I'm a big part of a couple
organizations globally called the Entrepreneurs' Organization and the Young
Presidents' Organization. I just came back from speaking in Barcelona at the
YPO global conference, and everyone that I met over there who's an entrepreneur
struggled with school. I have out of
the signs of attention deficit disorder
diagnosed. Attention deficit disorder,
bipolar disorder. Do you know that bipolar disorder is nicknamed the CEO
disease? Ted Turner's got it. Steve Jobs has it. All three of the founders of
Netscape had it. I could go on and on. Kids -- you can see these signs in kids.
And what we're doing is we're giving them Ritalin and saying, "Don't be an
entrepreneurial type. Fit into this other system and try to become a student."
Sorry, entrepreneurs aren't students. We fast-track. We figure out the game. I
stole essays. I cheated on exams. I hired kids to do my accounting assignments
in university for consecutive
assignments. But as an entrepreneur you don't do accounting, you hire accountants.
So I just figured that out earlier ( raising children).
At least I can admit I cheated in
university; most of you won't. I'm also quoted -- and I told the person who
wrote the textbook -- I'm now quoted in that exact same university textbook in
every Canadian university and college studies. In managerial accounting, I'm
chapter eight. I open up chapter eight talking about budgeting. And I told the
author, after they did my interview, that I cheated in that same course. And
she thought it was too funny to not include it anyway. But kids, you can see
these signs in them. The definition of an entrepreneur is "a person who
organizes, operates and assumes the risk of a business venture." That
doesn't mean you have to go to an MBA program. It doesn't mean you have to get
through school. It just means that those few things have to feel right in your
gut.
And we've heard those things about
"is it nurture or is it nature," right? Is it thing one or thing two?
Well, I don't think it's either. I think it can be both. I was groomed as an
entrepreneur. When I was growing up as a young kid, I had no choice, because I
was taught at a very early, young age -- when my dad realized I wasn't going to
fit into everything else that was being taught to me in school -- that he could
teach me to figure out business at an early age. He groomed us, the three of
us, to hate the thought of having a job and to love the fact of creating
companies that we could employ other people ( raising children).
This is Adam Norman, a 30-year-old father and a journalist. I consider being a father as my full-time duty, which comes before my actual job of journalism. As a father, there will always be new challenges for me to face everyday while raising my kids. This is where the idea of this website came from. I wanted to give out my experience, along with the experience of others, to all parents out there who need an advice with raising their kids.
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