Why All Young People Should Be Entrepreneurs. | Justin Lafazan | TEDxAllendaleColumbiaSchool

Around my junior year of high school, I started to feel like I was living my life backwards. Both subliminal and overt societal messages were telling me that there was one singular path to success, and that it went, you go from high school to college, which leads you to an internship, which you lead to a job, and then you turn that into writing to partner, and then you get to retire. But that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and I saw the development of a really, really interesting paradox. Because if this was status quo advice, what if I didn't want the status quo, where four out of five Americans feel negatively about the work that they do? So I was really confused about this whole thing of what does it take to be successful in the world? And anyways, I thought I was different. I loved learning, but hated going to school. I wanted to make a change in the world that didn't feel like an organized structure was really the best place to do it. So I started researching, and I started exploring and just asking questions. And I used this hand in the sand mentality, where I tried to take as much advice as I can, and things that didn't resonate with me, I let slip through my fingers. And what I did enjoy, I kept in the palm of my hand. And what I eventually found in the palm of my hand was advice to create opportunities and solve problems. So I went back to the people who were giving me this advice, and I was saying, how did you do it, why did you do it? And they were telling me that they wanted a life that they couldn't live without. They wanted something different than the universe presently offered them, which made a whole lot of sense to me. And that's where I kind of got this whole idea behind life design, which is looking out 10 years, finding the life that you wanna live, and designing a path to get there. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we have to know what career we want to do while being in high school. I started two separate companies in two completely different industries, and I have no idea what I want to do in five years. Nevertheless, I understand the kind of life that I want to offer. Meanwhile, back to when I was asking all these questions, I started to realize another thought, and that the people I was asking these questions to were all entrepreneurs. Now, Babson College is leading this fight to change the definition of the word entrepreneur away from someone who started a company and towards someone who creates opportunities and solves problems, which is ironically the same definition I was getting before. So I thought I was really onto something, and I started to weave together more advice and settle upon the fact that what we need to do as young people is design the lives that we wanna live through entrepreneurship. And there are so many benefits to entrepreneurship. The first is excitement. Back in high school, I was bored. I was sleeping in class. I felt distracted, and really, I felt disengaged. Me and my friends liked to joke that we spent three weeks every year of high school trying to find birthday gifts for my girlfriend just to pass the time. Well, at the same time, my friends who were doing real work and going out into internships came back and told us that all they really were doing was getting coffee and working on spreadsheets. There wasn't really a solution, and everyone was feeling so disengaged. Nevertheless, when I started my company, now I get to travel the country, and I get to work on cool projects with cooler people, and it's exciting to me. And for the first time in my life, I'm feeling less tired and more engaged. The second reason why I believe all young people should be entrepreneurs is for the fact that it offers flexibility. I was really disencouraged in school by the fact that I had to make choices and sacrifices based on time spent in class or time spent in job. School, just like prison, has a bell schedule that you have to operate with. In addition, you're told what to do and where to go every single step of your life, and the corporate world really isn't that much different. We're forced to clock in and clock out and have everything structured around us, and that really didn't make a whole lot of sense for me. Instead, I wanted something flexible where I can choose a variety of life paths and really make a decision that felt best for me and right for me. The third reason why I believe all young people should try entrepreneurship to design the lives that we want to live is because being an entrepreneur is actually risk-averse. Now, the same societal messages from before stop me, and they say, no, entrepreneurship is risky and unstable, and we should try the corporate world to really get a taste for what is going on. But I turned to a story told by Forbes writer Paul B. Brown, and Paul was telling me the tale of a man who really knew what he wanted. He found a company he really wanted to work with and went to work for them. He interned in their store, worked his way up to assistant manager, to manager, to regional manager, to senior management, and the company turned out to be Blockbuster and went bust a few months later. Because we, unfortunately, unless we're entrepreneurs, we don't have really control of our life path. And I see a really interesting dichotomy between two of my friends. The first, let's call Tim. Tim is one of the brightest kids I know. He went to Harvard University, got a 4.0 average, did all the right clubs and organizations, and is struggling to find a summer internship for this coming summer after his freshman year of college. He has no control of his life path. Well, on the other hand, I have my friend Jared Kleiner. Jared was rejected by basically every school he applied to, a kid's ultimate nightmare. But Jared didn't let that stop him because he's an entrepreneur. He wanted to create opportunities and solve problems for himself. So Jared started the Gap Year experiment in which he backpacked Europe, consulted for New York Times bestselling authors, did pageant training with Miss West Virginia, and everything else under the sun. And now Jared has a resume which impresses 45-year-old corporate executives, and yet he got rejected from all the schools he applied to a few months earlier because he took control of his life path by creating opportunities and solving problems. A real entrepreneur. The final reason I believe that all young people should really try entrepreneurship is because of this idea behind experimentation and exploration. Money Watch reports that one in two students will end up working in a career that either doesn't match their major or that they're overqualified for, which leads to tremendous youth unemployment and youth underemployment. That's a real problem nowadays, and I happen to believe it's caused by the structure of what we're living in. Right when we enter college, we're forced to make these major decisions about what we want to major in and what we want to do for the rest of our lives, when a few months earlier, we had to ask permission to go to the bathroom in math class. It really didn't add up to me because now college is no longer a time for exploration, but seen as this career accelerator. So where's the time to actually try things out and see if it's what you love, care about, and want to do? Entrepreneurship gives you the opportunity to test out your passions, see your interests, and find the work that makes you really come alive and gets you up in the morning. So I started my first company, Students for Students College Advisory, because I really loved higher education and I wanted to consult in that industry. And I tried it and I grew it and it went really well. And then I started a second company, Millennial Marketing Strategies. I liked marketing, I liked digital strategy, I liked consulting, and I'm still trying new things every day. Worked in two industries, have zero clue if I actually want to pursue either one of them in the future. But now I know more about myself, my passions, and my interests, and I can take a step back and see what's going on. Nevertheless, I'm the classic entrepreneur because I started companies and I started consulting and I grew organizations. But just like Babson College is trying to teach us, not all entrepreneurs have to be business owners. You can go work for a nonprofit. You can go work in a corporate world, but create opportunities for yourself and solve problems. You can go to college but do things differently and see the world differently. This whole status quo advice really didn't make a lot of sense to me. So I urge all young people to look out 10 years from now and don't decide what you want to be doing, but decide how you want to be living your life and design your path to get you there. Because if all young people listen to the average status quo advice, we'll end up with this average status quo life. But if we do things differently, if we create opportunities, if we solve problems, if we spark our interests, if we try entrepreneurship to design the lives that we want to lead, we might truly have lives that are extraordinary. Thank you.