This month – to celebrate one year of existence as The Pure Language Institute, we have a great anniversary offer and lots of exciting ideas for the future! We also are sharing with you 4 huge lessons we have learned along the way.
2018-2019 The Journey
India
First off, we’d love to share with you some of the lessons we learned during our first twelve months in business.
Even though we had both just lost our jobs, we accepted an amazing 6-month volunteer work assignment which took us to New York, Miami, Guatemala, Colombia, Italy, Romania, India, Myanmar, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya! Our work involved teaching hundreds of volunteer language instructors many of the methods that we now teach in our secular course. We loved it! We met so many fantastic people and made a lot of new friends. It makes us so happy to know that those who received the training are putting it to good use. But, when the assignment came to an end on March 18, 2019 – we had to come back to reality!
Have you ever faced something similar?
Lesson one: Don’t let setbacks stop you from being willing to help others. The rewards surpass the sacrifices.
On our way back to Canada,
we took a 14-day pet-sitting job in the Cotswolds, England. We buckled down, worked really hard, and by the end of two weeks – we had our website up and running! (including all the behind-the-scenes infrastructure needed to maintain it – tech support, research, content, finance, legal, admin, marketing, social media etc…)
Lesson two: When you have a big project, try to get away. Give yourself a deadline, then methodically plug away at the task(s) set before you until you reach your goal. Successful authors many times have ensconced themselves in an isolated area in order to finish their work with no distractions. In our case, doing something similar for a short time really helped us to finish a big job in the most efficient way possible.
With the Pure Language Institute up and running, we arrived back in Canada in April. Our first course as the Pure Language Institute took place July 1-5, 2019.
Then, in quick succession, we taught courses in Vancouver, B.C.; Edinburgh, Scotland, Chelmsford, England and Seattle. Meanwhile, we received another invitation to go to Cameroon and Ivory Coast for November of the same year. We also had been thinking seriously of relocating to India to expand business interests, do volunteer work and learn Hindi. We were planning to spend the month of December, 2019 there to check it out.
How would all of this be viable? – normally a brand new company has to be very careful about expenditures. We looked at all the angles; we had to drastically cut back. Our solution was to go mobile: “Location Independent.”
We sold all our furniture, put our personal stuff in a very small storage locker, and signed up with multiple pet-sitting websites. For the next 3 months, we lived rent free, in beautiful homes, and enjoyed other people’s pets (without the Vet bills!) This enabled us to buy flights to Cameroon, Ivory Coast and India.
We were so happy when we boarded the plane for Douala on October 29, 2019 – totally free of the clutter we had accumulated after 3 years of life in Canada! Even though it was somewhat painful to get rid of all our stuff, and move around for 3 months, the money we saved made possible to experience an unforgettable trip to 3 countries – a trip that solidified our decision to move to India.
Lesson three: When pursuing a goal, one needs to ask, “Is this worth it?” If the answer is YES, then resolutely move forward. Make the drastic changes necessary to reach your goals, it is totally worth it!
January 2020 – After that incredible 3 month adventure – there we were, back in Canada making our final plans to move to India. The date was set and tickets were bought for April 20, 2020. Then – BOOM!! COVID-19! You know the rest of the story. Cancelled travel plans, cancelled life plans. Worldwide lockdown! What could we do? A conversation with my insightful, resourceful wife sparked the thought of converting our course to a format that could be taught completely live, online. (so we buckled down again, no holiday in the Cotswolds this time)
And, VOILA! It became a reality and here we are! We have now taught 4 courses on Zoom – and are thrilled with our new “virtual classroom.”
Lesson four: Be flexible, be willing to “Adjust your Sails” and…Listen to your wife!
What a productive, crazy year! We hope you have enjoyed reading this little epistle. We enjoyed writing it!
Pure Language Institute Now Offering Language Classes!
We are very excited about the debut or our new online language school.
Sometime in August we plan to open up registrations for classes in English, Swahili, Spanish and Low German – with more languages in the pipeline! Our language instructors will all have taken our course so they will present dynamic lessons that will accelerate their student’s progress. Additionally, all our instructors have learnt a second or third language which contributes to their being very empathetic to the challenges and hurdles their students face. Big things are coming!!!
Comments