Teaching is a sales job.
That is not a metaphor. If you are not excited about the subject, you cannot expect anyone else to be.
I did not know what I wanted to be. Farming was natural, and it was what I knew, but farming did not pay well. This was the 1970s, and the work was already declining. When it came time to choose a major, I did not think it through as carefully as I should have. I decided I was going to be Tom Osborne.
Tom taught industrial arts at my high school. I took one or two of his classes every year, and when I had a study hall I was usually in his room anyway. He was my mentor. He was phenomenal. He got people excited about mechanical drawing, woodworking, and the rest of the shop curriculum, not by lecturing them into it, but by selling them on why it mattered.
So I went to college as an industrial arts major, graduated with the degree, and taught mechanical drawing and woodworking. I was young Tom Osborne. I watched what he did and how he pulled people in, and I tried to do the same thing.
What I learned from him still holds.
Teaching is sales. You have to sell the student on why they want to learn whatever you are teaching. If you are not excited about the subject, how do you expect anyone to do more than you? You do not. Leadership means you have to be out there. You let them be the stars, but you still have to put it out there so your enthusiasm is contagious.
I see the same thing at auctions. People ask whether the crowd was having fun. That is the point. Fun is what you need them to feel. Enthusiasm spreads, or it does not. There is no neutral setting where the audience gets excited on your behalf.
The mistake is thinking the job is the content.
Mechanical drawing, a listing, a bid, a lesson plan. The job is the transfer of energy. Tom Osborne understood that before I had language for it. I spent years trying to be him, and the useful part was not the subject matter. It was the standard: if you are not lit up, neither are they.
Ready to Raise More at Your Next Event?
If your school, nonprofit, hospital foundation, or charity is planning a fundraising auction and you want an auctioneer who still gets goosebumps every time the bidding starts, I would be honored to help.
Scott Robertson, CAI, BAS Founder & Chief Auctioneer
Champion Fundraising Auctions
Serving Nonprofits Nationwide
š (239) 246-2139
š www.championauctioneer.com
Letās make your next auction the one people never forget.
Watch me tell this story from this clip from our very 1st āServing with Purposeā Podcast!
