Corner Team Workshop
After a year and a half of teaching and coaching robotics, it was refreshing to end 2022 with a financial literacy workshop with seven young scholars in Baltimore City. I...
After a year and a half of teaching and coaching robotics, it was refreshing to end 2022 with a financial literacy workshop with seven young scholars in Baltimore City. I love STEM and feel it is very necessary to see more Black people and people from underserved communities in the STEM field. It is about representation and showing our people a different path regardless of their circumstances. I also know there’s real value when innovation is led by people of diverse backgrounds and new meaningful inventions are created by people with fresh perspectives and experiences. STEM will forever have my heart, but right now financial literacy has my mind.
There’s certainly some intersection between the fields. I am not just referring to financial technology (fintech), but financial literacy can be an extension of mathematics. In business, one should always know their numbers whether that is monthly overhead, customer acquisition cost, financial projections, or yearly revenue just to name a few. Furthermore, I feel we as a people need to shift from being consumers to owners which includes the tech space that we spend millions of our dollars in.
Ownership is a key to building wealth whether that’s ownership in one’s own brand, equity stake in other businesses, stocks, real estate, or a combination of those things. This is where our Businessaire Workshops, which are meant to educate and empower the community, come into play. I recognize that we are currently in a financial literacy movement where we have podcasts, social media influencers, books, online courses, and events geared to instruct people. For the Culture Games will continue to do our part with Businessaire.
The workshop with the Corner Team was made possible through a discussion I had with one of their team leaders, coach Savannah. Collaborating with coach Savannah and the good people over at Corner Team was a great experience. Corner Team is a great organization that is engaging Baltimore through boxing to build strong minds, bodies, and communities.
Before starting the workshop, we discussed how the workshop would be split into two sessions. The first session would introduce the mentality and characteristics of what it takes to be an entrepreneur as well as an in-depth discussion on the cashflow quadrant squares. Characteristics such as great time management skills, ambition, leadership, confidence, being a risk-taker, and being coachable are all important.
When teaching the cashflow quadrants to the students, I wanted to get across the different ways we exchange time for money versus having systems where money is made and investing where money is working for us. Most of the students were aware of being an employee and self-employed but the added information about being a business owner and investor seemed to resonate more when discussing local entrepreneurs, notable entrepreneurs in the culture, and notable brands that they support.
It is important to note that you can always start off in one quadrant square and then work your way to another or even possibly operate in multiple quadrant squares at once. I can tell I had their attention and most seem to gravitate more to the lesson when I made it more relatable to their lives and experiences.
The second part of the workshop involved Businessaire the game. I went over the rules of the game, and we separated the students into four teams. Some students picked up on the objective a little sooner than others but after a few rounds, they all were getting the hang of it. It was a great game between Kirk, Yaya, Empress, Kenny, Jazmyn, Kai, and Shamirah and I thoroughly appreciated their participation. Empress was the most competitive and eventually won the game so congratulations to her.
She started off in event promotions, then went on to open a moonbounce business, a convenience store on the street spaces, and then finally a bakery to serve the community. Her strategy involved starting off small and allowing the profits from one business to invest in more businesses, which is something that can be done in real life. Overall, there was a lot of engagement and I look forward to coming back for a second installment of the Businessaire Workshop. Thank you to Coach Savannah and the Corner Team for having us.
For more information on the The Corner Team, visit their website at Corner Team Boxing And Fitness Club Baltimore MD (www.cornerteam.org)