Presentation to HXNY teen classes

Exploration in life

We tend to stay in the realm of the "known", as exemplified by typical conservatism, avoid dealing with our finance, complacent with a job rather than entrepreneurship. The reason is risk: driven by fear of uncertainty, and lacking the means to deal with the "unknown", because we don't know "what", "how", and "who to turn to".

A constant sense of exploration in life is needed to conquer our fears, and expand our sphere of activities.

1. Build your courage via DIY projects - that you can do anything

2. Provide guidance via mentorship

3. Create community to offer social support

My edu-tainment strategies

Parents and teachers have implicitly followed this mode of guidance to cultivate our intellectual, physical, and social development. I myself tend to be unconventional, in particular, integrating cutting edge technology and psychology into edu-tainment, where fun enhances learning.

* DIY computer with Data-glove, 3D glasses, force-feedback joystics, touch screen mouse

* Learning Chinese with karaoke, trilingual Disney DVDs, and DIY tools.

* Cultivate thinking via 3D mathematical puzzles before they were popular.

Many things we learn, whether in school, extracurricular, ports, music, etc, aims to prepare us for life, although all indirectly. So far I see very few subjects that teaches things directly relevant to life. Given that our career will be a significant part of our waking life, and nothing we learn helps us to design our own career, I now propose a Youth Entrepreneurship Summer Program.

Entrepreneurship distinct from finance and business:

By entrepreneurship I mean the exploration of creative and innovative possibilities in human activities, i.e. the business analog of the Intel Science Talent Search. While this includes concepts in finance and business management, we focus on the inventive and discovery.

Business is about activities; money is a voting mechanism; and success leads to more freedom to try new things; life is exciting; to do things; pursue your idealistic dreams; who are the people you want to help? Your self; family; clan; people; the world;

How will you help people?

• Give them a fish, and you feed them for a day; teach them to fish, and you feed them for life.
• Do you send coal for warmth when they are freezing in the snow? Or do you send flower on their success?
• Invest your time and resources wisely
• A business can provide jobs, directly help people, etc

Exploration of unknown

• Course to DIY
• A joint venture, with you, your parents, and a venture mentor
• Your time, your parent's financial support and nurture, and mentor's ideas and expertise
• You are the CEO, your parents learns to respect you as an adult, and accept your decisions
• Develop a community of teen venturers to support and share ideas with each other

Proposal for the summer

• Every Sunday for 1.5 hrs (HXNY schedule that you have already cut out)
• 8-10 weeks (depending on participants' schedule)
• In the fall, execute the business. E.g. Fund raising for HXNY
• Each session: 1/3 business basics, 1/3 entrepreneur habit/methods, 1/3 business planning
• Resources: NFTE material, entrepreneurial books for teens,

• Not just a summer camp, but a serious adventure
• A typical summer session charges $2000. The amount is reduced to $1000 if you put in $300 of the tuition while your parents pay $700

Topics covered

• Speed reading and comprehension
• Tools for productivity enhancement
• Learning style personality model for communication
• Investment and Risk management concepts, applied to time, attention, and life
• Attitude for success & leadership
• Promotional strategies: Web2.0 marketing and selling
• Fun approaches to economics
• Competitive vs. Cooperative strategies in game theory

With Teen-Venture program:

• Test out your ideas
• Take risk when it is OK to fall and get up again
• You will stand out among your peers
• Gain the power to control your own destiny, rather than subjected to the whims of a boss, or let your work benefit corporations that enriches the powerful

Whether you participate in the Teen-Venture program or not, I hope you take entrepreneurship seriously. As a new generation of leaders in the Chinese American community, your freedom to act and do what is right will benefit the entire community. With wealth come political participation and power, and the possibilities to confront social injustices. Having solid preparation for your life in your teens is like having a good opening move in the chess game of life. I congratulate you for finishing Chinese school, and wish you a meaningful and abundant summer.

Q&A. Reservations:

1. not motivated to do business

Growing up in Chinese families, you may have various notions of money and business, and perhaps avoid them because "knowledge and learning is sacred", "business is mundane", "money corrupts", "to succeed in business requires backstabbing scums", etc.

Among all social activities, business draws most competition because income and livelihood depends on it. It replaces the battlefields of ancient times, thus things can get ugly. But as a tool it can also be made to do social good.

For example, life within corporations can sometimes be described as paid slavery, where people do things they intensely dislike because they are limited in their alternative opportunities yet still need to earn income to support their families.

Just as knights once fight against evil kingdoms, so you now can fight against bad forms of corporation with good ones. We are beginning to see more and more examples of compassionate businesses that are far more successful than their competitors, such as 3M for their management style, or many companies that are serious of doing social good.

Business as a tool has shown to be the most effective way to combat social injustice by use of economic incentive. Economic embargo is the tool nations use to keep each other in line.

Not interested because you have loftier goals? It turns out that everything you will do in life is in some ways business. Academic research is mostly writing business proposals, and industrial

No Time?

I try to use myself as an example that one can do a lot in the "spare-change" of time:

• My personal journey
• Websites I created during the busy years of job, babies, church, etc
• See Tech-Spirits for various business books I read
• See the long list of invention and ideas
• When others realized my venture ideas, I was not discouraged, but reaffirmed that my ideas are worthwhile, and validated my entrepreneur talent

No Background?

• Genuine entrepreneurship is not taught in school
• Innovations can be cultivated by good habits, but none of which is taught or encouraged by conventional learning
• My courses serve as intense training camp to equip you
• No MBA simply means no conventional restriction and baggage
• Are any of the founders of Google or Yahoo MBAs?
• Ph.Ds are trained to be innovative. Thus our parents have lots of great ideas.
• A safe environment for exploration is what one needs

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