[Music]
hi I’m Adam and I’m Richard and were the
under qualified innovators of the social
enterprise student hire and a few years
back Adam and I began our first semester
of University where we became two of
2-million post-secondary students all
across Canada one thing we learned quite
quickly is that school is not cheap we
were shocked to learn that though out of
those two million students 50% of them
had school related debt and the average
amongst those with debt was nearly
$27,000 think about that that’s a heavy
backpack for a student to be carrying
around not only in their time in
university but also for years after
until that debt is actually paid off
Adam and I are convinced that there just
had to be a better way and this idea led
to the eventual creation of our company
student higher student higher is an
innovative platform that connects
post-secondary students to one-time job
opportunities in the cities that they
live this approach allows students to
pick jobs that fit their skills and
their schedules as well as it gives
local community members a chance to give
back and help support their local
university students with over 2,500
users on the site right now things could
not be busier so at this point some of
you must be wondering how to guys like
us end up being in the first year of our
undergrad to all the sudden starting and
running a tech startup that’s addressing
one of the most significant financial
issues faced by our society by our
society at this point I mean at that
point I didn’t even know what a tech
startup was myself the simple answer to
that question is you don’t in fact
there’s been nothing sudden there’s been
nothing sudden or jumpy about this
process for us at all to date a common
conversation I find myself often having
with fellow students is where they’ll
ask me Adam what what problem is your
business solving and I’ll usually give
them a pretty quick response along the
lines of what Richard is described here
and they’ll respond back to me usually
about along the lines of wow like you
guys are going to be millionaires like
that that is a real problem you’ve got
there and yeah you are you are gonna
make it by contrast when I have the same
conversation with an experienced
business person their reaction to me
explaining the problem is much more
under underwhelming it’s usually along
the lines of that’s interesting or yeah
that sounds reasonable and that used to
make me feel really insecure and I felt
like maybe I wasn’t
laney myself very well or like this is a
real problem here guys like you’re
pretty underwhelmed
but over time I realize that these are
just too strikingly different I guess
schools of thought that these people are
coming from on the one hand we have
students where they see it sort of like
this you’re at point a you want to get
to point B point B being in our case
starting or running a successful company
and between those two points is nothing
but one big problem requiring one big
solution and that is the whole equation
quick and that’s the whole equation
there’s nothing else to it one big
problem because one big solution but
experienced innovators come to see the
process to look a lot more like this
after a couple of years of being at this
when people ask me this question of what
problem I’m solving in my head I kind of
chuckle and respond with I’m actually
solving a thousand problems we’ve come
to see innovation and entrepreneurship
as an unrelenting stream of a thousand
problems some of them big some of them
small but each of them requiring a
unique solution and a measure of your
courage and perseverance your ability to
get where you want to go depends on you
being able to endure this stream of
problems as they come we’ve come to
think of this mindset or refer to it as
winning the day putting your your belief
and your belief in faith not so much of
your ability to reach this big far-off
point be goal but rather than your
ability to tackle the two or three
problems that are right in front of you
right now and I have some pretty big
aspirations for myself and obviously for
business as well and that can be
intimidating but really when I step back
and look at it I know that the two
problems or three problems in from you
right now aren’t going to be the ones
that do me in we reference this
principle often when we’re talking
amongst ourselves and we’re facing a
particularly difficult problem we’ll say
to one another guys this is just another
one of a thousand and we’ve seen a lot
of value from this mindset in that it
inspires action it’s thinking that
inspires action because it’s easy
especially for young innovators to get
stuck in this rut of thinking of big
ideas and talking about them and talking
about them but never actually really
going and do anything there’s all kinds
of fancy events you can attend
they usually have free delicious hors
d’oeuvres you can make really cool
Instagram posts all while avoiding the
vulnerability of addressing problems
number one two and three and be
getting this journey of a thousand
problems and so it’s it’s our hope that
by sharing our experiences with you our
successes and our failures we might be
able to inspire your hearts to act
whatever your point be goal is there’s a
thousand problems between here and there
we have some strategies that might help
you begin to address them and when it
came time for us to first take our idea
and actually turn it into action there
was a lot that stood in our way I mean
we really knew nothing we never started
a tech startup never built a customer
base we didn’t even write it we’ve never
even written a business plan and so it
was a little daunting kind of standing
