 Welcome. My name is Kim Marie. I'm George Kau. And we are the founders of the Mark Kau Business Academy. We're so grateful you're here. We wanted to share with you a few of our thoughts about what Mark Kau is all about and why we created it and hopefully invite you in to ask more questions and find out more about it. So I'm gonna begin by sharing a little bit about how Mark Kau came to be. So Mark Kau is all about educating the next generation of entrepreneurs and I actually am a mother of two teenage boys. My oldest is going to be a senior in high school and he is already an entrepreneur. He started his first business when he was 12 years old. I have been a serial entrepreneur having multiple businesses and George actually has been my business mentor and as my son was approaching his senior year one of the requirements at his school is that he do a senior project and he decided he wanted to focus that all around the idea of becoming a successful entrepreneur. What does it take? What's involved? How do I build a platform in a foundation? How do I market myself? How do I decide on a product and you know align it with my passions and what I really care about and what I'm excited about. And in a very casual conversation with George we were talking about this and I was asking him about mentoring my son but then at the same time talking about how much I have loved in my own work as a life and leadership coach mentoring my son along the way to know himself to really find what his passions are and continue to deepen into that and to understand that that his values and passions and those kinds of things are going to change with time and yet at the same time he can experiment and try things out and really become the best of who he is. And so as he got approved for this senior project George and I had another conversation and Mark Howe Business Academy was born. We realized this is a fantastic blend of skills that we can teach young people moving on into the world and and help guide them towards something that really makes them sustainable and passionate and excited about their work. Yeah yeah and I'm grateful that this came to be because I see the young people in my life I mean just over the past 10 years as I've been an entrepreneur I've seen several kind of family members friends gone through college the expense of what that is the time the years spent there and come at the other end maybe not receiving what they imagined was the promise of that of those four sometimes five years and I need to include myself in that. I went to college spent five years there at a you know top college and then all I knew what to do and what was given to me by counselors was I guess the next thing if you're not totally sure is to go to grad school and also I had the pressure from my family to say well get get a useful graduate education so I went to law school a top law school spent tens of thousands just for the first year okay and you know with this promise that it would have a prestigious career afterwards. I actually loved the first year of law school but then during the summer when I was interning with a law firm I came to see the reality of law practice and I said it's not the interesting fascinating case studies that we were studying in school it's really be more mundane every day there's a lot of conflict a lot of personal yeah personal emotional conflict and a lot of paperwork to be honest I made a decision after that summer internship to say I'm not gonna I'm not I don't want to become a lawyer so I switched into a different kind of grad school which is an MBA program a masters of business administration which is supposed to set you up with the business skills to be able to create and manage businesses well if you those of you who don't have an MBA most of you watching this perhaps maybe some of the parents and grandparents watching this have an MBA but those of you those of us who know what an MBA education is like know that we don't really learn how to create businesses in an MBA school what we usually learn is how to be a corporate manager at a mid-level you know and most of us probably don't want to have a career as a mid-level corporate manager and be in the that kind of cock long story short after the MBA education I had to learn almost from scratch how to start my own business and really the last 10 11 years has been me learning that and then after learning that transferring it to other adults and now we hope with young adults this true skill set of entrepreneurship as well as the the the values and the inner skill sets as well which is one of things that can is so fantastic yeah I'm so I so relate to that George I mean this is the idea I to have a couple of degrees and kept trying to find that place and and and you know there's there's aspects of the college experience that I can be grateful for and I know that I wouldn't be where I am now had it not been for some of that there's also this kind of circuitous route that I feel like I took over the years to find that solid ground that really honored who I was rather than trying to fit into a mold or try to find my place that was going to be the so-called success and I also think you know part of my passion in creating this and and what I feel so excited about doing with young people has to do with we're so we're so seldom taught about who we really are and what we love and and or how to connect to what we love I should say and and and how to actually take those passion skills strengths talents experiences and put them into something that can serve others you know that can really bring something to the world and the other pieces sometimes we have all this enthusiasm and passion and it almost can get trained out of you you know you start to feel like you have to fit into being employed and sort of following a set of rules and I know so many people and especially young people now that I have young adults in my home kind of going I don't know if I really want to work for someone else I don't know if I really want to do it that way I kind of have these other ideas but I just don't know how to go about it and I know that was me too I I don't feel like I was employable to be honest I was a great worker but I had so much passion and creativity and enthusiasm about trying different things and exploring different things that you know being self-employed and being able to try to follow some of those passions including something like this with you know really hoping to to bring it a whole new level of education to the world this excites me so much with what we're doing so yeah yeah I you're this is such an important point that I want to kind of emphasize what you said is that when we look at the way that most livelihood or income generation is done in the world what has been for decades for I guess hundreds of years is that you work for somebody else right someone has a company or an organization and you somehow try to plug yourself in there but what we don't think more deeply about is am I going to be happy like that and so when you're plugging yourself into a company essentially you're saying all right company all right leadership all right you know a