How To Prepare High School Homeschoolers As Entrepreneurs: Lisa Nehring

UNEDITED VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

Shanxi: Hello, this is Shanxi Omoniyi, host of MPE’s “Homeschool Hints” podcast to encourage you wherever you may be on your homeschool journey.

Today we're listening to Lisa Nehring, founder of True North Homeschool Academy and one of our conference vendors. Lisa wrote a master's thesis on why parents homeschool, which included the history of education in America. You can visit with Lisa directly at our April 4th- 5th homeschool conference and curriculum fair at the KCI Expo Center.

Lisa: Well, hey everybody. My name is Lisa Nehring from True North Academy. We had a few technical issues, and so I'm here a little bit late, and I'm excited to be here with you at MPE. I'm super excited to come down to Missouri and meet you all in person.

I'm from South Dakota. I like to introduce myself by saying I have one husband, 2 grad degrees, five kids, and a black belt in homeschooling. I homeschooled for 30 years and had a great time doing it. It wasn't all perfect, but it was very worthwhile – loved the time I got to spend with my kids, and learning and growing myself.

And then in 2018, I started True North Academy as offering live online classes for middle school and high school. We’ve remained true to that mission since 2018.

We've grown pretty fast since then. We've added self-paced programs, and we have a really exciting dual-degree program where high school students can earn an entire bachelor's degree while they're going through their high school program.

And so I wanted to talk to you today about high school and some exciting opportunities.

I'll be honest with you. I didn't really love high school myself. I went to a private school, I’d gone to public school, and then we moved to Dayton, Ohio. There was busing issues and inner-city issues, and so I went to a private school.

But I loved learning and I read like crazy. I’ve always have been a big reader. In high school I was super busy with band and choir and swimming and tennis and throwing pottery and doing photography and art, and I was working part time too.

But schooling just felt like an unnecessary deterrent to the things I really loved doing, and I really wanted to spend my time doing, and I felt like it was kind of busy work without really teaching rural bold skills.

And I know sometimes when we get to the high school years of homeschooling, we can feel like, Oh my gosh, now it's really serious. We have to be super careful about credits, making sure that they're getting all the English, math, and science, and all the things.

They're vocationally ready. What are they going to do? Can they really get into college? And it feels like there's all this pressure all of the sudden.

And so I want to just talk to you tonight about some things that are going on in the world that can really affect how you’re homeschooling high school.

But I would love to hear from you, if you guys wouldn't mind dropping in a chat. What's one skill you wish that you had learned in high school? And have you thought about actually incorporating that into your kid’s high school program?

Personally, I wish that I'd done more career exploration in high school. My family was really involved in ministry and mental health, and teaching, and I just really didn't know that there was a lot of other job opportunities out there – marketing, sales, things that I'm naturally good at, that I never, ever considered.

I got degrees in human development and marriage and family therapy, thinking that I would be a therapist professionally, and I've always worked in admin in higher education. So I think if I had done a more robust career exploration in high school, it would have opened up some opportunities I have would never even considered before then.

So I want to really encourage you to find a good career exploration class for your kids in high school. We have a self-paced one at True North Academy as well as a live one that is a semester long.

And at the end, you'll also see a link in the comments and that is to a giveaway for a self-paced class at True North Academy. So if you win that, you can go take that self-paced career exploration class.

But you don't have to, you can pick from the other self-paced classes too.

But along with career exploration, I really wish that I had the gumption to start a pottery business. I had been throwing pottery all through high school, and I was selling pieces, but I didn't know that opening a shop and starting an actual business was an option in high school.

And I think if I had had somebody who’d said, Go for it, I would have figured out how to earn or get the money for an LLC and just get started on it and open up shop or work with shops. I knew several shopkeepers having my pottery in their shops to sell it. So there was a lot of options I just didn't even consider.

And I think as homeschoolers, we’re already kind of off the beaten trail, and so now's the time to really consider some of those exciting opportunities for your kids.

That leads me into what I want to talk to you tonight about, which is 2 really very important opportunities for your students while they're still in high school. So that they can get more in depth into the things that they're interested in doing.