there on point a and looking down and
seeing how far away point B was and it
was hard not to focus on the multitude
of problems that laid before us but it
was at this point where we just had to
stop and think to ourselves okay what
are the first three problems that are in
front of us right now and for us those
problems were number one how are we
going to sign up students number two how
are we going to get jobs and number
three how are we going to do all of this
on a shoestring student budget and so we
approached in a really creative way
where we actually our first platform we
launched a simple Facebook group and we
said we were able to sign up three
hundred students in three weeks and then
moving on we we launched a Google Doc
form which allowed us to receive jobs
where we received nearly a hundred jobs
just in the span of a couple months and
then finally we explored every free
service that we could to market
ourselves and to get the word out and we
were really creative and unique in some
of the solutions that we came up with
and after we had tackled these first
three problems it empowered us to take
on the next and it put us into that
mindset of winning
yeah just like Richards saying after
those first few ends we built some
momentum and that same momentum carries
us forward even today I think there’s
something with our thought process that
often holds us back from starting an
innovative endeavor or an entrepreneur
endeavor when we when we have an idea
our minds immediately identify problems
number one two and three the immediate
things you need to take care of right
off the bat after we think our way
through that our minds jump ahead to
four or five and six and once again your
mind can probably find a way to navigate
through those but eventually your mind
will think far enough ahead maybe it’s
problem 32 or problem number 50 but
eventually your mind will conjure up
some problem out there that will put you
in over your head that you aren’t
equipped to handle and maybe not even a
particular problem but even just this
ambiguous fear that
this journey of a thousand problems
there’s going to be one that you’re not
equipped to handle the funny thing that
we’ve experienced is that once you get
to problem 50 you’ve already knocked off
1 through 49 and number 50 ends up being
just another one of those thousand
problems and it’s really not an issue at
all and one of the things that we kind
of looked out like forward into the
future then saw and it looked like this
massive hurdle that we had to overcome
was actually getting media attention I
always thought you had to be rich or
famous or have some kind of hot scandal
on your hands that you could feed to the
news media people and when we landed our
first new spot with CTV it really opened
the floodgates and we realized how silly
we had been in thinking it was so big
and for us we carried that momentum for
it and we were able to tackle the next
problem in gaining more media contacts
and then the ball just continued to roll
and from all of that traction that we
had gotten we out we got a large influx
of jobs that came through and one set
one particular set of jobs was
photography jobs and unfortunately at
the time we had a lack of students in
order to take those jobs and to fill
them so instead of just sitting around
we carried with us that momentum and we
called up a local photography department
at a post-secondary institution here in
Edmonton and we arranged with them to
send out emails to all of their students
and we we slowly we got immediately we
actually got a bunch of students that
signed up and were able to take those
jobs and it was for us it really put us
in a pattern of success it gave us that
mindset that really anything that’s
thrown at us that we can we can
accomplish it that we can do it however
a lot of what we’ve talked about right
now is it has to do with win win win but
as are most things in life they’re not
everything goes according to plan yeah
on this journey of a thousand problems
eventually you will come across one that
you are truly under qualified and
unequipped to deal with and you will be
literally head underwater the alarms are
going off you have no idea what to do
and we’ve had these experiences and
they’ve been extremely instructive to us
and very enlightening we we’ve realized
that when you’re doing something
something creative or innovative that is
that is for the betterment of the world
they actually you’re trying to create a
positive change people see that and they
want you to succeed it’s remarkable even
if it doesn’t have any personal value
for them directly they want you to
succeed and we’ve had countless
people lift us out of these
circumstances when we couldn’t do it
ourselves I can think of one sir one
instance in the very early stages of
this project where we had no idea what
we were doing and we got connected with
some free business consulting and we
just went because we need some advice
and and we didn’t know who the fellow
was going to be we showed up there and
found out he was a harvard-educated
venture capitalist he started and sold
multiple businesses right in our state
and it right in our space and we were
totally unprepared for this meeting is a
really humbling experience but it just
taught us that principle that others can
lift you out of those circumstances when
when you’re in over your head but once
again despite all of that along the way
you have to accept the fact that there
are going to be some completely
unmitigated disasters and when we first
started student hire we we comprise what
we would consider is the the
quote/unquote dream team and we were
