TEDxHarkerSchool - Rahim Fazal - How Getting Fired From McDonalds Changed My Life

all right thank you for that awesome introduction so just a quick show of hands here how many parents here a lot of parents you guys taking up a lot of oxygen in this place how about students all right and how many people are here just to see Guy Kawasaki speak after lunch so you guys sivadas people well listen I I can't I can't tell you how lucky you guys are to be here I was in your shoes like 10 years ago and I would have killed to be at a conference like this so let's give a round of applause to Neil neeraj the whole like team out here these guys got an awesome job all right so this is really for the students I'm glad to see there's so many of you guys out here I want to start by asking you guys how many of you guys have jobs today you guys have jobs few of you guys how abouts in the summer any summer job folks here ok how many of you guys by show of hands liked the jobs that you guys have ok about half of you guys how many of you guys have worked in retail at a mall fast food anything where you have to serve your idiot friends what and you hate it right all right I learned I've learned a lot thankfully made a lot of mistakes I think the most formative thing for me was when I got my first job at McDonald's this was my boss my first boss and this was my job I don't know if you can see this very clearly I could when I was working there this is a this is the back storage area of McDonald's I you know all the cool kids got to work at the front you know they were cashiers they put me right in the back and I don't know why they did that I don't know if I wasn't good-looking enough or because I gave free fries to all of my friends it would come but I used to work in the back now in the back what they made me do was organize all of the little cartons for fries now I was uh I was a I was pretty good at academics I was in this IB program at the time and what I used to do after school to make some money was organize these fry containers and I might be the only entrepreneur who's ever been fired from McDonald's so about six weeks into it my manager comes and sits me down it was basically Ronald McDonald himself sat me down and and said that he had to speak to me for a few minutes and so I said you know excellent because anything I could do to get out of that damn storage area I would do and he came and he told me that they had to let me go because I was working too slow I think that probably could be better reasons for getting fired from McDonald's but for me it was sheerly laziness that was very difficult for me at you know at the age of 16 getting fired from McDonald's and if you want to go and try to get another job in the city and you've been fired from McDonald's it's sort of hard to get you know a reference when McDonald's has fired you no other place in the city would hire me and this was a big problem for me at 16 because I really wanted to work I was really into school I was really into academics but I wanted to get some you know experience on the side I wanted to make some money on the side and so having a job was really important to me but I had to figure out what to do after this tragic event happened to me at 16 and what I vowed to myself was that I was going to take my life into my own hands so it's 16 years old I was going to take life into my own hands and I was going to do something so that I would never ever ever ever have to work at a fast-food restaurant again and so I began I began scheming with my my brother over here this is actually one of my buddies one of my best friends Hussein this is from last week in Vegas it was the best photo I could find of us together we've known each other since we were 5 years old and so he and I went to the same school together he saw me go to McDonald's get fired from McDonald's he worked at a hardware store a little less lazy than I so I never got fired and the two of us basically decided that we were going to start a company together and so we started to scheme now we were always into computers from a young age from a really young age or into computers so we decided that we were going to do something with computers and we were going to create finally we came up with this idea of helping businesses set up websites and email addresses and we would do so through this website and it would be for free and he would do all the coding I would do the website design all the business stuff and we were going to be rich right that was a big idea now we came up with the idea one big big problem arose within the first week of this idea and that was we decided that we couldn't tell our parents that we were going to start a company now for those of you who in fact I'm sure most of you are in this position you know if you have you know you have parents were always riding you all the time always try and check your grades always trying to push you push you push you of you may not even be here on your own free will this this morning it's okay those were my parents and so if I told my parents that I was going to sort of sacrifice this IB program International Baccalaureate program I was in and this whole fast-track to get into college for starting a business on the side because I got fired from McDonald's there would have been two options for me the belt or the slipper those would be my only two options and so what who said and I decided was that we were going to hide this from my parents so that meant that anytime we talked about the business in at home on the phone on our cell phones we had to call it by a secret name so he came up with the name operation Thundercat okay so it's operation Thundercat after the Transformers yes and so I would be on the phone