257. Cultivating Youth Agency & Entrepreneurship Using "Yes, And" with Leah Ellis

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In this episode, we talk with Leah Ellis, the founder of The Society of Child Entrepreneurs. Her non-profit fosters an entrepreneurial spirit, leadership, and financial literacy in young people through hands-on experience.  

Leah’s “controversial opinion” is that children are not the future — they are leaders in their own right today. In the episode, she highlights successful youth-led initiatives, such as a child's campaign to introduce a crosswalk to her community and another kid's efforts to inspire middle school classmates to enjoy reading again. Through real stories, Leah illustrates the impact of seeing children as capable contributors and leaders.


The Big Dream 

Leah's big dream is a future where children grow into adults as confident adults who are capable and confident of who they are, their ability to lead, and their ability to solve societal problems. By fostering leadership skills in youth now, she believes we can overcome apathy and frustration that currently plague many adults.

Mindset Shifts Required

The key mindset shift for adults is to transition from seeing kids as future leaders to recognizing their potential as current leaders. Rather than dictating to children, adults should engage in dialogues, ask probing questions, and genuinely listen to young voices. This unlearning process involves understanding that enabling kids to take charge now equips them to handle responsibility and be proactive.

Action Steps  

For adults and educators who want to start partnering with children as leaders can take the following action steps. 

Step 1: Start with your mindset — how do you think about young people and what they’re capable of? What beliefs do you need to challenge in yourself? One way to start seeing how brilliant kids are is to simply ask one to express issues they're annoyed with and what their solution is. They’ve likely already thought of it, but haven’t had the opportunity to share. 

Step 2: Embrace school-home partnerships. The best way to make anything stick is to reinforce it in schools and in the home. Leah recommends the SoCE Circle, an online platform that has weekly challenges and stories that help enforce leadership and problem solving at home.

Step 3: On the school side, educators can implement programs like the Society of Child Entrepreneurs' curriculum to embed entrepreneurial thinking within school systems.

Step 4: Listen to and share stories of what children are doing. This is important because it shifts our mindsets as adults to see what children are really capable of. In the episode, Leah shares stories of children working with the city to get a crosswalk put in, creating a company that recommends book choices, and many other creative business ideas and initiatives. 

Challenges?

The biggest challenge here is for adults to shift their mindsets around what children are capable of right now, not just in the future. For adults, it’s challenging to be a guide and a sounding board only, not a teacher or manager when students are creating their own solutions. 

On the other side, children have challenges accessing resources can be a significant challenge, especially in underserved communities. Additionally, they often face the challenge of growing in environments where they may develop skills surpassing those of their parents.

One Step to Get Started 

The first actionable step is for adults to reconnect with their inner child-like curiosity by continuously asking questions. Engage children in conversations where they are recognized as experts in their own lives, fostering a supportive environment for their ideas to flourish.

Stay Connected

You can find out more about Leah’s work on her website, The Society for Child Entrepreneurs, and their Instagram.  

Free and paid resources are also available through the SoCE Circle. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 257 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

Quotes: 

• 1:01 “[Children] are not the future because they are students of leadership right now. They’re amazing human beings right now. And the more we say ‘children are the future,’ the more we defer into not allowing them to lead now.”
• 2:44 “I think my big audacious, hairy dream is that we have a generation of children who become adults who are secure in themselves, their ability to lead their communities, and their ability to solve problems throughout society.” 
• 16:39 “ Ask a question and then when they answer, ask another question and get really curious. Like, get 4-year-old level curious.  Ask them questions until they're annoyed, because they will start realizing that you might be the first adult waiting for their opinion instead of telling them what to think.”
• 19:44 “ And sometimes you have to step back and you have to let them fail. You have to let them build the resilience, build the confidence of recovering from that failure … The best way to build confidence is to recover from failure.”

