Welcome back to another episode of the startup therapy podcast. This is Ryan Rutan joined as always by Will Schroeder, my friend, the founder and CEO of Startups. Dot com. Well, we talk to lots and lots of founders, right? And we hear lots and lots of founder origin stories and so many of them track back to early, early days, right? Childhood. Yep. And so fun today to explore like what's so unique about. Childhood that most founders do trace their origin stories back there.
Why it seems that a lot of the seeds for entrepreneurship or foundership are planted before we've even made it to high school. Right. And I, you and I have heard a lot of stories. We have a lot of stories. Why don't you open up with one? I've got a lot of stories. I love origin stories. I love origin stories, right? Like I love hearing how founders, you know, kind of came from nothing and kind of built something.
What's fascinating about it is how all those stories sound so unique and yet they all follow the same pattern. Yeah, yeah, right. You know, it's unique stories, but with a very, very common theme. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And again, they're extraordinary in their own right, because when someone starts with nothing and then builds something, that always makes for a great, you know, rags to riches story.
Yeah. Except It, like, it's so, the same types of moments in time seem to have happened to so many founders, uh, early in childhood that you start to say, hey, there's something there. Yep. Right? Like, there's something about those formative years where something really important clicked for those folks.
And I think what we can talk about, you know, we talked about some of these stories, but we can also talk about what is it that clicked and how can we get this in front of more kids and get more kids clicking? Right? You know, how to make this a thing. How do we drive more clicks? Something to think about a lot. I love that. Uh, and, and so, you know, so we can talk about it. So, let me give you an origin story.
Where I grew up in, uh, in, in Southern Connecticut was kind of like a, a blue collar area. Connecticut's generally considered like a really rich state, uh, not where I lived. It was interesting. It was like in my neighborhood, there were probably no less than 70 to 100 kids. Kind of stacked. These were old school houses, typical eighties movie, right?
Like just roving gangs of, of, of unsupervised children, so many unsupervised children, which, which is kind of, you know, the setting for this, these were a bunch of homes that were all built after the second world war. So you had two family homes that were maybe 800 to a thousand square feet on the top and bottom. And so now stack those next to each other, and now picture an entire grid. Those are a lot of kids getting let out, you know, on a Saturday morning.
And so, so tons of kids in the neighborhood. And there's this, this one kid, this kid's about, uh, eight years old. And, uh, uh, little boy, uh, great kid, but had this really Tough situation that everybody in the neighborhood was very familiar with. Uh, he had grown up, he had never met his father, so he had a single mother, and the single mom was gone all the time. So picture, and this is like an 80s kind of era, an eight year old kid completely on his own. Completely on his own.
Also, without any You're just reciting the intro to Stranger Things. It really does, it kind of resonates, right? Yeah. And then there's this odd, this odd event that seemed to happen at the power plant. Anyway, so this kid, on a given day, like, around like, um, dinner time, you know, lights go down, uh, whatever, would basically try to figure out whose house he could go to to get dinner. Because there was no dinner at home. There's no parents at home.
And so, in very 80s fashion, he would just kind of float from like, you know, kid's parent to kid's parent. And that's kind of how he ate. They also, around that time, uh, everybody kind of knew this, it was kind of sad, had gotten evicted from their house. So, they were basically squatting on a, the floor of a neighbor's apartment. So this little 8 year old kid, this is what's interesting, because I have an 8 year old kid. So I think about this, like, like, Pretty easy to contextualize, yep.
I know, to think of this in like his terms when I think about this, I can't picture an 8 year old boy, like my 8 year old boy, dealing with any of this. This kid's super independent, comes home, basically he's sleeping on the floor of a neighbor's apartment for like a couple years, wakes up in the morning, And, uh, he's a cardboard box that has all of his clothes in it. That's his dresser, right? Puts on his clothes, whatever. He's like a, like, pretty good natured kid.
On this particular day, though, he goes, um, goes to school. Back then, Heh, alright, if you didn't appreciate this. Back then, school lunch cost a dollar at a public school. You, you bought what's called a lunch ticket. And, uh, anyway, so, he goes to the bus stop. And on this particular day, he's got a quarter. On most days, on most days, his parents didn't give him money for lunch, so he just had to figure it out. Like, that was his thing, right?
And what's interesting about that is, on this particular day, he's like, I've got a quarter. How do I make a quarter work? Because I can't go to school and buy anything. So, he's at the bus stop in the morning. He goes across the street to a market. In Connecticut, they're all called delis. And he goes to the deli. And he walks in, and he looks around what he can buy for 25 cents. And he spots a pack of Now and Laters. Do you remember Now and Laters? They were like, I still love Now and Laters.
That's why they call them that. I, I never understood why it was called Now and Laters. Like the candy doesn't really change as you eat it. Like it's the same thing all the way through. It's because I like them now and later. Yeah, and so, so he decides to buy a thing of Now and Laters, and if you recall, Now and Laters were, uh, Five to a pack. Six. Six to a pack, alright. I thought it was five two, I thought it was five two. Uh, I looked it up, it was six.
