One Question Friday: How Will You Teach Your Kids To Be Entrepreneurial?

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'll put my all in it like my days off on a roadless travel, never looking back. This is One Question Friday. I'm Sean, and it's just me today. Doing these episodes, these one question Fridays, I kinda like these. It's fun. It's fun to hear the listeners and hear their questions. And then I really put thought into this. So this one I heard it before I did it so I could think it through.

Usually I do these off the cuff, but Hey, little prep never hurt anybody. So let's listen to this question together. And then I'll give you my answer. My name is Sophia. Sean, last Friday you talked about the value of earning that first dollar by selling the bands. I know that your kids are still pretty young, but

I wanted to know how are you going to teach them to be entrepreneurial and when are you going to start? Okay, great. Thanks Sophia for the question. I if you didn't hear this before, I shared the story about how I had been working on a business, a startup. I was twenty-one years old. I was with my best friends, and we were working on a business for about a year. And

Somewhere in like the nine month mark, we realized We're just sitting around one day and we're like, Man, it just feels like we're just going through the motions. Not that we were being lazy, but like literally we were Almost like acting. Oh.

doing a startup. It's like, oh, we do this plan and then we talk to this advisor, and then we raise money from this investor. It's like We're doing everything except for the business part. We'll just we take a product, we sell it to a customer, and then the customer's happy. And we're like, Man, we've been going for almost a year now and we haven't even made a dollar. Like how can we call ourselves

We were winning all these awards. entrepr young entrepreneuri of the year, rising entrepreneurs, pr most promising startup. And I was like, man, it's all BS. We haven't actually even done anything. And so we took a forty eight hour challenge. For one weekend we were gonna try to make

our first dollar. We were trying to make we we set up a goal of trying to make a thousand dollars in a weekend. And we ended up Doing something very simple, we created these like wristbands, uh, like if you remember the old live strong bands, but Thicker, fatter. We called it the fat band, it's the fatband dot com.

And we were customizing them. So we found a dropshipper that would let us Write somebody's name or their fraternity's name or their school's name, whatever On these wristbands. And we can basically sell you a customized pack of a hundred wristbands or whatever.

And it would cost us Whatever, thirty cents to make these things. And uh that we could sell each one for a dollar twenty or something like that. And it worked. We made like I don't know, fourteen hundred dollars in that weekend and it felt so good. And I feel like I learned more about business in that one weekend than I had the full nine months because I had to Come up with a product.

I couldn't overthink the brand name, all that good stuff. Uh, you know, had to Get our first sale, how to figure out how to sell. How to figure out how to create a website, uh with the take payments online, all this good stuff. So Now this question is about kids. Now I I guess I'll point out. I really wasn't I don't know, I was kind of a kid, I was twenty one years old.

But my parents didn't do anything in that moment to help me. have that aha moment to get that first Taste of entrepreneurship. Um The light bulb for me came on later.

than I think you usually hear. We often hear these stories about oh Yeah, Mark Cuban or Elon Musk and when they were eleven years old they were, you know They were created a C D ROM company and they were selling it, you know, in the neighborhood or they know the l lemonade stand. Honestly, I didn't have any entrepreneurial Ambitions, you would have never guessed when I was a kid that I would be an entrepreneur.

Having said that I do think there are things that I will try to do. With my kids. I got two little kids, they're two and one years old now. to help them be more entrepreneurial. And here's what they are.

So I'll break it down into a couple of categories. Here are the foundational do's and don'ts for me when I think about how to teach my kids. The first is There's no rush. I will not push them into being an entrepreneur or doing a you know, like that telling them that this is the path.

Um there's no rush and there's no answers. Th it's on them to figure it out and they'll they'll get it in time. But along the way, I can give them some skills, experiences, and a mindset. that I think will help them. So here's how here's what I plan to do. Um

Let me first break it into a couple categories. Mindset. Um, how do I want them to think about things? What are the Aha moments where they realize something about the world. That I want to help them get to that realization faster.

So the first thing is that I wanna show them that the world as they see it. Has not always been this way. Meaning that things change. So

Everything you see that you accept as normal, whether it's this computer that I'm it's on my desk. Well, there used to be Not even a computer. Yeah, you used to not have laptops. There was one computer in a computer room. Before that there was a computer, not even in a home. And before that, there wasn't even a computer, right? So like things change over time. And it's very easy when you look around the world to just sort of accept that things are the way they are and that's it. When you don't realize that actually things are changing all the time. And uh most importantly, it is people who change them. So uh Steve Jobs has this great quote, which is like

Um The most important thing you have to realize is I'm gonna butcher it. But the most like the most important thing you have to realize is that Everything you see around you was made up. by somebody just like you. You know, the there is no there are no adults to this game of life. Who who who create all the rules.

