Excellent TED speech; We SHOULD be Fostering Childhood Entrepreneurs

After reflecting upon my own future as an entrepreneur I stumbled upon an excellent speech about the subject from Cameron Herold, creator of 1-800-GOT-Junk and BackPocket COO. Herold discusses his reflections as a child entrepreneur and discusses techniques he uses as a parent to foster an entrepreneurial spirit in his children. He rants against the current education system which I see as a one-size-fits-all assembly line.

Herold addresses ADHD, Bipolar, academic integrity, and many other subjects as he offers his unique spin on what is wrong with education. He claims that we should stop telling people that lawyers and doctors are the "good jobs" and start valuing children that offer other varieties of traits.

"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 -- because we have a lot of them in this room -- who have these ideas and these passions or see these needs in the world and we 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 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." - Cameron Herold

 

Reach the entire episode at:

http://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_herold_let_s_raise_kids_to_be_entrepreneurs?language=en