Anyway, so he buys some Now and Laters, and the idea is, this is, I mean, pretty clever for an eight year old, that he can basically ration his food, and of course he's eight, so he thinks it, it being all sugar, can ration his food throughout the day, okay? Uh, just kinda how he handles business. So he gets on the bus. And something really interesting and life changing happens to this kid. He's, he's sitting in the back seat, and one of his friends says, uh, Hey, can I have a now and later?
And here's the part they kind of don't tell you about in these origin stories, is how humiliating that is. Right, because think about it, man, like, the kid's saying, can I have a now and later? And the kid's being kind, he's just, you know, asking for a now and later. What he doesn't realize, that's that eight year old boy's lunch. Yeah, that's the kid's Kellewerk intake for the day. Right. Exactly. So, so what the kid does is he basically says, Hey, you know, kind of pauses.
And so his friend says to him, well, Hey, I'll pay you for it. And he's like, okay. And he's like, how much? And with the kid thought this eight year old boy thought was how much should you pay for them? So he says back to me, he says, Oh, uh, 25 cents. So his friend produces a quarter because it's a lot, a lot of money to him, right? Gives him a quarter takes the pack. And then a magical thing happens. Takes one. Gives it back. Hands the rest of it back. Oh man.
And concept of margin is revealed. Exactly, right? And so this little year old boy has no idea what just happened. But another friend sees this happening and he joins in and says, hey, I want one. Gives him a quarter, right? By the end of the bus ride, this kid has sold all six pieces. Right? Buck fifty later, he's got money for lunch and money to buy twice as much inventory for tomorrow. Mind blown, right?
And so, the coolest, the coolest part about the story though is, this kid goes into the lunchroom that day. In hands of a lunch lady, the first dollar he's ever earned. The first dollar he's ever earned. The meal he paid for. Exactly, and the pride that comes with that. And this is where it all starts, right? Where it begins. Goes and he gets a french bread pizza, which you know, it's gross. Oh man. And he gets, uh, in a chocolate milk. But here's what's interesting.
He takes it, he goes like into the corner of the lunchroom where nobody can see him, and he cries. Yeah. Right? That, that was a lunch he wasn't expecting. But they weren't sad tears. Yeah, they were happy tears. Of course, because at eight years old, this little boy knew. He'd never go hungry again. It doesn't have to anymore. I have agency. That's it.
I can change circumstances I don't have to accept and deal with what was handed to me if I was handed a quarter I don't have to sit at a quarter. I can turn that into something else and it is such an amazing feeling And it's amazing as like as parents. Well, we see this a lot too when our kids go through some of these same realizations Albeit, uh, none of them have ever had to go, you know, hungry or wonder where their lunch was coming from.
But to watch a child understand that they now have some level of control over their environment is something truly special. It's unbelievable. And so this eight year old boy goes on to create hundreds of millions of dollars of value because he, you know, understands this early in his life and employs hundreds of people and, and changes countless lives. And, you know, Ryan, as you know, the reason I know this kid's story so well is because it's me. Right.
I thought it was Willy Wonka this whole time. Are you serious? No. No. Right. I am well acquainted with now and later the sweet story of Will Schroeder. Yeah. Yeah. Now and later. Right. And I like to tell that story. You know, it's interesting, but I want to mention this. I told that story for the first time at the, uh, entrepreneurship class I teach in my kids middle school. And as it happens, my 13 year old daughter, Summer, was in the room when I told the story.
And that story goes on to talk about, I had a very bizarre origin story. I went to college for a year as a fake student. I basically, you know, like, every weird thing that you could possibly do and all the things you'd have to overcome, I did. But Ryan, you know, I think you'd appreciate this. Afterward, uh, Summer rode home with me. And she's like real quiet in the car. And she's thinking, I can tell like her, her, her mind is spinning, right?
Finally, she's like, Dad, I just have to tell you, I had no idea what it took for you to, to create the life that you've created for us. And I'm so incredibly thankful. And I'm so proud of you. Amazing to see that kind of gratitude and maturity. I gotta say, like, 40 years of grinding was worth a few seconds of that gratitude. Isn't it funny? Isn't it funny though, like, what some of the actual payoffs to entrepreneurship are?
Alright, of course there's the obvious ones, like, if you made money, that's great, right? You bought a house, that's great. But there are so many of these other beautiful little nuanced moments. Throughout our careers that make all of this stuff worth it, right? From that first time a client says yes to hearing your kid, tell you how proud they are that you clawed your way out of nothingness and made something out of it simply because you had this magical realization that.
I can change the world. I can choose my path, right? I don't have to take what was handed to me. And that's really what it's about, man. It's about, you know, in this case, you know, I'm literally teaching kids, but it's about those formative years when the mold hasn't been set yet. And we can take these kids in any direction we want, you know, from, from bad to good, unfortunately, right?
