Well, I just got back from New York. I was up in the Big Apple for the NFTE business plan awards. (That’s National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship….many of you know about my involvement with this great organization, as I sit on their local board.)

There’s a city-by-city run off. The Western Pennsylvania representative, Mackenzie Barrett from Carrick High School, did a nice job. Unfortunately, “Mac” didn’t win, though. I’ve known Mac and his father for some time now, ever since I met Mac at the local competition.

He has a very unique business idea. It’s a tutoring service. It’s a clever concept, and I’m trying to talk him into using it with TalkShoe.

Anyway, we flew up on Wednesday night, after my Duquesne Entrepreneurship class. We judged all day on Thursday, and on Thursday night, the winner was announced. It was a girl from Baltimore, and her idea involved a nail polish applicator. It’s kind of like a syringe, where you push the applicator, making the polish come out quickly, so that you can get a set of ten nails done in 52 seconds, as opposed to five minutes the traditional way. And, there’s no spill. She did a GREAT job of selling it. I was very impressed.

One of the things that got me about the whole competition: One of the presentations was by a pair of 13-year-old kids. THIRTEEN years old. These guys could hold their own with any graduate level business student entrepreneur that I’ve ever come across. They knew their market. They knew their unique differentiator. They had barriers to entry. All of the things that I look for as an angel investor were there. Alas, they didn’t make it to the final round of three. But as a whole, it was fun. It’s great to see these kids with these ideas, as so many of them come from absolutely HOPELESS backgrounds.
I recently listened to a radio interview, where the guest was discussing crystal meth labs. Crystal meth is rapidly becoming the drug of choice these days, replacing heroin in many circles. It’s primarily a rural drug, not an urban drug as you may think. In fact, a lot of crystal meth is derived from the stuff that’s in Sudafed.

(By the way, a few days ago, I needed to get some Sudafed for a cold I’ve been fighting for a while. I actually had to SIGN for it!)

But one of the side effects of crystal meth is that it can age you rapidly. And that’s part of what the problem is with crystal meth and all drugs really, people are looking for the short term benefit without any thought to the long term effect. The kids who use this stuff have given no thought whatsoever to what life will be like once they turn 50. 50 will never happen to these kids. They don’t look at the big picture.

It’s the law of the universe. Anything that you do while you’re young is something that you’ll pay for when you’re old. It’s nature. There’s no deficit spending.

So as the guy’s discussing crystal meth, never once does he get into “why” or “how” people do this stuff. The answer, as far as I can tell, can be summed up in one word:

HOPE

(or lack thereof)

Whenever I sign off my radio show, I always say one phrase: “The trick to life is to have something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for.” These kids don’t have that. When you can see that the best you can do is to sell crack until somebody shoots you in the back of the head, that kind of limits your horizons a bit.

These kids don’t get out of the ghetto unless they “jock” their way out or “pimp” their way out.

That’s it. Jock. Pimp. Pimp. Jock.

That’s why I’m a big supporter of NFTE. They can see a better way for these kids. And they work towards a better life for them.

I’m a big fan of NFTE’s “Adopt a Class” program. It’s where you can subsidize a NFTE class by going in there and working with these schools yourself by teaching students about starting and growing a business. (As opposed to NFTE’s general approach to teaching teachers how to teach entrepreneurship).

Some of my best friends have adopted a class. Bob Fragasso of the Fragasso Group, one of our great sponsors of the radio program, has stepped up. So has Chris Allison. And by their support of NFTE, I can see the results when I travel to New York for the national competition.

But in the big picture, NFTE helps these kids see a way out of the ghetto. They see a better way, not just in business, but in life. These students may very well want to continue their businesses, and I hope they do, but I hear about their aspirations about going to college or being a doctor. They’d never talk about those things if it weren’t for NFTE.

-Also while I was in New York….

I saw Ground Zero for the first time since 9/11. The magnitude of what happened that day doesn’t hit you until you see it up close for yourself. I had seen it on TV, of course, but in person, it’s so devastating.

And the more I saw, the angrier I got. I constantly hear Dick Cheney and other politicians talk about water torture and other ways of dealing with the people that did this. After seeing the impact live for myself, my only thought is “Do whatever you have to do, guys! Nobody does that to my country.”

-There was a recent article in “USA Today” that asked “Where will everybody live?”

By 2060, our population going to be projected at 400 million people. 400 million! I remember a song by Joey Dee and the Starlighters called “Peppermint Twist” where one of the lyrics references “180 million twisters in the USA”.

If you’re an investor, you’re sanguine, because that figure represents more of everything. Houses. Cars. Roads. Shoes.

Back in the sixties, the big thing was ZPG (Zero Population Growth). We’re getting away from that nowadays. We have a finite number of resources in this country, and if we’re not careful, we’re going to outgrow it before we know it.