Cameron Herold: Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs | Video on TED.com

Entrepreneurial Kids!

For anyone who is or has ever considered taking action on their entrepreneurial ideas or for anyone who has kids who show entrepreneurial tendencies, I strongly recommend slowing down for a few minutes to listen to Cameron Herold. Thank you to one of my facebook connections for sharing this presentation on his facebook page over the weekend.

This is what Cameron's talk is all about:

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

Cameron Herold: Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs Video on TED.com


As I listened to Cameron's presentation, I related to his stories in numerous ways. Not my normal blog topics on security jobs and security recruiting but maybe somebody will get a kick out of this information before I share loads of new security jobs as the week progresses.

• At age 7, I carried a bucket, sponges, car wash soap and towels to neighbors homes where I proceeded to knock on their door to talk them in to having their car washed.
• At age 8, my dad wouldn't yet let me use the lawn mower yet so I couldn't start my lawn mowing career just yet. However, I did have a wagon and my neighborhood had a monthly large trash pick-up. I pulled my wagon around looking for bundles of newspaper. At first, I just put the papers in my wagon and took them home. Then, I figured out that if I simply knocked on the door and told the home owner that I was recycling newspaper, they'd save and bundle their papers for me and would leave them on the front porch.

Can you picture the site of a green 1972 AMC Gremlin driving down the road with newspapers stacked to the ceiling? My dad drove me to the recycling center once a month with one load, then two loads, then three loads, and more of newspapers so I could collect a few dollars. He probably caused more wear and tear on his shocks than I made in recycling fees but I'm thankful that my dad supported my desire to work at a young age.

• At age 9, I noticed that the monthly large trash pick-up produced lots of old bicycles and bicycle parts. My parents aren't with me any longer but I owe them many thanks for allowing me to fill their basement with used bicycle parts. Thanks to my dad for letting me use his tools. I rebuilt bikes with junk parts and sold them to my friends.
• Somewhere around the ages of 9-10 I shoveled snow for money.  This activity lasted through high school.  Find something that nobody wants to do, put a price tag on it and you'll eventually find a buyer!
• At or around age 10, I remember delivering newspapers in multi-story apartment buildings near our Washington DC area home. The bag for the Sunday Washington Post very likely weighed more than I did at age 10. Somehow I got the papers delivered though because there was a profit to be made soon after delivery.
• Sometime around or soon after age 10, my dad finally let me cut grass. It wasn't enough to cut my parent's grass, I figured out that many people in the busy Washington DC suburb where we lived didn't have time to cut grass so my grass cutting business was born. This was a great business that I carried all the way through junior high and high school.
• While working my way through college, I started a landscaping company. This was a trunk venture in that I ran the business out of the trunk of my 1977 Plymouth Volarie. I knocked on doors to get the business and then hired fellow students to work with me.

If you're wondering, as you listen to Cameron's presentation, he is talking about me. Can you tell why I enjoyed his talk?  I'm the guy who as a kid was always in trouble, always at odds with other kids and had what seemed like a permanent chair in the Principal's office of my elementary school.

Baseball helped tremendously to channel my attention and energy and to help me focus in other areas of my life. I sincerely wish that somebody had recognized and understood how to nurture my entrepreneurial drive. Even to this day, my entrepreneurial drive and passion isn't always understood by those around me who have jobs but my friends who also own businesses they've started from scratch seem to get me more often than not.

Today as an adult, it is volleyball, softball, hockey, biking, tennis, skiing and other non-sedentary activities that helps to channel my energy and to keep me both fit and out of trouble. Professionally, I created SecurityRecruiter.com a while to fill a void that wasn't being met the way SecurityRecruiter.com meets it today. We provide both information security and corporate physical security recruiting expertise to global companies up to the Fortune 100.

I very well may have an entrepreneurial child. There is no doubt that she has a lot of energy and she has a short attention span much like the attention span described in Cameron's presentation and the attention span I had as a kid. His talk spoke directly to me. I hope you enjoy it.

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