I saw the GCEC (Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers) CfP for Calgary in early October. Reaching out to the list to see if any of you want to join me in submitting a proposal about using ETA in your teaching. I recently revised my undergraduate business plan course, which is now built around ETA (Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition) rather than e-commerce. Wow, do I wish I had done this earlier!
E-commerce was getting harder and harder. As national postal services keep increasing their rates and social media algorithms downplay unproven/non-paying new businesses, my (online) students, for the most part, would open up stillborn drop-shipping stores that merchandised a bunch of virtually rendered customized junk that nobody bought. An experiential exercise that brought so much energy and veracity to an undergraduate business plan in 2015 now seems to add frustration and very little data. CAC and LTV were still impossible to calculate (with little or no sales). Remote, team-related drama would only make this worse.
ETA, on the other hand, starts with real information. There is a listing on a business broker site that often includes recent revenue figures, a rough tally of asset values and other numbers that make the basis for a student business plan real-ish. Moreover, it seems to be so much more catalyzing of self-actualization. I have a few students with a trades background, and awesomely, now that this business plan for a hypothetical acquisition is an individual exercise, they have used this assignment to evaluate real career options for themselves (e.g. buying a butcher shop, an HVAC or an electrical contracting company). Today's demographics finally demonstrate the promise that we were taught as students two decades ago; now great masses of Boomers are selling their businesses to millennials or winding down their life's work and throwing that goodwill to the wind.
Be in touch if you teach ETA, and are interested in joining me in making a proposal for a session at GCEC in Calgary,
Geoff Archer, PhD
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