Interview with Brent Beshore about starting his business Adventur.es. This is part six of the ten part series. Follow the Starting a Business as a Young Entrepreneur interview series and don’t miss an interview! Interview Series Sponsored by Hiscox Small Business Insurance. Hiscox specializes in protecting IT/technology, marketing, consulting, health and beauty, photography and many other professional services businesses, tailoring coverage to the specific risks in your industry. At the…
If You Could Choose One Entrepreneur to Join Your Startup Who Would it Be?
by / ⠀Entrepreneurship / September 23, 2013Over the past several months, I’ve been asking entrepreneurs through Under30CEO’s interview series and interviews for the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization (CEO), “If you could pick one entrepreneur in the world to join your team at (company), who would it be and why?” The results included a variety of interesting entrepreneurs and achievers including a Shark from ABC’s Shark Tank, a dead industrial genius, multi-billionaires, a fictional movie character,…
Under30CEO co-founder and my good friend Matt Wilson wrote a recent article, “How to Stop Being Nice and Get What You Really Want.” While I can’t begin to explain how much I respect Matt and his perspective, I strongly disagree with this particular point of view. From Matt’s article, I deduced that “nice” means being thoughtful, fair, self-aware, and caring. I agree. The logic goes that somehow these attributes cause problems…
Startup porn, simply put, is a collection of entertaining, stimulating, and worthless activities that distract an entrepreneur from focusing on what really matters, hindering future achievements. When I first started as an entrepreneur, I spent time on the damnedest things. I obsessed about logo colors, the right type of phone system for our office, and safeguarding us against even the slightest legal issues that could potentially arise in…
My average day is completely filled with people. From the moment I wake up, I’m constantly reading peoples’ opinions, emailing, messaging, chatting, tweeting, meeting, skyping, and texting. All told, my social network (physical and digital) spans about 30,000 people. I’ve come to realize that connections, acquaintances, and friendships serve fundamentally different functions and require radically different approaches. In fact, I believe you can only have 20 real friends…
A couple weeks ago I met with two young entrepreneurs who had asked me for some advice. They were passionate, driven, highly intelligent and extremely focused. During the course of our hour-long conversation, it struck me that despite the attributes listed above, their questions, attitudes and strategies almost perfectly mirrored my own from six years ago. It brought back a flood of memories about the lessons I’ve learned…
Peanut butter and jelly. Bacon and eggs. Burt and Ernie. Some things just go together. One helps the other. 1+1=3. But what about less obvious complimentary pairs? The other day, I was driving through L.A. and something unusual caught my eye: a sushi restaurant with an attached medicinal marijuana dispensary. Immediately it struck me as genius (for obvious reasons), but I never would have thought to combine the…
I Promise I’m Not 17: Turning Your Age Into an Advantage
by / ⠀Personal Branding• Startup Advice / September 29, 2011I was recently back in my hometown of Joplin, MO, having dinner with my parents. We were towards the end of our meal and a family friend stopped by our table to say hi and introduce another couple that they were hosting. My dad said to the group, “Nice to meet you, I’d like to introduce you to my son Brent. He just visiting us for a few…
