Inspirations Along My Path of Entrepreneurship

I think every entrepreneur needs people who inspire them along the way to finding success. Through the years, I’ve been very lucky to find that inspiration from a lot of great people.

It starts with my parents. I learned so many great, early lessons from them both. . They were very entrepreneurial as a couple. My dad had a sign company that he started and built up from nothing. In order for him to pour everything he had professionally into the business and find success.? As I grew up, it hit me harder with each passing year the commitment to each other and their purpose together, as I observed the amazing work ethic it took for them to be successful.

After I graduated, I went straight to work in restaurant management. I was fortunate enough to work with a few general managers that really took me under their wing and taught me life lessons like what it takes to be successful, how to manage people. Each of them believed in setting high standards for themselves, on the premise that if you hold yourself to high standards, the right people are going to gravitate to you and join you on your mission.

In what turned out to be my final years in the industry, I had the opportunity to work closely with the CEO of our company.? He was a former CPA and CFO before his time running this particular chain of restaurants,? and he taught me the ins and outs of profit-and-loss and about the mechanics of running a business in general.

When I made the jump to my current profession, I found myself again working for some incredible CEOs, who taught me about the level of planning you have to commit to while building a successful agency. We studied everything from strategic planning to goal-setting, staffing for growth, and proactive financial management.

As I reflect on this subject, it’s hard not to realize that I’ve had a great journey! More recently, there’s another person that’s particularly inspired me. Since we started snapshot, we've had a lot of great people that have gathered at the table, and they've really wanted to help us--from? advisory board members to other business people out in the community that really took a lot of interest in us.

Some of our clients have been really amazing in this regard, too. They’ve taught us in some cases the value of innovating and making mistakes along the way. Some have said to me, near verbatim, something like, “We know you may mess this up or bump your heads while you find the solution here, but that’s cool with us. We love you guys, and we want to continue to work with you.”? Because they found us trustworthy and dependable, they wanted to teach us what they’d learned from working with other agencies, so we could integrate new strategies and services and keep the work in one place for them. They ultimately did this because they wanted us to be successful. So we’ve had some truly inspiring mentorship from our clients.

Most recently though, I’d have to give credit to my co-founding business partner here at Snapshot Interactive, Ben Rigsby. He’s amazed and inspired me in so many ways, as a young guy who came in here and began teaching me lessons from day one.? He’s taught me the value of attracting employees and partners with a lot of heart, and the way he’s been so focused in driving our creative vision has meant that we can be technically strong without sacrificing our ability to create award-winning work.

It’s been a fun journey on this path of entrepreneurship, thanks to all of these people, and we’re only getting started.