​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:​

TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Leah Ellis, welcome to the time for Teachership podcast.
Leah Ellis: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
Lindsay Lyons: Thanks for being here. I am just really excited. We are airing this episode as part of a series on youth voice and leadership, and so this fits perfectly in there. Um, one of the questions I've been playing with to start is just kind of like what people want, uh, what you want people to keep in mind as we jump into our conversation.
And so I'll just share like what's on my mind is that you reached out and were like, Hey, we do this cool thing where. Like kids actually start real businesses and take real action in the community. And I was hooked. So te tell us more. What else should we keep in mind?
Leah Ellis: Okay. So I'll tell you my biggest, most scandalous controversial topic, subject, one sentence ever.
Uh, children are not the future. So the thing I wa I, yeah, I know it, it gets every teacher right in the heart. 'cause we're like, wait a second, they're our babies. Yes, yes they are. They're our babies. But they're not the future because they are students of leadership right now and they're amazing human beings right now.
And the more we say children are the future, the more we defer into not allowing them to leave now. And the more we program them. To believe that they can't yet, but then we never tell them when yet is.
Lindsay Lyons: Love that. I love that so much. As a secondary school teacher, I always was frustrated when we were like, what do you want to be?
It's like, what are you, what can you do today? Like.
Leah Ellis: Yeah, exactly. That's, um, I have this challenge and I tell people all the time, 'cause you know, I do the podcasts and people are like, what is the one thing you wanna leave us with? And I'm like, okay, well the one thing I wanna leave you with is go find a child and ask them what thing happens in their daily life that they're annoyed with and how they would fix it.
Because they probably have already thought about it and they just didn't feel comfortable telling you. So when you open the door, they will tell you what's wrong and how to fix it.
Lindsay Lyons: I love it. We got it right at the start of the episode, so great ideas
Leah Ellis: jump in.
Lindsay Lyons: So one of the things that I like to ask everyone on the show is kind of stepping way back in kind of the big dream that you hold for education, learning, youth voice.
Feel free to answer in whatever way. Um, but really inspired by Dr. Patina love talking about freedom dreaming, and she says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So what is with that in mind, what is that big dream you hold?
Leah Ellis: Okay. So again, I don't believe children are the future because I think they're leaders now, but they are also the leaders of the future.
And so for me, I think my big audacious, hairy dream is that we have a generation of children who become adults, secure in themselves, their ability to lead their communities and their ability to solve problems throughout society. So we have now. A generation of mostly apathetic, frustrated, angry people who feel like we have no power, and if we can teach all these kids what their power is when they're young, then when they reach adulthood, they are advocates for other people.
They're advocates for their communities. They're advocates for solving problems, and they don't feel like they need to stay quiet.
Lindsay Lyons: Love that. And I think one of the mindset shifts you've been consistently talking about since we we started recording is that idea that it's like not the future, it's now. So I think that's a big one that people should take away from this episode.
Are there any other mindset shifts around like, you know, I think about youth adult partnership a lot and youth voice a lot. And there is something that has to happen in the brain of an adult, I think, to unlearn some things before we can truly get into this. So what would you, what advice would you give us?
Leah Ellis: So I'm actually, instead of just giving you blatant advice, um, I'm a teacher, which means I teach through story. So I'm going to tell you the story and then let you kind of pick through some of the things that I had to unlearn, and then we can discuss what that felt like and what it was like. So I had an in-home daycare and I taught engineering curriculum to 3-year-old girls.
It was fabulous. But then we discovered. A in a house that I had owned for 18 months, we discovered 10 years of black mold in the walls. So we had to move into a hotel, we had to tear apart. Most of the ground floor of our house was awful and that meant I had to shut down my daycare. 'cause you can't run an in daycare, um, in a hotel.
That's just not feasible. And when we went back, we were set to reopen our daycare on March 17th, 2020. Which unfortunately was the exact day that our county issued the stay at home order for COVID, and we did not get to reopen, and my husband and I decided to pivot and launch a financial coaching company, but he was deployed.
