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As a writer and editor at Entrepreneur, I get to pick the brains of some of the most inspiring and innovative people in business. Their missions never fail to fire me up, and when I spoke with Steve Distante, I was struck by his infectious passion for one goal: keeping kids’ entrepreneurial dreams alive.
This sustainable investment pioneer and author of the Pitchology series has spent decades helping founders fine-tune their ideas and raise capital. And lately, his real work is happening with young people. Through his children’s book Once Upon a Time in Entrepreneurland, the annual entrepreneurship bootcamp he holds for teens, and countless mentorship moments, Steve is proving something radical: entrepreneurship isn’t a skill you learn in business school—it’s a spark you nurture before the world teaches you to be afraid. Here’s what every founder should know about igniting that fire.
What made you decide to write books specifically for kids about entrepreneurship?
I started off with Pitchology: The Art and Science of Raising Capital for Entrepreneurs, which was a case study of different ways you could raise capital. But then my son Quinten, who got a degree in entrepreneurship from High Point University, told me something that changed everything. He said, “Dad, I really enjoy fable books like The Go-Giver. The stories are so memorable.” That stuck with me. So I wrote Once Upon a Time in Entrepreneurland as a collection of entrepreneurially positive fables—some true, some not so true. What’s beautiful about fables is that people actually remember the stories. When I ask people about specific chapters from my first book, they give me vague answers. But ask them about a story, and they give me fantastic, detailed clarity.
Photo credit: Steve Distante
You mentioned that entrepreneurship goes away as we get older. Why do you think that happens?
I have a coach named Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, and he claims that entrepreneurship starts to disappear around age eight. For me, it showed up at six and never stopped. But I think there are two types of entrepreneurs: born entrepreneurs and made entrepreneurs. The question isn’t whether entrepreneurship is natural or learned—it’s when we start to shut kids down. Instead of saying, “That’s a ridiculous idea, you can’t ever do that,” we should be nurturing that ability to dream. It’s really about not killing the passion.
What was your first business, and what did it teach you?
It was collecting horse manure on trails with a wheelbarrow and selling it to my neighbors for fertilizer. I also had newspaper routes—though I wasn’t old enough to have them legally, so I’d hire people to do the route and collect the money myself. I did business after business, and what really resonated for me was the connection with people. As an introvert, business became my way to communicate with the world. By doing something good for someone else, they’d actually talk to me about what they needed. That’s been my whole life.
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