I’m Rodney, CEO of Teach Life Skills LLC, hailing from the island of Sint Maarten/St. Martin, with roots in Belize, Central America.
Teach Life Skills, ’til now, has been a personal experiment and part of a journey that began in 2010 when I decided to start blogging. All I knew was that I had many visions and ideas about what I wanted to accomplish in a life of service. But I wasn’t too sure if it’s what I thought it was. So I just jumped right in because that’s my approach to a lot of things.
Ten years in the making
It’s been a long winding road with lots of false starts and gaps that actually started with me writing about parenting. Way back in 1991 I’d been looking for a way to contribute to the island’s development process. The entire community was saying that solving the island’s youth problems starts with upgrading parenting practices.
But nobody was doing it. In my spare time, I spent the next 15 years running parenting-ed classes. All of it was offline. I only wrote “The Life Parent” blog parallel to it for the small group of parents I interacted with each year. By the time my energy for it eventually waned, I knew I had to migrate fully online. As time permitted, I’ve since tried to pull some of my varied other interests into a coherent message–a task I consider still in its beginning stages.
Today with the launch of this site, there’s more clarity on where I want to take it. My immediate target is actually for the Caribbean, but to make an impact here, North America is almost a prerequisite. Also, parenting is only one of many areas of foci promising to move the needle far and fast.
What’s a life skill anyway?
It’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine that what’s been traditionally referred to as life skills should be called “adulting” or something else. I mean, shouldn’t something as big as life be reserved for what the corporate world inappropriately diminished to “soft skills?” Since this set of skills is the foundation for personal growth and leadership, they’re anything but soft. As a matter of fact, I believe these skills actually encompass the next phase in the evolution of the human mind.
We’ll be talking a LOT more about this...AND putting it into practice.
For now, the big idea is to make the teaching of essential life skills part of your life’s mission. Once you do this, you get a leg up on fulfilling that mission… and fast! This is because these are the skills that equip you to do big scary things people want but normally shy away from. And you learn fastest by teaching. I’m talking about fast-tracking your whole life’s mission and purpose… something I wish someone had taught me when I was twenty.
Who’s this for?
The African diaspora tends to be notoriously strapped for resources of all kinds. As a result, impactful service on a grand scale means you have to generate your own funding if you want to build something that lasts. Because of this, only social entrepreneurship is sustainable. In turn, THAT means full diversity and inclusion have to be part of the vision from day one.
One serendipity was the realization that upgrading my entrepreneurship skills was essential. Serving other entrepreneurs and small business managers also became key to sustainability.
Connect!
We’ll see how that goes. If you can see how this ties into any of your own projects, hit me up. You never know; the butterfly effect is real. With the blockchain and Web3 recreating the entire world so fast, by the time you read this, banks, Uber, social media will mean something way different from what they meant when I first wrote this. And I love LOVE strategic conversations if the aim is to contribute positively and help evolve the human race. Let’s hear your voice one way or the other.
Please share this post and help me spread the word. All the share links are active. Also, if you’re active in Clubhouse, look for the “Teach life skills & Win” Club. Join us and let’s get some impactful conversations going.