Transcriber: Annie Tian Reviewer: Bruce Sung
I was asked a question by a good friend,
and it was: “Are entrepreneurs born or made?”
For me it was pretty tough
because I come from a family of entrepreneurs
My grandmother owned a flower shop, my grandfather had his painting business.
My dad had his own woodshop, my brothers all own businesses.
So for me, I kind of wondered,
well, at first I thought, of course, you know, they’re born.
You have to be born into it.
But I remember a very distinct day when I got a phone call from my wife,
I was sitting at my office and
she said, “Doug, there’s something wrong with the baby,
I need you to come home right away.”
Now, for most of my 20s, I had been trying to become
what I thought entrepreneurs were, the Elon Musk’s of the world.
These people that drive fancy cars, fly private jets.
And driving home I started to think to myself,
none of that really mattered now.
I didn’t know what the outcome of our firstborn child was going to be,
and I had to go through this process to really discover and understand that
the real thing entrepreneurs were good at were solving problems.
It wasn't about the private jets or the shiny things.
It was about making an impact in the community.
So my daughter was born perfectly healthy,
and it inspired me to start a podcast,
and I'd interviewed over 100 entrepreneurs.
And the things that kept coming back again and again was they made
a conscious decision to solve problems in their communities.
These weren’t people that were going to necessarily change the world
but they were focused on changing the lives of one person at a time.
And it reminded me of a story about the starfish.
There was a big storm at sea.
It washed tens of thousands of starfish all over the beach,
and this little girl was standing there, throwing them back one at a time.
And this man watching her walked up to her and said,
“What are you doing? How can you possibly solve this problem?”
The girl picked up a starfish, paused for a minute, a little dismayed.
And then stood there and threw it back and said,
“I made a difference in that one’s life.”
And when I think about entrepreneurship,
I often think about that little girl and I think about so many people
so many small business owners who decided to take a risk, and take that leap
and open a business to help people solve simple problems.
I remember a friend of mine, she asked me,
“My son’s going into college, and he wants an internship in marketing.
Do you mind taking him out for coffee and talking to him?”
I said, “Absolutely.”
And he was really interesting. His name's Mitch.
And I asked him, “So what is it that you want to do after?
Why you want to do a marketing internship? What do you want to do after?”
He said, “I want to play professional hockey.”
I was a little confused, “If you want to play professional hockey,
why do you want to go through the process of an internship
while it’ll probably look good on a resume?”
Like so many of us who were following through the process,
and I dug a little bit deeper, and said, “Tell me more about your hockey story.”
Now, in Canada, where Mitch lived.
They get drafted early to play professional hockey. He went undrafted.
So at that time, his hockey dream would have been over.
He ended up getting a scholarship to an NCAA school and kept going.
Now I stopped, and said, “Well, Mitch, you’ve uncovered something.
You’ve been able to prolong your hockey career.
You can do something. You’ve got a scholarship. You’re going to graduate.
You're going to have a utility.
Why don’t you tell other people or help other people follow in your path?”
He thought about it.
I gave him a piece of advice, I thought his mom’s gonna kill me
’cause I said, “Don’t get a summer job, don’t get the internship.
Instead, why don't you just apply for the summer entrepreneurship grant
and start a business and just help these upcoming hockey players get scholarships?”
He did, and he’s now helped dozens of athletes get scholarships and now started.
So when you think about entrepreneurship in the lens of
it’s not about the big thing, but he focused on helping one.
He’s now making an impact in changing the lives of entire families.
He’s taking the burden off of having to pay for his school.
Another friend of mine, she lives in a really small town that's pretty remote.
And she was trying to figure out, so many small towns have great crafts,
they have great artisans, they have great food,
but there’s no way for them to get it in front of people
because tourism was down or not as many people were coming through.
So she created a gift box called Acre 75,
which only featured small artisan foods or crafts,
then launched an e-commerce company.
So now all these people who had lost the ability or didn’t have
the ability to start their own site,
she’s given them a means to now get their product in front of people.
The biggest thing I have learned from interviewing over 100 people
is the simple task of taking action.
Most of us simply see these problems,
but haven't gone into the depth to realize that taking that one step forward
or investigating the problem,
to determine that we can make a difference
in one person’s life is often that simple change.
But for most people, they don’t understand where it comes from,
and I encourage most of you to look inward and realize you all have the gift.
You all have a skill that you often take for granted.
Much like Mitch, he didn’t realize that his own story is what enabled him
to help others
Every single one of us has some skill
or some passion that we can bring to the table to solve a problem.
All it takes is that 30 seconds of courage
to go reach out and ask that first customer and say, “Hey,
I know that you have this problem.
I think I have an idea to help you solve it.
For many of you if you are entrepreneurial or you’re trying to think,
“Well, where do I really start? What can I do?”
It may be something as simple as just mentoring another business owner
and helping them learn the path you’ve gone through.
It might be as simple as just reaching out to some high school students
and providing guidance on, “Hey,
I played the sport, I can help coach this program.”
So many of you will take for granted how much you have to give back,
and it doesn't mean you have to build this big empire.
But I will tell you, when you have the courage to take that step,
you begin a journey that's going to enable you to change the world,
much like people like Toms have, if you’re familiar with Toms Shoes.
He ended up building a company that every shoe they built,
they would donate one, or companies like 10 Tree,
where they for every piece of clothing you buy, they plant 10 trees.
The fastest way to change this world is by becoming conscious entrepreneurs.
And whether you become one or support one,
I encourage you to join me on this journey and help inspire
the future generations of entrepreneurs to help changing the world
by stepping up, grabbing that starfish and throwing it back into the ocean,
because the only way to change the world is by doing one person at a time.
Thank you.