. And ideally beyond that to so when I teach this entrepreneurship is a big part of it. Because increasing your income is a major focus in terms of getting control your finances and building this kind of wealth building machine for the future. And there just wasn't anything good out there. I think that's the standard thing for a lot of teachers, you know that we want that perfect turnkey resource that fits exactly what we want to do and how we want to approach it. And oftentimes, we can't find it. So we make it ourselves. And this just happened to be a really big resource. And very quickly when I was into it, I was like, You know what, this is something that I want to make available to others. So I had a TPT store at the time. And I was thinking it would probably end up there. So you know, I switch to my personal laptop started doing it on my own. And I realized at the end like oh, this is this is more than a TPT resource. This is this is probably like a workbook or a book of some sort. And I approached Choose Fi. So they are a personal finance blog, podcast website, YouTube channel. They're basically a personal finance media company. And they have a publishing brands as well. And they agreed to publish it, which was the whole beginning of a workbook being created. And my venture into being an author, which was not something I ever thought was going to be on the cards for me, especially as a solid B student in English growing up.
Michele Schmidt Moore 5:17
Hey, B is pretty good.
Rob Phelan 5:20
I never picked the creative writing assignments, I was always the kid doing the like, advertisements, newsletters, things that we were just kind of factual and didn't require a lot of creativity. So for me, like the idea of being an author was just like, oh, that's for, that's for the creative people. So this is definitely a growth mindset. venture.
Michele Schmidt Moore 5:39
Well, and I think that's, that's part of it, right? The creativity piece, you know, we talk about creative and critical thinking, but, you know, you solve a problem that you want to solve for yourself and for your kids and for your students. And from that, that's where your writing was born. Because, you know, we talked about writing, and it's, it's sort of born out of this sort of necessity. And you know, not all, not all writing has to be a poem or short story. So I love that you sort of had this problem that you want to solve. And your response, in essence, was to kind of make a real world opportunity for yourself. And you created something that others could use, but also, you know, went out and did the legwork to figure out how to get it published.
Rob Phelan 6:22
Yeah. And that's the way a lot of businesses can be formed, you have a problem in your own life, chances are other people have the same problem. It's not a guarantee for success. But it's certainly a place to start. And by creating for myself was like, Okay, here's a resource that I know, at least I want to use. So putting the time and effort into making it, I will be able to reproduce it every year for my classes. And then I was like, well, maybe someone else might want to use it, too. And the little bit of market research, we did show that yes, there was a demand for this out there. So we went ahead with publishing it. And it's been doing great. So far, there's been a shocking amount of unexpected people picking it up. So a lot of adults are picking it up and bring it home and doing it in their own home. So because it is literally a workbook that you can take yourself through like it was designed for a teacher who doesn't really know or feel comfortable with running an entrepreneurship project. And they could basically act as a facilitator. So they could there was questions for them to ask there was activities, there was prompts, there was everything you needed in the workbook. And without me realizing it, adults are picking it up and be like, Oh, yeah, I can use this too. And some like nonprofits have picked it up, which has been really exciting. I think one of the most humbling moments was getting a call from this program in Oklahoma, it's called remerge, and they're basically trying to give entrepreneurship skills to women who have been incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. And just like one of those things, I'm like, I would never have considered that as a potential use for a workbook like this. But yeah, it's been awesome to see the creative ways that people are using the project as well.