moving forward we developed this web
platform that we pushed out to to
validate our market and build out our
idea and we got to a point where we need
to invest some more money into it and
additional resources in order to
continue to move forward and out of the
blue one of the co-founders came to us
and said hey I’m not going to be
investing any more money into this and
I’m actually going to be exiting the
company and we were shocked our concept
of the dream team had failed and it was
it was we’re kind of left struggling to
pick up a lot of the pieces however what
we’ve really learned from that
experience is that failure is just a
part of the journey that failure as you
go through it it shapes your personal
character as well as your business and
pushes you to where you need to go for
us this grew a deeper sense of
commitment amongst the remaining
founders and a greater desire for
success it’s a comforting thing to feel
that you don’t need to succeed or you
don’t need to accomplish everything in
order to succeed yeah along this journey
of a thousand problems you have to
recognize in my mind the way I think of
it is that there’s almost some
acceptable ratio of failure on this list
of a thousand problems and just accept
that beforehand when it happens you
accept it and move on and I think
especially in this part of the world
there is really so much opportunity
presented to us I don’t believe there’s
really such a thing in this part of the
world as a completely self-made man but
rather people who have been able to take
advantage of opportunities that have
been given to them by the world it’s
almost like the world has this reservoir
of opportunity and I think a person
could go through life just taking and
taking and taking these opportunities as
come and maybe be relatively happy but a
more fulfilling and rewarding way to
live a life is to alter the world from
its current state to expand that
reservoir of opportunity so it offers
more opportunity to more people and
that’s the philosophy we’re trying to
follow and if you’re someone in this
audience that has a goal a business idea
or just something that you want to
change in your life just go and do it if
you want to run a marathon go and run a
marathon don’t go out and buy the latest
Fitbit don’t download every fitness app
and spend hours researching running form
just get out there and run as fast you
can as slow as you can just get out
there and do it act now and seize that
moment of opportunity before it passes
you we’ve learned that we create our own
opportunities in life we dream of
influencing thousands of people all over
the world creating social change on a
global scale and helping to build and
empower a better and more sustainable
future and we achieve this mission by
simply solving one problem at a time
thank you
[Applause]
hi I’m Adam and I’m Richard and were the
under qualified innovators of the social
enterprise student hire and a few years
back Adam and I began our first semester
of University where we became two of
2-million post-secondary students all
across Canada one thing we learned quite
quickly is that school is not cheap we
were shocked to learn that though out of
those two million students 50% of them
had school related debt and the average
amongst those with debt was nearly
$27,000 think about that that’s a heavy
backpack for a student to be carrying
around not only in their time in
university but also for years after
until that debt is actually paid off
Adam and I are convinced that there just
had to be a better way and this idea led
to the eventual creation of our company
student higher student higher is an
innovative platform that connects
post-secondary students to one-time job
opportunities in the cities that they
live this approach allows students to
pick jobs that fit their skills and
their schedules as well as it gives
local community members a chance to give
back and help support their local
university students with over 2,500
users on the site right now things could
not be busier so at this point some of
you must be wondering how to guys like
us end up being in the first year of our
undergrad to all the sudden starting and
running a tech startup that’s addressing
one of the most significant financial
issues faced by our society by our
society at this point I mean at that
point I didn’t even know what a tech
startup was myself the simple answer to
that question is you don’t in fact
there’s been nothing sudden there’s been
nothing sudden or jumpy about this
process for us at all to date a common
conversation I find myself often having
with fellow students is where they’ll
ask me Adam what what problem is your
business solving and I’ll usually give
them a pretty quick response along the
lines of what Richard is described here
and they’ll respond back to me usually
about along the lines of wow like you
guys are going to be millionaires like
that that is a real problem you’ve got
there and yeah you are you are gonna
make it by contrast when I have the same
conversation with an experienced
business person their reaction to me
explaining the problem is much more
under underwhelming it’s usually along
the lines of that’s interesting or yeah
that sounds reasonable and that used to
make me feel really insecure and I felt
like maybe I wasn’t
laney myself very well or like this is a
real problem here guys like you’re
pretty underwhelmed
but over time I realize that these are
just too strikingly different I guess
schools of thought that these people are
coming from on the one hand we have
students where they see it sort of like
this you’re at point a you want to get
to point B point B being in our case