and if I asked him you know how the servers for operation Thundercat were doing and he said you know they were stable my mom had absolutely no idea what I was talking about and it was great but that wasn't the only challenge you know you guys sit here and you think about what it would take to really start a business today or next year over the summer or whatever it might be there ton of different things that you probably think about is challenges or obstacles I mean my biggest one was telling my parents you guys do not have that problem because likely your parents drove you here which is a really positive sign right for me telling my parents was the biggest thing so hiding it from them it had to be done the second thing that hit us was that if we were going to start this company we needed to open up a bank account and if we were going to open up a bank account we would need to have the company registered I mean we needed to have we felt we needed to have the company name comma Inc that was the only way that you could have a real legit company so hussainun I went down to the business registration office in downtown and we went down there and we stood in line and we filled out the form and we went up to the counter when our number was called and we were super super super excited because this was going to be the formation of our actual legit company so we get to the front of the line lady looks at the form and she asks us how old are we and I said very proudly yeah you know we're both seventeen years old and she looks at us and goes well you need to be at least eighteen to register a business and so we stood in this line for 45 minutes we filled out this whole form we took a bus all the way to downtown you had to take three transfers to get down there we had to skip class we did all these things to get down there and then we hit it from our parents we had this operation thundercat we had the whole idea and then we get to register the business and the lady tells us that we're too young to start the business so even before we've tried to you take in our first step our dreams are crushed but I'll tell you I really really did not want to go back to McDonald's so say and I started to scheme and we start to think what could we do to possibly get over this now I sort of tried to shave a little bit before I got here who's saying and now let's see he's pretty clean-shaven in this photo but you know Hussein is you can imagine from the name hüseyin had a full beard at six and a half years old okay Hussein had no problem no problem growing facial hair whatsoever you should ask his girlfriend about his shoulders today but that's another story so I told Hussein now we were really big into ice hockey and the playoffs were coming so I said why don't you keep your just don't shave for like three hours right and we can go back downtown and register the company so sure enough we he doesn't shave for about two weeks took a little longer than I was hoping but it was pretty much like a chia pet after about ten days right and the problem was of course his mom was asking him what the heck was going on and he just kept on saying it's a playoff beard I'm rooting for my team I don't want to shave this thing so he has this you know kind of spotty peach fuzz thing going on and and we went down to downtown and basically he made me stand outside because he said there was no way there's no way he was gonna let me go in you know looking like a twelve-year-old trying to get this business ready I'd ruined the entire crushes dreams again right so I let him go in by himself and I'm standing outside his business registration office just waiting I'm on my phone and playing like games on my phone finally like thirty five minutes later he comes out biggest smile at his face grinning ear to ear he has this forbid his hand it's been stamped with red ink and he's like yeah and he's like I gotta shave this thing right now so we go back home and now we've got the business registered it's it's it's phenomenal we've asked got this business off off now and we decided that we need to get people to come to our website now we didn't have a lot of money because I only was employed at McDonald's for several weeks but we took the money that we did have we and we decided to take out a newspaper ad because that was you know the thing that you would do back then right and so put out a newspaper ad and I built the ad myself in Photoshop it was absolutely ridiculous because when I got printed it was all like it was too small I had to be like enlarge it was ridiculous cost $1,300 do you know many people came to our website any customers that we got for this $1300 full-color ad no don't answer the question I'll tell you that for people who signed up for people signed up and so we put all this money into this ad and then we had four people who actually signed up to start a website on our system so we had no idea what to do so we started do all this guerrilla marketing online and I think one of the cool things that we can do today you know starting online businesses is that you can start to get people coming to your site you can you can build up a community really really quickly so that's what we did and you know we started to put you know anytime we would send an email out to any of our friends we would put links to this website we started going online into onto other discussion forums and starting to started to tell people that you know we had free photos of different celebrities and things like that we did whatever we had to do to get people to come to our site and pretty soon that I don't tell anybody that that's just between us and then pretty soon we started to get a thousand people signing up to the site 2,000 people signing