I spent the entire morning at Billinghurst Middle School as one of their guests for career day. I had 5 sessions with about 30-40 teens in each session who interacted with me on choices, leading up to what matters now, and through high school, that could lead to a career path as an entrepreneur.

Billinghurst Middle School - Career Day with Amazing Teens

Today was absolutely an exchange of learning, as are most activities that involve people. My attitude going into this environment was positive, and I was excited at the idea of spending time with teenagers. There is something about young people that I find thrilling, fun and memorable. My highest respect goes out to the administrators and teachers at Billinghurst, but most of all, to the students.

Bighorn Stickers to all Guests, Gotta Love It!

These young people displayed an impressive level of mutual respect towards me and to each other. They were great listeners, and they enthusiastically contributed to the classroom discussion. They were creative in drawing their visions, answering questions and providing scenarios.

It is virtually impossible to present a complete understanding of what it takes to become an entrepreneur in 30 minutes, especially to teens who still have their high-school years ahead of them. So what we did focus on were “choices” as I passionately repeated in each class, “everything matters…every choice you make matters!”

I started each session asking the teens what position in life they see 20-year-olds in – not just people they know, but those in society. I led them to understand that 20-year-olds range from military positions, college students, workers, entrepreneurs, house-wives/husbands, homeless people, and even prisoners. The challenge was to make them understand that no one chooses to be homeless, nor do people choose to go to prison – people end up in these situations largely due to poor choices. So, every choice they make matters! Each teen has a baseline of “smart” – my loud message to them was that every day they need to make choices to get smarter…they heard me loud and clear, and without exception, they agreed it was important to be smarter each day…and that in itself is a choice!

It’s tough to love every day of school, and every subject. What helps the learning process for teens is getting them to understand the relevancy of school subjects to their future jobs, careers, life! We talked about math – I told them that in business, math = money, and money matters – it’s part of every business, and everything in life has an aspect of business.  Math = Money! Learn it, use it, and know that the better your math skills become, the smarter you can run a business.

Naturally writing and reading are big on this list as well. Many of the kids said they hated to read. My response to that was you will become a better reader the more you do it – find an author, a book series, a blog – the Internet has virtually millions of things to read – do it, and then you may find yourself wanting to write as well. No one can survive as an entrepreneur who doesn’t read and write daily.

I am just one person who wants to see teens care about learning. I want to see them believe that as individuals they have value, and believing in themselves allows them to make good choices in learning, living and growing. It doesn’t matter what is taught in a classroom if there are no listeners. Once teens choose to learn, and understand the value of education, they can grow closer to their potential. We as adults need to care, we need to get involved, and when we get a chance to hang out with these awesome teenagers, we need to choose YES, they are worth it. It was my honor to participate in career day at Billinghurst Middle School today. I hope they ask me back.