supervisor employer tell me what my priorities are in my day-to-day or in my you know month to month quarter to quarter what my priorities are other people give you the priorities the company gives you the values now hopefully your value somehow align with the company but so many times we're just trying to get a job but trying to get a good job and while paying job and even the and sometimes the company stated values aren't actually what plays out in the day-to-day relationships in that company and how they treat customers and how they treat the environment and so ultimately Kim what you and I have both discovered is that self-employment right entrepreneurship allows us to actually live into the values that we believe and to set the priorities that allow us to be truly creative to fulfill our passions and you know what you said earlier about how a lot of young people might have that it gets trained out of them sometimes what I see is that young people have that and they try to go out and do it but they're doing it on their own maybe sometimes if they're lucky they have parental support or support from uncle and aunt or something like that or family friends rarely it's you know or they might usually they tell them oh you can't do it you'll get a job but even if they have some parental support etc. they're still kind of isolated doing it on their own which is why I'm so grateful that we have Mark howe Academy where we're bringing all of us together and we're supporting the you know young adults are supporting each other work we and the mentors are supporting all of you young adults to actually fulfill and realize the passion and the creativity that you have. Oh exactly so perfect and that was one of the most exciting things as we started designing this and creating this you know I kept saying I know my challenge you know you're my business mentor and so you really have helped me to understand different pieces that I can take and go through it step by step through your courses or through your mentorship and be able to ask questions and interact and then having a group a community where you can ask questions and interact and learn from each other it's been the most incredible community of people and I know that's certainly a goal I have for Mark howe is that we create this community of people that really steps in and almost holds each other you know really connects with each other inspires each other encourages each other and I know as we talked about doing this and did our own market research for this in talking to a lot of the young adults that might be interested in this kind of work so many of them that's what you indicated was was what they talked about like yeah I can learn about something I can go find a YouTube video I can go you know Google an article or whatever it is but I can't get that step by step help that guides me and says okay but this part I don't understand or that part I'm not quite clear on and that is so invaluable and so I know that's a huge piece of what we hope to give our students and and help them feel connected and doing it through what we call project-based learning so this is like hands-on you get to actually create the foundational aspects of your business whether it's you know creating the basic foundations that you hear about all the time things like websites and social media platforms but also the foundation of what are your values and what do you want to communicate with those who are interested and how does what you want to do in the world meet what people need in the world and how can we start weaving all of that together and create something that becomes an income generating opportunity for you to continue to grow with and unfold as time goes on yeah that's an important point about the income generating because what we usually see in like you know college or gap year programs is that they leave it up to you at the end to go good luck finding a job or maybe they have internships and things like that but again you're doing that through the traditional model of working for somebody else having to align with their values and their priorities etc whereas here with self-employment the generating of the income through the Markow program which is what we're really excited about that by the end of the 10 month we want you we will support you we will be guiding and encouraging and sort of giving you the structure to have an income generating business income generating self-employment by the end of the 10 months and yes we will do this through the step-by-step program the mentorship the one-to-one mentorship that happens for every single one of our students but also we have a wide network of connections that are eager to become the clients of Markow students so that's also what I'm really excited about we have a network we also have of course the community of Markow students that are going to be supporting each other and getting their their projects out there so the guidance the mentorship the community the structure the encouragement and the I guess we might say the guidance and the training of one's inner life and one's relationships is something that is so unusual in most programs it's something that both Kim and I have a lot of experience with we are both successful in terms of building a network and knowing how to relate well with others in business in collaboration and growing our audiences so we're really excited to have you those of you who are qualified to apply to inquire with us to read everything on the website ask us any questions that you have come to an info session if you're able to otherwise you can look at the recordings of that and reach out to us for your questions if this is the right fit for you please do reach out to us we've made the program as affordable as we can compared to college it is way more affordable compared to most other programs training programs vocational programs it is affordable but we also have some scholarship options and we just wanted to make sure that if it is the right fit for you read everything on the website if it's the right if you feel passionate about joining us in our small group that starts in September don't let money be an issue be sure to reach out to us and we will figure that out together Kim anything else you want to say no I love it thank you George this it's so exciting to be sharing this and creating this opportunity for young people and I think we have something really special here that that has the opportunity to unfold and bring a sense of our unique self and our confidence and our our passions and skills to the world in ways that really we haven't seen done elsewhere in any way like this and and it's it's so exciting to be doing this together thanks Kim thanks for all of your work and we look forward to your inquiries those of you watching this if you know if some of you are the young adults who are going to be applying if you are an adult and know somebody in your life who's a young adult who's you know you wish they had this kind of support in this kind of community and guidance to be able to launch their own self-employment let them know about markow.org and thank you for watching this thank you all