Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs

Bored in school, failing classes, at odds with peers: This child might be an entrepreneur, says Cameron Herold. At TEDxEdmonton, he makes the case for parenting and education that helps would-be entrepreneurs flourish -- as kids and as adults.

I would be willing to bet
I'm the dumbest guy in the room,

because I couldn't get through school;
I struggled with school.

But I knew at a very early age
that I loved money, I loved business

and I loved this entrepreneurial thing.

I was raised to be an entrepreneur.

What I've been really
passionate about ever since --

and I've never spoken
about this ever, until now --

so this is the first time
anyone's heard it,

except my wife, three days ago.

She said, "What are you talking about?"

I told her that I think
we miss an opportunity

to find these kids
who have the entrepreneurial traits,

and to groom them or show them

that being an entrepreneur
is actually a cool thing.

It's not something
that is a bad thing and is vilified,

which is what happens in a lot of society.

Kids, when we grow up, have dreams,

and we have passions, and we have visions,

and somehow we get those things crushed.

We get told that we need to study harder

or be more focused or get a tutor.

My parents got me a tutor in French,
and I still suck in French.

Two years ago,

I was the highest-rated lecturer
at MIT's Entrepreneurial Master's Program.

It was a speaking event
in front of groups of entrepreneurs

from around the world.

When I was in grade two,
I won a citywide speaking competition,

but nobody had ever said,
"Hey, this kid's a good speaker.

He can't focus, but he loves walking
around and getting people energized."

No one said, "Get him
a coach in speaking."

They said, get me a tutor
in what I suck at.

So as kids show these traits --
and we need to start looking for them --

I think we should be raising kids
to be entrepreneurs instead of lawyers.

Unfortunately, the school system
is grooming this world to say,

"Let's be a lawyer,"
or, "Let's be a doctor."

We're missing that opportunity,

because no one ever says,
"Hey, be an entrepreneur."

Entrepreneurs are people --
we have a lot of them in this room --

who have ideas and passions
or see these needs in the world

and decide to stand up and do it.

And we put everything on the line
to make that stuff happen.

We have the ability
to get the groups of people around us

that want to build that dream with us.

And I think if we could get kids
to embrace the idea at a young age,

of being entrepreneurial,

we could change everything
in the world that's a problem today.

Every problem out there,
somebody has the idea for.

And as a young kid,
nobody can say it can't happen,

because you're too dumb to realize
that you couldn't figure it out.

I think we have an obligation
as parents and a society

to start teaching our kids to fish
instead of giving them the fish --

the old parable: "Give a man
a fish, you feed him for a day.

Teach a man to fish,
you feed him for a lifetime."

If we can teach our kids
to be entrepreneurial,

the ones that show the traits to be,

like we teach the ones who have
science gifts to go on in science,

what if we saw the ones
with entrepreneurial traits

and taught them to be entrepreneurs?

We could have these kids
spreading businesses

instead of waiting
for government handouts.

What we do is teach our kids
the things they shouldn't do:

don't hit; don't bite; don't swear.

Right now we teach our kids
to go after really good jobs;

the school system teaches them
to go after things like

being a doctor and being a lawyer
and being an accountant and a dentist

and a teacher and a pilot.

And the media says it's really cool
if we could go out

and be a model or a singer

or a sports hero like Luongo or Crosby.

Our MBA programs do not teach kids
to be entrepreneurs.

The reason I avoided an MBA program,
other than that I didn't get into any,

since I had a 61 percent
average out of high school,

then a 61 percent average

at the only school in Canada
that accepted me, Carlton,

is that our MBA programs don't teach
kids to be entrepreneurs.

They teach them to work in corporations.

So who's starting these companies?
It's these random few people.

Even in popular literature,
the only book I've ever found --

and this should be
on all your reading lists --

the only book I've ever found

that makes the entrepreneur
a hero is "Atlas Shrugged."

Everything else in the world
looks at entrepreneurs

and says we're bad people.

I look at even my family.

Both my grandfathers and my dad
were entrepreneurs.

My brother, sister and I,
all three of us own companies as well.

