Lessons In Leadership from a 6 year old - Part 1

At six-years-old, my one ambition in life was to eat candy.

It was as important to me as oxygen - I couldn’t function properly without it. Lemon Heads, Jolly Ranchers, Blow-pops, Pop Rocks; even the real hard stuff - like Nerds, Now and Laters and Fun-Dip - all were vital.

The one impediment to my thirst for sweets was: I had no money. I was 6 years old and my mom - a single parent of six children - had other financial priorities. One summer, my mom came up with a brilliant idea for how my sisters and I could earn some money…. She equipped us with large green trash bags, small plastic shopping bags (for gloves), and a two-wheeled folding shopping cart. She then proposed we go around the neighborhood and collect all aluminum cans, glass bottles, and newspapers we found to take to the local recycling yard where they would give us cash for our trash.

There were likely some safety instructions as well, but all I heard was Trash=Cash=Candy!

So that Saturday morning at 8am, the cartoons had to wait - I was on a mission to get that paper…and aluminum and glass - !

Some leadership lessons I learned from this experience:

● Greater Sacrifice = Greater Success.

● Be Honest or Be Eaten.

● The More, The Merrier!

Read more about these leadership lessons in the next blog post.