The Entrepreneur of the Year

Are You an Entrepreneur?

What is your definition of an Entrepreneur?
Just take a minute to think about it.

Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World) painting sold for $450 million in 2017. What was it worth in Da Vinci’s day? The fruits of an entrepreneur’s labour are often better appreciated over time, far after their death.

The term Entrepreneur was derived from the French verb “entreprendre” (“to undertake”) and first coined by Richard Cantillon in 1730 to describe someone who was taking a risk and making decisions in uncertain conditions.

Later in 1803, Jean-Baptiste Say described the entrepreneur as taking things of lesser value and creating higher value. Joseph Schumpeter in 1911 said the role of the entrepreneur was as an innovator and a driver of economic development through creative destruction.

My definition? 
An entrepreneur is anyone who creates value for others and themselves. And everyone can create.

By my definition, God is an entrepreneur because I believe God created the world and us. A most beautiful creation. I’ve received so many business lessons from the Bible, which describes the entrepreneurship of God.

To All the Unsung Entrepreneurs

It’s not just business people who are entrepreneurs.

Artists, poets, writers, philosophers, musicians and scientists are also entrepreneurs. They use paint, words, thoughts, music, theory and experiments to create and express the beauty, joy, and wisdom of life and nature. 

Bach’s music was for the church. He died relatively unknown until Felix Mendelssohn resurrected his work 70 years after Bach’s death. They later searched for Bach’s unmarked grave to give recognition to his great works.

Those who scale their works of creation are recognized as Entrepreneurs, but it’s the unsung heroes who have allowed the greats to stand on their shoulders to whom we should also pay homage for making a dent in the world.

I further describe entrepreneurs as those who have the courage to live their dreams.

This was my father and my mother who left Korea with the shirt on their backs. My father went from an almost non-existent elementary school education to the German mines and then to Ford in Canada. He then had the courage to set up his own grocery store and laundromats. My mom left Korea as a nurse to come to a new country to learn English and work as a nurse in a small town in Ontario Canada called Owen Sound.

I am especially impressed by entrepreneurs who bootstrap with little money, few resources, little education, and little time because they are typically working many other jobs. This requires ingenuity and persistence along with the 12 hallmarks of entrepreneurship.

Do You Have the Credentials of an Entrepreneur?

I had dreamed since 14 of becoming a medical doctor, so I took no liberal arts courses or any business courses in university. So when I started my side hustle in 1999, I often had the impostor syndrome. I just did what made sense. Offer a unique service that gave more than I asked for. It worked and then I expanded and raised the prices as I gave more value. And most of the other bootstrap entrepreneurs in the domain industry were just like me. 

Who were the experts in domains?

It was us, who spent 16 hours a day, figuring out how to value a domain, register great domains, and make money from the domains. We built systems to automate as much as we could, because we were one-person operations. We were the visionary, the executer, the financier, the marketer, the salesperson, the administrator all-in-one. We wore all the hats of the business.

I would argue that being a bootstrap entrepreneur is the best business education in the world. You learn everything first hand. The lessons of entrepreneurship are inscribed into your soul.

We had no unfair advantage except a dream we sought.

Our failures are our battle scars and oh do we have so many.
Our successes are built on these piles of failures.
We learned to iterate and test our assumptions quickly before spending much money,  time or resources.

But my Director pulled me aside and asked me to seriously consider going to the Advanced Management Program at Harvard.

My wife was pregnant. There was no way I could. Would this help me?
It wouldn’t hurt. And no one could look down on you.
It made sense. I asked my wife. She paused and considered the implications.
I would be in a Harvard dorm for two months. She would be 4 months pregnant, yet she gave her full support.

And the Winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year is…

I applied to Harvard’s Advance Management Program. They suggested that I apply to their Owner Management Program. My director Chris Hartnett gave them a call.

Read the rest of my story at Ham.com along with my life lessons then and now (only a few minutes more but I hope will help you in your life)