We all decided to start these things
because it's the only place we fit.

We didn't fit in normal work;
we couldn't work for somebody else,

we're stubborn and we have
all these other traits.

But kids could be entrepreneurs as well.

I'm a big part of a couple organizations

called the Entrepreneurs' Organization
and the Young Presidents' Organization.

I just came back from speaking
in Barcelona at the YPO global conference.

And everyone I met over there
who's an entrepreneur

struggled with school.

I have 18 out of the 19 signs
of attention deficit disorder diagnosed.

So this thing right here
is freaking me out.

(Laughter)

It's probably why I'm a bit panicked,

other than all the caffeine
I've had and the sugar.

But this is really creepy
for an entrepreneur.

Attention deficit disorder,
bipolar disorder.

Do you know that bipolar disorder
is nicknamed the CEO disease?

Ted Turner's got it. Steve Jobs has it.

All three of the founders
of Netscape had it.

I could go on and on.

Kids -- you can see these signs in kids.

And we're giving them Ritalin and saying,

"Don't be an entrepreneurial type.

Fit into this other system
and try to become a student."

Sorry, entrepreneurs aren't students.

We fast-track. We figure out the game.

I stole essays. I cheated on exams.

I hired kids to do my accounting
assignments in university

for 13 consecutive assignments.

But as an entrepreneur, you don't do
accounting, you hire accountants.

So I just figured that out earlier.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

At least I can admit I cheated
in university; most of you won't.

I'm also quoted -- and I told
the person who wrote the textbook --

I'm now quoted in that exact same
university textbook

in every Canadian university
and college studies --

in managerial accounting,
I'm chapter eight.

I open up chapter eight,
talking about budgeting.

I told the author,
after they did my interview,

that I cheated in that same course.

She thought it was too funny
to not include it.

But kids, you can see these signs in them.

The definition of entrepreneur
is "a person who organizes, operates

and assumes the risk
of a business venture."

That doesn't mean you have
to go to an MBA program,

or that you have to get through school.

It just means that those few things
have to feel right in your gut.

We've heard, "Is it nurture
or is it nature?" Right?

Is it thing one or thing two? What is it?

Well, I don't think it's either.
I think it can be both.

I was groomed as an entrepreneur.

When I was growing up
as a young kid, I had no choice,

because I was taught at a very early age,

when my dad realized I didn't fit
into everything else

that was being taught to me in school,

that he could teach me
to figure out business at an early age.

He groomed us, the three of us,
to hate the thought of having a job

and to love the fact of creating companies

where we could employ other people.

My first business venture:
I was seven years old, in Winnipeg.

I was in my bedroom
with one of those long extension cords,

calling all the dry cleaners in Winnipeg

to find out how much they'd pay
me for coat hangers.

And my mom came into the room and said,

"Where are you going to get the hangers
to sell to the dry cleaners?"

And I said, "Let's go look
in the basement."

We went down to the basement,
and I opened up this cupboard.

There was about 1,000 hangers
that I'd collected,

because, when I told her
I was going out to play,

I was going door to door
in the neighborhood

to collect hangers to put in the basement,

because I saw her
a few weeks before that --

you could get paid, they used to pay
two cents per coat hanger.

So I was like, well,
there's all kinds of hangers,

so I'll just go get them.

I knew she wouldn't want me to get them,

so I just did it anyway.

And I learned that you could
actually negotiate with people.

This one guy offered me three cents
and I got him up to three and a half.

I even knew at seven years old

that I could get
a fractional percent of a cent,

and people would pay it,
because it multiplied up.

At seven years old I figured it out.

I got three and a half cents
for 1,000 hangers.

I sold license plate
protectors door to door.

My dad actually made me go find someone

who would sell me them at wholesale.

At nine years old, I walked
around in the city of Sudbury

selling license-plate
protectors door to door.

And I remember
this one customer so vividly --

I also did some other stuff
with these clients, I sold newspapers,

and he wouldn't buy
a newspaper from me, ever.

But I was convinced I was going to get him
to buy a license-plate protector.

And he's like, "We don't need one."