So I was home alone with an 18 month old and a 4-year-old, and that meant I had to figure out how to do my training while also watching my kids. So I put a lot of business training videos on our living room tv. I watched them while the kids played and I'd watched them while I was washing dishes and whatever I was doing, they were just the background noise of our house at that time.
So my 4-year-old looked at me and said, I wanna start a business too. And of course, being a mother, I said, no way. You're four. You can't start a business. And being a 4-year-old child, the number one word in her vocabulary at the time was why. I didn't like have a good answer. Like I tried to come up with a logical, justifiable reason for why she couldn't start a business, but there wasn't one outside of year four, and nobody's done it before, but especially at that time, we were all doing things that nobody had ever done before.
So what was one more new thing? So I made her tell me what she was gonna sell. We used a Facebook group to vote on her name. She did her launch and she created her business in May of 2020 at four and a half years old. And that then became her doing an art show as a featured artist, her doing her first children's business fair as a child entrepreneur at six years old, and me realizing.
Like the only thing that was holding our children back is the adults. And then when we started the Society of Child Entrepreneurs and seeing that, it wasn't just in my household, but it is a societal thing where we expect 18 year olds to act like adults, but we expect 17 year olds to behave like children.
And if we really want our 18 year olds to act like adults, we have to start letting our seven and eight year olds know what an adult does.
Lindsay Lyons: Wow. Love that. So sorry, continue if
Leah Ellis: you want. No, no. So it was, it's a long story, but that's kind of where we came from was what do we want the future to look like and how early do we need to start to get it there?
And the answer is, elementary school, we need to start an elementary school teaching them these problem solving these life skills so that they're second nature when they reach 25 years old.
Lindsay Lyons: For sure. And I love, I mean, as the parent of an almost 4-year-old, I'm like loving this story of like, yeah, why, why not?
Like why? Tell me why. Love it. Um, also just love your. Adaptability in that moment. Right. I think a lot of adults, sometimes it's like we are kind of hit with this like moment of wait. Yeah, why not? Or wait, wow, this is possible. And you went there. And I think that's such an inspiration to people who also are going to confront those moments where it's like, oh, I can shift and, and then we all shift together.
Leah Ellis: Right? Well, and it's so easy to just be like, because I said so, but then we're like, well, but. I mean, nothing in that, nothing at life was normal at that point. So it was, well, what's one more abnormal thing to throw into the ring? And now she's the junior executive director of our organization at 10 years old.
Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. That is so awesome. I am thoughtful of a couple things here. Two groups of audiences and, and sometimes over overlapping. So we have mostly our audience of people who are in education, right? They have a formal role in education, their teachers, um, maybe leaders. Instructional coaches, but we also have people who, and maybe are also in education, but are family members and thinking about like youth voice at home.
And so I'm, I'm seeing and, and, and noticing in your story that really, this can be both, right? This can be what we do at home and it's also likely in partnership with what we're doing at school. So any advice you have for either or both. Kind of hats the family hat or the teacher educator hat.
Leah Ellis: So both one.
Um, for teachers and educators, I've made this super easy for you. At the Society of Child Entrepreneurs, we've actually developed a 36 weeks school curriculum that's two hours a week, so you can literally buy our curriculum and stick it in an afterschool program and teach this in your building. Plug and play.
The worksheets are already there and everything, so you just make your copies and read from the lesson plans, so it makes life super easy for you. But for families, because we all know the best way for anything to stick is to do it at home and in school we created an organization called the Sochi Circle, and it's an online platform.
And every week I post a family challenge and it's like, here's a short story. Here's why it matters. Here's the challenge for your family to stabilize financial literacy, leadership, or problem solving for your kiddo at home. And when you can take that program at school and these challenges at home, then it becomes a part of the culture and not just like this one hobby.
Lindsay Lyons: That's super cool. I think that's exactly right because I, I don't think that anything that is true student voice or youth voice can just be this one siloed activity. It has to be part of the culture and the way we do things and the way we treat kids and interact with them. Right. So I love that. Um, are there moments or kind of wins or projects or businesses started that you want to highlight?