Now I'm going to do 2 workshops at MPE, one on entrepreneurship and one on what's going on with college. I’m going to just touch on those two opportunities now because we are in the fourth industrial revolution, and I'll be honest with you.

This is something that has captured my imagination for several years now. In 2019, I was teaching our career exploration class at True North Academy. And honestly, I kind of ran out of materials one week, and so I just went looking for some fun things to share with the kids.

And I ran across this idea that we are in a fourth industrial revolution, and it has captured my imagination ever since. It's been kind of a guiding light for what we've been doing at True North Academy.

I don't think a lot of people realize that we are in the fourth industrial revolution and in every other, every industrial revolution, it’s a time of great disruption and change. We saw this really highlighted in 2020.

You know, those institutions we've come to rely on, like government, medicine, education, they're all in a time of disruption, and science is exponentially blowing up. The forward advancements in science is just going at the speed of sound right now, so we're going to be in this time of disruption for a while now.

In 8th grade I learned that the industrial the Industrial Revolution was like 1890 to 1920. And if you think about that when we went from horse and buggy to automobile and what a great time of change and shift that was – where we went from a lot of monarchies to more democracies and republics and even other political ideologies that weren't really so very helpful – that was a great time of disruption. So that's the kind of disruption we're in now.

I don't think it's time to be scared or be fearful because these are great opportunity moments in time. So, just like in the 1910s and 1920s. Like, cartwrights went out of business, right? Those are the people who made the wheels for horses and buggies, and that entire industry just went kaput.

But the tire industry boomed, right? The highway industry boomed. Car washes became a thing. Car radios became a thing. So, this one industry and several industries failed. But other industries rose up and took their place, and they're huge. And that's the same kind of opportunity we are in right now.

So again, time of disruption, but a time of great opportunity.

With all that being said, I really fully believe that entrepreneurship is one of those classes every high school student must take, maybe even in middle school. Why now? It's because of this great shift that we’re seeing. And so there's a lot of social disruption.

One of the things we found in 2020 was that businesses that could pivot quickly, even private sector and public sector industries that could pivot quickly, they survived, right? In fact, many of them even really thrived.

And so, being able to pivot quickly is going to hold our kids in good stead. These are entrepreneurial skills. So even if they don't go on to own their own business, they are going to be well set up to be able to pivot and shift quickly no matter what the job market looks like.

And so these are skills like, you know, ability to learn quickly and on their own, becoming an autodidact, being able to pivot – I already mentioned that – but also, academic and real world skills like public speaking. Budgeting, problem solving. Marketing. Time management. How to close a sale, how to persuasively speak.

These are actual skills that our kids are going to need. Entrepreneurship teaches that.

Now we offer entrepreneurship one and two and a self-paced entrepreneurship class at True North Academy. And we've had some crazy successful stories coming out of our class.

One of our students at True North has developed a fishing gear. I'm not a fisherwoman, so I'm not even really sure what it's called, but it's something that goes along with fishing and he's actually getting a patent for it, and we're going to see him in Shields.

Another one of our students has T-shirts that he sells and he's doing really, really well, and then another student has a thriving house cleaning business. She has actually hired other people to help her manage all the business that she has.

And these might kind of seem like boring businesses. But their products and services that are in front of them. And I’ll go more into detail at my workshop at the convention. But what they have in their hand is something that they're utilizing to bring in money and to support themselves, even as high schoolers.

So, a group of our entrepreneurs in our entrepreneurship class – they together created an app. Now these students live all over the country, some of them in different countries. And because of the power of Zoom and some of the tech from the fourth industrial revolution, they were able to get online and develop an app. They didn't just talk about developing an app. They literally developed an app together, and in all of our live entrepreneurship classes, we do a Shark Tank challenge. And so that was what they presented for their Shark Tank. It was super fun.

So, you know, if you are not sure how to teach entrepreneurship, get into one of our classes, the live ones or the self-paced ones. Our goal is for every student that comes into our class to start and really, successfully run a micro business. Sometimes these kids have had them for years and have paid for college with them.

