En·tre·pre·neur

A person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk. (dictionary.com)

Entrepreneurship is the act of taking an idea and turning it into a business. Entrepreneurs are highly motivated and driven people who see opportunity and take necessary action to make that perceived opportunity a reality.

How Do I Become An Entrepreneur?

Fill a need. It is as simple as that. We can look at this as an equation; N+S = O where N = Need, S = Solution and O = Opportunity. By this simple equation we can find endless opportunities that can provide us resources. We can find needs all over the place. Just look at facebook, reddit, or community pages and you will see all sorts of needs.

Once the need is identified then you come up with the solution to that need. The hardest part is figuring out the solution and making it repeatable and scalable. Without the ability to repeat and scale, a solution becomes a job and not a business.

Example:

Lets say you are a teenager and wants to make money so you can buy your first car. You live in a neighborhood where people like to keep their grass trimmed and looking nice but some of the people in your neighborhood are too busy to spend time taking care of their lawn.

Go to each one of your neighbors and propose that you will mow their lawn once per week in exchange for $20. After finding 10 neighbors who need their lawn mowed each week you have established that you will make $200 per week by mowing lawns.

After a few months of mowing lawns you decide that you want to scale your lawn business to the next level. Now you hire your brother to take on some of the work. You make a deal with your brother that you will pay him $10 for each job he completes.

Your brother takes the 10 jobs you were doing and you go find 10 more customers. Now you are servicing 20 people in the same amount of time. You are making $10 per job your brother completes and $20 per job you complete. Now you are making $300 per week and your brother is making $100 per week.

By filling your neighbor’s need you have created an income stream for yourself and your brother.

As business improves you keep scaling and hiring and before you know it you have a full business. At this point you have hired your sister to manage scheduling, your brother and two friends mow the lawns, and you focus on acquiring new customers.

Famous Entrepreneurs

• Bill Gates (Microsoft)
• Jeff Bezos (Amazon)
• Tony Robbins
• Oprah Winfrey
• Richard Branson (Virgin Group)
• Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla)
• Gary Vaynerchuk

My Entrepreneur Journey

From childhood I have always had a bit of an entrepreneur’s mind. I started my first job at the age of 5 by making an agreement with my mother to pay me for each dandelion I pulled out of our lawn.

From there I started finding all sorts of things that could make me money. I got hired by my grandfather to pick up cigarette butts off of his property in exchange for a few cents per cigarette butt. Every time I visited his house, I spent the first few hours finding cigarette butts and then turned them in for money. Then I would take that money and go spend it at the dollar store.

As a teen I mowed lawns, weeded gardens and did projects for people around their homes. I even became a baby-sitter for a short amount of time by watching my neighbor’s triplet boys. This was a huge task and definitely motivated me to not be in the childcare business.

Hot Sauce

In 2020, I started a hot sauce company while I was still in the US Army. While this started as a hobby, I turned it into a business at the prompting of my wife. I will probably make a separate post about the development of this company but you can check it out here.

We are currently looking for investors to scale to the next level and provide more sauce to our wonderful customers.

Window Cleaning Service

When I got out of the US Army, I started a window and gutter cleaning company which is what I am currently spending most of my time on. While this service does pay pretty well, scaling and creating systems and processes for employees has been a challenge for me. I learn more every day!

Conclusion

An entrepreneur is a person who creates and manages an enterprise or business. Becoming an entrepreneur takes some initiative and continued action. There are a lot of ups and downs in entrepreneurship but I believe that true entrepreneurs are born with an internal drive. Whether they like it or not, they are designed to create and inspire!

As always, I am looking for constructive criticism. Please feel free to contact me or leave a comment with ways I can improve, information you want to see on my site or general questions or comments.