177. Kids Don't Respect Life If They Don't See Anything in It for Them

“In late 1994 I realized websites were the next level of marketing. I bought a computer and taught myself how to create them. I started building websites for small inner city companies, mostly African-American, who didn’t even understand the Internet yet, but they liked the medium. My first attempts were horrible websites like everybody’s back then and they would take ten minutes to load. No one cared because the idea was so exciting!”

“At 17, my best friend and I had finally decided that to survive in our destitute neighborhood we had no choice but to sell drugs. After our first week he asked, ‘What are we going to do when we get caught?’ Because one of three things happened to all drug dealers: you either die or go to jail or you get strung out. I gave the drugs back to the dealer, and I was never involved in drugs again.”

“I’m an assistant scoutmaster in the Boy Scouts in the inner city. We just took a bunch of kids out to their first camping trip last week. We have to show these kids what life is about so they can ‘live life’ and not be merely ‘fans of life.’ That’s what Corporate Kids is about. I want to show them what they can achieve so they can be in the game of life and playing the game of life.”