Do high school students make better entrepreneurs than MBAs?
I recently wrote a post about how the US really needs college students to be entrepreneurial.
I should've addressed it to high school students instead.
I've challenged Georgetown MBAs and others of college age (and older) to get out of the classroom and do something entrepreneurial. I've shared an easy litmus test method for people to get a handle on whether or not they have what it takes to be entrepreneurial. And yet it was this talk at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology ("TJ" for short) that's gotten the greatest response.
Not college students. High school students.
Here's what the student leader of TJ's Future Business Leaders of America club just emailed me:
Hey Mr. Odio,Hope you've been well. FBLA has been going great this year, and we'veactually been using your challenge to go out and buy something from Cos and sell it as a focal activity for the year. Most of the members refer to it as "the Daniel Odio Challenge".
That's awesome, and it makes me wonder if the place to really encourage students to be entrepreneurial is in high school, not college. While I know that being an entrepreneur is a skill that can be learned, apparently it's something that may need to be learned earlier than college age. Well done guys. For more incredible examples of TJ high school students being entrepreneurial, take a look at the comments section of the post where I gave an entrepreneur talk at TJ.