A company at 18? My thoughts
Sharing my perspective, pro’s and con’s of starting a company at this age.
In this article, I want to quickly go over some stories and experiences I had running a company at the age of 18. First of all, I want to give you some background on how this happened.
Some of you may not know this but when I was 14 years old I dropped out of high school. I studied woodworking because that had been a passion of mine sins I was 9 years old. But I always had this slight feeling that I was wasting my time by “learning” what they wanted me to learn. We spend hours and hours studying French and the only answer I got on the question why we had to learn that is: For if you ever go on vacation in France (a country that maybe soon won’t even be a part of the EU, which I would be very sad about) And that French is the second language in our country. I tried to put that a sight and I tried to pull me up in the practical woodworking classes hoping those would be more useful. But of course, the first year is just a general year where they show you all the options in technical skills, graphic design, construction, woodworking, electrics, metalworking,… even though I already knew I wanted woodworking, but that didn’t make a difference.
So me, my school and my parents decided to try homeschooling. I did that for about 2 years. The first year I could finally concentrate on my passion for woodworking and had some intern experience in the field. But after that year I noticed how physically demanding the job was and I started thinking that maybe at some point in my life I would want to do something else. So in the second year of homeschooling, I started concentrating on getting a degree to keep my options open. Also in that year, I got the opportunity to go to the USA for 3 months to build a Tiny House for people in California. This is 2015. Finishing of the degree in September 2015 I started at the University of Ghent in criminology because I’m still very interested in psychology, sociology, criminology, psychology, hell even urbanology.
But about 3 months into the studies I felled the same problem coming up than the one I experienced in high school. I’m wasting my time here. This came up after the first exams we got where they give you questions like, “when was George Mead born” or “when did they write this or this book”. I think it’s totally possible to find these answers on Wikipedia. so I couldn’t see the value in learning that. I also never had this kind of questions in real life btw.. And if you ask your professor why you need to learn this the answer is “you need to learn how to study” Witch I kind of understand but I just don’t believe in learning knowledge. What’s more important or what I find more valuable is how to get certain information, how and where to learn certain things. This is what education should focus on more instead of just plain knowledge where there is way to much of these days anyway.
So after these few months must have been January 2016 I started building Tiny Houses. I had the passion, the skills, the time, the energy and for a while I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed telling my story and I enjoyed inspiring people to live a more free life. What was more important than the Tiny House building itself was that people could have their own space, their own house, without a mortgage of 30 years and without too many restrictions on their lifestyle. If you want to change jobs, want to move countries, or you just were not sure on what to do in your life yet, you could start with a tiny house.
Now, what do I think about starting a business at 18?
Well for once I think jumping in to starting a business this young isn’t a waste of time. I thrive on having something to do every minute of the day and if I don’t I feel depressed very fast. In the first 2 weeks of having a business, I learned more than in my entire school career. You learn how to talk to customers, how to interact with suppliers, how to solve problems in a very quick manner, how to react to stress, how to brand yourself, how to work under time pressure… I think it’s always good to reach for something that’s barely out of your reach. It keeps your brain awake, it keeps you motivated. Also, I see a lot of people starting businesses around me, which is fun, but what they always prefer to do first is get the legal structure. Get an LTD. or an NGO or whatever. But what I also see is that they spend their whole starting capital on this. Which is incredible considering that at that point you have no idea on what awaits you or if what you’re about to do is something you will like. And above all, it takes up a lot of time. An example of this is the Tiny.houses Vlaanderen Non-profit that I brought together in the very beginning of August 2016. They spend a lot of money getting a legal structure in place and even until today they haven’t accomplished anything. Now guys don’t get me wrong. It’s amazing that you are doing what you are doing, all I’m saying is that that’s a way of working I can not cope with. That’s why I stepped down as a president very early on.
What I did to start up my business asap is to just start of being self-employed. It took one week and cost me 95 bucks. This way I was able to very quickly start building and if I needed help I could hire independent carpenters, roofers or electricians,… I think If you are this young and are not absolutely sure if this is what you want to do, this is the perfect way to try it out. And I knew even before thinking about starting that this would just be a temporary thing, a stepping stone. I remember the conversations with my parents about the choice of moving to NYC or starting a company. I don’t know what exactly they said, but basically, it always came down to the discussion about what’s realistic and what’s possible now. So I gave it a go. I don’t regret having that experience of doing this for one year. But if I had the choice or a stronger willpower beforehand I would have probably never done it.
So basically the only advice I can give you is, only start a company when you are a 100% sure you want to do it and then give everything you can to make it succeed. Find investors, find a small team to support you, find a co-founder,… If you are not sure yet, just try it out and make sure you don’t invest too much and you don’t bury yourself under stacks of legal papers and costs. If I had started a “legit” company I would’ve never been able to do what I’m doing now.
If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments. Have an awesome day everyone! And here is a link to a very good article about me early on in my career: read it here (Dutch)
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