“It is better to own the race course than the race horse.”

I’m always on the lookout for entrepreneurial education resources for parents and kids.

This book, The Parents’ Guide to Raising CEO Kids and website http://raisingceokids.com are superb resources for parents.

“Drawing from more than 200 interviews and Dr. Jerry and Sarah L. Cook’s expertise in parenting and entrepreneurship, The Parents’ Guide to Raising CEO Kids provides comprehensive assistance for helping your child succeed in business and life, as well as inspiration for those who wish to attain business success at any age. This integrative handbook assists parents in helping their child turn the dream of business ownership into a tangible reality.” (Excerpt from back cover)

Know what I love about this book?

• 70 pages of real youth entrepreneurs including their websites
• Wonderful ‘Questions for Reflection’ at the end of each chapter
• Lots of testimonials/personal inspirational quotes throughout the book from young CEOs.
• Chapter 9 Society’s Role

As a society we all benefit from youth who have purpose. Over the last 15 years, we’ve seen this time and again with Osiris Organization’s youth. Helping youth discover their purpose, incorporating it into their life, utilizing that purpose to create products and services, changes everything and everyone connected to your life!

Clearly, Dr. Jerry and Sarah Cook share the foundation of Osiris Organization’s mission. I recommend this book for anyone who has a commitment to supporting the next generation of youth.

“Graduation is only a concept. In real life every day you graduate.”

Well, the world has certainly changed in the decades since my high school graduation.

I still remember the excitement, though. Immediately after the ceremony, another graduate and I hugged one another and proudly exclaimed, “We’re DONE; it’s all over; we have nothing more to worry about!”

My dad, standing near by, overheard that prophetic statement. “Oh, REALLY?” Dad was cracking up and shaking his head. “You have no idea!”

My friend and I looked sheepish. We knew we were being dramatic. Of course there was much more to life…and school. After all, we would head off to college in a few months. Yep, more classes, books, tests, papers, to engage and worry over.

So I found the following article of profound interest.  When I graduated high school, I too, had the celebratory party discussed in this article. In those days, you did invite your friends—your peers—but they weren’t expected to give you any money. A card exchanged was sufficient.

The party was truly about celebrating your accomplishment. It was the adult family members/friends who MIGHT gift you a 20-dollar bill. Those were precious gifts for those of us (and that was most of us in my circle of peers) who would foot the cost ourselves for our college attendance.  Those cash gifts would more often than not go toward tuition and books.

Gift registry for high school grads? Yes, the times they have changed!

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/story/2012-04-26/gift-registries-high-school-grads/54793274/1

“Academic qualifications are important and so is financial education. They’re both important and schools are forgetting one of them.”  ~  Robert Kiyosaki

I’m pleased to see so many articles today in the mainstream press about the need for the millennial generation (18-29) to learn financial literacy.

While we’ve previously blogged about this subject on Osiris Organization’s site, it cannot be repeated enough. We’ve always put a lot of energy into the notion of youth education—academic and financial. It’s simply and crucially important in the 21^st century world we live in.

In this morning’s USA Today, in an article entitled, “The Cost of Financial Literacy,” one paragraph stood out for me:

Susan Beacham, CEO of financial literacy firm Money Savvy Generation says, “The parental instinct to provide for you children can actually be detrimental to preparing them to be financially independent. It’s an ‘unintended consequence’ that leaves adult children unprepared to handle their own finances. You feel like a good parent if you’re taking care of your child,” she says. “(But) the reason kids on college campuses don’t know anything about money is because they have no skin in the game because their parents are still paying. Their child is going to pay a much higher price for the lack of experience and knowledge they have on graduation day.”

I agree with her. But I don’t see our public schools rising to address this challenge anytime soon. I’m pleased to see more and more organizations like Money Savvy Generation springing up to address this important issue.

