My fifth grade teacher (I will call her Ms. R) recently invited me back to my former middle school to talk to her current class. I talked about what drives me, what it takes to be a good student, and somethings to expect in the years to come. I hope you enjoy a variation of my talk. Before I share what I talked about, I want to disclose that some of what is written below can be found on previous blog posts and ValueWalk.
"You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great." When my Ms. R would tell us this, it meant nothing to me as a ten year old. Looking back on it now, the only thing I can think about is how perfectly this describes my story.
I am currently in ninth grade. To understand my story, we have to first understand how I got started in two businesses: the jewelry business and the camp business.
When I was in 4th grade, I decided to start a business. I don’t believe it had a name, but I was extremely proud of it. I made earrings and brought them to a gift store to sell. Every weekend I would make new earrings to drop off at the store. I remember the joy that I felt when I was going through all of my sales with the owner. So, at age nine, I had my first job. I loved it. I could handle all of my numbers without the help of others. I felt empowered and confident. I had my own business. There was no feeling like it.
My passion for business continued. I started a summer camp for kids with my best friend at age ten. We called it Camp Kids. We hosted it one week of every summer for three years. Although watching the campers finger paint was a highlight, I was more than happy to just stay inside and work on the numbers. As a ten year old, we had an 85% profit margin. It was wonderful and my passion for business only grew.
The kids in my neighborhood finally outgrew Camp Kids, so I was jobless at age eleven. With all of my free time, I decided to invest. The word “investing” is an old Latin word. It literally means to clothe or dress yourself in a vest. Nowadays, investing is more about what you do after you save your money. Some people save their money by keeping it in a jar or a piggy bank. But making your money work for you, investing, is not a bad option, because then your money works for you.
Investing is putting savings into a company in order to support the company so that the company can grow. If the company grows, then your money should grow. That is how it is supposed to work. So, when you’re an investor, you own part of a company which allows you to have a say in some decisions they make. You’re a part owner now. How cool would it be to own part of companies like Disney (who owns Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, Black Panther, the Avengers, ESPN, and a lot more), Hasbro (Nerf, My Little Pony), Mattel (Barbie, American Girl Doll, Hot Wheels), and Hershey’s?
To better explain the passion of an investor, let’s talk about sports.
Motley Fool founder David Gardner says being a good investor is a lot like being a good sports fan. You are going to be a fan of that sports team no matter what, right? Just like a sports fan, a good investor sticks with their company through thick and thin. “We are in it to win it over the only term that counts, the long term.” Although I do not find myself sitting on my couch with chips and dip on Sundays watching football, you can catch me at home researching my stocks. I am very much a fan of my companies.
Just as sports may have an impact on many people’s lives, investing has influenced my life. So much of my life story has to do with investing and the traits it has given me. To many my story is just a list of credentials (I was the first woman to present to Google’s investment club at age 14 (and happily returning at age 15)), I was accepted to the Motley Fool’s College Woman in Investing conference when I was in fifth grade, I started an investing blog at age 13, and wrote a book, Early Bird: The Power of Investing Young when I was 14. However, my story is much more than that. It is made up of the values I learned from my lifestyle and hobbies that make up an investor. I think that leads me to the most logical topic, ice cream. Here are some questions you can ask to yourself:
How do you eat ice cream?
Do you prefer a cup or a cone?
Do you like sprinkles?
What is your favorite topping? Or do you prefer plain ice cream?
Is chocolate or vanilla a better base?
Although I did not place a poll with these questions, the answers will vary. Everyone eats their ice cream cones differently. To start out, some use a cone and others a cup; some pile on toppings like hot fudge (my favorite), peanuts, sprinkles, or cherries, but others enjoy the plain, milky flavor; some ice cream enthusiasts see how fast they can eat their banana split whereas others savor it.
I’ve been told a range of things about my consumption of ice cream, for example: “Why do you have to eat so slowly?”, “It feels like eternity”, “You should just hurry up, why can’t you just finish it by now?” Whichever way you put it, eating ice cream as slowly as I do takes a lot of patience. There is a Swedish saying- eat less, chew more. Patience is a characteristic I developed long before I started investing or even interacting with simple math, which was a long long time ago.