Michele Schmidt Moore 7:58
And it's, I mean, it's quite literally giving people a new way of life. So when you think about the kinds of businesses that some of your students have created, or that you've seen created as a result of the simple startup, what are some things that you've seen,
Rob Phelan 8:16
I would love to say that there is now like a company listed on the s&p 500, who has been created as a result of this, but it's not. And that's not the point of it, either. The simple startup is supposed to be simple businesses, it's that first dip into the world of starting a business or a side hustle. So it's meant to be very easy to get into very accessible for anyone to do. And the businesses are things that you're like, Oh, yeah, I could do that. And the question is, just Why haven't you done it? So some of them are an eight year old girl who has a greeting card business. So she makes handmade greeting cards. super adorable. Another one who does a finger puppet business and she started her own Etsy store to you know, produce and sell these there's a boy over the summer who ran video game tournaments so was super into I think, I think it was fortnight he was running them for me it was Call of Duty and was really into video games and wanted to take that interest and do something else with it. So he just started organizing weekly video game tournament so I think it was like a couple dollar buy in I forget what the limit is on the number of players you can have but maybe it was like 20 and he would pay out half the money in prize money and that was it. So he's talking hazardous facilities was like such a simple idea. Really impressive one this past month kid was doing virtual guitar lessons. So it was offering virtual guitar lessons so he would get on a live zoom call and teach guitar to kids and did a great job of it had a really cool like YouTube channel where he was like showing what he could do and then was selling on the YouTube channel as well. So it just really using his technology well, and you have your standard baking companies. Oh, this was really good one someone did a virtual babysitting service. Oh, wow. Just as COVID was hitting and you had parents who were suddenly scrambling for any sort of childcare, they said you know what, I will occupy your child on a video calls What if they disappear or something like that? I will call you immediately and let you know. But if you need to work from your home office need someone to occupy your kid on your on your person. And they did reading so they would both have the same book and they would read out loud, this mostly younger kids. Yeah, they also did a video game tutoring, which was, you know, this business just had a lot of legs to it. But yeah, they Oh, yeah, it just they didn't, they didn't quite narrow down in their focus, but they had a lot of things that they offered on their menu of choices. And, you know, like playing video games, if the kid at the same video game, he would walk the kid through how to do better in the video games will share all the insights he's found.
Michele Schmidt Moore 10:57
Actually, I can see that because a lot of people who play video games watch, like there's a whole business around watching other videos. I think actually, that was pretty smart. He's had and he had, he had several different possibilities for how he might, you know, get to the interests of the of the child that he was minding.
Rob Phelan 11:16
Yeah, I had another kid who was who was getting paid to play fortnight and that wasn't their business. That was just something that that was a quirky fact, when they came in, but yeah, like, good enough at it, that they got drafted into some team that was sponsored by some company, and they were getting paid to play which I thought was a real testament to how like kids can turn these interests into something exciting if they want to.
Michele Schmidt Moore 11:39
Oh, yeah, there's a whole eSports sort of business around. Yeah.
Rob Phelan 11:44
Yeah, waiting for eSports to become an official school sport, I think it's gonna be it's gonna happen at some point. It's gonna be really interesting. When it does.
Michele Schmidt Moore 11:51
I had my kids, we were reading articles about it. And, you know, they were sort of debating, I think that the big question was, are eSports Real Sports? And so they are each coming down on different sides and supporting their arguments. So it was interesting, for sure.
Rob Phelan 12:04
It's a great idea. And, you know, could you be the one to move the on that in your school and get that going first? And you're in the space? Like, that would be a great challenge for some teachers out there who probably have a lot of motivated students who would jump on that?
Michele Schmidt Moore 12:18
Oh, definitely, definitely, to actually make it come to be. So like, how are our kids best served by this sort of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial mindset?
Rob Phelan 12:30
So I guess the the big question is like, Well, what does entrepreneurship teach us? And I think, a big reason I hear from a lot of parents, that take me up on these virtual courses I run so I teach the simple startup as a virtual course, where I take groups of kids through it. And a big reason why parents come to me is they say, I want my kid to learn the value of money. Like, I don't want to just give them allowance, I want to I want them to earn it in some way. But I don't necessarily want to pay them for doing chores. So they expect the chores to be done anyway. And they were struggling with a way for getting their kids to actually learn the value of money without, you know, having to go pick up a part time job because like maybe they're 1012 years old, like they're not picking up a part time job just yet. And this, this kind of was the answer for that. Because an entrepreneurship project, you will teach you basically how many hours of work it takes to earn a single dollar or $5, or whatever it is. And then the kids also have to manage that money. So they get to make decisions about how to spend their money, where to allocate it. What is a need? What's a once? What can they do without like, they suddenly become very protective of their money, because they realize how a lot how much they had to work for it. And a lot of parents will come back to me say, Yeah, they don't spend anything anymore now, because I tell them, they have to spend their own money and they don't want to do it. So it's it certainly teaches financial responsibility. It teaches organization, personal management, so like, you have to be your own boss, you have to get yourself motivated to go do different tasks, or to make a to do list as well and to execute on those tasks. You learn communication skills, and two very important parts communication, like you learn to listen. So what's what's going wrong in terms of society? What are people having challenges with? What are they complaining about? And then that's where a lot of business ideas will stem from. And then also the speaking and, and I guess, our communication side, where you are able to convey a message, you're able to share value, you're able to share your hype. So that excitement you have about an idea you're able to infect somebody else with that excitement, and that is a skill in itself, which can be learned.
