Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs | Cameron Herold | TEDxEdmonton

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.

When I was a kid

in grade school, in grade two
in Winnipeg,

my teachers sent a note home to my parents

and said that I was a terrible student,

and that I wouldn't focus
and pay attention,

and that I was sitting in the back
of the class playing games.

And they were right.

And that kind of happened in grade 3,
grade 4, grade 5,

and then all the way through school,

so I would be willing to bet beer tonight

that causes or does not cause cancer.

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

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

But what I knew at a very early age

was that I loved money
and I loved business

and I loved this entrepreneurial thing,

and I was raised to be an entrepreneur,

and 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 ever heard it,

except my wife three days ago,
who said,

"What are you talking about?"
and I told her --

is 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.

And it was a speaking event
in front of groups of entrepreneurs

from around the world.

When I was in grade two,
I won a city-wide 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, "Hey, let's be a lawyer
or let's be a doctor,"

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

and we decide to stand up and do it.

We put everything on the line
to make that stuff happen.

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

that want to kind of
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 is a problem today.

Every problem that's 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:

"If you give a man a fish,
you feed him for a day.

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

If we can teach our kids
to become entrepreneurial --

the ones that show those traits to be --

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

what if we saw the ones
who had entrepreneurial traits

and taught them to be entrepreneurs?

We could actually have
all these kids spreading businesses

instead of waiting
for government handouts.

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

Don't hit; don't bite; don't swear.
My 9 year old is into swearing big time.

I'm harnessing it a little bit.

He actually told me he learned
the C word the other day

and I was terrified, and he said:
"It stands for 'crap'",

I was like, yes!

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

you know, and the school system
teaches them to go after things like

being a doctor and a lawyer

and being an accountant and a dentist

and a teacher and a pilot.

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

and be a model or a singer

or a sports hero like Luongo, Crosby.

Our MBA programs do not teach kids
to be entrepreneurs.

The reason that I avoided
an MBA program --

other than the fact
that I couldn't get into any

because I had a 61 percent average
out of high school

and then 61 percent average

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

that's a good school, because you buy
one term, and get one free.

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

They teach them to go 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 of your reading lists --

the only book I've ever found

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

Everything else in the world
tends to look at entrepreneurs

and say that we're bad people.

I look at even my family.

Both my grandfathers
and my dad were entrepreneurs.

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

And we all decided to start these things

because it's really the only place we fit.

We didn't fit in the normal work.
We couldn't work for somebody else

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

But kids could be entrepreneurs as well.

I'm a big part of a couple organizations
globally

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

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

and everyone that 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 little bit
panicked right now --

other than all the caffeine
that 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 what we're doing is 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.

And I told the author,
after they did my interview,

that I cheated in that same course.

And she thought it was too funny
to not include it anyway.

But kids, you can see these signs in them.

The definition of an 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 those things about
"is it nurture or is it nature"?

Is it thing one or thing two? What is it?
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, young age,

when my dad realized
I wasn't going to 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 the three of us,

to hate the thought of having a job

and to love the fact of creating companies
that we could employ other people.

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

and I was lying in my bedroom
with one of those long extension cords.

If you're 30 years old, you don't remember
phones with extension cords,

but I do, I'm 44.

And I was calling
all the dry cleaners in Winnipeg

to find out how much would
the dry cleaners pay me for coat hangers.

And my mom came into the room
and she said,

"Where are you going to get
the coat hangers

to sell to the dry cleaners?"

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

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

There was about a thousand
coat hangers that I'd collected.

Because, when I told her I was going out
to play with the kids,

I was going door to door
in the neighborhood

to collect coat hangers
to put in the basement to sell.

Because I saw her a few weeks
before that -- you could get paid.

They used to pay you two cents
per coat hanger.

I thought, there's all kinds
of coat hangers.

And I'll just go get them.

I knew she wouldn't want me
to go get them, so I just did it anyway.

And I learned that you could
negotiate with people.

This one person offered me 3 cents
and I got him up to 3.5.

I even knew at a seven-year-old age

that I could get
a fractional percent of a cent,

and people would pay that
because it multiplied up.

At seven years old I figured it out.

I got three and a half cents
for a thousand coat hangers.

I sold license plate protectors
door to door.

My dad made me go find someone

who would sell me
these things at wholesale.

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

selling license plate protectors
door to door to houses.

And I remember this one customer
so vividly

because 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, "Well, we don't need one."

And -- I'm nine years old --
I'm like, "But you have two cars

and they don't have
license plate protectors."

He said, "I know."

I said, "This car here's got
one license plate that's all crumpled up."

He said, that was his wife's car.

I said, "Why don't we just test one

on the front of your wife's car
and see if it lasts longer."

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.

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

and buy all the comics
from the poor kids.

Then I would go back
to the other end of the beach

and sell them to the rich kids.

But it was obvious to me, right?
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. Go get some.
So that's obvious, right.