Yeah. But what rarely happens, this is what I think is fascinating, obviously what we'll unpack, is what rarely happens is somebody makes such a big deal about teaching kids The value of agency. Yeah. This idea that I can form the world how I want it to be. I don't have to take the script that was given to me. And then, of course, the tools to do it. And I think we should talk about both. I think we should talk about what the sense of agency actually means.
Yeah. You know, and also why, like, why it's not being taught or, you know, how hard it is for kids to get it. But then, you know, let's also talk about after that. I want to get into What kind of tools do kids need in order to understand agency and be able to kind of forge their own destiny? Yeah, that's the crux of it, right? If we ask the question like, so what is it about childhood that drives that gear that to go on and do these things?
How do we go from selling, you know, candy in elementary school to building startups as adults? And it becomes fairly clear that entrepreneurship begins In that moment, when we realize we can choose our own path, even if we're only a hungry eight year old kid. But you know what's weird, Ryan? We're usually not told. Here's what we hear. Usually not. Are we ever? Right, right. It's usually one end of the spectrum, which is this amorphous claim, you can be anything. Yeah, yeah.
Which is totally untrue. Which, yeah, that's, talk about choice paradox, because they didn't even have the choice, you can be anything. You mean any, any, anything? Yeah, great. Well, that helps me to point myself nowhere. There are so many things that is not true, right? Now, I know someone's going to push back and say, oh, you don't want to tell a kid they can't be anything. I'm not saying that.
I'm saying that what you want to say is there are some things that you can become, but what's important is that you make them happy. Right? They're a product of your vision, of your intent, of yourself. Not, here was 12 options and pick one and that's it. Even worse in my case, I remember taking that exam, like that little test out of freshman or sophomore year of high school. And it was like four questions, right? Like what could we possibly derive from four questions?
But the, the, the things that came out for me were, uh, I should either be a lawyer Or a forest ranger. And so I thought, like, well, I guess You would've been a great forest ranger. If environmental I got the beard for it. If environmental law had been a thing, then maybe I would've leaned that direction. But, like, that wasn't even an option. It was like, do you want to be a lawyer or a forest ranger? I guess. But back that up, man. It started with, here are preset scripts.
And you pick one, that's it. You pick it, right? Doctor, lawyer, fireman, policeman, right? Like, that's it. Those were the choices, right? And there was no sense that I had any choice really in the matter outside of like choosing one of those things that were predefined. And that even that was going to be narrowed down based on a couple of arbitrary things like I like being outside, ergo forest ranger. And I have a good sense of logic and language. Ergo, lawyer. Come on!
How many more things can you do with those skill sets? But building that, it takes time to be instantiated with this idea of a preset script. Yeah. That's sort of the point. By the time you've made it through so many grades, assuming you have, and you know, maybe on to college and, and beyond, um, and even in the workforce, you have just been told over and over, this is the path.
You show up, you complete this work, you get this grade, you get this payment, you get this, uh, degree, and that's it. That is life. You just pick from a script. And, and dude, that, that goes back to what we just talked about. Like, this is exactly why the seeds of entrepreneurship grow during childhood. Yep. Because we haven't been far enough down that path where, you know, we've, all the curiosity's been beaten out of us.
And we have not yet been conditioned to believe that this is just how it is, right? Them's the breaks, kids. These are your choices, right? Off to the military for you. To be fair, I'm not saying it's for everybody. I'm not saying 100 percent of kids should learn entrepreneurship. I was coaching my kids hockey a couple days ago. I'm standing next to one of the parents of one of the kids that I coach.
And the dad was saying, we were talking about working at startups, and he said, man, that's the polar opposite. Of what I'm bred to do. He's like, I grew up as an attorney. I was a prosecutor. And then the first chance I got, I went to go work for Chase bank because it was even more secure. Yes. He's like, I have no risk appetite whatsoever. So that guy should absolutely not be an entrepreneur, but, but hang on. So entrepreneurship, not for everybody, but agency.
The core of what we're actually talking about here, everyone should have agency, right? That father had agency, hopefully some level of agency, chose the path of becoming, right? Became the prosecutor and then said, Hey, I'm going to use my agency to choose to go and do something else that I feel is better for me. It's more secure, right? That's agency. Let's build on that a little bit, because I want to get into that. When we talk about choice, Okay, I can choose to do this or that.
Let's separate that, it might be a little bit gray area, but let's separate that from agency. I'm gonna put choice as in, here are my, here's what's in front of me, and I just get to pick one. Agency is, there's nothing in front of me because I'm a blank canvas, and I'm gonna create from scratch. Yes. What my world is going to be. Right. It's red pill, blue pill. Screw you. Right? Like, I don't want pills. Right? I don't want to do my own thing. Yep. That's agency. You bet.
I think that's a hard concept to, to digest as we get older. Yeah. But what's interesting, it's such an easy concept for kids. We don't know what can't be. We, we don't, we don't know. We don't know that there's a path we have to follow. We don't know that there are binary choices in life. Right. It's just that we, we have that flexibility. My son, he genuinely believes. That he's gonna first play in the NFL, uh, when he's done with that, ironically, he's going to become, um, a doctor.