I said, "But you've got two cars."

Remember, I'm nine years old.

I'm like, "You have two cars and they
don't have license-plate protectors.

And this car has one license plate
that's all crumpled up."

He said, "That's my wife's car."

I said, "Why don't we test one on her car
and see if it lasts longer?"

So I knew there were two cars
with two license plates on each.

If I couldn't sell all four,
I could at least get one.

I learned that at a young age.

I did comic book arbitrage.

When I was about 10 years old,
I sold comic books

out of our cottage on Georgian Bay.

I would go biking
up to the end of the beach,

buy all the comics from the poor kids,

then go back to the other end of the beach
to sell them to the rich kids.

It was obvious to me: buy low, sell high.

You've got this demand
over here that has money.

Don't try to sell to the poor kids;
they don't have cash.

The rich people do. Obvious, right?

It's like a recession.

So there's a recession.

There's still 13 trillion dollars
circulating in the US economy.

Go get some of that.
I learned that at a young age.

I also learned, don't reveal your source:

I got beat up after four weeks of this,

because one of the rich kids found out
where I was buying my comics,

and didn't like that he was paying more.

I was forced to get
a paper route at 10 years old.

I didn't want a paper route, but my dad
said, "That's your next business."

Not only did he get me one,
but I had to get two.

He wanted me to hire someone
to deliver half the papers,

which I did.

Then I realized: collecting tips
is how you made all the money.

So I'd collect tips and get payment.

I would collect for the papers --
he could just deliver them.

Because then I realized
I could make money.

By this point, I was definitely
not going to be an employee.

(Laughter)

My dad owned an automotive
and industrial repair shop.

He had all these old
automotive parts lying around.

They had this old brass and copper.

I asked what he did with it,
and he said he just throws it out.

I said, "Wouldn't somebody pay
for that?" And he goes, "Maybe."

Remember: at 10 years old, 34 years ago,

I saw opportunity in this stuff,
I saw there was money in garbage.

And I collected it from the automotive
shops in the area on my bicycle.

Then my dad would drive me on Saturdays
to a scrap metal recycler

where I got paid.

And I thought that was kind of cool.

Strangely enough, 30 years later,
we're building 1-800-GOT-JUNK?

and making money off that, too.

I built these little pincushions
when I was 11 years old in Cubs.

We made these pincushions
for our moms for Mother's Day

out of wooden clothespins --

when we used to hang clothes
on clotheslines outside.

And you'd make these chairs.

And I had these little pillows
that I would sew up.

And you could stuff pins in them.

Because people used to sew
and they needed a pincushion.

But I realized you had to have options,

so I spray-painted
a whole bunch of them brown,

so when I went to the door,
it wasn't, "Do you want to buy one?"

It was, "Which color would you like?"

I'm 10 years old;
you're not going to say no,

especially if you have two options,
the brown one or the clear one.

So I learned that lesson at a young age.

I learned that manual labor really sucks.

Right, like cutting lawns is brutal.

But because I had to cut lawns
all summer for all of our neighbors

and get paid to do that,

I realized that recurring revenue
from one client is amazing,

that if I land this client once,

and every week I get paid by that person,

that's way better than trying to sell
one clothespin thing to one person,

because you can't sell them more.

So I love that recurring revenue model
I started to learn at a young age.

Remember, I was being groomed to do this.
I was not allowed to have jobs.

I would go to the golf course
and caddy for people,

but I realized there was this one hill
on our golf course, the 13th hole,

that had this huge hill,

and people could never
get their bags up it.

So I'd sit there in a lawn chair
and carry for all the people

who didn't have caddies.

I'd carry their golf bags to the top;
they'd pay me a dollar,

while my friends worked for hours
hauling some guy's bag around

for 10 bucks.

I'm like, "That's stupid.
You have to work for five hours.

That doesn't make sense. Figure out
a way to make more money faster.

Every week, I'd go to the corner store
and buy all these pops,

Then I'd deliver them
to these 70-year-old women playing bridge.

They'd give me their orders
for the following week.

I'd deliver pop and charge twice.

