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'EDI MATTERS' NEWSLETTER
VOLUME 04 - ISSUE 02

TED Talks - CEO ADDRESS

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image So, my daughter is graduating from High School next month and as times change so do the requirements for graduation. Apparently, she and her classmates have to give a TED talk as a requirement for graduation. For those of you who don't know, TED Talks are all over YouTube as short speeches on topics related to Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED). The emphasis of the TED talk is supposed to be on the educational aspect of the topic selected.

One of my daughter's friends was hanging around our house and she said to me, "Hey Kevin, I needed a topic for my TED talk, so I decided to do it on people's biggest regrets from High School. What was your biggest regret?"

I gulped, staggered, pleaded the fifth, and then I thought about it for a minute. This topic deserved more than an answer like, "I should have asked Debbie to the prom" or "I should have tried out for QuarterBack". It deserved much more than that, my response follows:

My biggest high school regret was simply not quitting.

Wait, what? No,... not quitting school, but quitting the school I was at.

One day, my parents, thought it would be prestigious to send their kids to private Catholic Schools. So they told my brother he was going to Bishop Connolly High School, in Fall River, MA. My brother had just finished 9th grade at Tiverton High School, so he blatantly refused, they punished him, he refused some more and they punished him again. This miserable process repeated itself every day for weeks over the course of the summer, the battle never had a winner, but eventually my parents just gave up. Upon giving up, my parents turned to me and said, "next year you go to 9th grade at Bishop Connolly". Having witnessed the prolonged battle that my brother had just gone through, I said, "Fine".

Bishop Connolly in the early 1970s was an all-boys school. It was a Jesuit Priest school who had accepted Dominican Brothers from a Dominican school that had burned down several years before. As such, all of the teachers were either priests or brothers.

The early 1970s was not a shining time for the Catholic Church, (If you have seen the movie Spotlight, Fall River is mentioned several times), nor was it the best time to be a boy, at a Catholic all boys school. The students were diligent to never be alone in the locker room with the creepier priests or brothers. Since the priests lived in the school as well as worked in it, they had access to all their worldly belongings all day long. As such, a large portion of the non-creepy faculty was usually drunk, soon to be drunk or hung over, but around them you were reasonably safe.

I spent my first year at Bishop Connolly avoiding the creepy staff and trying to understand what the alcohol impaired teachers were talking about. I did not do well, my grades suffered and I struggled. I didn't want to fail and I didn't want to get thrown out of the school even though I hated being there.

By the end of my freshman year, my parents had lost interest in the prestigious private school thing. They said they were not paying for another year and told me to prepare to go back to public school. Now, I wanted to stay at Bishop Connolly more than ever. I refused to quit, to give up, or to succumb to the pressure.

So I worked at various under 16 year old jobs, and I saved money for tuition and books. In sophomore year, I worked harder at the school work and pushed on through. I got decent grades and did the extra work.

Eventually, I graduated from Bishop Connolly and I felt like I had accomplished a great thing, which I had. But...I ended up with a less than stellar education, I spent all the money I could have used for college, I lost most of the friends from public school in my home town and I didn't know a single girl. I didn't even know how to talk to a girl.

I should have quit.

Three semesters into college I had to drop out for lack of money. I had to learn rudimentary high school stuff before I could pass a college course. I had been trying to talk to girls, but was failing badly.

I should have quit.

Now, fast forward 40 years, in business I've learned that you have to make plans, but plans may need to change. Often times the best laid plans are affected by variables that we have no control over.

Entrepreneurs, are people who push hard to overcome the impossible and start businesses. However, most startup businesses fail. The exact same spirit that pushes an entrepreneur to start a business is the same spirit that causes him not to re-evaluate. Simply put, a successful entrepreneur is one who can see a path forward, but understands that the path may need to change, while the unsuccessful entrepreneur continuously pushes forward into disaster.

Knowing what I know now, my biggest high school regret is, I should have quit.

Thanks. My daughter's friend has not given her TED talk yet, we will have to see how it goes.

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