Right now I'm about four hours away from my first Marketing course of this new semester at Tufts, and I never know who's more nervous or excited about the upcoming 13 weeks- me or the students? 

Experience says that it's always me!.

Over the last month, I've honed the syllabus a whole bunch of times sending the first edition out at the end of December along with the six marketing projects that will consume the content for the majority of the semester.  Over the last three weeks, the class has gone from "full" to "full & wait list" to "full, wait list, and now wait-wait list".  What I know from the experience of 27 semesters is that in four hours from now everything will get sorted out, and the course will settle in at about 33 students.  

I've had the privilige of teaching at MIT for 20 years and here at Tufts for 14, and people ask me all the time, "Why do you  teach?  They ask this question in part because they're curious, and I would say that about 25% of the time, people ask because they would like to consider doing the same at some time themselves either as an instructor or as a guest speaker.  BTW, call me anytime on this.

So, why do I teach?

• 1st, every class, teaches me the importance of being curious myself.
• 2nd, I have the opportunity to give back content, experience and lessons learned.
• 3rd, it's a privilige to be asked to teach at these two superb universities.  Makes me feel good!

Mostly, I realize through this process of teaching just how curious I become every week during every semester. 

I also gain an up-close-and-personal understanding at the same time of just how much I don't yet understand about the rapidly evolving worlds of Marketing and Sales.

What will be occurring this year, as it did last, is an accelerating velocity of change in the world of Sales and Marketing, and I would encourage you to intensify your own level of curiosity about this revolution that's unfolding right in front of us!

Writing the Winning Business Plan

If your curiosity extends to updating your business plan as you kick off 2020, you might want to review our just-updated ebook on "Writing the Winning Business Plan".  20 years ago, I started this document teaching my first course at MIT.  Every summer since then this document undergoes a major editing on the NH beach with advice, editorial comments and content coming from associates and customers.  Growing in size and its level of detail, this free Writing the Winning Business Plan ebook has been downloaded about 25,000 times and is now used both at Tufts in their Entrepreneurship Center and is the business planning book for MIT's edX online courses and the engineering management courses at Singapore University of Technology & Design.

Take a look.  https://www.derbymanagement.com/solution-center/sales-tools

The key thought for today I want to leave you with in this very short blog is just to think through how you personally plan to be curious during what is going to be a very exciting and very different year ahead?

Have a great day today...and be curious!

Please stay connected!
jack@derbymanagement.com 

Head Coach, Derby Management, experts in...
-Sales & Marketing Productivity
-Business and Strategic Planning
WHAT WE DO AT DERBY MANAGEMENT

Professor of the Practice, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center