What do you think about the In Search Of Heroes Program and its impact on youth, parents and business people?
Lorrie-Morgan-Ferrero: The way you got it going, it will have a huge impact. My only concern is that it’s only online, and while I am always online and a lot or most people are online I think, there are other people it won’t reach, but, as it grows online hopefully it will be taken out in a bigger way as well and people will know there is a place for them and get some support. It’s a great program you’ve got going and it’s a heart-felt need that you’re filling.
John Assaraf: It is about time someone takes them serious and does something for the youth. We have got to start with our younger children. See, you and I get to change our mind. With our children we have to help them make up their mind. So when we can give them the information, no matter what backgrounds they come from, no matter how much schooling they have had, no matter what kind of errors they have made in the past, no matter what kind of hurt they have got in their hearts or in their minds, they can overcome them. They can do something worthwhile and meaningful, caring and spectacular starting with their life right now.
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
- George Bernard Shaw
Alex Mandossian: For those who want to have it impact them I think it’s fantastic. For those who haven’t recognized it yet, I trust you will do your best to put it in front of them so that they recognize it. So if that part of us recognizes the greatness of this program we will embrace it and hopefully spread the word.
Jason Potash: I think it’s a great idea and I commend you for putting together the program, because no one has tried to make that blend between business, youth and also family and tying it all together, and having role models that children can follow. I was fortunate enough early in life that my father was an entrepreneur. He had his own company for many years and I was exposed to that environment. Strangely enough, I still decided to become an entrepreneur.
I’m just joking! My dad was never home, he worked weekends and he worked during the summer. When all the kids were out playing basketball, he was at the office. Obviously, he had to sacrifice. I learned that you have to sacrifice to get ahead. He did very well and was very successful and got to a point in his life where I remember one point where my dad was on the couch in the afternoon for most of the summer.
I was like, “Dad aren’t you working?” He was like, “I’m just going to watch a ball game on T.V. and take it easy.” He didn’t do much at all but he put in the effort to make it happen. Again, I was fortunate I had a role model and a Hero in my life who was an entrepreneur.
I think that in the school system, they don’t teach entrepreneurialism, they don’t teach people to have the desire to want to be a creator, be a visionary, to want to go out on their own. You usually just learn the 1-2-3s of being involved in a business or accounting, history or geography, whatever it might be.
Even in high school and grade school, I know that no one really struck me as a Hero. Even in the academic system that inspired me to want to become self employed or an entrepreneur, or to let me know there were options out there.
I don’t have to work for the man, punch a time clock and like everybody, go to grade school, graduate high school, go and get a job. You work for that job about 10 years, get another job and that’s it. You are there for 20 or 30 years and you retire and whatever. Then it’s moving down to Florida to enjoy your retirement.
That does happen, but small business fuels the economy. Most of the jobs created right now are created through small businesses. Entrepreneurs, they fuel and drive the economy as well because they are the visionaries, creating the ideas. They are creating companies today with one employee that become the companies that have 5,000 people tomorrow.
Without those entrepreneurs and those visionaries and those people that are willing to take the chance and risk it all to make it happen, no matter what negative circumstances and consequences may lie ahead of them, those are the ones that are making a difference.
I think it’s great you are getting to the source, as we talked about changing society as a whole, it all begins with the children, it all begins with those that are impressionable, those that are young, those that are going through the school system.
I think it’s great you are trying to appeal to them, to get them to share some of the views and the beliefs that you have as it applies to being an entrepreneur. I think that a lot of good will come of it, by giving people those Heroes they can latch onto to hopefully aspire to bigger and better things in business and their careers.
The school system, academia, is not geared toward grooming and molding entrepreneurs. It’s grooming you to hopefully find a skill, an area that you would think you would enjoy working within and basically take you down the path so you can become a good and effective employee.
I’ve been through university, dropped out of university, been to college, luckily made it through college. In terms of what I learned in college and university, I think one of my bosses early in life said it best. He said, “You go through grade school and then once you go through college/university, all it really becomes is an exercise in stress management.”
You look at business. There are constantly curve balls thrown at you. I don’t care if you are self employed or work for somebody else. You’ve got projects, deadlines; you’ve got things to do in an amount of time you think that can’t be done. You are juggling multiple projects. Companies are downsizing, they are outsourcing. You’ve got more stuff on your plate than ever before, and in many cases, you are making the same money, if not less than you were several years ago.
It too, is an exercise in stress management. I really think that getting essays in on time, your thesis, working on projects, presentations and studying every night that just really develops the foundation for you having the skills and the stress management skills to survive in the business world, but it is not teaching you how to survive as an entrepreneur.
In many cases, it’s totally doing the opposite. It’s grooming you to become a cog, a wheel in the machine, a spoke in the hub of an organization to do your role and that’s about it. It’s a totally different world when you basically cut the apron strings.
You cut the parachute off and you survive without a net as an entrepreneur, knowing that there is no paycheck, no benefits, there’s nothing, and obviously you have a gun to your head every day of the week because if you don’t produce, you don’t eat, you don’t pay the mortgage, you don’t pay the car payments and everything falls down like a house of cards.
I totally agree that the school systems have really not done anything to address this, to encourage it. It’s kind of a shame, because as I said, we all know that small business is really what fuels the economy. It fuels job growth, and that starts with entrepreneurs.
It’s developing that fertile soil in the school system and planting those seeds at such a young age. People who do venture off into entrepreneurialism are doing that by accident or stumbling on it by mistake, or they happen to aspire towards or have an influence in their life, but there are probably so many other people, if exposed to even Heroes early in their high school years, would maybe take a shining to some of the things you and I talked about and hopefully looking at being an entrepreneur as a “career choice,” just like being a doctor, nurse, fireman or firewoman, whatever it might be. It’s very important.
to be continued...