The 3 Pillars of a Successful Entrepreneur.

Throughout the second semester of my Junior year, I was accepted into Hawken’s entrepreneurship Macro course. The course aims to teach students the pillars of entrepreneurship, and self-direction. Throughout the semester we have worked with three companies Bar Italia, Nooma, and Roundtable learning which is around the Cleveland area. As students, we acted as consultants for these companies. We would meet with them at their headquarters and learn about their company, and then they pitched to us their problem. That they are pitching to us, we are given three weeks to research and explore the market of the company. To find information that helps form a solution. We then will present statistics, facts, and quotes to support our solution.

Becoming a successful entrepreneur relies on many different factors when turning ideas into successful realities. Being an entrepreneur means you are taking on greater risk and responsibility, that is why entrepreneurs reap greater benefits. The definition of an entrepreneur is a person who organizes and operates a business or business, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so. So, the definition of an entrepreneur clearly states that an entrepreneur has to be able to accept and grow from their failures. The stigma our world has created around the meaning of failure, FAIL means (First Attempt In Learning). How we, as humans have progressed in this world, is through failure, we try something, it doesn’t fully work, we learn from it, and then we try it again, and repeat the process till we have a great solution.

When we are little and are still babies, we crawl around until we can try to stand up and walk we’ll fall but we get back up. When we do so everyone is cheering for us our parents, siblings whoever is there to encourage the baby when they fall to get back up. As life goes on no one is at your side cheering for you to get back up when you fail. Instead, you get laughed at, judged, and told you are not good enough. This is why so many people are scared to fail and to take risks knowing that there is the possibility of failure. I want to bring this full circle and connect the thought of failure to a guest speaker. My class had the opportunity to listen and hear from Michael Obi, a father of two Hawken students and is the CEO and President of spectrum global solutions and is a leader in a venture capital firm for underserved communities. At the beginning of his talk, he pitched to my class the idea of imagination, how do we envision our dreams, aspirations, and goals in the future. He talked about how to use your imagination as a driver for your passion. The more you imagine what you want, your body will subconsciously bring you and put you in situations that will propel you in the direction of your desired goal. This is so true and is necessary to be an entrepreneur and even just to be successful in any goal. Many great entrepreneurs write down their goals every night and read them back to themselves, and reread them in the morning before the day, reminding themselves what it is they are after being their ultimate goal. Writing down the goals and reading them is a great way to build the image in our brains and manifest them into existence. While Mr. Obi talked to my class about imagination he has asked me numerous times “what do you imagine” to my class, there were crickets in the room till my teacher spoke up, he asked again and there were crickets again until my teacher’s son who is a seconded grader expressed what he was imagining. I eventually answered his question about what am I imagining, later in his talk. I want to connect this back to the story I told in the beginning, no one wanted to share what they were imagining of their future selves. This is a perfect example of people being scared to be laughed at, judged, and told you are not good enough. It is society telling us to let go of our dreams, not our peers in the classroom.?

Throughout the semester I have learned a lot about myself and what my strengths are and my growth areas. During the first couple of weeks of class, we all took a personality test questionnaire titled the VIA strength test. My five strengths in order were, creativity, curiosity, perspective, appreciation and beauty, and honesty. The VIA test was great for invalidating and discovering my strengths, for example, I knew I was a creative person, but I didn’t know actually how creative I am. On the other hand I never really thought of myself as being someone that appreciates beauty and excellence. Knowing my five strengths helped me direct my efforts on the tasks I worked on with each of my teams. The test also gave me the confidence I needed to use my strengths. It was very helpful when we as a team were dividing up work to look back at our VIA strengths, and we gave each other work that most fit their strengths. I want to shift the focus from validating and discovering my strengths to finding my weaknesses. I learned pretty quickly with the freedom in Entre that I am not the most disciplined person. For any person to be successful in any goal they have to be disciplined. Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most”(Abraham Lincoln). I struggle with discipline, it’s something that I have been subconsciously working on. With basketball I am disciplined, I am in the gym practicing four to five times a week and lifting weights three to four times a week. I never question myself, I am just chasing something but it feels normal, it doesn’t feel like work anymore. I believe this for two reasons. I know what to do with basketball, I know how to train myself, I know how to lift, but in my life right now there is no road map to show me how to progress my life to a higher level and start preparing for my life for the real world.?