Click on the link to read this article in its entirety:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/basics/story/2012-04-23/millenials-financial-knowledge/54494856/

Each spring Major League Baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson Day. This article in USA TODAY about the waning presence of African Americans on the rosters of MLB (Major League Baseball) prompted the following conversation between Bill Roddy and me:

“Honey, I remember you telling me several years ago that one of the reasons young African American males have little interest in baseball is due to the unfortunate high rate of absentee fathers. You told me that when you were a boy, and even when your grandfather was a boy, fathers usually taught sons the baseball fundamentals of throwing and catching.”

Bill sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin. “Well, that’s true. But the bigger reason is that Professional Baseball doesn’t have the “awe” factor that basketball and football carry.”

“But the article points out that the pay in baseball is comparable to the other sports,” I countered. “So it isn’t that it’s lacking in prestigious pay. Plus, one can play baseball a lot longer than football, certainly, and longer than basketball too.”

“Gail, you have to understand, young men in general today are so much more susceptible to that awe factor. They need the stimulus of being involved in something that brings envy from others. Just loving a game is not enough for young men today.”

“The article also said there’s little scholarship money for baseball.”

“Yes, there’s that. It’s not a revenue generating sport, like football and basketball, for colleges. As a grown man now, and my remembrances of being a young African American growing up in a sports obsessed community, I see five things that keep young AA men from baseball:

• Baseball African American role models – fewer exist today
• Baseball requires much more organization for kids in the neighborhoods than football and basketball
• Baseball is much less stimulating – kids are used to hype today
• Baseball takes longer to develop into a Major League player
• Baseball entails expensive equipment

“So all in all, honey, do you think it’s not a big deal—a mere reflection of our changing cultural tastes? I’m just curious because I know that as you were growing up in the 1960s and coming of age in the mid-1970s, you loved baseball. Your grandfather taught you to throw curveballs and fastballs.  Those lessons were a source of bonding.”

“That’s true. Fathers aren’t around as much to teach through sports lessons. It’s also true that it isn’t a big deal. Times change, cultural focus changes. As you know, that’s always been Osiris focus–to teach our young men to be better people, whether or not they pursue sports as a recreation or a career. Youth love to emulate their sports heroes. But we show youth that they can become entrepreneurs, business owners, eventually professional sports team owners, and inspire their peers that way.

Which pursuit would better serve our communities?

We invite you to read the USA Today article in the link below: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/dailypitch/post/2012/04/mlb-jackie-robinson-day-african-american-players/1#.T4ybMY6JsX4

Osiris Organization’s youth are often stereotyped and profiled in seemingly myriad ways. One of the most damaging and false profiles is that our youth—mostly African-American males—are not intelligent.

I thought about this stereotyping before I turned in for the night. It triggered a thought-provoking dream:

I’m in attendance at some sort of public event. A man approaches me. We strike up a conversation. He has a lofty command of the language and tells me he is a scientist, an astro physicist, in town consulting with the university.

Did he ever look the part! Caucasian, short, slight, bespectacled, rumpled suit and tie, hair in disarray—a bona fide geek.

 It wasn’t clear why he approached me. As we sat at a table, he regaled me with his love of all things scientific. I’m not a scientist but I found his stories fascinating; his enthusiasm quaint.

 He had one annoying habit. He never looked at my face while he spoke to me. His eyes darted around the room. I chuckled to myself, “Another funny quality of geeky people—all intellect and poor social skills.”

 Suddenly, a group of FBI agents rushed into the room, rushed over to this man, handcuffed him, and whisked him away. Once they were convinced I had just met him, they told me why they arrested him.

“We have been following him for several years. His criminal specialty is identity theft. He has bankrupted at least 50 people that we know of out of millions of dollars. These ill-gotten gains allow him to travel the world; his intellectual fabrications have fooled even the most skeptical.”

Ah….you see where I’m going with this, don’t you? I’ve been around the block a few times. In real life I doubt I’d be that accepting of this man’s resume. Nor would I so readily assume those blatant stereotypes I describe as any real reflection of someone.

But doesn’t the dream slam home a point! Somewhere in my mind this profile took root. He’s white, he’s short, he’s slight, he’s rumpled, he’s bespectacled:

HE’S A HARMLESS, AMUSING GEEK!

