Yvette Adams is a serial entrepreneur and multi-award winning business woman. She is the author of No Kidding – Why Our Kids Know More About Technology Than Us & What We Can Do About It. Yvette was recently recognised for her significant contribution to Science and Innovation in Queensland, placing her in the Queensland Science and Innovation Champion Hall of Fame.
Here the Creativity and Innovation Speaker shares how she went from a kid that hated computers to a budding entrepreneur.
It’s ironic what I’ve ended up doing for a living
Okay, I’ll admit it. I grew up in a house, surrounded by computers, but don’t judge me as a tech whiz kid from day dot.
Although we had several computers in the house at any one time, all I ever knew what to do with them, was how to turn them on and play games.
Pacman, ET, Jumpman, Summer Olympics and Pole Position were just a few of the Atari greats that we spent hours banging the arrows and spacebars of keyboards, or wrestling with joysticks, all in the act of beating one another.
There was no word processing, no programming, no internet, and certainly no mobile phones or iPads back then. Whilst I knew how to turn a computer on and boot up a game, though I wasn’t scared of them, I didn’t exactly know how to do anything particularly useful with them either.
People were always telling me to ‘learn typing’ and ‘do computers’ at school back in the 90s because they were ‘the way of the future’, but I was a fiercely independent teenager and had no interest in pursuing a career that might (god forbid) wind me up with an ‘office job’. Instead, I chose art classes, PE and biology whenever I had a choice.
I was always good with words but was horrified in sixth form (grade 11) when taking journalism for the first time and discovering we’d have to layout our carefully crafted articles on a computer.
Begrudgingly, I followed the teacher’s instructions, but impatience and frustration got the better of me. I distinctly remember swearing at the teacher and threatening to throw the computer out the window in class.
It just wouldn’t do what I wanted it to!
But then came the entrepreneur in me
Therefore, it’s ironic (don’t you think!) that I ended up starting my first business aged 17 (a newspaper, which was bought out by an American entrepreneur after the first issue!), my first internet business at age 26 (an online tee-shirt business which I sold 4 years later for five figures) and that today I’ve ended up immersed in a world of technology, currently running three companies (www.thecreativecollective.com.au, www.thetrainingcollective.com.au and www.awardshub.com), furthermore I was awarded ICT (Information Communications Technology) Woman of the Year for Australia in 2013, and have helped thousands of people to gain essential digital skills including those that are complete technophobes (like I once was!).
No one suggested to me that there was a career path called an ‘entrepreneur’ and if you’re the naughty one regularly getting kicked out of class and suspended from high school (like I was), then that’s an extra indication you’d be better off working for yourself!
Today I get a real kick out of helping people find their passion and gaining the skills they need to achieve great things in life, whether that’s succeeding as a female in a male dominated industry like I have, learning the digital skills needed to start or grow their businesses, building their profile and credibility through entering business awards, and enjoying the amazing lifestyle you can when you work for yourself as a true entrepreneur.
My passions
I love encouraging women into leadership roles, encouraging people to actually create that cool product or business they’ve been thinking about, (I regularly mentor at Startup Weekends and am really involved in the crowdfunding scene in Australia and I LOVE helping children gain an entrepreneurial mindset and know that this is a viable career path), and helping them understand all the career opportunities available within the IT world, where there is currently a massive skills shortage.
On this front, given I’m a mother of two, I also love helping influencers of kids (namely parents, teachers, career advisors, principals and more) understand that technology has turned every aspect of our lives on its head. Love it or hate it, technology is here to stay and life is not the same as it once was.
It’s time to step up and grab all the digital skills you can. Digital literacy is the new financial literacy. If you have strong digital skills, the world truly is your oyster.
