I started my first business when I was 13 years old, washing cars on the weekends. As business picked up, I hired my friends and paid them each a cut of the day’s profits. I took meticulous records, documenting the color, make, and model of each car, and putting them into overly-complicated excel graphs to analyze trends. While the graphs and charts don’t really have any importance anymore, I still rely on the lessons I learned running my first business, more than a decade ago.
Don’t be afraid to take calculated risks: Sure, most of my friends spent weekends playing video games and hanging out, but I was wiping grease off tires. In the beginning I had saved up allowance money and decided to spend it all on—not the latest Nintendo game—car cleaning supplies. I took a risk after weighing the pros and cons and chose to sacrifice some of my free time and money to dedicate to my new venture. I knew that if it didn’t work out, it wouldn’t be the end of the world—advice that seems trivial for this particular circumstance, but very applicable to one later in life: after college I took what I thought at the time was my dream job, an analyst position at a prominent and well-respected real estate private equity fund. After a year, I realized that I was not happy at work, and that I was suppressing my entrepreneurial spirit. I knew that if there was any appropriate time to take a risk, it was early in my working life, and that, again, if it didn’t succeed, it would not be a failure, but a learning experience.
Don’t worry, be happy: Keeping yourself, and your employees, motivated and happy is extremely important. When I ran my car cleaning service it was making sure the friends I hired took the same care and caution wiping every inch of a vehicle, and compensating them appropriately. Today it may mean giving your intern a summer bonus or taking the troops out to lunch—just because. Equally important is keeping yourself happy, and making sure you know that just because you’re an entrepreneur that is literally working 24/7, doesn’t mean you can’t give yourself a short break or reward here and there.
Live the dream: Remember that as an entrepreneur, you’re living the dream. You eat, breathe, and sleep your business. It’s as much a part of you as your arms and legs, and that should make you happy—if it doesn’t, you may want to think about a career change.
So whether you’re on your first entrepreneurial venture or your 50th, don’t forget to listen to yourself and always learn from the past, whether it’s business related or not, it may come in useful one day. And if it doesn’t work this time, it’s not a failure, its simply an investment in yourself, so long as you learn what worked and what didn’t, and put it to good use.
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Harrison Miller is the Co-Founder of DealsForDeeds.com, an innovative daily-deal platform that connects businesses, consumers, and non-profits in a mutually beneficial way. He is also the Founder and CEO of Carwashbooker.com, a national mobile-vehicle service network. He is a graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied real estate finance. Harrison is passionate about all things entrepreneurship, particularly social entrepreneurship and for-profit social ventures.
Website: DealsforDeeds.com | Twitter: @DealsforDeeds