up to the site 3,000 and these were all businesses who are starting their companies using our using our website and then we hit 10,000 people now if you remember no one knew that we were running this company okay now what happens when you have 10,000 customers you have you know that you have to deal with customer service right so how would two kids deal with customer service here's what we did if you remember we were these we were we were sort of scheming right we had to think about what was the right idea so here's what we came up with I had a cellphone and a pager now back then we used to have pages okay so I had a cellphone and a pager and what would happen with it was I had a girl I was dating this girl at the time and she recorded a message on my pager that said thank you for calling but all of our operators are currently busy okay now we had to do this because any of our customers knew there were these two 17-year old Indian guys with like one with a full beard right one who just got fired from McDonald's running this website we would have had no customers okay so she had to record this message saying all the operators were busy please leave a message and someone will return your call as soon as possible now what would happen was I would be an English class and the pager would go off because a customer would call now if a customer called they'd leave a message on the pager and we said that we would return your call in four hours because we really believe that great customer service was important even at that young age right and so so does the pager would go off I would put my hand up now I don't know if you know this is probably something very familiar to you guys put your hand up it doesn't matter what the hell you have to do it was always teacher I have to go to the bathroom is that okay yes we have no problem go I would go I would go outside I would check the page check the message I call the customer back and I would say hello this is Raheem thank you for calling you know mail BC I have got your customer support message you know how can I help you and I would solve the problem whatever it was and then I go back into class now a couple problems the first one is if you has to go to the bathroom once in a class that is okay if you start to ask to get out of class twice in the same class your teachers start to think you have a urinary infection so be very careful about that the second thing was that I didn't want to say my name was Rahim every single time I answered the phone so I used to come up with different names some you know some were ethnic names you know some were you know I would say sometimes my name is cleanest how can I help you most call centers are actually located in the Midwest so that was okay but then I remember there was one day I was calling a customer back and I had run out of mail names to say so the lady answers the phone and I freaked out and I go um thank you for calling this is Hilda speaking and I had to run through the entire call sounding like a 48 year old woman but like I said you have you got to do what you got to do right you can't let anything get in the way of your dreams now we start to get towards the end of the school year the college are my college applications have been submitted I've gotten my acceptances to places I was really stoked I couldn't be happier but the business has grown it's now twenty-five thousand customers we get I get home one day and my mom and dad are sitting in the living room and they're looking at each other now that was odd for me okay my mom and dad love each other but they don't spend too much time on the same couch looking at one okay so but I do the usual thing that I do when I get home I got home I took my shoes off and I started to run upstairs went to my room got on my computer and I'm halfway up the stairs and my dad goes mm-hmm like oh damn all right so I come downstairs I get into the living room I say what's going on and they said Rahim that's how my dad talks that him we know what what so I'm not saying anything what I'm thinking in my head what is he talking about this man is crazy and I said what what are you talking about dad and he goes your principal called today I'm thinking why would my principal because my house now I had I had skipped out about eight classes that week but that was for good reason our servers had gone down I had to go downtown I had to go fix a service okay okay but I'm wondering what the heck is going on so he says him your principal called now I'm going to get out of the accent cuz - are - so he said listen your principal called he said he said you are missing a lot of class so I knew that I was missing I was missing a little bit of class relatively and then he said and your teacher said that you miss a lot of class you go out of the class sometimes once sometimes twice same class once sometimes twice oh my god where is this going and then she also said that another teacher said that you are walking around with a cellphone and a pager inside your class and you are going out of the class once sometimes twice so I said what is going on here and I'm thinking I am screwed because they just found out about operation Thundercat and I may need to go back to McDonald's this ever so he said Raheem we know we know to him Raheem you are dealing the drugs oh my god that was the best that was the best point of my entire life okay to have your parents to have your parents tell you convincingly that you are dealing drugs when you are actually running an online business with 25,000 customers he's an absolutely amazing feeling but I had a choice to make because if I admitted I was running the company you know those two options right Bell to the slipper but if I told them I was