Michele Schmidt Moore 14:37
Oh, yeah. Well, and
you know, like that, I think about la English, which is obviously my base. I can see how this would fit in so easily, you know, within an English class, particularly when we're talking about argumentation, we're talking about persuasion, the marketing piece of this, but then also like the thinking that has it the problem solving that has to go in into figuring out, you know whether or not this is this particular iteration of my solution to whichever problem they were trying to solve in order to make this business. Those are such thinking skills, I think that not are easy to fit into an English class, but also could possibly work in, in other classes. And so I'm wondering how teachers if you're not necessarily a, you know, finance teacher, how can people foster this same mindset in disciplines such as you know, English also say science and math?
Rob Phelan 15:36
I mean, I think you hit the nail right now that it's about problem solving idea. And in most classes that we have, you could do some sort of sales activity marketing activity, you can tailor the content of what you're doing around a business topic. So I was thinking of like English or LA, like persuasive writing pieces, creating advertisements, trying to pitch a product. So like, what would the verbal communication for that look like? Or the visual communication that would go with that to social studies projects? Maybe even looking through history and being like, Okay, what would what would have been the major problem, this scenario, what would have been a solution to that problem, go pitch that solution. Now, as if we were in that time period. math classes are very much you can look at the numbers, the finances, you can make more problems include different scenarios for businesses like I actually ran on treasure project in a math class once where they had just had to come up with a hypothetical business, but we did systems of equations. So they had profit and loss statements to figure out what their breakeven point was. And just based on their hypothetical business, and they liked it, they were able to grab on to it money is something that almost every kid has some level experience with. So if we're talking about a constructivism approach, they can build on whatever they can build on any piece of knowledge that they have, if you're start talking about real life situations, like money, or everybody has bought something probably at some point, or walked into a store, so you can anchor it to those ideas, and then build on that.
Michele Schmidt Moore 17:06
Now, that is the one thing about this is that it seems like it's easy to, like you said the anger piece, get kids excited about something that has applications for their world beyond just the classroom, that it really touches upon their interests, like you're saying, You're giving examples of students who were using, you know, the what all that they know about video games in order to develop a babysitting service, you know, it seems like a project that kind of hits all checks all the boxes, in terms of student ownership and agency and having those critical thinking skills go in the design thinking that has to go into creating your own business. It just seems like a really interesting project.
Rob Phelan 17:53
And one thing that actually just came to mind that I didn't list was the, like, we love growth mindset. It's a great buzzword in the education world at the moment. But it's more than just growth mindset here, when you start thinking like an entrepreneur. So you try something out that's entrepreneur related, whether you do a side hustle, or you start a small business, or whatever it is, you start realizing that you've got more control than you thought you did. So a lot of growth mindset, we have that internal and external locus of control. So external, being the things outside of your control internal inside to you. And then some things are within your control, and some are not. When we start doing entrepreneurship, we start realizing that there's a lot less that happens to us that we can't do anything about, we can start putting things in motion that can actually solve problems. So we stopped waiting for somebody else to do it, we start doing it ourselves. I think that is probably one of the most important byproducts that comes from doing something like this.
Michele Schmidt Moore 18:47
Being solution minded. We just talked about that. On the podcast a couple episodes ago, this idea of being solution minded and, and knowing that you can create the solution to the things that you might be frustrated about.
Rob Phelan 18:59
Yeah, as Don Wettrick did if you're familiar with him, he's amazing teacher. And one of his best sayings, I've heard him say is that there is no day stop waiting for they? Yes, we're very quick as a society to say, okay, we're gonna wait for the government to take care of that for our administration to take care of that. Well, that's a state problem. And instead, he's like, Well, no, you, you figure out what you can control what you can change, and then you go do that you start implementing the change, or that famous saying, like, Be the change that you want to see in the world? Mm hmm.
Michele Schmidt Moore 19:31
Absolutely. Absolutely. So there's a lot of mindset that you can learn from starting your own business perseverance, I would think would also be another habit of mind. That would have to come into play.
