Eric Hanberg

We had a quest speaker come into the class today to talk about entrepreneurship. Eric Hanberg is an entrepreneur himself. He has engaged in a number of business opportunities over the years some being in the realm of non-profit, but mainly he is a writer and self publisher. Eric brought a lot of great advice to presentation on what it takes to be an entrepreneur. However, I took most of his advice as life advice rather than business advice. Its seems as though a lot of  the qualities that it takes to be an entrepreneur would benefit anyone throughout all of life's stages.

One of the things that Eric mentioned was not being afraid to take risks. This is probably the number one property that entrepreneurs need. Eric elaborated on this idea by stating that the new laziness is a fear of failure. He talked about a friend of his that was a photographer, to whom he suggested putting an ad a Craig's list for photo services. His friend however was to afraid to even post. I really latched on to this idea because it is all about putting yourself out there. What's the worst that could happen? No one will want your photos? Oh well, but what if they do? Its seems as though entrepreneurs are great at finding something the love doing and coming up with a way to get paid for it. I plan on trying to adopt this ideal and put myself out there more.

Another thing that I thought was really cool about Eric was how he took his love for writing and is making money off it. Eric stressed that you might not make money off of it right away, but that it is a possibility. It took him a few years to see any real profit from his book sales but with his current job paying the bills, his books sales are all gravy. I think it is pretty cool that he was able to take his hobby and turn a profit and now with the increase of sales he has a luxury of living a different life. With the added money from his books, maybe he doesn't need that 40 hour a week job. I think another property that entrepreneurs have is that they are able to step back and look at how they want to live there life and then figure out the avenues they need to take in order to get to that palce. Eric mentioned about how he wants the ability to vacation in Europe for weeks at a time, and it seems to me as though he is close to fulfilling that goal.

I am not quite sure that I am cut out to be an entrepreneur or that I even what too, however I am starting to find the idea more intriguing. Even if I don't use Eric's business advice for business, I plan on incorporating it into my life. Being an entrepreneur means being a little less fearful, something that I think all of us can benefit from.