Yeah. Because he's, he said that, that I'm gonna understand injuries really well in the NFL. Yeah, yes he will. Yeah. Yes he will. He'll suffer them himself. And so, my son will likely not do either of those things, and I know it's heresy for a parent to say that. Yeah. I just know my son well enough, I, I, I know what his, his skills and attributes are. They're probably gonna head in another direction, who knows what that is. Right? Yeah. But here's what I'm saying. He doesn't know.
That he couldn't do that. Yeah. Right? Like, he doesn't understand the size requirement for the NFL. Right? And, and if he's a copy of me, he won't make it. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. And so, my point is, it's really interesting to me, it's fascinating, That his world is still a blank canvas. Yeah. My job, as a parent, I can't speak to anybody else's job as a parent, Is to keep that canvas as open as possible, So that he keeps asking, what if. Right?
You know, help him with direction, help him, you know, find what he wants, but make him keep asking questions. Yes. Versus shutting him down and being like, no, this isn't it. Now, here's what's interesting. If I contrast that to my daughter, who's 13, my daughter has got it all figured out. She has one plan and there's no plan B. Yeah. She's 13 years old. She wants to go to Harvard. She wants to be a cardiologist. That's it. And she probably will.
And she probably, yeah, she's like a perfect straight A student, like whatever, and she's smart as can be. So, that's fine too. My point is, uh, I'm there to help them ask questions, I'm not there to tell them what to do. Not in that respect. But I think, within this concept of agency, Ryan, I think for us, as parents The more we can say, what if, or the more we can say, what do you want to do, or, what don't you want to do? Yeah, yeah, 100%.
Those explorations are the things that matter the most, right? I think that it's really about stopping looking for, like, these kind of hard coded, discreet answers. Again, like, where's the path for me, right? Do I need that? And instead, just trying to remain curious and asking yourself, you know, letting them ask themselves, why not? And come to those conclusions. The coolest thing about, you know, our jobs here at startups.
com and what we get to do all day is all we work with our people with agency, right? We almost forget for a second. If you, if you, if you sat here long enough, you'd forget that the rest of the world has regular jobs because everyone that we work with creating their stuff from scratch, so at some point. Each of these folks had to have a moment where they realized that agency could exist. Yeah, yeah. Right?
Where they realized that maybe the path that life had prescribed wasn't their path, who'd have guessed, and they could create a new one. What's also interesting about that, Ryan, I'm curious your thoughts on this. Once we understand that the world is malleable, it gets Really interesting. Sure does. When I was eight, that day I discovered that life, my life, is malleable. Right? The fact that I didn't have parents, or I didn't have, uh, income was a condition, but it wasn't the answer. Correct.
And it wasn't a permanent condition. Right! And so, think of how powerful it is, early on, if we show kids How malleable the world can be. Because the reality is most kids grow up in a shit situation, right? We're in the most privileged country in history in the U. S. Ryan, you're in Guatemala. You're not in the most privileged country. I'm in nearly the opposite, yeah. Right, right. And you see every day how hard coded folks lives in environments feel.
Oh, there's a true belief that there's no way to transcend situation here. Station. Like, whatever you have, wherever you started, is where you're going to end up. There are very, very few breakout cases. And people don't ever seem to believe that they could be one of those, right? You see that it's hard coded. It is what it is. And it happens earlier. You bet. And there's a cultural phenomenon that basically said, look, things suck here. Right. And the best you can do is make it suck less.
That is the polar opposite of agency. That is, you've been conditioned that you are trapped. And the truth is, if you're conditioned, you know, it's the, uh, the, the elephant with, with the rope around its foot. Right? It just, it's always had that shackle. Yeah. And so it feels like it still can't go anywhere. That is the worst thing we can do to a kid. Take away that hope. You know, something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new.
Everything you're dealing with right now has been done a thousand times before you. Which means the answer already exists, you may just not know it. But that's okay. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all day long at groups. startups. com Any of this sounds familiar. Stop guessing about what to do. Let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it.
In my case, what we have tried to do with our kids is to consistently show them how to take agency, right? Not not necessarily just as themselves, but even us as adults, how that is a constant and current process that we're always, always going through the choice to move to Guatemala in the first place. That was a choice that was us exercising agency and saying, we wanted to change something about the situation in which we were raising our kids. And we wanted a different environment.
We've been here six and a half years and now we are saying we want to change that again. And here's why. And, and there are tough lessons that live within that, right? Because to leave here, there are sacrifices. Yeah, there are benefits on the other side.
And so it's a matter of truly exercising that agency in the way that you just described, which is asking why, staying curious about things, and really not having to say, like, here's all the reasons why, no. Or here's all the, just the reasons why, yes. Because that turns it back into that binary, binary choice. And instead, showing them how malleable life is, and that with some agency, that you can try to make it what you want. You can fail at it too.
And we've made some decisions where they look at it and they go, Why'd you do that? And we're like, we thought it would be different. At its foundation, you have to have this glimmer of optimism of what's possible, right? And I think that's so important. When you take that out of a child, when you take the optimism or hope, okay, out of a child, you forever neuter them. Yep. Right, from opportunity. Now, there's a version of parents that I get, which they want to be protective.
