Who's Doing It

The Rise of The Young Entrepreneur

Johnny Bui

• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781641373890
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Have you ever asked yourself... What's my purpose? What should I be doing? How can I be in the know?

In today's modern age, we are more equipped than ever to find success, yet so many of us struggle to achieve it. Who's Doing It: The Rise of the Entrepreneur explores the intersection of self-initiative, societal expectations and curiosity. It shows that you can achieve success at any point in your life despite the hand that you have been dealt with. If you are willing to see your goals from the macro-perspective and focus on picking your battles, success will follow.

In this book, you'll discover:

You are only limited by your ambition and willingness to keep trying. Reading Who's Doing It: The Rise of the Entrepreneur demonstrates that you are capable of anything if you allow yourself to be in a constant state of beta. Trust me when I say, your time is now!

Part 1

“When you’re twenty, you care about what everyone thinks; when you’re forty, you stop caring about what everyone thinks; when you’re sixty, you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.”

—Winston Churchill

The Young and the Relentless

“I was taking all of these AP classes and it seemed like I was learning a lot, but I couldn’t see how the things I was learning were going to help me take people to Mars,” Brennan Stark explained.

As we read through this chapter, we will identify teenagers who questioned the conventional norms. See, usually, when you see someone disturbing the peace, your first instinct is to see if someone else will say something. Yes, it bothers you, but you haven’t yet mustered the courage to say or do something. That’s the norm, right? Ignore and proceed if no one else will do something about it. And for a moment, Brennan, David, Hayoung, and Prabha didn’t do anything either. Compliance breeds complacency and within that complacency, some of us grow restless.

Brennan saw it in his schooling. He had been told multiple times that he had a bright future ahead of him, but he found himself asking if it really even mattered.

It’s a question few of us stop to ponder when we are consumed by our day-to-day activities. But these questions consumed Brennan.

Brennan stumbled upon a blog series about Elon Musk, called Wait But Why. He began reading the last post of the series called The Cook and the Chef: Musk’s Secret Sauce. He went through all of Musk’s philosophies and first principals, as well as his plan to colonize Mars. To Brennan, these were the things that actually mattered: sending people to Mars, reinventing renewable energy, creating mass-produced electric cars.

Reading about Musk had given Brennan an epiphany moment. “This guy seems like he’s doing cool stuff, the things he’s saying makes sense, it seems like the things he’s doing really do matter. Maybe I should just pay attention to this and see if there is a way I can do something along those lines,” he remembers thinking.

Brennan was worried about whether what he was doing mattered. But it wasn’t an empty statement. He wasn’t just going to leave that thought sitting there, tell people about it and not do anything about it. He was relentless about this itch for doing something purposeful.

And in tireless fashion, Brennan actively pursued a remedy for his anxious state.

***

The trick to being young and relentless isn’t something you’re born with, so don’t get it twisted that you can’t create something similar to the following entrepreneurs that you are reading about. It is a mind-set that can be acquired.

In this chapter, we’ll follow Brennan Stark, David Zamarin, Hayoung Park, and Prabha Dublish to understand the different ways the Young and the Relentless (TYTR) mind-set is demonstrated.

TYTR mind-set is essentially coming to terms with one’s youth and doing something about all of the questions you have about life. It’s about going through life with a third eye that questions every single thing that you come across: Why are there so many homeless people in Cambridge? Why haven’t we found a solution for dry-erase markers running out of ink? It’s the frustration that you have for not understanding everything about life and questioning it when it doesn’t make sense to you. Why shouldn’t it make sense to you? But saying isn’t enough; we must do.

An example of demonstrating TYTR mind-set is, upon entering college in 2016, I had this aching for purpose that was best illustrated by The Rock’s quote, “Once you know hunger, you will never be full.” Of course, he wasn’t talking about food. He was talking about rising up from the bottom and how after being at the bottom, you’ll never be satisfied with how high you go. Because you’ll always be chasing the top, and you’ll always be feeding your hunger.

I wanted to find my major but, more importantly, my passion. I felt I had all of this energy and excitement ready to finally figure out what I wanted to do with my life—all I had to do was find out what that was. So, I set up weekly sessions with career services for the next semester and a half to discuss different classes and activities that I could be taking to accelerate my experience.

I tried to learn about what upperclassmen were doing and attempted to participate in the same activities: networking events, going out for coffee, getting jobs, studying abroad. I was so dissatisfied with where I was that I was willing to do anything for experience.

TYTR is about being relentless. It isn’t about doing anything crazy. It’s about being present and proactive and doing all the things that others will eventually do to achieve the things that others haven’t. I have zero doubt in the ability of others, but talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. And when you are young and relentless, it’s all about the action. TYTR mind-set entails:

• Consciousness of traditions

• Proactivity

• Curiosity

• Initiative

• The actual work

“I never worry about action but only inaction”

—Winston Churchill

An important thing to recognize when it comes to this book and TYTR mind-set is that this is focused on people who meet the criteria for the Y:

Young.

Yes, this is a book about Generation Z, members within our generation who were able to accomplish things that aren’t so commonly attributed to someone of our age.

As I set out to better understand some of these individuals through my research and interviews, I had strict criteria in mind:

1. They had to be young.

2. Cultural and socioeconomic diversity.

3. They must have had an impact that could be vouched for by a third party.

Generation Z (Gen Z) is the demographic cohort that takes place after the Millennials (also referred to as Generation Y). According to the Pew Research Center, the age range of Gen Z is 1995 onward.

Throughout this book, I am going to introduce you to individual after individual, from young project managers building environmentally friendly houses for those in need, to landing a dream job as a college dropout, to Forbes 30 Under 30 recipients, to Shark Tank contestants. I’m going unveil the realities beneath their two-dimensional titles through three-dimensional analysis of what it takes to be a young, budding entrepreneur in the twenty-first century. Through the narratives of these awe-inspiring individuals who live among us, I will prove success does not have to wait until you’re forty-five.

Yes, they are young, but as you see them execute their aims and goals, you’ll see they use their youth as an advantage.

All of these individuals played a crucial role in putting a stake in their future to live actively, not passively. One of the biggest wonders we have is how someone was able to accomplish a certain task. Online articles and motivational social media posts don’t reveal enough about the behind the scenes of what it took to start a business or host a premier conference for young entrepreneurs.

Let’s explore the actions and mind-set behind a group of young individuals who, by the strength of their curiosity and ambition, created something out of scratch.

***

The Pursuit of What Mattered

When Brennan Stark was just two years old, he knew he wanted to do something that mattered. But he was just like any of us growing up. He played baseball and fell in love with the sport so much he wanted to become a famous bas...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Ariana’s Kitchen
• Part 1
• The Young and the Relentless
• The Magic of Saying Yes
• Part 2 “The greatest bit of advice I ever received was ‘Don’t worry, no one knows what they’re doing either.’” —Ricky Gervais
• What Is This “Experience” That You Speak of?
• The Things Nobody Ever Told You
• In Between the Lines
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Citations