And I mean, specifically I just looked on your website. Today and I was like, oh, there's this update since I've been on there and it's talking about like a 10-year-old trying to get a crosswalk in their community, like standing in front, right? Like so there's just. So many wins, I'm sure. Do you wanna share some with us?
Leah Ellis: So the 10-year-old on the blog post, that's my oldest daughter. Uh, so she's the one who started all of this and yeah, she walked into my office and she was like, we need a crosswalk. I'm going to city council. And she stood on a chair, told the mayor, paint a si, a crosswalk right here. Then sent an email to the city administrators that was like, okay, now that we've discussed it, what are your next steps and what do I need to do to make sure it continues on?
So she has a meeting on Monday with the Main Street Planning Committee to work on getting her crosswalk put in. She is amazing, and I could tell like 500 stories just about melody because she inspires me daily, but she's not the only kid in the Society of Child entrepreneurs and she's not the only one doing amazing things.
So we have another kiddo. You mentioned that you're in secondary education, so you know very well that reading for pleasure drops off statistically at a massive level after fourth grade. So by the time they get to middle and high school, nobody's reading for fun anymore, and the ones who are labeled nerds and all that stuff.
I have a, one of our members, he's a 14-year-old super avid reader. He loves books. He loves talking about books, but none of his friends were talking to him about books anymore. Once they got to middle school, they had all stopped reading and he hated it. So he created a company called Troy's Top 10. And you tell him one book you enjoyed, just tell me one book that you liked and he will find he has created bookmarks and on the back of each bookmark is the genre and 10 recommendations for that genre.
So if you tell him I loved Divergent, then he's like, oh, cool. Here's my top 10 dystopian future novels. These are what you should read next. And then he's encouraging kids his age to read again because he's telling them exactly what to read and exactly what they'll like. But then he takes it a step further because he puts that list on a bookmark so you don't lose it.
And then he goes to one of our local book Bulk Sales Places and he buys dozens of books at a time for a dollar a piece. And then he bundles them the books with his bookmark. So it's also super sustainable 'cause he is taking all of these books that would've ended up in the trash. And he's reselling them with recommendations on what else to read.
At 14. This is the business he's running.
Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible.
Leah Ellis: Oh, he's fabulous.
Lindsay Lyons: I am like, I, I am a book nerd. Like, let's talk Troy, gimme your top 10,
Leah Ellis: right? I, I have some of his bookmarks. They're so cute. Um, and then we have another kiddo. Um, she's one of my, it's, this is one of my favorite stories to tell right now.
So we're piloting our full 36 week curriculum and week one she sits down and she's like, I am a child. I cannot be an entrepreneur. My mom forced me into this class and it's done. And I was like, you are gonna be my star student. And she was like, no. And she was like, I wanna be a paramedic. There's nothing that a paramedic can do, starting at 12.
And I'm like, well, you know, I teach first Aid to Girl Scout daisies and we teach them check call care, and like, they can't do much with care, but they could do like a, an ice pack or a bandaid while they were waiting for an adult. So. Couldn't you make like a a child or teenager friendly first aid kit that doesn't have all the extra stuff that kids don't need?
And she was like, yes, but first aid kits are always clear. And I'm an adolescent girl and I really hate clear bags because I need privacy for my stuff. And I was like, that's completely valid. And so I thought that her business was going to be creating these really cool first aid kits. And then she comes to me in week three and she's like, I have a different idea.
And I'm like, okay, what is it? And she was like, I've been thinking about phone cases and how sometimes I wish I could do more with my phone case, but I can't. So I was thinking about like if we made something that would slip on and off of your phone case to change what its function is. And so I showed her pair glasses and how pair glasses work where you have a frame and then you can pop different designs on top of that, like a cap to personalize your glasses for your day or your outfit.
And I was like, so do you mean like pair glasses for a phone? And she was like, I've never heard of pair glasses, but yes. This is exactly what I was thinking because I could have it where like it's a wallet for when I wanna go out and I don't wanna carry a whole purse. Or I could have it where it's a dry erase board for me to doodle with my friends when we're bored.
