Entrepreneurial Advice Nobody Gives You

You just have to go on a journey. Vital lessons every business person needs to learn.

Growing up, you might of had the dream of being in the NBA. Your friends would laugh at you and say you are too short, not good enough for the NBA. They would tell you all the stats on the possibilities of ever reaching the limelight: “Joe, only one in every [insert discouraging denominator] boy makes it to the NBA!” But you know what they say about stats right? Ninety-nine percent of them are made up of no backing.

Still, you probably didn’t make it to the NBA, but you could have done something that would prove more beneficial to your life and the lives of your family. At the age of ten, I picked up a shovel one cold winter morning to venture through Swarthmore, PA. The city was a ghost town. A winter wonderland with no visitors anywhere to be found — the people had withdrawn from their normal activities.

We were poor, but we got by. My mom took good care of the family, and continues to this day. But on that snowy morning in 2003, when she offered me her five dollars to grab breakfast, I respectfully declined. I told her I had to go. You can’t get through life accepting handouts every step of the way. You need to make your own money, your own way. Its waiting for you somewhere out…