I don't, I don't want to instill this false hope in my child. They'll never make it to something. Yeah. I get it. I get it. Okay? And I understand where that comes from. Who wouldn't want to, quote, protect their children? But you're also protecting them from success. Right? You're also protecting them from agency. To be able to say, my situation sucks. Yeah. I'm gonna do whatever it takes to recreate my world.
To make it what I want now some people will listen to that and they'll say that's bullshit Will you've just got this false hope and it doesn't work for everybody except one thing We talked to hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs who did exactly this. Did exactly this, yeah. Right? Doesn't work for everyone. Just works for everyone we talk to. Strange. Yeah. We're a little biased. But what I'm saying is like, my situation was fucked up, sure.
But it's a fraction of where we see other people come from. Sure. Right? People coming from, especially from other countries, different cultural environments, etc. Dramatically more challenging. Yep. Fun fact. As you know, I was given a keynote. at an entrepreneurship conference last week. And I told that eight year old kid's story for the first time in public. And it was, it was interesting to me because I, I, you know, I, I'm not shy about my background. Right.
I don't usually go up and keynote about it. And I, but I was telling this, this story of agency. But what was interesting was afterward, a whole bunch of people lined up to talk to me. And I'm assuming they're going to want to pitch ideas. None of it. I mean, a few. Most people that came up to me wanted to talk about how they had the same challenges as a child. And they didn't know they were allowed to talk about it. They didn't know there was a path forward.
First kid that comes up to me, super smart. He's like, both my parents were murdered. Right? I mean, whoa, holy shit. Wow. Right? Yeah. And he explained the situation. He was very open about it and vulnerable, which I respected. But he's like, I didn't know I could talk about it. I didn't know that there was a path. Now, he's at an entrepreneurship conference. So obviously, you know, he's got an idea where he wants to take it. Another woman comes up to me, probably 2021.
And, uh, she said that her challenge was that she had to be able to get off of her reservation in order to become an entrepreneur, right? Like, um, you know, very strong Indian culture. And the idea of leaving the reservation, of becoming anything but, you know, someone on the reservation, not knocking that, by the way, I'm just saying culturally, was a big deal for her. And, you know, that, that defined her childhood, that struggle, et cetera.
But I think what's interesting is It also accelerates you. Well, I think there's something magic that happens, man. There's something magic that happens. It goes from being when you take hardship. And you add a little bit of agency, realization of agency, that hardship becomes a foundation that you push off of hardship of that same sort without that realization of agency becomes an anchor that you just continue to drag around with you, right? It goes back. It's the elephant with the rope around.
It's like it doesn't realize it's not there. At some point, the elephant that realize there's some agency, Ties that rope into a, into a, into a bow and celebrates with it, right? Like at some point it becomes the thing that actually helps you move forward instead of the thing that holds you back. And I think the difference there is simply a dash of agency.
You know, what's interesting too is for a lot of founders, I think they say this with like, like a bit of humility, but I will say the reason I'm a founder is cause I'm totally unemployable, but think about that for a second. Had I not been able to, to, to create my own path, I would not have survived well in a corporate environment, in a lot of environments, really, you just, you'd say the same thing, but in a very different context, you'd say. I'm unemployed because I'm unemployable. Right.
Very different. Right. Again, like that, that agency changed that story. I would never want to manage me. Um, that, that would be my greatest nightmare, but, but my, my point is, I think for a lot of, uh, entrepreneurs, part of what drives them, they want to create a world on their own terms. Yeah. Let me be like specific about what some of these, these parameters are. Some people look at it like, Oh, I want to create a business to make money. Sure. I get that. But a lot of folks are saying.
I want to create a business so I can travel all the time. Yeah. Right? I can be nomadic. Okay? Other people saying, I want to start a business because for who I am, maybe the color of my skin, or my gender, or you know, whatever it is, that I'm being persecuted for what I'm trying to do. So fuck all of you guys. I'm going to go do my own thing. I'm going to hire whoever the hell I want. I'm going to work with whoever the hell I want. I'm going to do whatever the hell I want.
And they want to create that agency for their life. As well they should. Yeah, yeah. It's so important to, to you and I, Ryan, to give people not just the sense of agency, but, but I want to transition here, but the tools to do it. It's one thing to say you can be anything or you can create your own world, blank canvas, blah, blah, blah. But if we don't give you the actual tools to do it, what good is it?
Ryan, when you think about the tools that we're teaching founders, and in this case, let's say, uh, teaching kids, and your own kids for that matter. Sure. You know, what are some of the tools that matter the most to you? I think some of it just goes back to like that, that hope and desire for something different is okay. Right. That doesn't necessarily feel like a tool unless you don't have it. And then all of a sudden it sure does.