I had this captured market.

You didn't need contracts, you just needed
to have a supply and demand

and this audience who bought into you.

These women weren't going
to go to anybody else

because they liked me,
and I kind of figured it out.

I went and got golf balls
from golf courses.

But everybody else was looking in the bush

and looking in the ditches for golf balls.

I'm like, screw that. They're in the pond.
And nobody's going into the pond.

So I'd go into the ponds and crawl
around and pick them up with my toes,

just pick them up with both feet.

You can't do it onstage.

You get the golf balls,
throw them in your bathing suit trunks

and when you're done, you've got
a couple hundred of them.

But the problem is, people
didn't want all the golf balls.

So I just packaged them.
I'm like 12, right?

I packaged them up three ways.

I had the Pinnacles, DDHs
and the really cool ones.

Those sold for two dollars each.

Then I had the good ones
that didn't look crappy: 50 cents each.

And then I'd sell 50 at a time
of all the crappy ones.

And they could use those
for practice balls.

I sold sunglasses when I was in school,

to all the kids in high school.

This is what really kind of gets
everybody hating you,

because you're trying to extract money
from all your friends all the time.

But it paid the bills.

So I sold lots and lots of sunglasses.

Then when the school shut me down --

they called me into the office
and told me I couldn't do it --

I went to the gas stations and sold
lots of them to the gas stations

and had the gas stations
sell them to their customers.

That was cool because then,
I had retail outlets.

I think I was 14.

Then I paid my entire way through
first year of university at Carlton

by selling wineskins door to door.

You know you can hold
a 40-ounce bottle of rum

and two bottles of coke in a wineskin?

So what, right? But you know what?

Stuff that down your shorts
when you go to a football game,

you can get booze in for free.

Everybody bought them.

Supply, demand, big opportunity.

I also branded it, so I sold them
for five times the normal cost.

It had our university logo on it.

You know, we teach our kids
and we buy them games,

but why don't we get them games,
if they're entrepreneurial kids,

that nurture the traits
you need to be entrepreneurs?

Why don't you teach them
not to waste money?

I remember being told to walk
out into the middle of a street

in Banff, Alberta.

I'd thrown a penny out in the street,

and my dad said, "Go pick it up.

I work too damn hard for my money.
I'm not going to see you waste a penny."

I remember that lesson to this day.

Allowances teach kids the wrong habits.

Allowances, by nature,
are teaching kids to think about a job.

An entrepreneur doesn't expect
a regular paycheck.

Allowance is breeding kids at a young age
to expect a regular paycheck.

That's wrong, for me,
if you want to raise entrepreneurs.

What I do with my kids, nine and seven,

is teach them to walk
around the house and the yard,

looking for stuff that needs to get done.

Come and tell me what it is.

Or I'll say, "Here's what I need done."

And then, you know
what we do? We negotiate.

They go around looking for what it is,

then we negotiate what they'll get paid.

They don't have a regular check,

but they have opportunities
to find more stuff,

and learn the skill of negotiating
and of finding opportunities.

You breed that kind of stuff.

Each of my kids has two piggy banks.

Fifty percent of all the money they earn
goes in their house account,

50 percent goes in their toy account.

The toy account,
they spend on whatever they want.

The 50 percent in their house account,
every six months, goes to the bank.

they walk up with me.

Every year, all the money
in the bank goes to their broker.

Both my nine- and seven-year-olds
have a stockbroker already.

I'm teaching them
to force that savings habit.

It drives me crazy
that 30-year-olds are saying,

"Maybe I'll start contributing
to my RSP now."

Shit, you've missed 25 years.

You can teach those habits to young kids,

when they don't even feel the pain yet.

Don't read bedtime stories every night --
maybe four nights of the week,

and three nights, have them tell stories.

Why don't you sit down with kids
and give them four items,

a red shirt, a blue tie,
a kangaroo and a laptop,

and have them tell a story
about those four things?

My kids do that all the time.

It teaches them to sell,
teaches them creativity,

teaches them to think on their feet.

Do that kind of stuff, have fun with it.

