Wealthy & Wise: Why You Should Become An Entrepreneur

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About the Video – Wealthy & Wise: Why You Should Become An Entrepreneur

Being an entrepreneur allows individuals to pursue their passion and turn it into a profitable venture. It can provide a sense of autonomy and control over one’s career path and work-life balance. Entrepreneurs also have the opportunity to make a significant impact in their industry and community, and potentially leave a lasting legacy. Additionally, the potential financial rewards of entrepreneurship can be substantial.

Prefer to read? A full transcript is provided below.

Cort:

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Wealthy and Wise. I’m your host, Cort Christie. And today, we’re going to be talking about why everyone should become an entrepreneur and what’s going on in the actual world out there, because we are seeing that day in and day out with our business at NCH. And we have a very special guest, an entrepreneur in his own right who’s been very successful as a business owner and now serves as the president of NCH. Greg Martin, welcome, Greg.

Greg:

Thanks, Cort. Great to be here.

Cort:

Awesome. So, I know you’ve been an entrepreneur.

Greg:

Yes, sir.

Cort:

Many times.

Greg:

Yes, sir.

Cort:

Ran a very large organization and now you’re helping build NCH. And in our really unique space of helping entrepreneurs lay a foundation for their future business, the ideas that they have. But what is the current environment like for entrepreneurship today?

Greg:

Yeah, that’s a great question. So, I think I was a junior in high school the very first time I heard the word entrepreneur and I thought, what in the world is that? And I think it may have been a civics class, but I remember it was a fairly complicated definition. So basically, what I learned when I was a junior in high school is that an entrepreneur is a person who takes on financial risk to bring together all the elements of production. And I thought, man, that doesn’t sound like all that much fun.

Cort:

It sounds really complicated.

Greg:

It does. It sounds really complicated, but obviously the definition of entrepreneur and entrepreneurship has changed dramatically since I was a junior in high school, which was quite a few years ago, to be honest. But anyway, my entrepreneurial journey, maybe I can talk about that for a minute. So, rather than bringing together all the elements of production, some family members and I found a, an interesting product that we wanted to sell because it seemed like it was doing some interesting things for people who were taking it, some positive things for people who were taking it. So, there weren’t that many elements of production really to speak of. We just were able to find someone to help us put this product into a bottle and put a label on it, and then we took it to market. Well, that was in the late eighties, and it’s gotten even simpler now. So, entrepreneurship now is really about individuals who have a desire and a motivation and a drive to do something that they may already be doing as a hobby or as a kind of as a side interest. And just to formalize that. And whether they do that by establishing an LLC or a corporation, it is now so simple to become an entrepreneur that the difficulty of becoming an entrepreneur that I was first introduced to in high school, all of that’s been resolved and we make it easy for people. That’s the reason we’re in business. We’re in business to help all of these men and women out there who have an idea and want to turn it into a formal business. We help them get that started and we help them get it started the right way. And that’s the important part of choosing a service provider like NCH. Unfortunately, the secretaries of State in all the different states where our clients live oftentimes, well, almost invariably they have a website. And you can go to a state secretary of state website, but they are generally hard to navigate. Sorry, excuse me, hard to navigate. They may ask questions that you have no idea how to answer. And so having a trusted advisor or partner like NCH to help guide you through that process is really invaluable to me. And we have so many testimonials from people who have used our services to incorporate who say exactly the same thing. It’s why we have such a high rating on TRUSTPILOT. But let’s just talk now, maybe just for a second. I’m going to segway into why would you want to be an entrepreneur. Why would you want to be an entrepreneur? So, most people are familiar with a guy named John Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller. John D. Rockefeller famously said once, I would rather have 1% of the efforts of a hundred people than 100% of my own efforts. So basically, entrepreneurship is a way to leverage your own talent and your capability, whether you have employees or not. It’s a way to leverage yourself. 1x, 2x, 10x, 100x of what you could do on your own. And there are lots of different ways to do that now with e-commerce, with all these platforms, whether that’s transportation platforms like Uber or Lyft or Fiver or Upwork. There are so many ways to get involved in entrepreneurship now, but it’s really important that you do it the right way by having an LLC so you protect yourself.