Other times, they're just for a season, and they learn a lot about business. But either way, your kids are going to really need entrepreneurship skills. It matters more than ever before.

And also, becoming an autodidact, which entrepreneurship actually encourages, how to learn on your own without formal training. So again, we have live online and self-paced classes. We also have a lot of entrepreneurship type classes. It's called our business track: finance, leadership, communication.

And then we have a lot of marketable skills classes like accounting, video and audio editing. Because everybody and their uncle has started a podcast, and finding an editor is tough. So, if your high schooler can know how to do audio editing, they can have a job, like, tomorrow.

Same with video editing. Everybody's going to short- and long-form videos, so if your student, and your high school or middle schooler knows how to do video editing and can market themselves, they could have a viable job in high school.

We also offer things like entrepreneurship, art and graphic design. We want other students who do stock photography as well, and they make a nice sum selling their stock photography.

So, the fourth industrial revolution is also, by the way, changing the college landscape. I don't know if you guys, I'm in education news all the time, like every day I go check on it.

And there's college and university changings, left and right. College is super expensive. Textbooks alone have risen by over 400% in the last 10 years, and those are electronic textbooks your kids can't resell, so it was just a lot of money out.

College costs are just skyrocketing, and there's a lot of woke ideology. I go way more into this in my college workshop at the convention, and I'd love to see you there, but the reality is that college that we went too is different. It’s a changed landscape.

Now, I had kids in my twenties, 30s and 40s, so my youngest kids have an older mom. But if I'm preparing them the way I prepared to go to college and launch, listen. That was 40 years ago, that's two generations ago. That is, like, not what's happening now.

And if you're preparing your kids to launch the way you launched 20 years ago, that world, that landscape is completely different and 2020 really highlighted that for us. But don't think you're sending your kids to the same college experience that you had.

And I hear this all the time from parents who are like, I paid for college working part time. My kids can do that too.

Listen, I went to a private Christian college, and it cost, like, just under $10,000 a year. I got scholarships, worked as a water safety instructor and lifeguard, and my parents helped a little bit and I graduated with no debt.

That same college costs $38,000, not counting room and board.

And if you think your kids are going to be able to pay off college working at Arby's or McDonald’s, that's not reality. It's not going to work out for them, so you really need to really plan.

How are you going to launch your kids well, especially in this fourth industrial revolution? Does the piece of paper matter still? I think it does. But how we get our kids that college degree is really something, as parents, we need to strategize very, very well.

Now at True North Academy, we have started a very unique, cutting edge, dual degree program where we are partnering with accredited colleges and universities, and your student can earn a four year college degree at the same time they are earning an accredited high school diploma. It’s a learn once, earn twice program. This is not a scam. It is not too good to be true. It is a real thing. We have several students enrolled as we speak.

And they're going to graduate with both a high school diploma and an accredited bachelor's degree at 18 and 19. Several of them want to go on to graduate school. They're going to be able to start graduate school at 19 or 20 with no debt.

Several of them have already started their own businesses, but they want the piece of paper. Several of them want to go into blue-collar jobs, but they know at some point their bodies are going to probably wear out, and they need that piece of paper.

So there's all sorts of different reasons for getting a college degree while you're still in high school. We have a couple medically fragile kids, and they're not going to be able to live on their own. Perfect for those kind of students.

This is a real program, and it is so exciting because it's really going to allow families to save a lot of money. You don't have to like, spend your high school years cramming AP tests, honors classes, CLEP-ing, dual enrollment, all those kind of things to hope you get into this exciting school that's going to cost $40,000 a year.

So it's going to circumvent a lot of those issues, and again, it's accredited, and we're super excited. We have some really great things to share with you.

Now in my workshops at the convention, especially – well, both of them – I’m going to go way more into depth about what is really going on in colleges, right now. I’ll give you a lot of stats and facts so that you can really mull it over and think through what is happening with college right now, and then offer you some different solutions. I'll go into CLEP, AP honors, all those kind of things, because I really, I have a passion to help parents, equip parents, inspire parents.

