Raising Kids to be Entrepreneurs
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School didn’t come easy for Cameron Herold, coach, mentor, and owner of BackPocket COO. In fact, he struggled with school and was diagnosed with ADD. Yet he knew at a very early age that he loved money and business. He was raised to be an entrepreneur and is very passionate about sharing tips with others.
Cameron’s father recognized Cameron’s entrepreneurial spirit at a very early age. He groomed Cameron and his siblings to “hate the thought of having a job and love the idea of creating companies where they could employ other people.” Over the years, Cameron had several successful business ventures.
- At age seven, Cameron collected 1,000 coat hangers from neighbors and then sold them to the dry cleaners for three and a half cents each.
- When he was nine, Cameron sold license plate protectors door to door. He purchased the protectors at wholesale and resold them for a profit.
- At ten, Cameron did comic book arbitrage, selling comic books from his home. He would buy low from kids on one side of town and then sell high to kids on the other side of town.
- Cameron also had a paper route when he was ten but hired someone to deliver half of the papers. Cameron would then deliver the other half and collect tips from his clients, which is where he made all the money.
- Cameron learned that there was money in garbage and began collecting old brass and copper from automotive and industrial repair shops. He would take it all to a scrap metal recycler where he got paid. Oddly enough, 30 years later, Herold was a leading force behind one of the most successful new business ventures of the last decade, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?. He was Chief Operating Officer for nearly seven years.
- Cameron made money caddying for golfers, providing pop from the corner store to 70-year-old women playing bridge, and retrieving golf balls from golf courses (including the ponds!). He would clean up the golf balls, package them, and sell them for a profit.
- At 14, Cameron sold sunglasses to the kids in his high school, and then began selling the sunglasses at gas stations when the school shut down his business.
- Cameron paid his entire way through his first year at university by selling wine skins door to door. He added the university logo to the wine skins and sold them to fellow students for five times the normal cost.
“Start building a network of fellow entrepreneurs that understand your passion and don’t make you feel guilty about always chasing it.”
Leanna Archer of Leanna's Hair.com
Leanna Archer of New York began bottling and selling her own hair pomade at the young age of nine. Her pomade was based on her great-grandmother’s secret recipe, which has been in the family for generations. Leanna’s first customers were her friends and family. Archer’s all natural line includes hair cleansers, conditioners, and treatments. LeannasHair.com handles more than 350 online orders a week, and generates more than $100,000 in revenue every year.
Leanna is now 17 and serves as the CEO of Leanna’s Hair. She is the youngest person to ever ring the NASDAQ Stock Market opening bell, and has been recognized by Forbes, TIME, Success, INC Mag (30 under 30), Essence, Ebony, Hype Hair, NY Daily, and USA Today. NBC, MSNBC, ABC, FOX Business, and BET have also interviewed Leanna. Archer was positioned as Teen CEO #5 on AOL Black Voices online web portal’s list of “Top 9 Young Lions” who are making Black History.
Archer is a motivational speaker and has been honored for her entrepreneurialism. In 2008, Leanna founded the “Leanna Archer Education Foundation” to help build schools and safe learning environments for underprivileged children in Haiti.
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According to Cameron, “Entrepreneurs are people who have ideas and passions, or see the needs in the world and decide to stand up and do something. They put everything on the line to make stuff happen. They have the ability to get groups of people around them that want to build a dream with them. They organize, operate, and assume the risk of a business venture.” Cameron believes that if we could get children to embrace entrepreneurialism at a young age, those children could go on to make great changes in the world in which they live.
Cameron believes that teachers, educators, parents, etc., often miss opportunities to find kids with entrepreneurial traits and groom them for success. Instead, children often grow up having their hopes, dreams, passions, and visions crushed, and are told to learn to aspire to other things. Instead of grooming kids to be doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. (which aren’t bad things), Cameron believes we should be raising kids to be entrepreneurs. Children will always be presented with opportunities to study to be doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. but rarely do you hear parents or teachers saying, “Hey, you can be an entrepreneur.” According to Cameron, our MBA programs don’t teach children to be entrepreneurs. Instead, they teach our future generation to go work in corporations.
Cameron sums up his thinking by stating that society has an obligation to “start teaching kids to fish instead of giving them the fish.” He relates that to 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.”
Cameron Herold has been coaching entrepreneurs on five continents for the past twenty years. He coaches and mentors young, fun companies, helping them make their dreams happen. He also speaks to parents and educators providing tips on how to help would-be entrepreneurs flourish both as kids and adults. He recommends the book, Atlas Shrugged, as a great example of an entrepreneur being made into a hero. He is also a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization and the Young Presidents’ Organization.
FamilyMint.com encourages parents to model financial responsibility and provide their children with the necessary tools to manage their individual entrepreneurialism and financial success. It’s never too early to begin teaching children the life lesson of financial literacy.
Photo Source: www.acanadianfoodie.com
