What entrepreneurs can learn from children with clubfoot
[Music]
over the years
i’ve learned that children teach us some
of the most valuable lessons in life
right like how you can tear something
apart to find out what it’s made of and
know how it works
how to pick yourself up when you fall
they even teach us life’s critical
lessons like how to genuinely be happy
sometimes however the lessons that
children teach us are unexpected
like the lesson i’m going to share with
you today that i learned from a child
named chebo
sichevo is a smart wonderful young man
that likes to smile and make funny faces
but there’s something else that cheryl
likes in that school but until he was 15
years old
chewa was uncomfortable being in school
because he was born with a condition
called club foot
now with club foot children are born
with feet that are curved inwards
they’re shaped like golf clubs which
makes it increasingly difficult for them
to walk
or to run long distances if you neglect
a club foot
the feet become permanently deformed
which makes which is a source of further
discomfort later on in life and
unfortunately for chebo
it earned him a nickname in his
community the cursed child
today i’m going to tell you what
children like chebo can teach
entrepreneurs i will show you the
benefits of learning these lessons
and i’ll even show you what you can
apply in your own life that you cheo
applied to his club foot recovery
journey
but first let’s talk about club foot you
see one
in 1 000 children worldwide is born with
the condition
now while its causes are idiopathic it’s
been linked to genetics
and skeletal abnormalities a club foot
won’t just go away because you’ve chosen
to ignore it like chewa’s parents did
it needs treatment and without treatment
the feet become permanently deformed and
you need surgery to correct it
now what that surgery looks like is that
they’ll need to cut the foot
and try and straighten it back into
place
this can be excruciatingly painful to
experience
and what’s much more painful is the
recovery process itself
because it can take a long time
depending on the type of surgery that is
done
and post-operative care among many other
things
you need grit to go through this
recovery process angela duckworth
defines grit
as passion and perseverance for our
long-term goals
she says grit is a better predictor of
achievement than talent
or intelligence i think entrepreneurs
are going to need a lot of great
post pandemic because since the pandemic
hit last year
startups have become an endangered
species
four out of every 10 startups is at a
significant risk of running out of money
72 percent of startups have as they have
a massive reduction
in their revenues and six out of every
10
has either laid off or reduced the
salaries of their employees because
times are indeed tough and unfortunately
about become tougher because out of
every 10 startups
nine unfortunately might not make it
this is such a dire situation
when you think about it it’s it’s sad
really
but this is not the time to give up
because what the pandemic has done
is that in developing countries where
people are predominantly poor
it threatens to put the lives of further
500 million people
into poverty and now more than ever
people in these vulnerable populations
will not depend on their governments or
market forces in order to survive
they will depend on the efforts of
social entrepreneurs because social
entrepreneurs have been in the forefront
of the pandemic fighting some of the
world’s wickedest problems
according to the schwab foundation
social entrepreneurs have
improved the lives of over 622 million
people
by providing solutions in health in
education
in water and sanitation environment
among many other
solutions provided and see this is why
we need social entrepreneurs
because the possibility of a world
without them post pandemic is
something that is quite simply too
ghastly for us to contemplate
but what will make the difference
between the social entrepreneurs that
succeed
and those that don’t it’s not their
talent
it’s not their intelligence it’s their
passion
their perseverance for their missions
it’s their
grit and chaos example is such a good
example of what it means to have grit
because it was a journey of pain it was
a journey of
patience it was a journey of
perseverance but it later on turned out
to be a journey of triumph
through grit you know and
i remember watching him recover and
thinking to myself this is such a tough
kid
because i i wouldn’t want to go through
something like that myself
but little did i know that seeing that
recovery was preparing me for something
that i would later experience
myself well need to use grit in 2019
i decided to apply for achievement
scholarship now the thing with
achievement scholarships
is that thousands of people apply for
these scholarships
every year across the world and only
between one
to two percent awarded the scholarship
now even though i believe i put in a
brilliant application that yeah
i was one among the 98 to 99 that were
good
but unfortunately not good enough and i
remember that rejection stung so much
and going through it and thinking to
myself i may as well just throw my
dreams out the window
i was defeated i was distraught i
i gave up and i remember telling myself
i will not reapply because this is such
a painful process to
to enjoy but the next year
against my better judgment i decided to
throw in a fresh application
and out of the over 60 000 people that
applied that year
and the over 600 local applicants in
zambia
i became one of only 13 zambians
that were awarded the scholarship in
fact i’m the only zombie achievement
scholar standing at the university of
sussex
see that’s great great is not about
going through tough times in order to
survive
it’s about going through tough times in
order to survive and then
to thrive in summary what i’ve been
talking about
i’ve been saying that the grit that
children like chew will show
through their recovery journey is
something that we all need
if we’re going to build back better post
pandemic because now more than ever
the world needs our solutions so we need
to re-examine the places where we failed
we need to
go back to the doors that were closed
for us and knock on them
try again and again persevere and have
passion for these goals until we achieve
them
because post-pandemic the world is going
to need every
solution we can get now i end this on a
good note
i’m happy to tell you that ceo did go
back to school
he can walk he can run and he can play
sports like all of the other kids in his
neighborhood
in fact he’s no longer the community’s
cursed child
and rightly so because his name ichibo
has such a positive meaning in bamba in
bemba it is a reference to the word of
god
thank you so much for listening today
you