It feels like the shovel that digs you out of the landslides are covered in. So I think that, you know, it's the, if we go back to like some of the tools, right, I was the kid with the proverbial lemonade stand, right? Six, seven years old. I didn't have a lemonade stand. I had a lemonade wagon. So mine was a slight deviation from the normal model, but that's because you were the, uh, you're the original food truck.
I quite literally, man, because we lived in a developing neighborhood and we lived at the end of a cul de sac. Nobody was going by my house. I couldn't set up a lemonade stand, right? And the rents at all my friend's driveways were way too high. So I grabbed the radio flyer wagon and igloo cooler that my dad had for softball practice that he coached. And I filled the damn thing with lemonade, right? Started hauling it around.
Selling it to the construction workers who were, who were working on the, the various lot sites. Uh, and so like, I learned a lot of lessons or a lot of tools that came out of that. But I think one of the biggest tools wasn't, it wasn't the money that I earned that bought me a super, super sweet ET bicycle. Uh, it wasn't that it was the knowledge.
That I could create something from nothing you bet right that I could I could do that right and so it was these the early learnings that propel you into so I'd be like the the tools are really being open to trying, right, especially in an age where you're still relatively fearless, you're afraid of certain things, but you're not afraid of failure, right, don't care about. Yeah. Less consequence. Look, I think the, the mindset shifts are, are perhaps the most important tools to me.
It's mostly going to come back to like the mental models that all of a sudden you realize, especially the ones you've been handed, even at a young age are largely broken and don't have to see everything through that lens that you've been handed. So casting away the lens was probably the biggest tool that I developed at that age. When I sold that first pack of Now and Laters, unwillingly, that was the tool.
I realized that if I had a product that someone wanted, I could sell it for more than I paid for it, right? Now, while that sounds dead obvious now, it was not to 8 year old me. I did it by accident. But I caught on quickly. Yeah. Right. That's the thing. But you do, right? Like I, it's funny now that I'm thinking about it. One of my, one of my lessons at that same stage was agency with an agency.
Right. So I had the agency to go in and to, to create the lemonade wagon after a couple of days, this thing happened where some of the guys weren't buying it anymore. And I could have just accepted that like, they're not thirsty and want, but I took agency within that situation. I wouldn't ask like, Hey man, you, you, you bought from me yesterday. You haven't bought for a couple of days. And he said, yeah, you know, your, your lemonade's a little sweet.
I like it a little, I like it a little more sour. I'm like, okay. Heard feedback similar to that from a couple other people. Asked my dad if he could take the, the, the, the 15 bucks I'd made so far and go buy me another igloo. Bought me another cooler next day. Mixed up the, mixed up the sour batch, right? Less sugar. So you, so, building at the rent, the tool you learned was customer discovery. Yeah, exactly. These are the tools I'm talking about, right?
These are the fundamental utility belt of a founder. One is opportunity, one is finding profit, one is customer discovery. The other was you realized that in order to get more customers, you had to go get them versus them come to you. And here's what's fascinating about all these tools. You only need to learn them once. Yeah, yeah. Right? You only need to learn them once. To some degree, I am still always a seven year old kid pulling around a wagon full of lemonade. I'll give you a funny story.
Uh, I might have told you this once before, but, um, my old business partner, uh, Blaine Walter, they tell this story about, uh, the CD player. Yes. Right. So, so, uh, for folks in the audience that haven't heard this one. Great story. So my old business partner, um, when I ran the agency, uh, his dad had started a Cardinal health, you know, which is one of the, uh, I think it's like 15 largest country company started as a little grocery store.
It did in Columbus, Ohio. Uh, anyway, uh, he's, he's the son of the founder. He told me this great story about him and his brother and his brother is like, I'm going to say 12 years old and he wants to buy a CD Walkman. So you got to figure this is like late eighties, right? And his dad, who's one of the most stoic CEOs, right? I've only met his dad maybe a half dozen times. And when Bob Walter looks at you, he doesn't look at you, he looks through you.
And what I mean is his level of intensity is unbelievable. A brilliant man, a brilliant man. But his intensity even scares me. Okay, and I'm not even his kid. Anyway, here, but this is such a dad entrepreneur thing to do. So he says to the older, uh, brother. He said, look, I'll give you the rest of the money. I'll advance you on your allowance. But if you don't pay it back with interest, how awesome is that with interest? Okay. I'm going to repossess it from you.
So no surprise, a month goes by, falls behind in his payments on his allowance. And dad being the CEO and founder that he is repossesses the disband, but that wasn't enough. The important lesson was that he sold it back to Blaine for 50 cents on the dollar. Right. And Blaine was like, I never, I never needed to learn a lesson about debt ever again. That was it. How amazing is that story? Will, is that the origin story for Afford It?
Is that where you decided to sell electronics on weekly payments? Right, I wish, I wish. And so, but what I'm saying is like, these little lessons that seem, you know, trite at the time, are incredibly powerful and they form this tool belt that most kids don't have. Most kids don't understand what the tools would be to be able to identify a problem and solve it.