Um You know, we everybody's making up the game as they go. And so I the first thing I want to do is I wanna show them that. I wanna instill this understanding that things change over time. So when they see something as it is, I'm gonna show them what it used to look like. I'm gonna show them what it looks like in other countries where it doesn't look the same as it is here. So they can see that the world is a lot more bendable, it's flexible, it's malleable. Um the world can be bent.

And it's bent by people who decide that it's gonna be another way. Okay, so that's the first most important thing, right?'Cause that's what an entrepreneur is gonna do, right? Entrepreneurs Trying to change the way it's changed the status quo in some way. And uh if you don't realize that the status quo is simply made up by other people just like you, no more talented, no smarter than you, then that means that you can do it too.

The second thing. Um Uh so that's the mindset. Aspirations. Um

You are who you admire. I always have believed this. You are you become who you admire. So I wanna show them I wanna I want to admire people that I hope that they admire. I wanna tell them stories of people who have Who have just simply wanted something and made it happen, whether it's an athlete Michael Phelps wanted this and he made it happen.

uh an entrepreneur who wanted this made it happen, an inventor who wanted to solve this problem and they made it happen. And that I want to tell them those stories consistently. So that they understand this link. But basically The name of the game is Figuring out what you want.

And then knowing that you can make it happen. And I'm gonna praise that. So for example, even now with my daughter. She's uh really good at puzzles. She loves puzzles. Uh. Yeah, there's these little parenting tips. It's almost corny, but

Honestly, I I I do believe it. I think it works. Then I praise her not for being great at puzzles, I praise her for I'm like, you figured it out. Oh wow, you you didn't know how to do it. But you just kept trying and then you figured it out.

You're great at figuring things out, right? Like I am I praise her for being able to figure things out. I praise her for trying things that she was afraid of. I fra I praise her for um For basically like going out of her comfort zone. And saying you did it anyways, right? You always do that. You're always so brave.

Right, you're always figuring things out. I am trying to instill in her That she could figure anything out. That she can do things even when she's afraid of doing them even if she's never done them before. Um never praise for being so smart or so good at X, uh,'cause I think that's a trap.

So those are little things. Uh on the on the um on the praise and aspirations. Next, let's talk about skills. So if we want to be an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur is not really a thing. It's just a collection of skills. uh that you that you put together and you apply with some force.

So what are those skills? Being able to build. Being able to sell and being able to invest. And so I am going to invest in each of those skills at a young age. And you could do them in a bunch of different ways. So Um

Being able to build, you know, it could be as simple as uh my wife, she always talks about how when she was a kid, her dad used to take her. On Saturdays to Home Depot. to do a building class, a free workshop building class that she does on on weekends. And that's why my wife is so self-sufficient. Like if something's broken in the house, my wife fakes it. If we get furniture, my wife assembles it because she's really great at that and she loves doing it. And I'm terrible at it. I'm terrible at it because I never got any practice at it. Uh and I never got I never found fun in it. So I never

Never did it, right? Um Doing something like that teaches you how to build, even literally how to build furniture. But it makes it fun to build things from scratch. Um, and so that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna teach them to build. I'm gonna teach them to build toys.

Computers Uh furniture Build anything. Build a a a a little you know, stage and then we'll use it for puppet shows, whatever. It doesn't matter. We're gonna try to build things together. And

Then the next one is selling. So teach you how to sell. So how so we I will literally give'em some experiences like Door to door sales. I don't know if you guys ever done these like uh Um What you call? It's like a Like a fundraiser thing where you go door to door and you sell like wrapping paper and ice cream and stuff like that to your neighbors.

I think those are incredible experiences. I've talked about this in the past. If kale is a superfood, door to door sales is like a superfood for being an entrepreneur because you're going to get repetition at Hard work. Facing rejection? Persuasion. Uh building rapport.

Um, yeah, all these things you get from door to sales. So I'm gonna heavily emphasize door to sales. Um And and and and so this idea of being able to sell is important. Same thing with investing. I'm gonna give them money on. And we're gonna invest it together. And whether they win m whether they do well or they lose money, they'll live with those consequences. And when they want something, it's gonna come out of that pot.

And so um So that's the the core idea. Get them understanding early on about investing in a stock market with a very small amount of money, a couple thousand b dollars, maybe two thousand dollars. And uh let them know that hey, when you want that. New Xbox, it's gonna come from the earnings you've been building up in this thing. And uh

And so I want them to learn about investing in that way. So um there's other some there's other direct skills that I have seen as I invest in founders that I'm like E the most impressive founders I meet, I really like interrogate them to find out. What is it that they know or they did that made them the way that they are? And I've seen two consistent experiences come up. That are highly correlated from what I can tell.