I could dress it in a tutu, so it's just cute when I'm stuffing it in my bag. And I was like, yeah, you can do all of those things. And so now she's going to the dollar store and buying super cheap phone cases just to practice cutting them apart and building prototypes. When she started literally a month ago with child entrepreneurship is stupid.
Lindsay Lyons: That is incredible. And I'm, so, I'm thinking, okay, there's two trains of thought I have I'm having right now. One is like, what is that in the moment response to like as an adult, you notice this kid who you are like, I'm eager to cultivate the leadership of this child. I see a spark of an idea here, right?
Like. What is that move that you make with that kid to kind of foster that trajectory? And then I also am interested, so you can take either one at a time, uh, is thinking about like the curriculum that you built, so like in a class setting or an after school setting with multiple kids. Like what is, what are the things that, what are the activities that you're doing in terms of maybe skill building?
Maybe it's like ideation, like what's the kind of framework there? So any or both.
Leah Ellis: So I'll do both first. How do, when you see the kid who, like, I, I know this is gonna get to you, but you've gotta get over your own preconceived notions first. Um, ask a question and then when they answer, ask another question and get really curious.
Like, get 4-year-old level curious. Ask them questions until they're annoyed, because they will start realizing that you might be the first adult. Waiting for their opinion instead of telling them what to think. Um, because even when I was like, well, here's an idea, how would that work? And then she was like, well, I have a better idea.
And then it's, okay. Well, but the how is that work? How do you make it, how do you create it? I know that. So I'm one of her elective classes. I know that her following elective is a sewing class. I'm like, okay, well with these two projects, how would you make it work? And watching them. Build on their own ideas while you are simply questioning and encouraging and keeping your mind open and not like, like it's like improv.
Always say Yes. Yes. And what else? Yes. And how, um, so that they can keep going. And then for the curriculum, we have it set up into five units. So the very first unit we start with what is an entrepreneur? And the kids start out by discussing like, what are the traits that an entrepreneur has to have and.
Then they write a mantra for themselves. Um, and they have to write not who they are, but who they are becoming.
Lindsay Lyons: So we make the, oh, I don't have one right here. I thought I might,
Leah Ellis: we make them write like, I am becoming the kind of person who looks for solutions when I'm frustrated because nobody's gonna write down.
I am a problem solver 100% of the time. And I want them to understand that. Like, it, it doesn't have to be black or white, like we're allowed to live in that gray area. And then after they've established what an entrepreneur is, we discuss how entrepreneurship works. Then we start market research, product development.
We do mission and vision statements. We do brand voice and personality and core values, and then we talk about social entrepreneurship, and then we talk elevator pitches. Then at the end of the curriculum, at the end of 36 weeks, they actually do a children's business fair where they have their product in their booth and they sell to their community.
Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. That's so, so cool. So I am now thinking about challenges that may arise either for the students or for the adults who are involved in something like this. Anything that you can think of that's like a big challenge in this work and how you have. Yourself or seeing others kind of get through that challenge.
Leah Ellis: So for the adults, the biggest challenge is that your job with this is to be a guide and a sounding board. You are not in this moment, the teacher or the manager. You can't tell them how it works. You have to just guide them for finding their own solutions. And that can be really hard as a parent because you want to do, you want your kid to just get it right.
And it can be really hard as a teacher because you're like, let me spell it out for you. And sometimes you have to step back and you have to let them fail. You have to let them build the resilience, build the confidence of recovering from that failure, because I will tell you, I'll shout it from the rooftops, the best way to build confidence is to recover from failure.
And that means letting them fail. Even though as a teacher and as a parent, that's the last thing we want to do is let them fail. And then for kids, it's kind of twofold. Um, the biggest like. Just hang up that gets kids stuck is lack of resources. I mean, when we work with underserved communities, we have to have grants that will give 'em startups costs so that the kids have materials to start their businesses.
Because simply having the resources is something that a lot of us take for granted. And so making sure that we have systems in place so that every child has access to the resources, whether that means a 3D printer in a library or a cricket for school-wide use. Um, creating, you know, this is our community craft space and anybody can take anything out of the space and making sure that they have those resources.
