Cameron Herold describes growing up in a strongly entrepreneurial family in Sudbury, Ontario, and the social and educational challenges he faced as a young entrepreneur. He recounts starting many ventures by age 18, running companies with employees in his early 20s, and overcoming stigma from family/neighbors and a school system that struggled with his attentional difficulties.
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Back then, it was the fact that entrepreneurship was not cool. You know, today we almost have this very tainted view of entrepreneurs because of the really the rise of the dot com era and then now the second rise of the Internet boom where being an entrepreneur was cool and everybody wants their kids to be entrepreneurs. Well, I grew up in an era where being an entrepreneur, we were kind of vilified. We were these greedy, capitalist little kids who didn't fit in. And so I had a challenge around that where I thought it was cool and I thought it was fun, but, you know, aunts and uncles and neighbors thought I was this strange kid who was always doing these strange things. And I just thought it was natural. I was born in Toronto, Canada, but I grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, which is about four hours north of Toronto, kind of a small city of about 80,000 people at the time. My father was an entrepreneur, and both sets of grandparents were entrepreneurs. And I was groomed, as were my brother and sister, all to be entrepreneurs. And we've all run our own companies for the last 15 to 25 years. So I grew up in this very entrepreneurial household where I was shown that having a job was a bad idea. Being an entrepreneur was never about the money. It was about controlling your time and having the freedom to do what you wanted, when you wanted and work on the things that you wanted. So my dad really taught us that, that by being in charge of our own time, we would then make as much money as we wanted, but it was always around the freedom that we chased. And by the time I was about 18 years old, I'd had about 16 different entrepreneurial ventures. I could still rattle them all off to this today and all the lessons that I learned from each of them. And then When I was 20 years old, I had 12 full time employees. So when I was just in my second year of university, I started running my first operational company with 12 employees. And when I moved out at 22 years old, I had about 18 employees at the time. Back then it was the fact that entrepreneurship was not cool. You know, today we almost have this very tainted view of entrepreneurs because of the really the rise of the dot com era and then now the second rise of the Internet boom, where being an entrepreneur was cool and everybody wants their kids to be entrepreneurs. Well, I grew up in an era where being an entrepreneur, we were kind of vilified. We were these greedy, capitalist little kids who didn't fit in. And so I had a challenge around that where I thought it was cool and I thought it was fun. But, you know, aunts and uncles and neighbors thought I was this strange kid who was always doing these strange things. And I just thought it was natural. So I had to overcome that strange stigma. I also really had to overcome a school system that was rigged against me. You know, I didn't have the same intellectual capacity. I wasn't able to memorize information. And I had a massive I have 17 of the 18 signs of attention deficit disorder. So I see everything that's happening, and I'm massively focused on all of these other things, which made it very hard just to pay attention and focus. So I felt like I was emotionally abused in the school system for 18 years where I was told I was stupid and wasn't paying attention and was struggling. So I've had to really overcome some of those insecurities. If you like that video, you're going to love more here@watchcameron.com.