Maybe cause. Maybe correlated, I don't know. with being a great entrepreneur. And they're they're not ones that I would have expected. The first one is debate.

I can't tell you how many people who I find to be really impressive that have a background in debate. I think debate Teaches you how to obviously how to speak. It also teaches you how to form a logical argument. So using logic.

It teaches you how to See both sides of an argument because in debate You don't just get to say the thing you believe. You have to be ready to argue for or against a specific topic. So you gotta be able to quickly understand what the argument would be in both perspectives, which guess what? is an amazing skill to have and uh as a person.

So debate is something I will try to get My kids into. uh because I've seen it translate. But of course if they don't love it, you know, they'll find their own way. The next one is gaming. Something that parents often view as a waste of time.

It's something that I've seen very, very correlated to success. So Gaming teaches you how to play uh play on a team. How to communicate quickly and under pressure. How to come up with a strategy to win. How to enjoy winning and bounce back from losing.

Right. These are all really important things. There's a whole bunch of stuff. Math. Um, there's there's things that go into gaming that I think are really important and it's really fun. And so I think gaming is a something I will encourage And um And can participate with with my kids.

So those are some of the skills section. Now last one, experiences. So here are the the some of the experiences. I talked about door to door selling. Uh lemon the the proverbial lemonade stand. So running a lemonade stand, understanding the profit loss, buying the ingredients the next day. So a lemonade stand that specifically runs for multiple days. Um

I will have them join my meetings. Um I'll tell you two quick stories. One is My brother in law is very successful Business guy. uh extremely successful. And he Always brings his son.

Um To His meetings. His his negotiations. Um Car auctions, whatever. He puts his son in a bunch of situations that involve

Business, deal making, money. He's in the real estate game. And um I asked him, I was like, you know, does he like it? Why does he do it? And he goes. goes, Well, he kinda liked it, but you know, at first he was bit quiet about it. And you know, he'd probably he'd probably rather be on his iPad. But I told him, I said, This is really important. I said

Um When he tells them when he goes to these things, he goes the he goes what clicked for him. He's like he's only eight, nine years old, whatever. What clicked for him was We got into a negotiation and we bought this business and he's like

Uh you know, dad like was this a good one? He's like, Yeah, this is a great one. He goes, Then why did they why did they sell? He goes Because my job is to make money off people like you. Sons who inherit things from their parents that don't know what it's worth, don't know how to do it, don't know how to negotiate.

People like me Take advantage of people like you. And that's why you're not gonna end up like that. It's a bit of a hardcore way of saying it. But he um you know, he's right in many ways that like if you don't teach your kids skill skills about business, they'll be put in positions where they're illiterate, financially illiterate. They're i incapable of negotiating well, incapable of analyzing the property to find out what it's really worth. And um

And so he kind of teaches him and he he asks him all the time. He's like, Hey son, what do we do when we go to these things? He goes Uh, you know, we we win businesses off of people like me, right? Uh or or like, you know, kids who don't learn like I'm learning. And so So I think you know Getting your kid to the table, I think is more important than people realize, even if the kid is very quiet in that moment. There is something happening.

My dad put me in a position like this that I'll never forget. It was uh I was in college. And My dad started to see that I was getting into the idea of entrepreneurship. And so he said Hey, I got this meeting in San Diego. Um, come with me. This guy's a great entrepreneur.

So I get on the flight, I fly there. And my dad's flight gets either delayed or canceled, or I don't know, maybe he did this intentionally, I have no idea. But Either way. Now I was in San Diego and my dad's not there.

And I'm like, Well shit, what do you want me to do? He's like You gotta go to the meeting. And I was like, I don't even know about your business. I don't know anything. He goes, just go to the meeting. It will look really bad if we don't even show up. So I go to this guy's office. Yeah, my dad had talk to the guy and say, Hey look, my son's coming. He doesn't know anything about you know he doesn't know the first thing about the first thing. But just uh if you do me a favor, you know.

And so I go to this meeting. The guy's twenty minutes late. I'm sitting in the room. He barges in. And this guy is a

Ball of energy. Hm. Is like It comes in with so much energy, so much swagger, and I had never seen that in a Business meeting before

Um and he starts telling me he go he goes. He goes. Mm. Yeah, sh Your what's your name? Sean? I said, Yeah, Sean, he goes.

