Think Like an Entrepreneur: From Crisis to Opportunity | Cary Singleton | TEDxPepperdineUniversity

I'm actually here because of a first date we've all been on those first dates I'm assuming you're nervous the other person's nervous you're trying to ask the same old question so where'd you go to school what did you do for a living and eventually you end up with so how about those Dodgers but my first date with the man who's now my husband will singleton was quite different he suddenly leaned in and said of something very provocative very provocative question what Carrie do you want your legacy project to be caught me completely off guard I thought he was going to ask if my steak was prepared adequately my Legacy Project I realized he's asking me what do I care about what impact I want to have on the world and I thought for a few minutes about things I've been involved in cancer Habitat for Humanity there's so many important clauses but what I actually said was entrepreneurship Wow he looked a little surprised but gamely asked why entrepreneurship well I came from a middle-class family in fact my father couldn't afford to go to college so he joined the Navy so he could attend USC on the GI Bill he met my mom there and in 1952 they got married and he graduated from USC and not too long after he got a job with a national sales rep company representing manufacturing companies around the country was based right here in Los Angeles who's doing pretty good with that job in 1960 the sales manager of the largest his largest customer which was based in Tucson called him up and said we'd like you to start your own rep company and we'll give you all of our business nationally and we'll bring you some more customers on top of that so my dad quit his job and a few days later this Sales Manager flew him out to Tucson his little private plane my dad walked in to talk to the owner of the company who had no idea about this game plan so my father said well I'm gonna need guaranteed thousand dollars a month that's like $8,500 a month in today's dollars yeah the sale the owner the company looked at him and said you got to be kidding I've never played a Salesman that much and I'm not going to start now all right I'll think about it overnight so my dad went back to his little motel room in Tucson I'm sure he was quite nervous had is probably a sleepless night I mean he quit his job he had a wife three small children had just built his first home big mortgage and probably no job talk about a faceplant so the next day he went back talked to the owner the company again and they finally agreed that they paid he would pay him $1,000 a month against commissions relieved my dad flew back to Los Angeles and he and my mother pulled a four foot folding card table out of the closet put it in their bedroom and that was my father's new office so he travelled around the country and my mom answered the phone in between piano lessons that she was giving in our home and a few years later she joined him on the road and turned out she was fantastic at sales and the two of them made a terrific team by 1965 they had a real office with a real secretary they'd hired another salesman and they were making in today's dollars sixty five thousand dollars a month in commissions and five years later we bought that company and five years after that we were designing a building our new offices expanding our manufacturing capability so when I was a teenager and all through college in the summers I worked for that company it was pretty amazing I learned everything from marketing sales purchasing invoicing Claudie control production and shipping that product out the door in two years after college I joined that company on the executive team and eventually we won America's small business a year pretty cool big change in our family now when I was a little kid our dinner conversations were probably like most families you know your parents would ask you how was school today how'd you do on that test did you have any homework and then they'd ask us about our little business ventures so my brother who was eight years old was raising chickens behind the Corral and he was delivering fresh eggs everyday to all the neighbors and I boarded horses in that Corral and then my parents would talk about their day at the company the business what was going on did they had new customers or were they having problems with any of the manufacturing plants and that by the way is my brother the little egg sewing brother he's been running that company for the last 20 years now when we were growing up my parents encouraged us to think about how to solve problems how to think like an entrepreneur the first thing is to be curious see if there's a problem can you do something about it can it be improved the next thing is to do your research find out what's worked what hasn't and why next think outside the box for a solution and most importantly determine do you have the skills to solve this by yourself or can you create a team of skilled people from a couple different disciplines and finally evaluate the risk does it make sense financially to do this or if it's an important cause you want to put your money your time your resources into this and then of course just do it we all know that slogan I suddenly realized oh my gosh I'm on a date and I can't seem to stop talking about my family and entrepreneurship and the change it made in our family and I must be really nervous because I like this guy a lot but why are we talking about this on our date so took a deep breath so will what would you like your legacy project to be and he without a beep said financial literacy what are you kidding me like that is the most boring dry thing I can possibly think of course I didn't say that to him instead I said well that's interesting why financial literacy and he said well you know I grew up without any knowledge about personal financial matters he got his degree so you got a degree in English got his MFA in film then came over here to Pepperdine and got two more degrees when in computer science when in Business Administration but it wasn't until he started earning you know pretty good money bought his first home learned a little bit as family's ranching in real estate business that he realized how little he knew and then he started being curious doing his research he said Kerry do you realize that half of Americans are financially illiterate I was I was shocked I mean it's not that we're stupid right it's just we haven't been taught so right then and there on our very first date we did was wasn't a very romantic date obviously maybe you guys have had some of those too I don't know we decided to start the singleton foundation for financial literacy and entrepreneurship I guess that's what happens when you start dating over 50 and we got to work to find out what the problem was turns out 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and a third of those are Millennials so we decided to ask educated Millennials what they knew about money let's take a look Austin Southern California Miami Florida Dallas Colorado New Jersey Houston Texas US Angeles California I'm 20 I'm 20 22 26 30 33 AP stats calculus calculus calculus