dealing drugs then probably belter the slip so when he said why are you missing class once sometimes twice I said I don't know maybe there's something wrong with me may have a urinary infection or something so I said okay you better take you to the doctor so I went to the doctor I got some lab tests and just so you guys know I was okay I was completely okay the business lasted for another day now we get a we get a company emails us and says we like your website we think you have a lot of traffic we want to buy your company now I remember where I was I was in chemistry 12 and I went to the bathroom as I did as you know was my sort of office at the school where I conducted most of my business and I checked the email and this company was serious they they wanted to buy the company now so I called them up we had a conversation they said they took about probably bout a month or so and then they sent us a contract they sent us a an agreement to buy the company now if you remember I could barely read the you know like that the timesheet at McDonald's a couple of years back let alone this agreement to buy the company so what do you do now I need the only thing that I knew and that was I I went to Hussein and I said let's let's it's time to get that beard on first of all second I just liked the beard and the second thing was let's open up the yellow pages and let's look under attorneys and let's call a lawyer so we looked under a and it was a brunette Abrams and Abrams we called up Abrams and Abrams and we said hey listen were these two kids we just got an offer to buy the company but we don't know how to read this document can you please help us figure this stuff out and they said absolutely we can do that yes and then they said by the way it's five hundred and ninety five dollars an hour now I was making six dollars an hour at McDonald's so that seemed like a hundred times what I was getting paid at McDonald's to pay this lawyer for one hour and I figured it would take more than an hour so I said oh you know what sir that's just far too expensive for me I just can't pay that and he said well we really believe in our service here at Abrams and Abrams why don't you come for a one hour free consultation so I said a free consultation that sounds amazing so I went down may or may not have involved skipping class and we went to go to the lawyer and we took the contract down there they looked at the at the contract they made their red lines to it and that night they sent it back to me so I was so happy because we didn't have to we didn't have to spend anything to get this contract done so I send it back to the company that wanted to buy us and three days later they send us more changes back so now I'm like a man now I got to pay this guy five hundred and ninety five dollars an hour to get this thing done so what do you do so over the Yellow Pages I called up the second one okay it was Abercrombie in something so I call this other guy up I said listen I have never worked with you before I don't even know you but I have this contract someone wants to buy the company do you have something like a one-hour free consultation and they said yes absolutely come down for your one hour free consultation I said awesome go downtown meet with the lawyers we give them the contract they make some more changes they send it back to me I send it to the company County sends it back to me more changes what do you do we went through nine different lawyers for nine free one-hour consultations okay and we ended up selling the company for a million and a half dollars didn't spend a single dime on a lawyer all right and then and then I should say that just so you guys know and this is not a joke this is I mean this is not a funny part after we sold the company my parents freaked out because they had no idea like what they were going to tell our family and their uncles and aunts and would they be able to use coupons anymore and all these problems right and they actually pushed me to go back to school now speed the story up real quick so I won't get get to the the takeaways here but what ended up happening was I said I don't see any value in school whatsoever so I'm not going to go so I didn't go to school I ended up starting another business I ran it for two years I thought I was on the top of the world that business ended up like falling flat on its on its face and I lost almost all of this money that I made running this business and I had no idea what to do with myself two years later and so what do I end up doing I end up going to my parents and saying help me out because I have no idea what to do with myself and I end up going back to school and and doing graduate school and getting an MBA and I'll tell you this is all in all seriousness that was one of the best decisions that I made for having the company that I have today which has been even wait you're even like a hundred times more successful than this company in high school so so it a little bit of what your parents has to say actually does make sense okay now I'm going to I'm going to share with you five things that I learned from this experience I hope that they're helpful for you okay first one is get down with dad okay get down with dad mom other suits now as you could tell I didn't tell my parents anything for this entire journey that was probably I wish I had done it again I would have involved my parents more and some of the things that I really encourage you guys to do is that you've given that you're here today obviously you have lots of family support your family can be massively supportive and it's something that I didn't actually take advantage of in high school I do today and having a good relationship with my parents because I did not