If Theranos and Fyre Festival had a baby, it would be Life at Sea Cruises.

Life at Sea promised its customers a 3-year cruise voyage, selling 111 cabins and accepting millions of dollars in up-front payment.

The only problem?

They didn’t have a ship. 🤷

They planned to acquire a ship by the end of September, fully refurbish it, and be ready to set sail on November 1.

Seriously — that was their plan. Not a sliver of contingency stood between their (impossible) expectations and the hundreds of people who left their jobs, sold their homes, and planned their entire lives around spending the next three years at sea.

Life at Sea personnel began fleeing the company back in May, and CEO Kendra Holmes (no relation to Elizabeth — I checked), has also departed to launch a competing cruise company.

It’s all really fishy.

It’s also yet another example why entrepreneurship education is so important, and why at BETA Camp, we teach kids to deliver real products to real customers.

How to help kids explore careers — right now

In high school, kids are expected to choose classes and electives that serve as prerequisites for college.

👉 At 15, college counselors will ask them to narrow their extracurriculars and go deep in one area to prepare for personal essays. 

👉 At 17, kids choose their college major.

How are kids supposed to make these decisions if they haven’t had a chance to explore their options first? 

A multi-year survey of 165,000 high school students found that less than half of all students felt positively about their career and college readiness.

Zain Punjwani, the program director at Apollo, introduces middle school kids to different careers every day.

Here’s what he recommends: 👇

1. Find your kid’s ikigai

Zain refers to the Japanese principle ikigai, which means “that which gives your life purpose”.

It’s the combination of:

• What you’re good at

• What you love to do

• What the world needs

• What you can get paid for

Not sure what to write? That’s a learning opportunity. 

❓ Say your kid doesn’t know what they could get paid for.

👉 Look at their diagram. Maybe soccer was something they put in the “good at” and the “love to do” spaces. 

👉 Think of all the potential careers they could do with soccer: 

• Becoming a sports broadcaster

• Opening a sporting goods store

• Teaching soccer lessons to kids

• Coaching a soccer team ⚽

Your kid’s ikigai diagram is the map that will guide them on their career exploration journey.

2. Don’t wait to start exploring

Your kid won’t know what they want to do until they’ve tried it. 

Science has proven it: young adults choose careers based on earlier experiences.

This means that the earlier kids start trying out careers, the better — at Apollo, kids as young as age 10 are actively exploring careers through hands-on projects.

So how exactly do you help kids “try out” careers?

Zain suggests learning by doing with real-world projects wherever possible:

💰 For Apollo’s unit on business and entrepreneurship, students launch their own startup:

For the unit on engineering and technology, students participate in an AI hackathon.

To learn about science and healthcare, kids publish a research article on Substack about an important health issue.

The benefit of these projects is two-fold: kids learn best by doing, but they also amass a portfolio of projects that they can leverage to land future opportunities.

3. Build timeless skills

Zain says that there are three core skills that kids need to be successful:

🧠 To teach kids curiosity: Encourage them to ask questions about everything they encounter (even if that means playing the somewhat annoying “why” game).

💪 To learn adaptability: Teach kids to embrace the new technologies that are shaping the world (at Apollo, kids learn about artificial intelligence, brain-computer interface, genetic engineering, blockchain, virtual reality, and more).

🕹️ To master agility: Don’t answer all your kid’s questions for them. Teach them how to use the library, the internet, and their community to find their own answers.

These three skills will remain timeless no matter how much the world changes.

The goal of exposing kids to different careers at a young age isn’t just about getting them a head start on life. 

It’s about teaching them that:

• The future is exciting

• They can find work they’ll genuinely love

• They’re capable of making a difference in the world around them

That’s a lesson every kid deserves to learn.

He never thought he’d be a teacher — now he’s shaping the future of education

As one of our guides at Alpha, Jawaan Delaney spends his days preparing the next generation of leaders to go out and change the world.

But becoming an educator wasn’t always his plan.

First, he had to earn some wisdom worth sharing. 

Discovering the value of a quality education

As the youngest of seven siblings (!), Jawaan’s childhood wasn’t easy. His parents worked hard, but money was still tight.

Despite the odds, Jawaan credits his parents for prioritizing education, making it possible for him to attend Loyola University on an athletic scholarship, where he: 

• Majored in sociology

• Played Division I soccer

• Learned the value of curiosity

His education transformed his worldview — partially because of his course material, but also because it taught him how to learn on his own and use all the resources available to him.

👉 But remember: resources ≠ resourcefulness.

And Jawaan’s resourcefulness would prove to be his most valuable skill — if he could apply it.

It was the worst of times (to be looking for a job, that is)

After college, it was time for Jawaan to choose what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

📉 There was just one problem: it was 2009, and the U.S. was recovering from an economic crisis.

Jawaan wanted to do something impactful, but he didn’t know exactly what — and there weren’t many jobs around to choose from.

Jawaan allowed crappy circumstances to dictate his future:

“I really lost direction in terms of where I wanted to be and where I wanted to go,” he said. “Now, working with the students I work with… I realize I could’ve done so much more. But unfortunately, I didn’t have the courage to do so.”

Rather than making his own opportunities, he was waiting for opportunities to come to him.

To Jawaan, this was the single biggest failure of his career. 😞

 It was time to double-down on his resourcefulness. 👊

Becoming an educator — unexpectedly

With no experience in education, Jawaan secured a job designing after-school academic programs for kids.

How? 

By leaning into his strengths as an athlete and soccer coach.

Once he realized those skills were transferable to education, he pushed hard to land the job, and was promoted to head-up the program in only two years.

As it turns out, this is where he was destined to make his impact.

Jawaan became inspired by the possibilities of integrating technology into the classroom (this even became the concentration of his eventual master’s degree).

But he kept running up against the rigidity of traditional education, where change occurs at a glacial pace. 

So, he transferred from a traditional classroom to a nontraditional one — first with the LA Galaxy, and then with us at Alpha. 👏

Now, not only does he practice resourcefulness — he teaches it. 

This is an integral piece of Alpha’s signature curriculum element: the “Olympic-level masterpiece”. This is a project that takes as much time and effort as an Olympian training, practicing, and earning gold in the Olympics.

“Our goal is to allow students to create something that could hopefully be a launching pad for them and their career,” says Jawaan.

It’s the idea of creating your own opportunities, not waiting for opportunities to come to you — a lesson in resourcefulness that Jawaan learned the hard way.

Over his career, Jawaan has been transforming education for countless students. But he still has big dreams for the future.

“I don’t believe the changes I want to see will happen in my lifetime,” says Jawaan. “But I want to be the person to start a wave that might turn into a tsunami.”

At Alpha, Jawaan is in the perfect position to do just that. 🌊

Four questions that will answer everything

I love the concept of ikigai.

It can really help us to determine what we should be doing with our lives, and guide kids as they make decisions like:

• What classes to take?

• What clubs to join?

• What college major to choose?

In the case of Jawaan, he may not have ever discovered his aptitude for teaching if it wasn’t for his ability to look past what was immediately in front of him.

When he first graduated, his ikigai probably looked something like this:

1. What was he good at?: Sociology (degree)

2. What did he love?: Soccer

3. What could he be paid for? Unknown

4. What did the world need? Unknown

As he explored the world and opened his mind, he realized that he could get paid for teaching, and that the world needed passionate educators who pushed the boundaries of traditional learning.

That’s when everything clicked.

I encourage you to find your own ikigai, and introduce the concept to your kids.

Until next time,

Ivy

CEO Prequel, BETA Camp, Apollo

Follow my journey on LinkedIn