starting or running a successful company
and between those two points is nothing
but one big problem requiring one big
solution and that is the whole equation
quick and that’s the whole equation
there’s nothing else to it one big
problem because one big solution but
experienced innovators come to see the
process to look a lot more like this
after a couple of years of being at this
when people ask me this question of what
problem I’m solving in my head I kind of
chuckle and respond with I’m actually
solving a thousand problems we’ve come
to see innovation and entrepreneurship
as an unrelenting stream of a thousand
problems some of them big some of them
small but each of them requiring a
unique solution and a measure of your
courage and perseverance your ability to
get where you want to go depends on you
being able to endure this stream of
problems as they come we’ve come to
think of this mindset or refer to it as
winning the day putting your your belief
and your belief in faith not so much of
your ability to reach this big far-off
point be goal but rather than your
ability to tackle the two or three
problems that are right in front of you
right now and I have some pretty big
aspirations for myself and obviously for
business as well and that can be
intimidating but really when I step back
and look at it I know that the two
problems or three problems in from you
right now aren’t going to be the ones
that do me in we reference this
principle often when we’re talking
amongst ourselves and we’re facing a
particularly difficult problem we’ll say
to one another guys this is just another
one of a thousand and we’ve seen a lot
of value from this mindset in that it
inspires action it’s thinking that
inspires action because it’s easy
especially for young innovators to get
stuck in this rut of thinking of big
ideas and talking about them and talking
about them but never actually really
going and do anything there’s all kinds
of fancy events you can attend
they usually have free delicious hors
d’oeuvres you can make really cool
Instagram posts all while avoiding the
vulnerability of addressing problems
number one two and three and be
getting this journey of a thousand
problems and so it’s it’s our hope that
by sharing our experiences with you our
successes and our failures we might be
able to inspire your hearts to act
whatever your point be goal is there’s a
thousand problems between here and there
we have some strategies that might help
you begin to address them and when it
came time for us to first take our idea
and actually turn it into action there
was a lot that stood in our way I mean
we really knew nothing we never started
a tech startup never built a customer
base we didn’t even write it we’ve never
even written a business plan and so it
was a little daunting kind of standing
there on point a and looking down and
seeing how far away point B was and it
was hard not to focus on the multitude
of problems that laid before us but it
was at this point where we just had to
stop and think to ourselves okay what
are the first three problems that are in
front of us right now and for us those
problems were number one how are we
going to sign up students number two how
are we going to get jobs and number
three how are we going to do all of this
on a shoestring student budget and so we
approached in a really creative way
where we actually our first platform we
launched a simple Facebook group and we
said we were able to sign up three
hundred students in three weeks and then
moving on we we launched a Google Doc
form which allowed us to receive jobs
where we received nearly a hundred jobs
just in the span of a couple months and
then finally we explored every free
service that we could to market
ourselves and to get the word out and we
were really creative and unique in some
of the solutions that we came up with
and after we had tackled these first
three problems it empowered us to take
on the next and it put us into that
mindset of winning
yeah just like Richards saying after
those first few ends we built some
momentum and that same momentum carries
us forward even today I think there’s
something with our thought process that
often holds us back from starting an
innovative endeavor or an entrepreneur
endeavor when we when we have an idea
our minds immediately identify problems
number one two and three the immediate
things you need to take care of right
off the bat after we think our way
through that our minds jump ahead to
four or five and six and once again your
mind can probably find a way to navigate
through those but eventually your mind
will think far enough ahead maybe it’s
problem 32 or problem number 50 but
eventually your mind will conjure up
some problem out there that will put you
in over your head that you aren’t
equipped to handle and maybe not even a
particular problem but even just this
ambiguous fear that
this journey of a thousand problems
there’s going to be one that you’re not
equipped to handle the funny thing that
we’ve experienced is that once you get
to problem 50 you’ve already knocked off
1 through 49 and number 50 ends up being
just another one of those thousand
problems and it’s really not an issue at
all and one of the things that we kind
of looked out like forward into the
future then saw and it looked like this
massive hurdle that we had to overcome
was actually getting media attention I
always thought you had to be rich or
famous or have some kind of hot scandal
on your hands that you could feed to the
news media people and when we landed our
first new spot with CTV it really opened
the floodgates and we realized how silly
we had been in thinking it was so big