Even his furtive eye movement made him somewhat endearing. Geeks get a break for stunted social graces, don’t they? In the dream I never thought that might be a sign of someone one step ahead of the police. In real life—I might—it’s hard to say.

Stereotypes and profiling can be equally dangerous when the profile makes us assume all is well with this person.

Let’s all be very careful using labels for people…and believing them, okay?

Please…

Many of you are parents of teenagers. You have probably experienced this from time to time—the distress of trying to let your teen move through peer relationship growing pains even as you see them potentially going over a cliff!

At Osiris Organization, this is one of our most used teachable moments: advising kids that while their loyalty to friends is understandable, a few of their friends might need a little distancing now.

Young males especially struggle with seeing so much value in friendships with the “buddies,” especially relationships of long-term.  Young men don’t want to “rock the boat” when they see a friend going down a destructive path or if that friend asks them to come along.

Cat Thompson wrote a wonderful piece called True to Your Word in the April 2012 issue of Experience Life Magazine. It’s a series of articles in one. Reclaiming Your Truth is superb and speaks to the call for youth and adults to houseclean some of our relationships to make room for those relationships that allow us to live deeper in our truth.

http://experiencelife.com/article/how-to-be-true-to-your-word/

Osiris Organization is proud to be a collaborative partner with Harvest Prep Academy.  Young adults in our life skills and work training program are employed at Harvest in entry-level positions. The support that these youth receive goes beyond a paycheck. These young adults receive mentoring from caring, committed adults, and a sense of community involvement that is immeasurable for life development.

Thanks, Harvest Prep and Mr. and Mrs. Mahmoud!

http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/144057966.html

Building Communities of Passion. That’s the title of chapter 4.3 in the new book by business thinker and strategist, Gary Hamel. The book is called, “What Matters Now.”

I highly recommend this book for those who also question “the fundamental assumptions we have about management, the meaning of work, and organizational life…”  I too feel our businesses, our institutions, need to once again inspire the human spirit. To do that requires retooling business (life) ethics.

Chapter 4.3 is the inspiring story of how one large non-profit institution, entrenched in it’s management model for many, many years, was able to change direction, and motivate the members of the organization to lead instead of merely “serve.”

This is what we have found to be true in our work at Osiris. We never bought into the formula of mentoring kids to be a passive audience—that adults create programs and kids get “plugged into” that formula. When youth are motivated to create solutions for themselves and others, they may struggle at first. They are not used to thinking any solutions reside within themselves. With time, practice, and encouragement, they do.

Chapter 5.5, Aiming Higher is also an enjoyable, thoughtful final chapter.  Hamel wonders out loud, “what is my quest?”

He answered that question when he participated in a fascinating collaborative effort with 36 other management experts in 2008.

“Bureaucracy and control have had their day. It’s a time for a new ideology based on freedom and self-determination.” (What Matters Now.)

I couldn’t agree more…

Please visit link to read reviews.

http://www.amazon.com/What-Matters-Now-Competition-Unstoppable/product-reviews/1118120825/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

“Nonprofits & Accountability.”This article appeared in the Sunday, March 4, 2012 Minneapolis Star Tribune business section. It featured Steve Rothschild, founder and chair, Twin Cities Rise, author of the new book, “The Non non-profit: For-profit thinking for nonprofit success.”

Click on this link to read this article by business writer Neal St. Anthony in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

http://www.startribune.com/business/141186083.html

While the ongoing violence and threat of violence in our world—in our communities—shakes us to our foundations, I won’t ever forget that there are many male members of our families, communities, the world stage, quietly going about leading with commitment, service, honor, and love.

My uncle Odell is 96 years young. Still teaching Sunday school each Sunday. Briefly hospitalized this weekend.

Thinking of you, loving you, Uncle Odell…

You are one of my favorites

That much is true

I wonder, do you ever think of yourself this way?

Or are you just busy being

Just busy giving

Just busy living

Just busy striving

To get up each morning and do well that day

And shower your family with great love without question

And shower your community with such love without question

And shower your niece with deep love without question

Thank you…