Tonight was the Big Dream Gathering at UNI. My Marketing professor was gracious enough to let me leave during the break, so I was able to enjoy the gathering from 7pm to 8:30pm or so. I arrived and was immediately impressed with the number of posted dreams, and I added three to the walls myself. I spent time reading every dream posted, and commented on a dozen or more posts. A big shout out to Mitch Matthews for hosting the impressive display and inspiring people to dream big!
On Tuesday I enjoyed my first day in my new office. I have been accepted into the Student Business Incubator (SBI) program at UNI, which is run by the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center. It is a rather large office and is well equipped and furnished, and it is provided to me for free. I was still absorbing the absolute shock of having a second office at the age of 20 when Laurie Watje, my teacher, mentor, and the SBI manager knocked on my door to give me a heads up: “Mitch Matthews, a UNI alum, is with Big Dream Gathering and will be stopping by to tape an interview with you around 3pm, so be thinking about what you want to say!” I was awestruck and terrified. Here I am, 30 minutes into my first day and now I have to give an interview on tape!
You see, to stay in the incubator you must make satisfactory progress in various areas of running your business, such as business development, personal development, networking, SBI involvement, and other things. You are required to obtain a certain amount of “points” per semester by doing various activities. This is easily achievable to anyone reasonably motivated, and I will certainly pass the requirement by a large amount. One of the things you can get points for is being available for incubator tours, which merely amounts to talking to anyone Laurie brings by when you are in your office. I could have turned down the offer, but beyond looking bad on the first day, I had no desire to! Fear is not a reason to reject opportunity. Indeed, one of the big lures of entrepreneurship is the ability to challenge myself in ways I have not experienced, the ability to improve skills that have gone undeveloped, and to thrust me into situations I that I find uncomfortable. Confronting things you are unfamiliar with and having the courage to do things you might not do otherwise is an important part of being not just an entrepreneur, but a leader as well.
Sure enough, a small mob of people swarm in around 3pm, and I hear the knock on my door. The time has come, and I think, “Now, what do I say without sounding like a fool?” While I’m not entirely sure I accomplished that, I felt like I had a great interview. Mitch Matthews is a very impressive and personable guy, and it was obvious that he has a lot of passion for what he does. As Laurie noted, he was coming around filming people to talk about their “Big Dreams”, for he runs BigDreamGathering.com and is going to host an event on campus that I will surely be attending. Part way into the interview the camera guy ran out of tape and went to retrieve another, but Mitch and I just kept talking anyway!
As my interview wrapped up he gave me a few very useful bits of advice and then moved on to the other incubator inhabitant present, Travis Steffan, who runs two bussinesses out of the incubator: Synn Clothing and WorkoutBox. I knew his story because I met him during a tour last semester when I was in a class, but I wanted to listen to the interview anyway because he is an impressive individual and a successful student entreprenuer. While listening I got to gab a bit with the other people present, which were mostly people from around UNI that were showing Mitch and his small crew around and grabbing people with Big Dreams.
Eventually the excitement passed and I took a few minutes to reflect on what had just happened. My first formal day as an entrepreneur and I had already accomplished these things after four hours:
Networked, which resulted in connections, advice, and a possible customer (before I have written any code!)
Filmed an interview, resulting in free marketing / press
Successfully delivered an elevator pitch on camera and off, with positive feedback from four or five people
Was told by at least three people they loved the name of my business
Had my business concept reaffirmed by people I did not know, which felt great
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Registered domain names
Setup work environment
Read policy information
Gained points towards business progress for staying in the SBI.
As I walked to my night class I could not imagine a higher octane start to my business, nor could I imagine a more productive day. I had a great sense of accomplishment, and yet I technically have very little done. But as I say in the interview: I have all of the pieces, I just need to put them together.
So, to anyone reading that wants to find the moral of the story, I leave you with these two lessons learned:
Develop an elevator pitch! It is absolutely necessary to be able to describe your idea and sell it to a person in just a few sentences.
The first day is -NOT- too early to buy business cards! You never know who you might meet that wants one. I was kicking myself for not having any!
I’ll try to post a picture of my office and maybe come back and insert the video of my interview once it has been posted.