Lunch Academy Ep 002 - #PayItForward

Launch Academy Episode 002 is the offside banter to our everyday lives at Launch Academy Western Canada starting. What is that ding. Leading startup hub. My name is Sam. I'm your co host and here is Sade.

Nice to see you again.

I guess. I guess we're sort of seeing them again.

Nice to virtually see you.

How is the weather today, Sade?

Well, it's raining just like last time.

What did your weather app say today?

110% chance of rain.

110% chance of rain with this. Is there any snow in the horizon?

No, thank God. The rain's melting away all the snow. Soon we'll be able to do some hikes again and all that good stuff.

Yes. So we talk everything Vancouver here. So we'll talk about tech, obviously we talk about the weather a lot. You know, our daily lives here at Launch Academy. And also of course, food. It is Lunch Academy and it is 12 o'. Clock. Okay. So I mean, how was your week? How is everything going? What's been with you?

Week is going great. Playing a lot of catch up. Really looking forward to this episode because this is my turn to feed Sam.

So I'm so scared. It's gonna be good and I'm still sick, but I'm getting better.

I keep trying to feed him multivitamins.

Yeah. And they're like, I guess for anybody listening, they're really big. Like they are not swallowable vitamins. They're the size of a tooth. Like are you actually supposed to chew? Is it a chewable or. They are massive. Anyway, just some housekeeping items. Make sure you're following us on Facebook if you're not already Launch Academy ignited. We're live there every week. That's where you actually get to see our faces and not just listen to us. If you want more of us, we also pretty active on Instagram. You get some BTs behind the scenes stuff. Launchacademy, our Twitter handle is also LaunchAcademy. And now it is official. I can say we are also on itunes. So please subscribe. We'll leave a link in the Facebook description, but you should be able to find us by just saying. Actually everybody that's listening, do a test. Go. Hey Siri, play Lunch Academy podcast.

Yeah, See what happens because apparently I can't pronounce lunch and it keeps pulling up launch.

So which is. Which is. Which is a podcast about rockets and NASA and stuff. Which is cool too subscribe to those guys. Shout out to those guys too.

Shout out to podcast out there.

Cool, cool. So anyway, how Was your week. What did you do this week?

Anytime somebody asks me that, I blank and then I just don't remember what I did that week. Honestly, just playing catch up. I feel like all of last week was launching our birthday party.

Yeah.

So this week was just answering emails. Oh, we did schedule in our next Founder Spotlight. So we're going to do a new video interview. The last one was Ganesh. The next one will be Jason from Clue. So stay tuned.

Shout out to Ganesh and Jason.

Yeah, thanks for. Thanks for agreeing to sit with us here for an hour.

You're stuck. But you also, you also worked with some kids this week, right? Is that right? Right.

Okay, that's what you were leading to. Stop taking the queue.

I'm working really hard here, guys. Ray, if you're listening, please give me a raise. Give me more talent to work with.

I need to acknowledge my cues better. Noted. Yeah. So pretty exciting. Me and my colleague Claire went to elementary school and taught some fourth graders about money and entrepreneurship. And we did that with JA Canada. It was great. We got an opportunity to volunteer and they gave us all of the material. They came and prepped us in advance. We're biased towards J Canada because my wife works there.

And so JA is junior achievement. She works for the British Columbia chapter. So that's the full disclaimer. Here's the full plug. But I mean, like, I wasn't the one volunteering. Like, Shade did this and like, what was it like?

It was great.

Do you think that, and maybe this is a loaded question like, do kids nowadays, they think about business and startups and I actually have no idea what you taught, so maybe you can go a little bit into that too. I'm like, where are people at now?

So the package included talking about the basics of money. So we did go basically kind of went through a bunch of different definitions to get these kids more comfortable with talking about money. So we went and talked about that, you know, checking accounts, saving account interest, finance, financial institution, which was super hard when we said, anybody know what financial institution is to.

Is that a bank? Is that a bank?

Looking at us like deer in headlights.

Oh, wait. Beyond banks, what's another financial institution? Pop quiz.

I guess insurance companies or financial institutions.

Okay, I feel like maybe you should do this class with me.

Like, good test run.

How. How literate financially is Sam?