Our kids’ education is so very important. Education really, truly is the transmission of culture, and public schools know that. Hitler knew that. The Catholic Church knows that. Anybody who's educated in the past has always known that the education is really how we shape the future.

And so parents, I applaud you for taking the time and making the sacrifices to educate your kids in a way that they can grow up and really be educated and really have those values that are so important to you.

It’s a worthy thing to be doing, and I love being part of the alternative education movement and the homeschooling movement.

If you have any questions at all, I don't know if I can see the comments, I would love to answer them. Oh, OK, you guys put in the comments. So you wish you'd known more about civics and budgeting and finance skills.

You know, I had the best 8th grade civics professor. I mean, they were just phenomenal. Budgeting and finance, boy. I wish I'd had so much more on than I do, and I wish I'd learned more about investing and not just budgeting, but also debt and leveraging debt and what that really meant.

You loved having the opportunities to take internships and job opportunities in high school. Wow, that is so cool. I wish my school had done more internships and job opportunities, and yeah, having an entrepreneurship class in high school, I think it would have really changed my life.

I think it would change a lot of kids’ lives. Our students at True North, they are really seeing the opportunities for entrepreneurship, and that is super exciting. 'Cause I know a lot of adults, right now. They're working a regular nine to five job and they're collecting their W2 pay and they're starting the side hustle and at some point, they might change.

I know somebody who – she's a nurse. So she goes to the hospital. Not an independent contractor. She goes to the hospital and works at the hospital. She also owns a roofing company. Her roofing company made, like, $8 million last year. And I mean, it just, it makes her nursing job pale in comparison as far as money goes. But she loves the mission of the nursing. So entrepreneurship just gives our kids so much more opportunity to make choices, to have freedom. And isn't that really what homeschooling is about? It's really about providing our kids with these amazing choices and freedom to choose, and that's one of the reasons why I love it so much.

So I hope you guys can go over to this link and just sign up for the free self-paced class. We have several to choose from. We have baking, cooking, leadership 1 and 2. We have more coming in the spring and those are listed as well. So if there's one you see that’s not live yet, you're welcome to just let us know. And when it goes live for our summer session, we'll sign you up for it.

But if you're interested in in learning more about any of our programs, I'd love to chat with you so you can just leave a comment below or send me a private message you can head on over to TrueNorthHomeschool.Academy.

There's a chat. There's also a phone number and e-mail in the upper left hand side. Feel free to use that. I love talking with people who want. Information about education or homeschooling, and we also have free academic advising. You can sign up under our advising tab on the website for a free two-year academic plan or meeting with somebody for 15 minutes live as part of an advising session, and we'd love to work with you in that way. And of course, check out our live, online and self-paced classes as well as the dual degree program.

Again, I am really super excited about coming down to visit with you guys at the Convention and give these workshops. I love talking about entrepreneurship. I love talking about alternatives for traditional college degrees. Not because I don't think college isn't important. I think it's.,I think it is very important, but I think that the way the world is, it's just time to look for alternatives that make sense for us and for our kids and our family.

So again, my name is Lisa Nehring. It's been just a delight to be here with you tonight. I look forward to visiting with you more in just a couple weeks, and thanks to the opportunity to MPE to do this Facebook Live and to come down to the Convention and do workshops.

I'll see you guys in a couple weeks. We'll have some great goodies at our convention booth. We've got bookmarks that are little microproducts and so we have had to build a transcript. We’ve got some fun things on the military. We have a Monopoly game, and they're all on bookmarks. They're really kind of fun and clever, but anyway, we'll be excited to give those out to you, and I'll see you in just a couple weeks. Thank you so much. Take good care. Bye.

Shanxi: Thanks so much for listening. We hope you are encouraged in your homeschool journey.

Please continue the conversation with us on our website, midwesthomeschoolers.org, or email us at podcast@midwestparenteducators.org. We're also active on social media if you'd like to connect with us there. Thanks to Kevin McLeod of incompetech.com for providing this royalty-free song Wholesome, which is licensed under creativecommons.org.