Youth career advice usually sounds like a plan. Tony Chapman's version starts earlier and goes somewhere different. His mom rented him the pitcher for his lemonade stand, made him calculate profit margins on Kool-Aid concentrate, figure out how many cups per glass, and walk to the park where it was sunny before she'd let him sell a thing. That's not a lemonade stand story. That's a first lesson in how you can impact outcome.

The helicopter parent makes the lemonade, designs the sign, and emails the neighbors to stop by. Then they show up to sit in the lobby at their kid's job interview. Chapman hired a lot of young people and said directly: if a parent came in to sit in the lobby, that candidate didn't stand a chance. The thing parents think is support is producing the exact result they're trying to prevent. Meanwhile, a kid alone on a farm road outside Ottawa selling sunflowers in the heat, no parents, negotiating price on the spot, is already running laps on the version being raised in the lobby.

The oxygen of life is curiosity. Know why you're there and you'll know when you can leave. Love is when time disappears. Three things worth writing down.

Topics: youth career advice, helicopter parenting, entrepreneurial mindset kids, career reinvention, curiosity and success

GUEST: Tony Chapman | http://chatterthatmatters.ca

Originally aired on 2026-02-25