Halloween Is why America Has the Most Tech Millionaires
By Crystal Stranger, Founder of PeaCounts
H alloween is more than ghosts, goblins and candy. The kids who dress up and walk around at night, knocking on stranger’s doors, asking for candy may look like rejects from a cosplay convention running around wild, but they are actually young entrepreneurs and sales people in training.
As the sales maxim goes, ‘you don’t know if a door will open unless you knock on it’. The act of trick-or-treating centers around walking up to houses you have never been to, knocking on doors, and hoping for a reward. No analogy could be closer to the sales process as an adult.
You develop persistence by continuing to knock on different doors until you find rewards. I remember times as a kid trick-or-treating where we would go a whole block without any doors opening. Did we give up? No. We kept going until we found a better neighborhood.
HALLOWEEN + FACING REJECTION = ENTREPRENEURSHIP 💻
Perseverance is developed when you walk up to houses that look promising, but the doors don’t open. After the anticipation, slight sadness and disappointment, no time must be wasted as you quickly move on to the next door.
Fear of rejection is the biggest fear most people in their lives face. Halloween helps children overcome fear of rejection. Most children remember at least one year where their costumes were not exactly what they had envisioned. This can be embarrassing, but kids really want that candy so they overcome their fear and go out anyways.
Generosity is a trait that is also taught at Halloween by many parents I know. When I was a child we would turn the leftover Halloween candy into a candy covered gingerbread house for Christmas (still in wrappers) then donate it to a local orphanage. This way the children could eat the candy after enjoying the decoration.
YES! TECHNOLOGY AND HALLOWEEN GO HAND IN HAND 😱
Halloween clearly fosters entrepreneurialism, but how does the holiday have anything to do with tech? Well, dressing up as favorite characters from comics, movies, or animated shows transports you into the fantasy world where you can be your favorite character. It is a lot like being an avatar in a game, except you can choose any elements from any source, meaning imagination and skills are your only real limitations.
Similarly, gaming is where most software developers start out. This is because much of software engineering is based on game theory, and most of the early development exercises taught in college classes are game-building. Thus this living out of fantasies through dressing up as favorite characters is a gateway to building games, and coding in general.
The numbers support this premise — the United States has far more millionaires than any other country in the world. There are over 13,554,000 millionaires nationwide, and 38% of the world’s tech billionaires live in the United States.
The history of Halloween trick-or-treating goes back to European roots, but became extremely widespread in the United Sates starting in the 1930’s. It has spread to many other countries worldwide in the last few decades gradually gaining worldwide adoption of the practice in Europe and Asia. This also nicely coincides with tech areas popping up in the regions where the child trick-or-treaters have grown to adulthood, such as in Ireland, Hong Kong and Singapore.
I OWE A LOT OF MY ENTREPRENEURSHIP TO HALLOWEEN 🙌
Every time I am at a crypto conference meeting new investors I think back to my own Halloween experiences. My friends and I used to target our trick-or-treating to the wealthy parts of town and we would climb a tremendous amount of stairs to each house, not knowing if anyone would be home or not, but when someone was at one of those houses they tended to give out full-size candy bars, and multiples at that. Even as a child I was not content with random choices, I wanted to maximize Halloween by planning carefully and taking on bigger challenges, with the resulting bigger rewards. This certainly has played out in my entrepreneurial journey, giving me the drive to shoot for the stars.
About Crystal Stranger
Crystal Stranger, EA, has more than 15 years of tax and finance experience, is a journalist and speaker on blockchain and crypto technologies since 2014, and author of The Small Business Tax Guide.
Self-taught, she read every investment book in the library to catapult herself from homeless to millionaire investor in two years.
Applying the same intensity and focus to every interest, Crystal founded PeaCounts, using blockchain and AI technology to revolutionize how workers are paid, eliminate black market labor, and help individuals break the glass ceiling.