No. And these kids were super receptive. And honestly, I was impressed at the level of kind of comfort with fourth graders talking about money and what is profit and what is loss and the logic behind all that like, if you're running into loss, you won't be able to pay your bank loans and business loans. And so we were talking about all those things and they were like, it made sense to them. They weren't completely lost. And also, few kids brought up bitcoin, which was ridiculous. Teaching some fourth graders about finances and some like, what about bitcoin? You're like, what does the world become?

The world's moving fast. In fourth grade, I was trying to figure out how to get out of French class.

I can't even remember what I was doing in fourth grade.

But like, not, not bitcoin, I can.

Tell you that, actually. And this kid, I was so interested. So I actually talked to him on the side and was like, so how would you describe bitcoin? He was like, that's funny that you use to buy things online. I'm like, not quite, but like, pretty good.

Yeah, not bad.

Yeah, better than the first time somebody.

Asked me what I can use bitcoin. I can use mom's credit card, I can use my brother's credit card, I can use my dad's PayPal account. Those are my financial institutions.

I was impressed. These kids were awesome. And I definitely, they had a lot of fun with it. And ja. The material they give us is also super engaging. We've got some videos about young entrepreneurs. We really wanted some motivate them to think, get that business mindset early so that they can pick up opportunities at a young age.

So they're going to be my customers in like 15 years. Is that the goal? The Long Tail marketing plan, Guys, here's Launch Academy's Long Tail marketing plan is we're going to reach out to 8 year olds and we're going to have this little cool rocket ship T shirt. And that's the plan. You got to start earlier and earlier. Right? It's just, it's just like in, like.

It gets you thinking. Yeah, it really. Because we want kids to believe in their dreams and all that. And I want to be an astronaut. Great, do it. But then if you also have these passions and you're thinking about them in a business sense, you're making better decisions for your future. And if you're doing that at a young age, as young as grade four, it's. I think it can lead to some pretty amazing career choices. So I thought it was really cool.

Do you think astronauts pay taxes? Like, you just literally made me think of that. Like, you know, if I'm in a different country, like, which taxes do I pay? So that's that's probably a good question for accountants, but what if I'm in space? Where are you employed? I'm employed in space. What are, what taxes do I pay? Like, do I just pay the taxes that, that employ me? I guess that would kind of make sense. Or are they just tax exempt because they're freaking astronauts for the moon? For my moon tax. Okay, yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll Google that. So if anybody knows the answer to this, please let us know. Or, you know, we don't, we don't have our computers with us, so we can't Google it. But like, on this kind of topic of, you know, I mean, obviously you were volunteering and it's a pretty good cause and there's all that, but I think one of the mantras at Launch Academy is everybody has something to teach, everybody has something to learn. Our CEO Ray says that time and time and time again. And I think it is drilled into our culture and into our DNA. But why is it important to give back? I mean, without getting too cliche, right? Like, what did you get from this experience? Not just the kids, but did you learn anything yourself or.

I think it keeps you grounded. I think that's because everybody gets into their own bubble, Right? Whether it is your industry or your work environment or anything, your life routine, you get into a bubble and you start getting comfortable with your opinions and the way you think. And I think going out and volunteering or getting involved with different charities and nonprofits that are working on different causes opens your eyes to other things that are happening in the world and other issues that are prominent that you don't even think about on your day to day basis. So not. I mean, getting out and spending time with fourth graders grounded me again to like, see like the. Think about the younger generation.

Yeah.

And how do we help them and have a great future.

Yeah, for sure. And I, and I was kind of thinking about this and it's not even so much about work life balance, I think, I think especially in startups when, when people can regularly just work heads down 18 hours a day, you know, for four days, and they legitimately don't see daylight. Well, we're in Vancouver and we're raining for the next 10 days, so we're not gonna see daylight anyway. I told you we'd keep talking about weather, but like, I think it keeps you in touch with humanity. Like, you know, whatever product you're building, whatever service you're building, you're building it for someone's son, someone's daughter. Right. Like and, and if you become so disconnected with it because you're so into your line of code or into your, your lean canvas or whatever it is, and you don't kind of just take a step back and be like, oh, yeah, so these are the people that I help, or these are the people that I sell to, or, you know, all those things. Like, I feel like you, you become a little bit robotic as a company. And I think the, the best companies and the best entrepreneurs have, have.