Last Thursday was quite the whirlwind of a day! I started off my day in the morning heading down to Provo Utah to speak at an event put on by RevRoad. RevRoad is a business accelerator for entrepreneurs that offers coworking space, legal services, marketing, accounting, mentoring services, etc in return for equity. They asked me to come down to do a Q&A session in front of an audience that was also live streamed over the internet. If you’d like to watch the interview you can access it below but you need to fast forward the video to 41 minutes in and that’s where my interview begins:
I finished the interview and had just enough time to race to my office in South Jordan to meet with a company late that afternoon that was pitching my partners and I on their business. Then an hour later I had to jump back in my car and drive to Salt Lake City for my next big event where I’d been asked to be a Shark for Warrior Rising’s big Shark Tank Event. Warrior Rising is a non-profit group that helps Veterans become entrepreneurs by offering them training , mentoring, and helping connect them with investors, referring to their Veterans as “Vetrepreneurs”.
The event was a spirited one with the other Sharks and I was so impressed with the Veterans pitching us that I ended up saying I’d go in on two of the five companies that presented. Funny thing was that neither of the deals I went in on are for businesses I would normally even have looked at, but the individual Veterans that pitched them were so humble and you could feel their work ethic and integrity they brought to the table…so I just couldn’t stop myself from jumping in to invest.
Speaking about, mentoring on, and investing in entrepreneurs gives me so much joy! We’ve all heard the phrase “Do what you love an you’ll never work a day in your life” but it’s not really accurate to say you won’t work because I worked my guts out from early morning until well after 11pm when I finally pulled into my garage totally exhausted and starving from not taking a break all day – however, it is definitely a heck of a lot more fun to work when the work you are doing is something you love.
~Amy Rees Anderson (author of the book “What Awesome Looks Like: How To Excel in Business & Life” )