Sean, let me tell you one thing. You want to write this down. You got a pen. I was like, Yeah, I got a pen. Write this down. Great customer service. If you have great customer service, you can own the whole goddamn world. And I was like Okay, that didn't seem very profound, but let me write this down.

And he's like I just got off the ph I'm late because I got off the phone with this TV company. We have uh we bought a TV and it's cracked and they w The service was awful, terrible. You know, what am I ever gonna buy from these guys again? No. Customer service. Cus if you have great customer service, you can own the world. Did you write that down? I was like, Yeah, yeah, I wrote it down. And basically this guy was just this fireball of energy.

He taught me about what h you know, his background, his story about uh how he was how he was uh He wrote you know, he sold movies. He wrote a h he was a Hollywood script writer. Then he built a skyscraper in San Diego because he thought real estate was the game to be playing. Then when the internet started coming out, he built like an early version of Redbox, like a movie DVD rental thing in malls. And then he got into then he um you know, he started investing and then you know, he's just each time he's just equ he's like failing up.

He's like not really making it happen, but he fails up. And then he met this guy in an elevator, invest his company, it turned out to be like the biggest textbook startup in the in the the world. And then um, you know, he married the woman who did one eight hundred flowers, and he, you know, he he has one thing after another. He just shared like 10 stories. Companies he built, investments he made, people he met, blah blah blah.

And I'm kind of captivated by this guy and he's like, You hungry? Let's go get lunch. And we just left the office on abruptly and I was like, Well, okay. Uh and uh He's walked into this restaurant and the restaurant was like, Oh, Neil, yeah, we got your table ready. And he had his own table at this restaurant in San Diego and San Diego weather's perfect. And I'm basically just like wow, this guy's got living the life. And his table every table in there had tablecloth except for his table had paper.

'Cause he needed a pen to be able to do deals. He would write stuff down on the tablecloth itself, on the on the paper. uh to teach me about what was you know stuff that was going on. And he didn't even order. They brought out bunch of appetizers and they just they knew and he had his own tab. He didn't even have to pay. He just left. And I was like I wanna be this guy. And he at the end he gave me his book.

And he signed it and I read his book on the way home on the airplane and I was like This guy is amazing. And Literally that experience is so formative because I just saw somebody again, you are who you admire. I saw somebody who's just seemed like they were having so much fun. I felt like this guy.

was in the mall and he got locked into the toy store. And he was just playing with all the toys of life. And I was like Jeez, this is this is how I want to be. I want to have have an You can hear me now. I wanna have this kind of energy.

I wanna have this kind of charisma, this storytelling, this enthusiasm, this variety of business experiences. Um This lifestyle where I just flow through the day. I'm not locked into one schedule or any patterns that I'm used to, you know, asking for a table and then sitting quietly and then paying waiting for the bill at the end. This guy just had his own rules to life. And I really admired that. So I want my kids to meet people like that.

And so they can admire them but also uh put them in those experiences get them those experiences. Let them shadow me, join meetings, things like that. So that they can they can see You know. People that are really interesting and they might have that itch start to develop of like, oh, I want to live like this guy lives. This versus the cubicle life versus the doctor life versus whatever else.

Okay, last thing, a few other things that I think are are good experience I want to have. Definitely traveling international. So I was lucky I grew up in Indonesia and China, differ bunch of different places. And so therefore I got to see third world countries. I get to see that other people live differently. This Builds. An immense amount of gratitude.

uh for what you have, things you take for granted, you know, clean streets and lights and you know, running water and things like that. warm hot water every time you turn on the shower. Um, so you'd start to not just take those all for granted. You develop some some gre gratitude there. The second thing is

You realize that the world is a lot bigger than just your little bubble. My wife, you know. grew up in California, lives in California. We still live, you know, fifteen minutes away from the place she grew up in. She loves it here. She's very safe here, but in reality That exposure to change, you know, to moving, having to make new friends.

To going to a new country, not knowing the language. Um that exposure is really important. And you know, she went to India and things like that. That's how she developed it. But I wanna really H make sure my kids Have

A not so comfortable experience. Going to a variety of different places. Um you know, Europe and and and Southeast Asia and things like that. So that they can experience that. That's one thing I can do as a parent that's like in my control.