Rob Phelan 19:43
Oh, yeah, you're going to fail, and multiple times and that's totally awesome. Like, that's exactly what we want to do. We want to try things out. We want to see if they will work or not. And we don't want to be afraid to try things because we don't think they will work or be afraid to try something because there is that risk. failure, like, how many times have you maybe not done something because you're like, Ah, it may not work. So I'm just not going to do it. Entrepreneurship of yours, you're encouraged to, to venture into those areas, like try something, see if it works. Do people like it Do they want to do they do need to change something about it before they'll like it or want it, and then build your business around that. And a lot of times, you will go down a dead end, you know, you'll try something you'll think is the best idea in the world. And you'll get crickets from your customers, because they're just not they're not interested in that that's not what they want. And you could either carry on regardless and say, I will eventually find somebody who will buy it. So you have to build it and they will come mentality doesn't work very often. Or you say like, Okay, well, why don't you want it? What's, what's the reason why you said no to me. And that's something that I, I'm really encouraging my students who were in my workshop at the moment to do is to they're supposed to to get their first sale. And they only started four weeks ago. So they're supposed to have their companies up running and starting to sell now. And if they get a yes, awesome, congratulations. But if they get a no, the hard part is they have to ask the person. Okay, can you tell me if that's proud? That's fine, no problem. But can you give me a little bit of feedback about why you said, Now what about the idea, the business the way it was pitched, turns you off? Or isn't of interest to you? And they have to take that feedback and either adopt it and say, Yep, you know, that's very good feedback, I need to change something about my business, or they have to sit there evaluate and say, Well, no, I still disagree with that, I think what I've got is good, I'm going to go try some more people out and see if there is a different opinion out there, or maybe a different market who does want what I'm selling.
Michele Schmidt Moore 21:37
I love that. It's all these habits of mind. It also reminds me of science. And you know, when you talk about, you know, in essence, you're having a hypothesis about your business and how it might serve other people. And then you trying out your hypothesis, and you see whether or not as you said, the marketing is working, or the product itself is working. And there's all these different variables that you have to account for. And then you take back that information, and then you, you know, you make tweaks on your hypothesis, and then you put it back out there again. So it's sort of a similar process in that respect.
Rob Phelan 22:10
Yeah, I think the scientific method and the production process that you would see in entrepreneurship have a lot of similarities, like you design something. So you come up with a hypothesis, you create a prototype, so you know, maybe try it out and one or two places, you test it on a larger scale, you look at the results, you take the feedback, you go back to the drawing board, so you design again, you reiterate, and then eventually you end up with a product or service. And you're like, yeah, I think this is what people really want. And that's when you start really going much bigger in terms of scale.
Michele Schmidt Moore 22:39
Absolutely. So like, this has been a really wonderful example of sort of taking, taking something where you wanted to solve a problem. And, and you were kind of looking for something that would help with your kids, I was curious about how we as adults, and educators could use this real world opportunity for ourselves.
Rob Phelan 23:03
So I don't know if you know this, but really interesting fact out of a study diamond was the s&p fortune 500 study from maybe 2015. But it was a study of like everyday millionaires. And so millionaires in the US, so people who have a net worth of over a million dollars, and educators came up in the top five listed professions for everyday millionaires. Wow. And like it was one of those tasks like totally blew me away. So it was very surprising, and you dig into it. And there are actually a lot of educators out there who are really good at running businesses, because they have time, they are very organized and very good at making the most out of the little bit of time that they have. They're able to create things, they're able to create stuff that people want. So they know how to listen to the market or their students and adapt to that change. So educators have a lot of skills that do actually translate towards entrepreneurship. And they're, you know, they're very good at doing a lot with a little bit of funding as well. So none of us really went into education for the money. But you can certainly do a lot of with good with what you have. So better money management is a skill that we can work on as educators but then also creating more income for ourselves through these entrepreneurship projects. And we've talked about a lot of the benefits already. But my advice for an adult is just start, try something you can build a business to suit your lifestyle, it does not have to be a full time, you know, 2040 hours a week kind of deal if you can do something very small. And like Teachers Pay teacher's is a great example of that where you can put a couple of hours in a week and get some resources up there and just keep adding to that library as you go and then eventually kind of just starts returning to you and then you can put more time into it if you want or you can just kind of keep it as a small little side gig. Like I know mine, I barely touch it anymore. And it brings me in about like 50 to $100 a month which is just really kind of cool. To see that passive income as cool dripping in, even though I do nothing to really support that anymore.
Michele Schmidt Moore 25:07
As you know our design touchstones, our mindset and relationships, real world opportunities and critical and creative thinking, what educators do you admire that embody one or all of these touchstones?
Rob Phelan 25:19
I was thinking about this before we got on because there are so many influential educators that have touched my life in some way. I already mentioned Don Wetterich, who was someone I'd listened to on a podcast and then actually reached out to him and he was he was kind enough to respond and give me a lot of advice about creating, or basically fostering creativity and students. It's a big focus of his and entrepreneurship as well with our students.