and for us we carried that momentum for
it and we were able to tackle the next
problem in gaining more media contacts
and then the ball just continued to roll
and from all of that traction that we
had gotten we out we got a large influx
of jobs that came through and one set
one particular set of jobs was
photography jobs and unfortunately at
the time we had a lack of students in
order to take those jobs and to fill
them so instead of just sitting around
we carried with us that momentum and we
called up a local photography department
at a post-secondary institution here in
Edmonton and we arranged with them to
send out emails to all of their students
and we we slowly we got immediately we
actually got a bunch of students that
signed up and were able to take those
jobs and it was for us it really put us
in a pattern of success it gave us that
mindset that really anything that’s
thrown at us that we can we can
accomplish it that we can do it however
a lot of what we’ve talked about right
now is it has to do with win win win but
as are most things in life they’re not
everything goes according to plan yeah
on this journey of a thousand problems
eventually you will come across one that
you are truly under qualified and
unequipped to deal with and you will be
literally head underwater the alarms are
going off you have no idea what to do
and we’ve had these experiences and
they’ve been extremely instructive to us
and very enlightening we we’ve realized
that when you’re doing something
something creative or innovative that is
that is for the betterment of the world
they actually you’re trying to create a
positive change people see that and they
want you to succeed it’s remarkable even
if it doesn’t have any personal value
for them directly they want you to
succeed and we’ve had countless
people lift us out of these
circumstances when we couldn’t do it
ourselves I can think of one sir one
instance in the very early stages of
this project where we had no idea what
we were doing and we got connected with
some free business consulting and we
just went because we need some advice
and and we didn’t know who the fellow
was going to be we showed up there and
found out he was a harvard-educated
venture capitalist he started and sold
multiple businesses right in our state
and it right in our space and we were
totally unprepared for this meeting is a
really humbling experience but it just
taught us that principle that others can
lift you out of those circumstances when
when you’re in over your head but once
again despite all of that along the way
you have to accept the fact that there
are going to be some completely
unmitigated disasters and when we first
started student hire we we comprise what
we would consider is the the
quote/unquote dream team and we were
moving forward we developed this web
platform that we pushed out to to
validate our market and build out our
idea and we got to a point where we need
to invest some more money into it and
additional resources in order to
continue to move forward and out of the
blue one of the co-founders came to us
and said hey I’m not going to be
investing any more money into this and
I’m actually going to be exiting the
company and we were shocked our concept
of the dream team had failed and it was
it was we’re kind of left struggling to
pick up a lot of the pieces however what
we’ve really learned from that
experience is that failure is just a
part of the journey that failure as you
go through it it shapes your personal
character as well as your business and
pushes you to where you need to go for
us this grew a deeper sense of
commitment amongst the remaining
founders and a greater desire for
success it’s a comforting thing to feel
that you don’t need to succeed or you
don’t need to accomplish everything in
order to succeed yeah along this journey
of a thousand problems you have to
recognize in my mind the way I think of
it is that there’s almost some
acceptable ratio of failure on this list
of a thousand problems and just accept
that beforehand when it happens you
accept it and move on and I think
especially in this part of the world
there is really so much opportunity
presented to us I don’t believe there’s
really such a thing in this part of the
world as a completely self-made man but
rather people who have been able to take
advantage of opportunities that have
been given to them by the world it’s
almost like the world has this reservoir
of opportunity and I think a person
could go through life just taking and
taking and taking these opportunities as
come and maybe be relatively happy but a
more fulfilling and rewarding way to
live a life is to alter the world from
its current state to expand that
reservoir of opportunity so it offers
more opportunity to more people and
that’s the philosophy we’re trying to
follow and if you’re someone in this
audience that has a goal a business idea
or just something that you want to
change in your life just go and do it if
you want to run a marathon go and run a
marathon don’t go out and buy the latest
Fitbit don’t download every fitness app
and spend hours researching running form
just get out there and run as fast you
can as slow as you can just get out
there and do it act now and seize that
moment of opportunity before it passes
you we’ve learned that we create our own
opportunities in life we dream of
influencing thousands of people all over
the world creating social change on a
global scale and helping to build and
empower a better and more sustainable
future and we achieve this mission by
simply solving one problem at a time
thank you
[Applause]
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