It's like a recession.

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

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

I also learned, don't reveal your source,

because I got beat up after about
four weeks of doing this

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

and he didn't like the fact
that he was paying a lot more.

I was forced to get a paper route
at 10 years old, I didn't really want it,

but my dad said
that was going to be my next business.

So not only would he get me one,
but I had to get two,

and then he wanted me to hire someone
to deliver half the papers,

which I did, and then I realized
that collecting tips

was where you made all the money.

I would collect the tips and get payment.

I would go and collect for all the papers.
He could just deliver them.

Because then I realized
I could make the money.

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

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 him what he did with it,
he said he just throws it out.

I said, "But wouldn't somebody
pay you for that?" He goes, "Maybe."

Remember at 10 years old, so 34 years ago
I saw opportunity in this stuff.

I saw there was money in garbage.

And I was actually collecting it
from all the automotive shops

in the area on my bicycle.

And 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,

and we made these pin cushions
for our moms for Mother's Day.

And you made these pincushions
out of wooden clothespins --

when we used to hang clothes
on clotheslines outside.

That's what clothespins looked like.

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 pin cushion.

But I realized
that you had to have options.

So I spray painted
a whole bunch of them brown.

And then 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 to me,

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

But I realized that 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 would sit there with a lawn chair

and just carry up all the people
who didn't have caddies.

I would carry their golf bags
up to the top, and they'd pay me a dollar.

Meanwhile, my friends
were working for five hours

to haul some guy's bag around
and get paid 10 bucks.

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

That doesn't make any sense."

You just figure out a way
to make more money faster.

I sold pops at a bridge night.

Every week, I would go to the corner store
and buy all these pops.

I would go up and deliver them
to these 70-year-old women playing bridge.

And they'd give me their orders
for the following week.

And I'd just deliver pops
and I'd just 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 for them
in the bush and in the ditches.

I'm like, screw that.

They're all in the pond
and nobody's going into the pond.

So I would go into the ponds
and crawl around

and pick them up with my toes.

You just pick them up with both feet.

You can't do it on stage.

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

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

But the problem is that people
all 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 and DDHs
and the really cool ones back then

that sold for two dollars each.

Then I had all the good ones
that didn't look crappy.

They were 50 cents each.

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

They could use those for practice balls.

I did that [at] a young age.

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 --

the school actually called me
into the office

and told me I couldn't do it,
so I went to the gas stations

and I 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.

And I think I was 14.

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

by selling wine skins door to door.

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

and two bottles of coke in a wineskin?
So what, right?

Yeah, but you know what?
You stuff that down your shorts,

when you go into 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 kind of nurture the traits
that you need to be entrepreneurs?

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

I remember being told to walk out

in the middle of a street
in Banff, Alberta

because 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
ever 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 now,
I've got two, nine and seven,

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

looking for stuff that needs to get done,
come to me and tell me what it is.

Or I'll come to them and say
what I need done.

And then we negotiate.

They go around looking for what it is.

But then we negotiate
on what they're going to get paid.

Then they don't have a regular check,

but they have more opportunities
to find more stuff,

and they learn the skill of negotiating,
and finding opportunities as well.

You breed that kind of stuff.
Each of my kids has two piggy banks.

50% of all the money
that they earn or get gifted,

50% goes in their house account,
50% goes in their toy account.

Anything in their toy account
they can 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 kids have a stock broker already.

But 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 them
bedtime stories every night.

Maybe four nights out of the week
read them bedtime stories

and three nights of the week
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 them?

My kids do that all the time.

It teaches them to sell;
it teaches them creativity;

it teaches them to think on their feet.

Just do that kind of stuff
and 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
that you want to be nurturing.

Show the kids what bad customers
or bad employees look like.

Show them the grumpy employees.

When you see grumpy customer service,
point that out to them.

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

And say, "These ones are good ones."

(Laughter)

If you go into a restaurant
and you 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 go get a tutor.

Imagine if you actually took

all the kids' junk
that's in the house right now,

all the toys that they've outgrown
two years ago

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

And they can actually sell it

and learn how to find scammers
when they get email 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 the money they get,
50% goes in their house account,

50% goes in their toy account.

My kids love this stuff.

Some of the entrepreneurial traits
that 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
that I want you to also look out for

that we don't kind of
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 and Jim Clark

and Jim Barksdale have all got it,

and they built Netscape --

imagine if they were given Ritalin.

We wouldn't have have that stuff, right?

Al Gore really would have really
had to have invented the Internet.

(Laughter)

These skills 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 as well?

Because there's huge opportunities
in that.

I want to close with a quick little video.

It's 2 minutes and 10 seconds,
I'm going to go 30 seconds over,

I apologize, but I'm doing it anyway.

It's v video that was done
by one of the companies that 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.

[Do you remember when you were a...]

[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 around the world.]

[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 you reach,]

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

["It still is."]

Thank you very much for having me.

(Applause)