Um The other things I think would be fun is I want to help them uh Yeah, another thing I've seen correlated with success in as an entrepreneur is Learning how to just simply flip things. So Um

You know, buy something, sell it on ebay for a little bit more. Uh right, buy a sneak and then sell it to a sneakerhead, right? So just flipping things is an experience I want them to have. Um And uh and then the last thing is is little exercises. So there's this thing called the marshmallow test. that people do with uh

With employees, um Kids, students. It's it's a pretty famous test. And what they do is they give you a bunch of They they put you in teams and then they give you a bunch of random tools like sticks. Rope, uh like a string, sorry. Uh

And one marshmallow. And the game is you need to build a structure using only these tools. And whoever can get it from the table height. To the ceiling, like the closest to the ceiling. Um Whoever gets their marshmallow the highest wins.

And so you do this exercise, you'd play this game Yeah, there's a big moral of the story. And the moral of the story is what what happens is that Everybody's you know, here's what adults do, especially high you know, high achiever type types like consultants and stuff like that. Yeah, well first quickly. You know, um

Divide and conquer. You know, one person's the leader, they'd say, Hey, you're gonna focus on this, you're gonna focus on this, you're gonna focus on this. And then they First let's make a plan. Let's not just jump in silly, you know let's not be stupid about this. We only have so many materials. Let's make a plan. So they make this plan, they're drawing out a structure. One guy's like, Oh, I know the the physics of this, we need it to be this This angle, blah blah blah.

And then they finally start to build it and they're trying, oh let's build the foundation really good first, blah, blah, blah. And finally at the end oh two two minutes left. Oh oh god. They shove the marshmallow on at the end. And the whole thing collapses. And then so always because the marshmallow has a lot more weight to it. than you anticipate.

Uh, marshmallow seems like the small thing, but relative to these sticks and string. The marshmallow is extremely heavy and it collapses the structure almost every single time. And so somebody who literally just took like two two sticks and shoved the marshmallow on, they'll win. And um and kids take the opposite approach. Kids immediately stick the marshmallow on, they don't wait till the end. Uh, they stick the marshmallow on. If they don't eat the marshmallow, they put it on first and then they start to learn that oh wow, it falls over once and they're like, Oh, that's not gonna work. We have to make sure this thing can hold the marshmallow weight.

And they build the whole structure around that key risk or that key assumption. And this is like very akin to how bad entrepreneurs and good entrepreneurs go. A bad entrepreneur wastes a lot of time planning. and avoids shipping the product to the customer, avoids the the the harsh reality of rejection till the very end.

And that's when they put the marshmallow on. And then when it does, it collapses and they're devastated because they put so much work in. Where is a great entrepreneur? Well, let's not spend too much time planning on paper. Let's just prototype here. So let's just try something.

quickly early on. Let's try giving it, you know, put the marshmallow on. Let's ship it. And If it falls over, no problem. That's just, you know, attempt one, we put very little into it. We learned something. Let's make attempt two better, and attempt three. And they'll get four or five attempts in that same twenty thirty minute period. that the other group got one attempt.

So I'm gonna try to teach them these sort of like almost like moral of the story. Type of exercises. That will um Show them the value in Rapid prototyping and facing rejection early on, in learning, you know, testing your key risks and your key assumptions, or finding what is the key risk and key assumption.

Um and not being afraid to fail. So those are some of the things that I'm gonna do. To recap. The mindset that things change and that the world is not just the way it is, because that's the perfect way. It's like, no, it's been constantly evolving, constantly changing, and it will change again. And the people who change it, Uh are just people like you, people who see things see the status quo and decide it can be better.

Uh, the next is I'll tell them stories of people who have done that and I'll praise them specifically for figuring things out or bouncing back from failure rather than just being smart or being good at. Been good at X. Then I'm teach them the skills of building, selling, and investing. Uh specifically Giving them uh chances to become good at

Debate. Gaming, things like that. And then I'm gonna have, you know, experiences the lemonade stand, selling door to door, travelling to third world countries. Um, you know, joining meetings or sitting in on meetings, flipping something on eBay. Uh and like the marshmallow test.

And I'm gonna do all those things and I'm not even gonna mention the word entrepreneurship. I'm not gonna mention uh that they should do something because it's their choice about what they want to do. My job is to um you know create an environment where they get exposed to it, where they get to dabble in it, where they get to build core foundational skills that they can choose to use later if it's If it's what's for them.

So Hopefully that helps, Sophia. Thank you for the question and uh I'm glad I got to sit down and think about this,'cause I do have kids and just sitting down to answer your question Uh for fifteen minutes writing down my notes. Uh, you know, that helps me be a better dad. So thank you and uh hope you guys enjoyed one question Friday. If you'd like these.

You can go submit your own questions. It's like MFMPod.com. And there's a little microphone button where you can submit your question to. All right. Take care. I feel like I can rule the world of no way

It be what I want to I put my law in it like my day's off On the roadless travel, never looking back

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