When we do this entrepreneurship class, again, this is middle school, the first thing we do, uh, is we open up, uh, the, the, the class is designed to build a pitch deck and at the end pitch it shark tank style to a bunch of founders and the kids love it. But the first thing we do, first day, um, this is actually tomorrow, is we talk about, um, identifying problems.
And I always tell them, I said, all of you are worried that you don't have an idea for a company, but you all have ideas right now because you all got problems. I give them the tool, I teach them the tool, that every problem is an opportunity. That all products come from a problem. And we map back to, you know, every product in their life started with somebody's problem. Now they have that tool. Now instead of saying, oh, I haven't invented something, as if the invention.
They have this new tool that says, wait a minute, I need to look for problems, and problems are everywhere. And a lot of those problems affect me, personally, which make them very good problems for me to solve. Now they have that tool and this series of tools, uh, problem identification, trying to figure out how to make a profit, sourcing things, selling things. Once you have those tools early on, all of a sudden the world gets very interesting.
I remember one of the lessons that I took from that then was that where you apply those tools starts to matter a lot. Cause I went on to like do a bunch of other things to make money from an early age. I realized like, okay, this is interesting. I can go solve people's problems and make money. Then I realized at some point, not all problems are worth solving because it's not just about the money, right?
You start to understand like, okay, I could go do this, but I'd rather spend my time doing that. And so that not all problems, I think it was one of those fun realizations for me was just because I could spot something as an opportunity. i. e. I saw a problem, understood that it was worth solving from a monetary standpoint, found the solution and could get paid for it. That wasn't actually the pinnacle of the exercise. All right. That making sure that it was something that I love doing.
Like we, we joke around all the time, right? Like, you know, if, if we had built lawyers. com into the startups. com, I wouldn't have nearly as much fun with what I do. Nothing against lawyers, except yeah. Something against lawyers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We need less of you, but we're about to have less of you.
But, but that said, that said, I think about all of the tools, just like you described, Ryan, that I developed as a kid and how by developing as a kid, they also made me more advanced as an adult. A while back, one of my friends, uh, we were kind of going deep on this. And he said to me, how do you think you learned sales? He said, you're, you're, you're a very charismatic salesperson. Like you're very good at communicating what's important to you, et cetera.
And I said, the way I got good at it. was because I was forced to listen. And what that meant was, and this is, and it kind of ties into the story almost exactly, when I said I'd have to run around to figure out, you know, where I was gonna eat dinner tonight, it was a sales pitch to that kid's mom that I was worthy of, of having dinner there. And honestly, It was the 80s, people weren't that, like, cool, right? Like, they were fine with telling you to fuck off.
And so, I would have to basically charm the mom or dad for a brief period of time. But to do that, I had to listen. Which kids don't necessarily have to do. But I had to listen as to what was important to them, you know, etc. So that I could know to say the right things, right? And not come across like an asshole. That's sales! Right. Literally the foundation of sales. Now it came from a bit of a fucked up place, but I didn't need to learn it again.
Oh, and again, it came from a fucked up place, but that little bit of agency that you discovered along the way, turn that into a powerful tool instead of something that was going to hold you back in the future, right? I think it's, it's so important. We get into a point. Okay. Listen, now I've got this tool called sales. Yeah. Okay. Maybe one of the most powerful tools you can have as a founder. What are we not selling? We're selling people on the idea of the work for us.
We're selling people on the idea to buy our product. We're selling investors on giving us money. We're selling all the time. Constantly in a lot of people. And I say this in a good way. Have never had to sell? Because there was never a consequence if they didn't. You could say, well, I tried to talk my parents into getting me a Nintendo. And if you didn't, you'd be disappointed, but you were fed, right? So, like, the stakes weren't that high, okay?
Now, uh, when I say that, when you've been conditioned to sell for a long time, you just naturally do things that most people don't do. I would put listening at the top. If I'm a good salesperson, it's because I'm a good listener. And it's important to me to make sure the other person is happy, right? Versus, let me just tell you why I want something. Right. A good salesperson says, I'm going to come from a position of knowing why you want something, and then working backward from there.
Yeah. But once you figure that out, you can apply it to a thousand things. I would go around, around this time. I loved building forts, which obviously also had an early path, but I love building forts. I think, I think you've actually in this, in the course of this call, you have completed the, uh, the 10 by 10 grid of 80s child bingo. And anyway, so. But one of my things would, would be, I'd come up with like, a plan for what this fort would be.
And then I would go recruit all the kids in the neighborhood. And if you grew up with me, you know exactly this. We're always recruiting, right? It's like a startup. Selling the vision of what this thing could be, explaining why you're gonna work for sweat equity to do this. And then convincing everybody at the same time to show up at the same place and work under a shared vision. And I loved it. I loved it, right?
And, and we always had these cool forts and these cool situations that would have never existed had someone not pulled this all together. But all of those things I was learning, especially the recruiting and things like that, here's why I think you should come and carry all this plywood from, away from a construction site in the middle of the night so that we can go build a fort with it, right? Here's why it'll benefit you.
