Eric Henberg

Today we had guest speaker Eric Henberg, he is a writer, marketing person, nonprofit and entrepreneur. He talked about two basic things that every entrepreneur should keep in mind. One is the emotional labor part of the business and other is working for money.

Emotional labor: there are a number of things that go in a start up emotionally. There are times you can’t get your hands on any work at all. And there are others when there is too much work to handle.  Eric mentioned this amazing quote from Thomas A. Edison

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

In other words, working hard is important when comes to entrepreneurship. You have to get up and handle the situation and complications. You have to get up and make the phone calls that you need to make. You have to get up and send an email or phone call that you don’t want to do. Another quote Which Eric mentioned that goes along the same line is from Seth Godin

“But the new laziness has nothing to do with physical labor and everything to do with fear. If you're not going to make those sales calls or invent that innovation or push that insight, you're not avoiding it because you need physical rest. You're hiding out because you're afraid of expending emotional labor.”

Working for money: to explain it further, get paid for what you did, don’t undersell your abilities. He mentioned the three question criteria we should use when receiving a job.

1)      Do we want the job?

2)      Does it pay what you want it to pay?

3)      Will it help my career?

The piece of advice for any starting up entrepreneur is: enjoy your work because rewards are uncertain, be willing to fail, build networking, waste less time (on TV etc), and the last one get more done in night/morning/lunch. The last BIG piece of advice is: do it get it done, learn and move on to next.