Mr. Taylor is a business lab teacher who specializes in business-associated subjects. Some of the students may desire to pursue business courses after graduation, so learning the fundamentals in high school may be advantageous for them. Here is an article of ten questions with Mr. Taylor, to gain insight into his thoughts on various business-related topics and some of his personal experiences to get to know him better. 

• How many years have you been teaching? How do you feel about it? 

“It’s my 6th year teaching in WHS and I feel very responsible about it. As a teacher, I always help students to learn new things and expose them to a friendly environment.”  

• What prompted you to pursue a career in teaching? 

“I really wanted to have a job where I felt like I was making a difference for other people and everything that I did before. I felt I was just trying to help someone else make money, like teaching, my job had a real purpose.”

• What other certifications and degrees do you possess?

“I have an associates degree in Computer Information Systems and a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a focus in accounting. And I also have a master’s in education.” 

• Given that you primarily teach in business-related disciplines, which do you believe has the most scope? 

“Well, I mostly teach accounting and marketing classes. I think that marketing is more abroad as there are a lot of different career paths that go along with marketing whereas accounting does have a lot of career opportunities but they’re all just very similar where the marketing careers are a lot different.” 

• Have you ever run your own business? Tell me about your business ventures.

“I tried to start a couple different businesses, but I never really put a lot of effort into either of them. The first business that I started was the commercial cleaning company where I worked with doctors offices and businesses to clean. I did that for a little while. And then the most recent one that I tried was doing computer repair. So I would go to people’s homes and do things like virus removals or upgrade their internet and different things like that.”  

• For how long have your enterprises been in operation?

“The cleaning service only lasted less than a year. I was too young when I started that. But the Computer one I did that off and on for like 4 years and I still have a couple of clients that’ll call me every once in a while and I’ll still help them out.” 

• Have you ever been a part of an amazing project? If so, where?

“I mean, in one of my previous jobs I did IT, and managed the sales and the tech team. We installed over a hundred computers and new networking equipment and stuff like that for healthcare organizations and that was a lot of collaboration and stuff that had to go on for that to happen which was really great.”

• Do you use your business expertise in class? If yes, how? Several examples.

“I try to use similar leadership tactics. When I lead, I tried to empower people to make their own decisions and do their own thing. It was more like a hands-off leadership approach where I just tried to support the people rather than micromanaging and telling them what to do. And so similar to that in the classroom.” 

• Any advice for beginners who want to establish a business? And teachers who want to form a business?

“For anyone who wants to start a business I would recommend that they should pick something they’re knowledgeable and passionate about because in the beginning it’s going to be a lot of work and it may not be very profitable at first so, you’re gonna be willing to do the work because you love it and you’re passionate about it until it gets going. It starts to build up and you establish yourself a little bit and then it can become something where you’re actually making money but you need to be willing to do it basically for free at first.”  

• How do you balance your business and teaching obligations?

“I don’t really do both of them at the same time but for me in both business and teaching, I tried to make my focus on my own professional development and professional growth so I can continue to learn about what I’m doing. Learning what’s new in the field and trying to stay current with trends and things like that. So I get to teach business a lot that is still very relevant. That’s how I manage to do that.”