“Nurture your relationships. You never know who someone knows. You never know when a connection will come back to help you or haunt you.”
Picture the person that you think has the perfect job? Who are they? If I had to guess I would say that the person you are imagining has a job that they love. Perhaps a trade that they’re really good at. I’m always so envious of the chef’s I see on Chef’s Table. These people have a singular focus. One that they love and one that they’re great at. Doesn’t that make for the perfect job? ‘Find something you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life’ sort of stuff. Well, what if you’re like today’s guest, Khalif El-Amin, and you don’t want to find just one thing? What if you want to do a lot of different things? And help other people do a lot of different things? Now that can give a restless soul like me some hope.
“It got to a point where we were invited to three different fashion shows [and we weren’t even trying to be a clothing brand].”
“We tell these kids, fail, you’re gonna fail. Big deal. How do you bounce back from the failure? What did you learn from the failure so that you don’t make those same mistakes again?”
Interview Contents
3:15 - How Khalif describes what he does for a living.
6:00 - Young Enterprise Society.
7:00 - Creating networking events.
10:00 - Working with youth and adults.
15:00 - Grants and funding.
21:00 - Networking.
22:30 - STEAM workshops.
25:30 - Kids starting businesses after the workshops.
29:00 - Connecting with the students and getting them to believe in themselves.
32:00 - Focusing on entrepreneurship.
36:00 - Most interesting products kids have come up with.
40:00 - Working with over 250 businesses.
45:00 - Having a broad vs. specific business model.
47:45 - Khalif’s favorite part about his job.
49:30 - Advice for people that don’t know what they want to do for a living.
Links
THIS EPISODE WAS MADE WITH THE SUPPORT OF
Kevin Cole
Marcus Batson
Roxanna
Michelle & Jim Wortner
Janelle Swanson
Jimmy Seymour
