Creativity, Community and Story — Scott Millar in his own words

Scott Millar, 18 year old CEO of BOP Industries tells his story and answers our questions about what young innovators need to succeed.

Hi, I’m Scott Millar, an 18-year-old Brisbane based entrepreneur who runs my own company called Bop Industries. I started this company as a school business venture in Grade 9 in selling keyrings at local markets and had an absolute ball doing it with a team of fellow students.

During the summer holidays of that year I was looking for a job, but found that as a 14 year old, I had nothing to really set myself apart from any of the other job seekers. I then remembered how much fun I’d had running my first business venture at the markets — and this inspired me start it back up again and see what I could do with it. Within a very short time, I went from selling at local markets again to now being the founder and CEO one of Australia’s largest holographic projections companies.

BOP Industries creates Holograms like you see in Star Wars and Iron Man for all sorts of different uses from events in stores or the movies to conferences. As well as that we also run workshops all around the country with plans to expand overseas shortly where we are teaching kids and people of all ages about emerging technologies. We are a big believer in how technology can feel just like magic, so we’re aiming to bring a bit of that magic back to our work.

In all of this, I think the creative mindset is essential these days to succeeding with starting a new venture. We hear a lot about robots and AI replacing everything now, and I see that it’s having a creative mindset that may give you the edge over every other person that is starting their own business, as creativity allows you to think about products in a new way. Creativity can also mean knowing how to pivot and iterate on your idea if needed — too look at what’s working, what’s not working and how you can start focusing on what does work.

As well as that it’s really important that you have a look at a product or even an issue in your life and go from there. Many many successful businesses start this way, where people who are having an issue in their life work to find a solution, and it’s creative thinking that will get you from the issue to the solution or product.

The next thing I recommend to help find success is to start talking to people in your community. Set up or go to any events or meetings you see around your area and start with the people there. Another tip would be to jump on LinkedIn. I’ve created and gotten so many connections from LinkedIn by just creating a profile and being active. You just need to add a bit about who you are and what you do.

Next — the biggest thing I have found to create engagement and meet people is to start posting questions and see what people say. I did a post the other day asking asking for opinions on whether or not I should go to University straight after finishing high school, and it was viewed more than 20,000 times and helped me meet 70 new people from all across the country.

I would also highly recommend that you start researching. I was building a hologram unit recently with one of my team and we got to talking about what goes into building a product. Our conclusion was that 50 to 70% of the work needed for a new product comes in the research phase, meaning that if you haven’t got the right research for what a community needs, you won’t have a successful product.

My other piece of advice is — if there’s a product out there that you love but you wish it could do a few other things, there’s nothing to stop you from going and improving it more and seeing how that goes. Just because something’s already in the market doesn’t mean that you can’t work in that field as well. Talk to people, do your research and see what resources are online. Fo instance in Queensland there are some great resources from the Queensland government available from Advance Queensland, and often local libraries are a great place to start also.

As for the playful FutureWe question of what would I do first if I went to Mars, I’d definitely be taking lots of photos and videos and interviewing people on what Mars life is like even doing a live stream back to Earth if that was possible (well, either that or eating the Mars food, I want to see what that tastes like!). I love sharing my story on social media and blogging about our activities and projects (as well as other peoples) and, like the advice above on creativity and engaging with people, it’s been a huge help in developing my business to where it is today.

More on Scott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smillar1/