As an investor over the long term, you have to learn patience. I am like a sports fan. Even if my team loses that day, I still stick with them. We all have good and bad days. The true fans are found still rooting for the team on the bad day. Good companies bounce back from hard times, and patient investors can benefit.
I’m also am a dancer which means I realize that hard work needs time and focus. When I finally earned my first pair of pointe shoes, I could barely stand. Four years later, I can spin, fouette, hop, and jump. That’s four years of ongoing training to be able to stand on your toes! Looking elegant is fun especially with pointe shoes. While you’re softly landing and gracefully spinning you’re enduring unbelievable amounts of pain, remembering a combination in French, and staying on beat. It never feels like you’re making all that much progress day by day, but it all pays off in the long run!
The point of all of these stories is the importance of patience, time, and discipline. Time is key. It took a lot more than just investing to get me to where I am now, and Ms. R is a large part of who I have become.
As a fifth grader, I was far from the student I am now. I didn’t know the value of being a hard worker or the importance of being a driven person. When I was younger, school was always something I wasn’t good at. Being a somewhat careless student just became part of me because I never realized that you had to work to become a good student. You are not just born as one. Creating good work habits is something good teachers will stress to you. These habits will continue to help you throughout middle school and high school. Becoming a good student is more than just knowing when to put your phone down and start homework, when to take notes in class, trying to continuously push yourself out of your comfort zone, and going the extra mile to make sure you get the grade you deserve.
Ms. R taught me what it takes to become a good student along with many other important traits. She taught me how to be tough and why you should stand up for yourself. Outside of academics, peer pressure was something that influenced me greatly. Becoming a tougher person allowed me to be comfortable with who I was and not follow the choices of others. She taught me that a good student needs to take advantage of the resources they are given and asking for help is okay. One thing I continue to learn is how teachers are there for you. Many teachers like Ms. R want what is best for you. It is better to ask for help now then be lost later. I think about all of these things every day. She has had an incredibly large impact on who I have become as a learner and as a person.
I learned that staying driven and disciplined is a process. It always has been, and it always will be. Putting aside one hour every day to write is not that much in the short term. Over the long run, it got my book into about 15 newspapers and over 1,200 people’s hands. That is amazing and something I thought I could only dream of.
Thinking about what time can do for you, let’s quickly talk about investing! Investing is putting your money into companies you believe in and letting it gain interest over time. I won’t go into all the details, but the power that investing holds for many is summed up to compounding. Compounding is the process of your money slowly gaining interest over time. 
On the topic of compounding, I have a question for you. I am going to give all of you a lollipop . You can choose to eat the lollipop now or wait 20 minutes, and I’ll give you another.
(Of course, this is when you would assume all the kids would rush up to get their single lollipop. To my surprise, there was only a few fifth graders that requested a lollipop at that moment, and everyone else chose to wait.)
If I was to stay here until 3 o’clock and hand out lollipops every twenty minutes, you would have approximately eighteen lollipops. Sadly, I am not going to stay, but this shows the power of compounding. With time and patience, you could go from one lollipop to eighteen. Here’s another question, would you rather have a million dollars now or a penny that doubles everyday for 30 days? If I were to give you the one million dollars now (again, I am not shipping any money to anyone), you could potentially use it to buy one hundred twenty-five thousand bags of lollipops, one thousand four hundred smartphones, sixty-six thousand books, or any number of other things (investing is also an option).
I have another question, would you rather have one million dollars now or a penny that doubles everyday for the next thirty days?
I am sorry that I am unable to give everyone that raised their hand the one million dollars. Instead, I’ll give you something more fun: a math problem! I am going to give you a table and I want you to figure out how much money you would make after 30 days with the doubling penny.
(Here we did an activity with the penny and finished the lollipop.)
The point of these questions is to show what time can do for you as a person and as an investor. Rather than leaving your money in a piggy bank think about investing or saving when you’re older so with time, your money can compound just like the penny or the lollipop. It won’t compound that quickly, but it will make a difference. Just as investing gets better with time, so do you.
As you are finishing this year up and heading into middle school, decisions you make that might feel small in the moment could impact your future. My advice is set a goal and slowly work towards it. To make achievements, there will always be barriers. I can’t count on two hands how many rejections I get, and in that moment, it might bring you down. If you push past the no’s and focus on your goal, you can all do amazing things. All it takes is motivation and time. Remember, "You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great."
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