An AI-generated transcript:
Hello, this may be one of my stupider ideas but I'm getting ready, getting the Christmas dinner ready for a party and I thought I'm not going to get a chance to record something so I'm going to do that now.
So killing two birds with one stone which is kind of the topic maybe, if I can stick to it, for today.
So I don't know if you can hear this.
This is probably a terrible idea but we'll have a go.
Yes, so my topic really is teaching and to be successful, forget about teaching, to have a successful business you've got to do, well, you know, it's a bit like multitasking, two things at once, but you're not doing two things at once, more that everything you do, everything you do can be recycled and turned into something else.
so that everything you do has more than one value.
That's my theory, the Patrick Sherriff theory of value.
So while I, you may think I'm just peeling potatoes and messing around, but I'm actually, while I'm doing this, I'm also, this is multitasking, isn't it?
I guess, but I'm making a metaphor here, actually.
You may think it's a shepherd's pie, but it's not.
It's a metaphor for teaching.
Yes, I'm making the meat and the veg and everything,
I'm putting it all together and then mashed potatoes on top.
But from that I'll get three dishes.
I've got a main dish which is going to have the meat in it, two more dishes for people that are not going to the party, and one that's separate because that's going to be vegetarian.
But it's all coming from the same source basically.
It doesn't take any longer to make one, two, three, four dishes than it does to make one.
And there
That's the high kind of point.
From that small benefit, the amount of time I spend in the kitchen, I could be just doing one meal or actually I'm making four.
And at the same time I'm doing a video too, so that may be doing too much.
But anyway, it's the same with teachings.
For example, when you have a lesson,
You write the lesson plan and you make ideas for it.
From that, you can then reuse that plan again.
You can perfect it or whatever.
But don't stop there.
Then it can become the basis for a textbook, which you can then sell.
It could become the basis for another website like freetalktefl.substack.com.
You know, all of these ideas all feed into each other and they become more valuable.
It's very similar to
compound interest.
I can bore people for England talking about compound interest.
Einstein said compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.
Allegedly he said that.
Probably it was Mark Twain.
What's his name?
Compound interest is basically, you earn a little bit of interest each year
and then you earn interest on the interest.
And so over time it's exponential, it's that bugbear word I can never say.
But you know, you look at the graphs and they go up, it's not just incremental increase, it's going up like that.
Hockey stick time.
I think it's the same, sorry to finish that thought, with investments you can essentially double the amount of savings that you should have on paper over a ten year period.
There's a blog post about that somewhere, please have a look.
Personal finances for the self-educated self-employed English teacher.
but it's also the same for skills you compound those over time so the more lessons that you teach and you keep records of it and notes the more benefits you get from it and it doesn't just increase incrementally it increases exponentially so that it
in the end.
So if you have a look on the freetalktefl.substack.com website, if you look along the top, there's different lesson plans.
There's also a section called Books.
Click on there and you'll see there's light-blooming, I don't know, 15 books there that I've published.
But you could do too.
All I've done is just kept my notes, improved them, turned them into books,
That sounds really difficult.
Yeah, looking back at it now, 16 years later, it looks really difficult.
But at that time, you're just, oh, I've got these extra notes.
Oh, I might as well spend an extra two or three hours this week getting it together.
Next week, another couple of hours.
And oh, look, I've got enough for a book.
Oh, I'll publish it.
Oh, I can keep reusing the same book again and again each year.
Maybe adapt it and improve it.
But the lion's share of the work has been done.
and it's now a new product and it's now something new.
So that's how one person, well two people, my wife too, that's how we can have quite a nice living and continue to grow and do interesting things and make more money without having an enormous entourage of employees.
So that's all I really wanted to say
I could give you the recipe for a shepherd's pie if you want, but I don't think you'd come here for that.
Leave a note in the comments if you really want that and I'll tell you how it goes.
Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
See ya.
33. The Sherriff theory of value, AKA the shepherd’s pie model of business