And then the second one is the mind shift change for the kids of the fact that they might be in a place where they are developing skills their parents haven't developed yet. Having to live with that middle of knowing that their parents could do it, but their parents don't know how, and trying not to let it pull them back down and trying to maintain that open-mindedness while they're developing themselves and teaching upward mobility and societal pressure and all of that stuff, and telling them like, it's okay for you to have a better future for your parents and it's okay to drag them along.
Lindsay Lyons: I think about so much of that, like our kids do things better than us, as as adults. Right,
Leah Ellis: right.
Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. I love that. Right. You can bring them along with you. Um, okay, great. Wow. There's just so much here. I love that we've kind of gone from like. Well, a kind of back and forth between both big picture, what is possible, like painting a picture for us, like what is possible.
Because I think that's sometimes a big hurdle to overcome for adults is like what even is possible, right? But then you also gave us the concrete, like, what do you do one-on-one with a kid? How can you coach Traject trajectory? That's not a word. Uh, like what's the trajectory? Of kind of that curriculum.
And so I'd love to kind of move to close here with a few closing questions. One being, if there's one thing that folks can leave the episode and do immediately, what do you suggest that is?
Leah Ellis: Always, always, every single time ask questions. Like I want every adult to get in touch with their inner 4-year-old and ask questions and allow the child in your life to be the subject matter expert in their life.
Pretend that they know more about themselves than you do, because it's actually the truth and it's just hard for us as adults to come to terms with
Lindsay Lyons: Love that. Great advice. And then this is for fun, could be related to our topic of conversation today. Could be something totally random, but what is something that you personally have been learning about lately?
Leah Ellis: Oh gosh. So I am in an all women's networking group for, um, it's mostly neurodivergent business owner women. So it's a really unique kind of place to hang out. And our conversation this week was on. Um, but becoming like, who are you becoming and the stories that you tell yourself in every situation, and how those stories can shape who you are.
And one piece of advice that they gave that I had never heard before, which was brilliant, is whenever you have a situation in which your initial gut reaction is some kind of like constricting response, like, oh. They didn't answer my email because they hate me. Um, then every time you come into that like gut wrenching response, then force yourself in the moments that matter to come up with two alternative stories, one that's positive and one that's neutral.
So then you might also say like, they didn't answer my email because their computer. Broke, and that's very neutral. Like that's just nothing against, or for me, their computer broke. And then the third one might be like they didn't answer my email because they're waiting to reply until after they secure a $500,000 grant for me.
And so then you're like, okay, so any of these stories are equally likely to be true, so why should I not believe. The positive one, instead of believing all the time, the self-deprecating versions of all of those stories. Also, if you have a $500,000 grant for me, email me. I will take it.
Lindsay Lyons: That is incredible.
I love that. And so immediately actionable. So I'm gonna start using that. Thank you. Uh,
Leah Ellis: yeah. I loved it when she taught it, and it's one of those things that we can teach the kids.
Lindsay Lyons: Uh, oh my God. Great points. And the last question is just people are gonna wanna connect with you and figure out like what you're all about and and your program.
So how do people do that?
Leah Ellis: So, um, you can go to SO cce i ct.org. That'll take you to our website. It has all the things you can see the blog that Lizzie was talking about with my daughter standing on a chair, um, on Facebook and on Instagram. We're just. Society of child entrepreneurs. And then if you really want to get involved in getting those weekly challenges in the lesson plans that I post online, it's school.com/s O-C-E-C-I-R-C-L-E, so it's, it's S-K-O-O-L school.com/sochi circle, and that'll give you the information and that one, one of the levels to join is free, so you don't have to pay to be a member of that.
Lindsay Lyons: Awesome, and we can link, if anyone's driving or running or anything, we'll link those in the the show notes so that you don't have to capture that on audio. So thank you so much, Lee. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Thanks for sharing all your wisdom.
Leah Ellis: Thank you so much for having me.

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