Raising Entrepreneurs

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There has been a bit of a buzz this year in the “blogosphere” - the community of bloggers in a given industry who read and comment on each other’s blogs - about young Carl Ocab, from the Philippines, who started a pretty well-written blog with decent content at the age of just thirteen.

Some have suggested that Carl’s blog is a hoax, or at the very least unethical, and that the posts are really being written by an adult, perhaps his father. Others have even used the word “exploitation”.

I think this is an example of the kind of age-related prejudice which keeps kids out of most offline business communities.

If Carl’s bio said he was 24, would anyone wonder or care whether some or all of the posts on the blog were ghost-written? Of course not.

Subcontracting content is a time-honoured method of getting time leverage, whether the content is articles, eBooks, sales letters, or website pages. There’s a whole industry in private label rights, where people legally claim the work of others as their own.

Do you think that Donald Trump or Robert Kiyosaki personally sat down at the word processor and banged out all the words in their latest books? Of course not. If it’s quality content, that’s all that matters.

Unless you’re a kid.

If you’re a kid and you do what the adults do, somehow that’s morally wrong?

I don’t think so!

For the record, it’s merely an assertion that Carl doesn’t write his own stuff. The authoritative Philippines blogger, Yuga, went as far as to meet with Carl and his father for several hours to assess whether the thoughts in Carl’s blog were his own. His verdict?

Yes, Carl isn’t a very eloquent speaker. He talks like a 14-year old - a 14-year old who knows how to reverse-engineer some WP templates, or prowl the DigitalPoint forums and bid out some simple projects to Indians. That does not mean he can’t write better than a regular 14-year old. He’s a bit shy, yes, but if you treat him like a mature person and not look at him as a kid, he’s very open and candid. I actually learned a thing or two from the stories he shared.

Read the whole Yuga-Meets-The-Kid-Blogger post.

OK, so having dealt with the question of writing the posts oneself vs outsourcing, let’s move on to the question of “exploitation”. We’ve all seen “activity parents”, haven’t we? Stage parents, pushing their kids into tights and forced smiles, or sports parents screaming “Kick him in the knee, Johnny!” or “Scratch her eyes out, Daisy!”

We all know this kind of parental pressure is not good for kids. If parents are pushing their kids to gratify the parents’ own anxieties and desires, then it doesn’t matter what the activity - performing arts, music, sports, volunteer work, paid work, business, or even religious outreach work - it’s not right. The child has to be the initiator and an active director of their life.

One of the most unfair things about this whole debate has been the assumption that someone Carl’s age couldn’t possibly write so intelligently, or if he does, that he’s a genius, one in a million.

Many, many kids aged between 11 and 15 are highly intelligent, deep-thinking, articulate people with a real contribution to make in the adult world. But the adult world is not listening. It’s the tragedy of our current system that in trying to protect kids from real exploitation, and channelling them into the school system instead, we have marginalised them and their capabilities so much.

Take kids seriously! Coach them on how to present their ideas well. Listen and engage with them. Think about it - if nobody had ever coached you on how to formulate an argument, write a report, or speak in public, how well would you be able to do those things now?

It’s not deceptive, morally wrong, or manipulative for kids in business to get guidance and mentoring - it’s smart. More adults should do it, because every successful adult I have ever met is very up front about the assistance they have had to get them started, learn what they needed to learn, and stay on track through the difficulties.

So, in summary, I’d say even if it’s all true - if Carl Ocab has outsourced the writing of his blog posts, if he has made use of his father’s knowledge of marketing to get traffic to his blog, or outsourced the marketing of the blog entirely to his father or anyone else for that matter - then he has been smart, resourceful, and entrepreneurial.

He uses his age as a marketing hook - is that any different from the cancer survivors using their recovery as a hook? It would be scandalous if he was just pretending to be a kid - that would be like someone claiming to have cured themselves of cancer who has never actually had it all. But that’s not the case here. Carl really was 13 when he started blogging, and he really is only 14 now. He’s telling the truth about his age, and how he runs his business internally, what tasks he chooses to do personally and what he outsources, well, that’s entirely up to him.

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