Rob Phelan 25:44
I had a teacher of my own when I was in the equivalent of 10th grade. So I went to school in Ireland, for secondary school and 10th grade year, we had this teacher, Alan Ryan is his name. And he did a business project with us as well. He didn't have to, it wasn't part of the curriculum, it was just again, he was like, you know, intro to business like he could have stayed very much on the theory of it, and some basic content could have had made a much easier life for himself. But now he pushed himself to get all of us encouraged to start our own businesses and try things out. And I started a Baking Company with two friends of mine. And that was probably one of the most like, influential experiences I had in my high school career. And then I think about teachers I work with at the moment, there's this one guy, Mike Franklin, his name and if you're talking about mindset, and relationships like this, this guy is amazing what he does for our students, like every Friday, like he does this fired up Friday presentation, he gets speakers to come in and motivate students and shares a lot of real life experiences very honest with students. And if you ask students like who, not who their favorite teacher is, but who they like respect the most, or who they had the close relationship with, like his name will pop up over and over and over again. And it's always made me curious to like dig into Okay, well, what are you doing, because what you're doing is clearly affecting kids in the right way. Like it's not, you're their favorite teacher, because you don't give homework or you just sit there and chat to them all day, like we have. We know teachers like that, who get the favorite teacher stamp, and you're like, come on, they're not even teaching. Now this guy does an amazing job. And he actually just got recognized as like the Maryland teacher of the year, last year. So it is an awesome person to learn from.
Michele Schmidt Moore 27:28
As educators, we are learners. I know, I am always learning. And this is one reason I love speaking to everyone on the podcast. But I was curious about books and videos and other podcasts you've been listening to? Oh, gosh,
Rob Phelan 27:41
How long do you have?
Michele Schmidt Moore 27:44
Maybe pick your top couple.
Rob Phelan 27:47
First off, echoing what you're saying, like always be learning. Yeah, we are never done learning. And we tell our students that all the time. And then sometimes we need to kind of remind ourselves that we need to live that too. And not everything you do needs to be about education, like you can learn about anything you want to as long as you're learning something like grow some at some point someplace in your life, every single day. And the idea is like if you grew 1% better or more knowledgeable, or more skillful every day, you would be 32 times as good as you are today. In a year's time like this small incremental gains you can do will pile up over time. And yet podcasts, books, mentors, blogs, just talking to people who are in places where you want to be. So like surrounding yourself with people who have the skills, the attributes, the wealth, the knowledge that you want to attain eventually, like you will absorb that just by being around people like that. So yeah, if you're talking about like, my favorite podcasts like choose fi is the one that really kind of changed my mindset on wealth building and finances and making the idea of financial independence seem achievable for any person out there. And particularly me as an educator, like I didn't believe it at the time that an educator could build wealth and leave the workforce early and go travel and to do all these all these fun things. Like I was resigned to the idea that I wouldn't be able to this pocket has really changed that mindset for me. In terms of books, like my favorite books, the four hour workweek, the four hour workweek by Tim Ferriss is one of those books, I read that it was a really game changing one for me and the titles a little click baity, like you're like, oh, four hour workweek. Well, that's not a teacher.
Rob Phelan 29:33
The idea was like creating more efficiency in your life and focusing on the things that were really important to you. So I know the way I've started teaching has changed as a result of reading that book. Like the things I put in place to make my life more efficient. The things that grade themselves automatically the reduction in the amount of assignments I give because I'm focusing on the ones that will truly give me a measure of what I need from my students. That I feel like the most time I put his teaching has actually gone down, but I'd become a better teacher as a result of it, which is a very nice byproduct, I must add the tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell awesome book, highly recommend that is read, thinking, and that's by Annie Duke. So professional, former professional poker player, but who talks about decision making and evaluating your decisions and just a very kind of interesting thing to add into your tool set of like, ways that you can approach life. The Tomic habits? Yeah. Book. So yeah, like, how do you bring about the changes in your life that you really want to implement, whether that is financial knowledge, different parts of your educational experience, you want to get fitter, you want to get healthier, like, just how do you implement change in your life, because it's one thing to say it's another thing to do. And we think we know that that it's not as easy to follow through on it sometimes, but really great book for that. And then the simple path to wealth is another fantastic book by jL Collins. And that's one if you are interested in learning about doing better with your money, and you're like, you know what I want to approach this idea of financial independence, where I'd like to teach him to be optional. And that's what it was, for me. I didn't, I'm not I'm not done with teaching, I like it, I'm good at it. I'm not one of these people who's necessarily called to be a teacher. Like, for me, a teaching is a job as opposed to a vocation. But I'm also very good at it. And I love working with kids. But I would I hate the thought of being that teacher who is hanging on for the last five years to get the pension. And they just can't afford to stop. And you know that they're done like they are, they're done. Like, they're not nice to kids anymore. They don't like their job. They're not preparing classes, they're not doing a good job in the classroom, but they're just they're sitting waiting out there time. I don't want that to ever be me. So financial dependence for me is about the option of leaving if I want to. And my goal is to be able to do that by the end of my 40s.