The other reason is passion. To follow through in anything in life, I learned you have to love it and love what you are doing. A quote I found that I think fits perfectly to the importance of passion in an entrepreneur “The man who loves walking will walk further than the man who loves the destination.” You learn to love the journey, when you love the journey that is what true passion is. Then your goals just happen as a side effect. Hearing this video made me think about the difference between a fixed v.s a growth mindset. When we as humans get stuck on the goals and destination and try to get there as fast as possible when instead of being growth-oriented, just simply loving the journey will get us further. As a society we struggle with this, people are working jobs they hate, just because that’s the degree they chose thirty to forty years ago, or because it pays well. Both are valid answers but let's refer back to the quote from the beginning of this section, “The man who loves walking will walk further than the man who loves the destination.” Doing what you love is more important to yourself than you think, and will be a huge factor in your success as an entrepreneur or anything else you do in life.

Confidence comes in many shapes and sizes, people express their confidence in many different ways. I’ve struggled with confidence in myself some things that haven’t come easy to me. Through my experience in sports in school, I learned that confidence is almost a swaggyness. Putting yourself upon a pedestal. Thinking and knowing we are great, and comes through disciplined hard work and preparation. My dad said to me over the weekend, play without a conscience. Means just play and don’t remember anything good or bad, just play. This did help me. In the end, people gain confidence through their preparation thinking it will meet their expectations.

I want to touch on something that will happen in the process of becoming very successful. Who is the person that you have to become to reach your goal? The person you are right now, will not be the same person that reaches your goal. The discipline that you have to grow and maintain or what about the knowledge that you must learn. Continued growth to change our habits to be more successful. A fitting quote is “Where you are now is a reflection of your past thoughts.” We as humans are where we are from our past thoughts and actions.?

Here a is Youtube clip from Andy Frisella’s podcast. I chose this video because it was a wake-up call for me. It gave me the understanding that nothing is going to be given to me and that if I want to be successful, I have to physically apply myself to every aspect of the goal I am trying to obtain. The seas of the ocean are never going to calm there is never going to be a right time to start anything in life. You just have to start gain momentum until your passion takes over. Knowing this there is a quote that fits perfectly, “Use the weekend to build the life you want instead of trying to escape the life you have.” Every time we as humans get home from school or work, we are tired and drained, but we have a choice we can sit down and enjoy tv or we can start building the life we want instead of building someone else’s. A quote from Lamborghini the car company says “We don’t do commercials because our target audience is sitting around watching TV.” Something that has helped me is, that my competition is not who is beside me it is me. My competition is myself, can I beat myself from yesterday, can I outwork myself from the day before. If I can do that, the growth will be immeasurable. It is continual growth for a long period of time.

Overall I am so thankful for the opportunity to be selected for Hawken’s entrepreneurship course. I am not anyone’s generic student, this course has opened me up to the world of entrepreneurship and business. On the other hand, the class helped me discover who I am. I learned what it means to be an entrepreneur. The course as a whole has helped fill gaps of knowledge from previous endeavors I had at home. While giving me the knowledge and skills I need that will help me in the real world. I have been so very blessed in my life to have the parents I have. My dad who is an entrepreneur, and my loving mother love me and accept me for who I am and puts me in the position, and give me the opportunities to excel in life and to put my best foot forward. Without them and their sacrifices, I don’t know where I would be and I know my future wouldn’t be as bright. I want to leave my audience with this being an entrepreneur is hard, it’s difficult and not easy. That is why an entrepreneur is a person who organizes and operates a business or business, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so. Taking on these risks means your acceptance of failure, great discipline, and lastly your passion for the journey.?

I read and listen to Fox News, and that is where I rely on to get my news. Fox gives me timely and reliable information. What is nice is that I can find it either from their Instagram feed or on Television.