calculus AP calculus AP stats [Music] no idea probably 60 maybe like a hundred I don't know to get credit score's know what is a credit score [Music] really 8:24 maybe 15 to 20 yeah probably 15 to 20 to zero one I don't know none no and maybe like 20 minutes not that much I should do more actually I don't have a budget because I don't have a lot of money so I mean that's probably why I should have a budget [Music] question okay there's obviously tons of information out there right online classes you can take but why isn't why aren't people getting this information why aren't they doing this why don't they know about it we partner you next with G flick and they did a study and this is what they learned the reason that people aren't using all of this information is because it's confusing and overwhelming it's complicated it's intimidating but the most important thing we learned is it's taboo to talk about money it's kind of interesting parents don't talk to their children about money most schools now teach sex education but they don't have financial literacy classes in fact 47% of most couples do not discuss their financial situation with each other that's kind of scary huh it's interesting to me coming from a entrepreneurial family that it's cool to be an entrepreneur but it's not cool to talk about money so we decided to think outside the box for a solution what if we looked at financial literacy from an entrepreneurship standpoint Will's idea was to make a game if we learned how to run a business in a game and then we had to figure out whether to use those profits or not and take them home and pay for housing or food on the table etc inside of the game it could be fun this is an interactive game we're developing it would be sports style game with some really amazing prizes but not everybody's into gaming in fact a lot of people are walking around like this oh my god check out this cat video it is so cool I just saw the most amazing music video ever so we thought okay why are they watching this stuff well it's obviously entertaining and could we use that idea an approach financial literacy this very boring subject with entertainment well we live in Los Angeles so we pull together a team of creative professionals from Disney DreamWorks the BBC Lionsgate and others and we put them together with millennial producers to create content that was by Millennials for Millennials because remember they're the ones who are one third of the workforce that's living paycheck to paycheck now our first partnership was with somebody a lot of you may recognize and if you don't you should check them out this is one of the most popular names in music today the DJ marshmallow and he's an amazing entrepreneur he did a video with us this last year called power where he tells you the true story of how he got to be a DJ which is he realized he had to invest in himself as of this week it has over 26 million views with a hundred thousand plus more a day every day let's watch a clip [Music] okaythat's marshmallow so obviously entertainment getting 26 million views 100,000 a day obviously that works so our next idea was to create a channel we call it million stories it'll be launching in a few weeks and we have all different kinds of content we have everything from comedy drama travel shows cooking shows you name it and we have Richard Sherman okay I think you know who he is he's going to the Super Bowl this weekend with the San Francisco 49ers that's his third time in the Super Bowl now Richard Sherman who by the way is up for the Walter Payton Award right now the Walter Payton award is for excellence both on the field and off with someone who's a superstar who's doing excellent work in philanthropy Richard looks like a guy who's got everything right it's making zillions of dollars but what you may not know about him is that he grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck he went to Stanford on a football and an academic scholarship and when he got there he realized how little he knew so he is passionate about the subject and he has created a show with us where he is totally in your face about what you are not doing about your personal finances let's watch it I had never seen a debit card in my life until I got one I learned what overdraft fees were really quick if I could go back and tell my 18 year old self anything I tell him to start a savings account just don't touch that savings don't touch it everybody bring it in this is how we're gonna attack your student loan debt this is how you get out of credit card debt your adulting now so don't thanks Richard we're really excited these on our team and by the way after any of our shows you have access to free online tools everything we're doing is free by the way free online tools where you can figure out how to fix your credit score how to get out of student debt how to budget all those things that you're probably not doing and finally I want to tell you about some more of our shows but one of the first things I learned when I moved back to Los Angeles a few years ago to get into the entertainment industry is that in Hollywood the first thing they tell you is show not tell half of the American workforce or Millennials but two-thirds of us are living paycheck to paycheck a lot of what we learned was on YouTube the economy failed the coalmine shut down my name is Jason house I run a food truck my name is Devin rhymer started making games this is American paycheck how much I talk to my son about money not as much as I should nobody teaches you about money in school everything goes to my kids my money my time my body my emotions thing is though there's no instruction manual comparison Peter Ramsey India Kenny Stern nancylou has named Forbes 30 under 30 I'm one of the directors of spider-man into the spider-verse and I'm a victor and motion picture stuntman a three-time Olympic medalist people were leaving out of my life I had no job that big flop this is my faceplant everybody bring it in this is how we're gonna attack your student loan dish step 1 know exactly how much you owe the sub you guys cards aren't bad if you use them responsibly your adulting now a dope [Music] my name is George I go and with some research planning and a little creativity I find the best things to do in a city all without spending more than 100 dollars this is George goes everywhere I'm Danell Leyva I'm Nancy live I'm Peter Ramsey I'm Richard Sherman better be watch a million story now watch million stories now I mean I'm on itself do you remember that the last thing we said about thinking like an entrepreneur was to take the risk the risk that we've decided to take the singlehood foundation is to break the taboo break the taboo about talking about money and we're going to use entertainment to do it but it's a risk we think is worth taking because it affects every one of us it's the economic future of our country and of our world thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 25,617

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Business, Culture, Entertainment, Entrepreneurship, Family, Finance

Id: MS4BhcFEaE8

Length: 17min 24sec (1044 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020