But what's great about teaching and learning those things, um, at that age is that there Easy to learn. Yeah. Because you don't know why you wouldn't do it. Right. Right. What's amazing about that, despite being easy to learn at that age, the transferability and value of those skills as we age just increase over time, right? It just becomes more and more valuable. We get to exercise them on bigger and bigger stakes outcomes. And it's interesting because a lot of people never had to sell.
I'll give an example. So my daughter, she's smartest can be, but she doesn't have to sell anything. Now, to be fair, in a couple of instances, I think I told you this when she wanted a puppy, my, this is like a few years ago, my daughter went and made like the most comprehensive PowerPoint presentation with slides in fact, this become a thing because, because I get pitched PowerPoints by my kids all the time. It's hysterical, but like who started this?
Like, it wasn't like, I was like, what you're going to need to use to build a presentation. They figured it out. Right? It's a thing. And so, uh, she, Summer, my daughter, uh, pulls my wife and I, uh, into the living room. And she's kinda nervous. She is nervous, right? A lot, a lot, a lot on the line here. A lot lot at stake. But, she's all business, okay? And she, uh, she, she opens up her presentation, and to her credit, it was very well done.
As a dad, you know, as a parent, like, this was such a moment. I was like, I, I, I thought two things. This is one of the coolest things ever. And there's no way your mom's going to let you get a puppy, no matter what's on here, right? Anyway, so she gives the presentation and she has like facts and figures. And she's like, and did you know that one in four, uh, four puppies actually don't shed? She's already thinking about what my wife's, uh, you know, objections are going to be.
Controls heart rate and blood pressure. It was, it was amazing. Now, the reason I bring that up is because, not because she's a great salesperson. I bring it up because the whole presentation was clearly designed to, to think through our objections. It wasn't about what she wanted. It was about what we wanted. And that's what made it effective. Learning what triggers work, like, and kids are amazing at this. I mean, like, there is a natural gear that kids have too.
And it goes back to something we talked about before, which is like wanting to have some control over part of life. This is quite literally what childhood is about. It's about pushing the boundaries so you understand where they exist, which ones are flexible, which ones aren't, and trying to have some control over your environment. And this is what childhood is about. Watching them navigate it is a masterclass in how to experiment, how to learn.
And how to accelerate the learnings and how to leverage the learnings into the things that you want to get, right? It's absolutely amazing. My son's only eight and he doesn't have this gear. He is incredibly charming. He's going to make a phenomenal salesperson. Right? However, he's still eight and he's also very selfish. So he'll come to me crying and he'll be like, Mommy won't give me something, right? And I was, and, and, and I prod him a little bit.
I'm like, well, uh, what did you say that made mommy want to do it? He's like, what do you mean? I was like, well, you told her what you wanted. You give her a list. What does she want? Yeah, right. And he's like, huh, but again, you could see the wheels turning. And the next time he goes back, he'll open with, Hey, mom, here's, here's why I think this would be good for you. So the next time he goes back, he's going to be like, Hey, mom, you know, here's why I think this is good for you.
Once he figures that out, once he, you know, kind of dials in that tool, he's dangerous. Yeah, right. That goes everywhere. They learn what works. Like, yeah, my seven year old Jack has learned that with me, it's often an emotional sale, right? Like when he appeals to that, like when he wanted peacocks, which we have now, as you know, whether we want them or not, how did he appeal to me? He appealed to me by telling me he believed that I could do it.
I told him, I don't know if I could find this. Like I'm, I'm just bullshit. And I'm like, I know, I know exactly where to get them. Like, I don't know if I could, you know, I don't know if they have them here. I don't know if they survive in Guatemala. And he's like, anybody could do it, dad, it would be you nailed it. And so now I'm not bidding against him. I'm bidding against myself. I'm like, no, I really, I don't think I could do that. And I, you're, you're probably wrong.
And I'm not as good as you think I am. Like, you got me. It's amazing. And to his credit, he was right. I did it. And they're lovely creatures here. I know the ones that live next to you, not so much fun. Yeah. Mine are my neighbors. My neighbors has, has like 300 animals on a two acre property. So what, what's interesting to me though, Ryan, it took a second to process. I already knew that fact.
But like, hearing it out loud exactly like it sounds and made, made it, made it, it funny again, what's interesting to me is as we teach these tools, as we plant these seeds, they keep growing. Yeah. Right? And they become these, these phenomenal things. A hundred percent. But if we don't plant the seeds, right, we get nothing. We harvest nothing. If we don't plant the seeds, we get nothing. Right. At all.
In fact, what ends up happening is that we actually end up making it so that the seeds get harder and harder to plant every year. Every year that we restrain agency, every year that we don't teach the tools, we put our kids, we put all kids in this position to have less agency in the world, to have less tools to do what they want.
So if we want to do something that's more important than anything, as founders, as parents, it's to give every kid every bit of agency we possibly can, every tool we possibly can, and keep pushing them to get out there to do their own thing on their own terms, and let them be who they're suppo Overthinking your startup because you're going it alone? You don't have to. And honestly, you shouldn't. Because instead, you can learn directly from peers who've been in your shoes.
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