Cort:

Absolutely. And I think, you know, there’s so many avenues for people to go down. As you mentioned today, it’s very different when it comes to starting a business, launching a business. The technology that can be leveraged. I wish there were some of the tools when I started 30 some years ago.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

Because it’s far different today. You know, starting a business is way easier.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

It is really way easier. One of the things that we get questioned about all the time is, you know, timing, about when to start a business and, you know, you come off a global pandemic. Is that the right time to start a business? I guess it would depend, right?

Greg:

Right.

Cort:

You think of maybe financial issues going on with our economy. Interest rates, inflation, all the things that can affect business.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

And people. People’s desire to step out and try something new. You know, when’s the right time to start a business?

Greg:

Yeah, that’s a that’s such a good question. And I know so many people struggle with when is the right time or even is there such a thing as a right time? Well, there is data out there that will indicate that some of the most successful businesses ever were started during recessions. That seems a little bit counterintuitive. How in the world is it possible that some of these household names that we all know started in some of the worst economic times? Well, in my opinion, there must be a correlation between the need to make something happen and the macro environment. So, some of these businesses were started because there was an urgency. The economic cycle had turned. The environment was a little challenging. So, some of these businesses were started just because there was a compelling need to make something happen. So, interestingly and like I said, counterintuitively, economic downturns can often be some of the best times ever to start a business. Now, I’m not an economic prognosticator. That’s not how I make my living, obviously. But I would say that the common wisdom right now is that the U.S. is maybe facing some headwinds. Interest rates are rising. Unemployment is still incredibly low. But the interest rate environment is not particularly favorable. In addition, we’ve heard just in the news the last few days about these bank failures. So, there is some uncertainty in the macro environment. This may be a wonderful time to start a business in the midst of that uncertainty. One thing we know for sure about the U.S. economy, it’s resilient. It never stays down for long. You bet against the U.S. economy. You’ve made a losing bet. And so, there’s I would, based on all of the above, I would say today is the best time to start a business.

Cort:

One, I think. Would you say, you know, the US economy is incredibly resilient. We have the most dynamic economy in the world, the freest economy in the world. And as a capitalist, as I know you are and I am. You look out there and you think, what could I do? When can I do it? And you know, what country would you want to do it in? And it all comes back to now in the United States.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

And I think of my own experiences in business, and I know you’ve had many where you’ve been involved in different businesses. Sometimes the first business is just to get the cobwebs out.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

To learn what it’s like.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

You know.

Greg:

The training wheels business.

Cort:

The motivators are still there. Why do you want to go into business for yourself? You know?

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

People want to go into business for themselves generally for financial independence.

Greg:

Right.

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Cort:

They want to be autonomous. They want the freedom, they want flexibility. They want all these wonderful things. They want to make more money.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

Those never change. But the business you might start isn’t necessarily the business you end up with.

Greg:

Yes.

Cort:

Because I have unfortunately and fortunately, about a dozen in my history.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

That I care not to remember but they served a purpose on my path.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

That got me to where I am at today.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

I’m sure you can relate to that when it comes to, you know. I don’t know what idea, is the perfect idea.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

I don’t know if the timing is the right timing and I don’t know if I’ve got all the skills yet.

Greg:

Right.

Cort:

To actually do it.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

And it’s like you’ll never be in the perfect position ever.

Greg:

No one is ever in the perfect position. I challenge anyone to come up with a single business that went from zero to hero without any type of trouble, travail going out of business risk. It happens to every business, regardless of how large and successful it may seem today. I can guarantee you there were some dark days in the past, and that’s just true for every entrepreneurial startup. So, I paid a lot of money to go to a very fancy business school. But I can distill almost everything I learned in that experience to a couple of things. One of them is, is there a pain that your product or service is solving, a real pain that real consumers or real people are experiencing? So, let’s just take some classic examples, Amazon. So, started out as an online bookseller. So what pain was Amazon solving? Well, they were trying to figure out how to get first run, first edition books to consumers at less price and more conveniently then someone would go down to their local bookseller to buy. Obviously, Amazon has pivoted and is now the everything store, but they were solving a real pain around convenience. It’s really convenient to go to one place, Amazon, and get almost anything you can think of and have it shipped right to your door. FedEx, what pain were they solving? Well, back in the day, and I’m guessing most of our viewers aren’t too old to remember this, there was something called a fax machine that had thermal paper in it. Heat, thermal paper, this is how this these things worked. And they there were telephone lines that connected these machines to one another. Well, that wasn’t really a very elegant solution because the print quality on these were terrible, and particularly for sophisticated businesses who needed speed. FedEx was a way to get important documents from point A to point B, generally from business to business immediately next day, that was their brand promise. So, they were solving a real pain in speeding up the time it took to get documents from one place to another. But those are well known household examples. But there are so many people out there solving pain points for real consumers. And if you have an idea of a product or a service, whether existing or just it just exists in your mind that you know, because you’ve experienced that pain yourself or people in your social circle you know, have experienced that pain and you can solve that pain for them. That’s a business. That’s the that’s the kernel of a business right there.

Cort:

And there’s just, you know, so many directions you can go with that. Whether it’s with technology, whether it’s transportation, whether it’s just, you know, manufacturing something faster than somebody else. Some of that’s hung up or, you know, you can’t get products from other countries right now. We need a lot more manufacturing right here in the United States and it needs to come back to this country. You know, there’s so many avenues for people to go down. And I think the core message that’s so important for our viewers today to hear is that entrepreneurship is alive and well in the United States. We’re watching the business registration numbers go through the roof.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

They’ve actually doubled during COVID. Now, that’s quite a shock to some of you. You think COVID would have stifled business startups. They’ve actually doubled in the last couple of years. So, that’s a shocker. That tells you there’s a lot going on in our economy right now. And there’s a ton of opportunity for all of you viewing right now to actually go out and take some risk, start something for yourself. Doesn’t mean you have to quit your day job and you still need that income coming in.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

But you can do something at night. You could do it on weekends, do it on the side. There’s a lot of people doing side hustles, but it’s, you know, doesn’t it feel like there’s any better time than now to start something today?

Greg:

I would venture to say that in my lifetime I have never seen a more low-risk environment in which to start a business. Why is that? Because startup costs can be nominal, in some cases close to zero, depending on particularly if you’re a service provider. You may have some marketing cost to let people know what you’re doing. But so, finding a service provider like us to help you with the incorporation, a very reasonable cost, getting started in whether that’s a product or a service. In many cases you can pre-sell a product even before you’ve made the product to see if there’s a market for it. So, the financial risks that entrepreneurs are taking in this day and age and in this generation are orders of magnitude lower than they have ever been in the history of entrepreneurship. So, if there’s a golden age of entrepreneurship, I’d have to say it’s now, today.

Cort:

It is now. And there were times I remember in history where it was like, oh, you know, I don’t know that I’d want to try to break into the market in something new or different.

Greg:

Yeah.

Cort:

So today it’s just, it’s wide open.

Greg:

Exactly.

Cort:

And it’s exciting right now. So, thank you, Greg.

Greg:

Yeah, my pleasure.

Cort:

And some insight into entrepreneurship and some of your history there. And for all of you listening today, hopefully you’ve got some nuggets for you to think about as far as when’s the right time for you to launch. What should you go into and what direction? But just know this, NCH is here to help you. We will talk to you about your idea. We’ll walk you through how to set up the business structure that is right for you. So, we get the foundation laid for your business. We do not charge you anything for the conversation. In fact, we love talking about entrepreneurship and what people are doing and helping them launch their dreams. We do that day in and day out here. So, please take advantage of all the services, all the options that we have available at NCH. And we would love to hear from you and your ideas. So, with that, thank you for tuning in to another edition of Wealthy and Wise. Have a great day!

DISCLAIMER: The above material has been prepared for informational purposes only, containing opinions of the provider, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Please consider consulting tax, legal, and accounting advisors before engaging in any transaction.

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