Get kids to stand up
in front of groups and talk,

even if it's just
in front of their friends,

and do plays and have speeches.

Those are entrepreneurial traits
you want to be nurturing.

Show kids what bad customers
or bad employees look like.

Show them grumpy employees.

When you see grumpy
customer service, point it out.

Say, "By the way,
that guy is a crappy employee."

And say, "These are good ones."

(Laughter)

If you go into a restaurant
and have bad customer service,

show them what bad
customer service looks like.

(Laughter)

We have all these lessons in front of us,

but we don't take those opportunities;
we teach kids to get a tutor.

Imagine if you actually took
all the kids' junk in the house right now,

all the toys they outgrew two years ago

and said, "Why don't we sell
some of this on Craigslist and Kijiji?"

And they actually sell it and learn
how to find scammers when offers come in.

They can come into your account
or a sub account or whatever.

But teach them how to fix
the price, guess the price,

pull up the photos.

Teach them how to do
that kind of stuff and make money.

Then 50 percent
goes in their house account,

50 percent in their toy account.

My kids love this stuff.

Some of the entrepreneurial traits
you've got to nurture in kids:

attainment, tenacity, leadership,
introspection, interdependence, values.

All these traits, you can find in young
kids, and you can help nurture them.

Look for that kind of stuff.

There's two traits I want you
to also look out for

that we don't get out of their system.

Don't medicate kids
for attention deficit disorder

unless it is really, really freaking bad.

(Applause)

The same with the whole things
on mania and stress and depression,

unless it is so clinically brutal, man.

Bipolar disorder is nicknamed
"the CEO disease."

When Steve Jurvetson, Jim Clark
and Jim Barksdale have all got it,

and they built Netscape --

imagine if they were given Ritalin.

We wouldn't have that stuff, right?

Al Gore really would have had
to invented the Internet.

(Laughter)

These are the skills
we should be teaching in the classroom,

as well as everything else.

I'm not saying don't get kids
to want to be lawyers.

But how about getting entrepreneurship
to be ranked right up there

with the rest of them?

Because there's huge
opportunities in that.

I want to close with a quick video

that was done by one
of the companies I mentor.

These guys, Grasshopper.

It's about kids.

It's about entrepreneurship.

Hopefully, this inspires you
to take what you've heard from me

and do something with it
to change the world.

[Kid... "And you thought
you could do anything?"]

[You still can.]

[Because a lot of what
we consider impossible]

[is easy to overcome]

[Because in case you haven't
noticed, we live in a place where]

[one individual can make a difference]

[Want proof?]

[Just look at the people
who built our country:]

[Our parents, grandparents,
our aunts, uncles]

[They were immigrants, newcomers
ready to make their mark]

[Maybe they came with very little]

[or perhaps they didn't own
anything except for]

[a single brilliant idea]

[These people were thinkers, doers]

[innovators]

[until they came up with the name]

[entrepreneurs]

[They change the way we think
about what is possible.]

[They have a clear vision
of how life can be better]

[for all of us, even when
times are tough.]

[Right now, it's hard to see]

[when our view is cluttered
with obstacles.]

[But turbulence creates opportunities]

[for success, achievement, and pushes us]

[to discover new ways of doing things]

[So what opportunities
will you go after and why?]

[If you're an entrepreneur]

[you know that risk isn't the reward.]

[No. The rewards are driving innovation]

[changing people's lives. Creating jobs.]

[Fueling growth.]

[And making a better world.]

[Entrepreneurs are everywhere.]

[They run small businesses
that support our economy,]

[design tools to help you]

[stay connected with friends,
family and colleagues]

[And they're finding new ways of helping
to solve society's oldest problems.]

[Do you know an entrepreneur?]

[Entrepreneurs can be anyone
Even... you]

[So seize the opportunity to create
the job you always wanted]

[Help heal the economy]

[Make a difference.]

[Take your business to new heights,]

[but most importantly,]

[remember when you were a kid]

[when everything was within your reach,]

[and then say to yourself
quietly, but with determination:]

[it still is.]

Thank you very much for having me.

(Applause)