Michele Schmidt Moore 32:00
Oh, that's wonderful. So it's one of those things where you're making financial independence is making it so you, you get to teach instead of something that you have to do is something that is roaring, and it gives you choice.
Rob Phelan 32:12
Every day, you get to choose whether you want to go into work that day or not. And if you're done, then you get to walk away, and you've got the financial stability in place to allow you to do that.
Michele Schmidt Moore 32:23
That's pretty cool. Rob, I want to thank you for coming to design lessons, because I feel like you shed light on some things that we can do with our students in terms of design, designing entrepreneurial experiences for them, that really hit on critical thinking that really hit on that creative thinking that hit on all of our touchstones. But also I feel like you've given us something to look for in terms of real world opportunities for ourselves, you get to some things to think about in terms of financial independence, and what that might look like, you get certain things to think about in terms of kind of what is our next opportunity. And I don't mean that in a sense of you leaving the teaching profession. But I mean, in the sense of you, you created this simple startup, because it solved a problem that you had, and wanted to make your curriculum better. So what are some things what kind of mindset is given us a mindset to think about in terms of how we want to solve problems to be solution focused, and to sort of design not only experiences for kids, but also to design our life in a way that is most fruitful for us?
Rob Phelan 33:38
Yeah, it's that designing your life like what do you want your life to look like? What changes do you need to put in place to get you closer to that goal? And what what changes can you make right now that's the other part like, don't wait until you're retired to start living your life like, you should be able to start doing that now, with some small changes and just design your life the way you want it to be? It's such an important thing to say, it sounds really simple. I know, it sounds really simple. Believe me, I know. But it is something that if you approach it with that mindset of You know what, I can do this, I can learn how to do this, you will find a way to do it. And there are there are lots of pathways to take. There isn't just one which is nice. So yeah, I highly encourage you to explore entrepreneurship as something that you can do as an intellectual activity, like, Hey, I'm going to try this and see what it's like maybe I'm going to add some tools into my skill set. And if I hate it, I can always drop away from it again, but hey, maybe I'll really like it. Maybe I will find a problem that I can solve even if it's something really small. Like those businesses I named for my students like they're not the next apple or Microsoft. They don't have a shopfront in your downtown area. Like they're just small services that are solving problems for people. And you can do the exact same thing to without a huge amount of effort, time or money like you should be able to start your business for next to nothing ideally.
Michele Schmidt Moore 34:56
Hmm. So if listeners want to connect with you, where can they find you.
Rob Phelan 35:01
So if you are interested in like starting a business and you want some more like guidance, or you want a community to do it with, I do run like courses that take people through the simple startup. So you go through it with maybe a group of 6070 people. And you share that community aspect. And you kind of share ideas, feedback, that sort of thing. So if that's what you're looking for, check out the simple startup Comm. It's where I'll be posting my live events. The workbook is something you can buy on Amazon, if you're like, Hey, you know what, maybe I'll check this out and give it a shot. It's a $20 investment to maybe start a business. So it's not a huge investment to kind of dip your feet in, and it has everything in the gym need to get started. If you want to connect with me, I would love to talk to you and just give you some advice, share ideas, answer your questions. You can reach me on Facebook, so on Rafi Lin on Facebook or the simple startup has a Facebook page on Instagram, I'm at at the underscore simple underscore startup Twitter at a simple startup. So letter A before it. And then if you want send me an email Rob at the simple startup.com.
Michele Schmidt Moore 36:09
Wow, Rob shared so many entrepreneurial mindset strategies that we can use with our students and ourselves. My favorite was to design your life with intention and to realize that the locus of control is within you. And most importantly, just start, all of Rob's contact information will be in the show notes as well as links to the books and resources that he recommended. And if you haven't already taken the two question survey, take a few seconds to do that. Now. The link is at the very top of the show notes in the podcast player that you're using right now. I truly appreciate you, until next time designers