have a great relationship with my parents in high school because of all the things that I was doing and all the things that I could could not tell you guys that I was doing that I was doing and I wish that I had I wish things were better because my sister was like the perfect daughter and she was a perfect student she has like four degrees she has been she's incredibly successful she had an awesome relationship with my parents and that was I think one of the one of the things that I regret that I didn't have I was such a rebel when I was that age the second thing is get a crew now what do I mean what do I mean by this two things number one how many friends you know if you're walking down the hall you guys may not have this issue but maybe you do walking down the halls you see a friend of yours and they're like hey let's go to McDonald's I say McDonald's just because it's close to my heart but it doesn't have to make dolls it could be let's go to the mall let's go somewhere you know let's go somewhere else or like over the weekend you know always trying to make you skip out of whatever activities you might you might actually have I had a lot of friends like that and so what I had to end up doing was I became better friends with Hussein because he and I were like so similar we were always on the same wavelength and you know we went we did all the things that all of our friends did we went to all the parties we had such a good time but we were like really focused on not ever having the opportunity to get fired in McDonald's ever again so it brought us really close together and he ended up being a really good rock for me I surrounded myself with people who were really really good the second thing is that I kind of formed this advisory board around me so today it involve ER which is a company I run today with this awesome board of directors you guys are probably familiar with the Board of Directors the people that you go to if you're running a company they kind of help you run the company in a way in a really simple way right so I had these advisors that I would go to every time I had a question about my about my website and that's something I really suggest you guys do as well build you know a circle around you build a crew around you of people whether they're lawyers or accountants like I would have had to do this whole free one-hour consultation stuff with the lawyers if I had a lawyer who I knew you that was part of my crew right so lawyers and accountants two greatest people you can have in your crew the third thing is get a life so all this stuff that we're talking about running the company being an IB all the hard things that you guys do on a day-to-day basis if you're not having a good time if you're not out there doing the things that regular kids do then you're going to completely regret it so make sure that a you know among all the activities all the college prep all that other stuff that you do if you guys want to start a business whatever it might be make sure you're actually doing stuff that is fun and matters right the fourth thing is get smart with money so a lot of people want to run businesses but they can't even manage their own personal finances that is a major major major problem right so whether you're working today or you know you have whatever allowance whatever your parents give you money whatever it might be make sure that you actually are smart about money and there's a one of my best friend's runs a blog called I will teach you to be rich go to that blog it's one of the greatest like I don't actually tell them I read it because I don't want as ego to get bigger but I do read it I will teach you to be rich awesome really get smart with money it's one of the best things you can do it and if you talk to your parents talk to other people that you know they'll tell you that one of the biggest reasons why companies fail is because they run out of cash right ATS one of the biggest reasons you as an individual will fail if you run out of cash there's one of the greatest lines I love quoting all the time which is that cash flow is more important than your mother take that to the bank alright and the fifth one is get going okay so when you guys leave today you're going to be super inspired right you guys have all of these ideas you want it you're going to want to get started and then what's going to happen then one of you guys is going to say oh but you know what like tomorrow's Sunday right so oh you know what be so cool like FIFA 12 just came out for Xbox 360 let's go play that that's like I cannot tell you how many friends I had growing up who were like that and those are the same people today ten years later who are still complaining about stuff you know I don't know if you have friends who have these really big ideas all the time but then they always seem to be complaining because things just don't go right that's a pattern that's going to continue happening with those people don't be one of those people make sure that you actually if you have an idea you want to do something get started don't let anything get in your way even if you're in school you have all these things to do don't let that get in your way right if you need to grow a beard to get your business registered grow a freaking beard man all right thank you guys and we'll take some Q&A thing

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 127,074

Rating: 4.7150836 out of 5

Keywords: Harker School, Harker, ted, tedx talk, ted x, Education, Entrepreneurship, harker school, ted talk, TEDxHarkerSchool, tedx, Students, ted talks, United States, harker, Technology, English, tedx talks

Id: ny1FmCnABDU

Length: 33min 32sec (2012 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2011