The Road to Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurs in America are encouraging unemployed and underemployed aspiring small business owners to quit their current jobs and become their own bosses in order to achieve financial independence.

            Although many people try to avoid failure, Scott Gerber argued in his speech Tuesday afternoon at the University of Georgia that we should be afraid of never failing.

            “A lot of times, people are scared of that word, failure. The idea that if you fail, you fail. You’re nothing,” Gerber said. “But in reality, failure can be the greatest lesson ever taught. It can be the big awakening to the real idea, to the real way to execute, to the ability to create something bigger than yourself.”

Gerber, the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, has learned a great deal from his past mistakes in the business world.

            When he was a junior at New York University, Gerber quickly became bored with his day-to-day classes and thus decided to work in the real world. Eventually he came up with what he thought at the time was a brilliant idea – he was going to pretend to be a project producer.

            “Maybe not the best way to start a career, but at the end of the day that was my breaking point,” Gerber said.

Just four months away from graduation, Gerber found himself in debt with only 700 dollars left in his name. His parents told him that it was time for him to find a real job, and that is where his story begins.

            Even though Gerber is currently a successful serial entrepreneur of Sizzle It!, he would be the first to speak about his many failures. Through these mistakes, Gerber discovered how to build a viable enterprise capable of generating a profit.

            “Life has a funny way of making you figure out what you do,” Gerber said. “Some people just have to fail and try a lot of stuff, throw a lot of crap at the wall to figure out what it is.”

            In order to grow a successful business from the ground up, Gerber gave several great pieces of advice to the 50 people in the lecture hall Tuesday afternoon and encouraged the audience to implement them into a future business model of their own.

            As part of a generation that emphasizes an “entitled” and a “we are all winners” attitude, it’s easy for people to buy into the idea that each person is special. Consequently, people make poor decisions based on this understanding.

            “No business idea you come up with is original. Nothing that you see or do today is unique. It all comes down to you,” Gerber said. “What can you do for your business or your idea? How do you execute in a way that brings something from your idea, to market, to making money?”

            In order to be a successful entrepreneur, people must think big picture as well as small picture. This is the key to coming up with an idea and getting started, Gerber explained.

            As time progresses and money is reeled into a company though, Gerber said many times young entrepreneurs try to transform a simple idea into a more complex idea.

The problem is that people want to be bigger than what they are capable of being. Instead of focusing on what people are good at, people tend to settle for mediocrity in a wide range of functions instead of striving for excellence in a single area.

            “Be unoriginal,” Gerber said. “Business is not about thinking about originality. It’s about building upon simplicity to then get to your point of originality.”

            Gerber continued with another great piece of advice regarding money, and the natural tendency for humans to focus too much on materialism. Too often, decision- making is driven by a desire for profit, ultimately making people think that they can raise money on an idea without actually improving anything.

“My advice to you when you start a new business is to look at your two hands and think, what can I start?” Gerber said. “What you can do with the resources at your disposal to prove something that makes it clear what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and why it works?

At the same time though, new business owners must recognize when things go wrong so that they can make smart decisions about spending money. By the end of the day, it’s necessary to identify what is worth investing in and what is not.

Time is the most important asset, Gerber claimed, and as a result, entrepreneurs must recognize when a company’s idea and product are not going anywhere.

However, there will be times when it is too late to make changes or to pull an investment, and it’s during these times when Gerber said people must know and understand their options.

“When you start a business, you always plan for the worst case scenario. There is never perfection. There is only good enough and get going,” Gerber said. “Once you realize that anything can go wrong, and everything will, you fundamentally change your perspective on even the simplest decisions.”

It’s important that a business looks at both their strengths and risks. A business leader must know that there are options and choices involved when making a decision, Gerber said. Therefore, they must expect and plan for everything that could go right and what could go wrong in every situation.

Finally, Gerber stressed the significance of social capital. It is a businessperson’s most important currency because relationships have power. A relationship can mean the difference between a successful business and an unsuccessful one.

The way to use relationships in the right way though, is different than what many people would suspect. Instead of thinking solely about personal gain, people must change their perspective and seek ways to provide help to others.

“Walk into a room from now on just asking, ‘How can I help you?’” Gerber said. “If we say that to someone, the chances of learning that, learning more about them, learning who they are, learning ways to build a relationship from there, that person will come back and bring good to you.”

Ultimately, Gerber concluded his speech by encouraging everyone to use relationships as tools and to seek new ideas. He wants people to challenge themselves, to explore the world and to be afraid.

“It’s being afraid to have never failed, being afraid that you didn’t take that risk and you regret it,” Gerber said. “That is the most important thing to take away from today.”