Today I was humbled and honored to receive the UVEF Entrepreneur of the Year Award.\u00a0 At the awards lunch they asked me to share a few words about the things that I would like to pass on to other Entrepreneurs from the lessons I have learned from my own journey.\u00a0 I struggled deciding what lessons would be most important to share given that there were only 5 minutes or so to fit them in, so I wanted to be sure and share those that could be most impactful.\u00a0 On the drive down to the event I jotted a few thoughts down on a paper, but when it came time for me to accept the award I found myself sharing some things I hadn\u2019t planned on.<\/p>\n
On my paper I had written 3 things:<\/p>\n
One – The importance of surrounding yourself with the very best team of people possible.<\/p>\n
I shared that you don\u2019t have to be the smartest person in the room or even the person who knows the most to be successful, you just have to wise enough to surround yourself with people who are far smarter and know tons more than you do. Doing that work wonders for me. It is a good team of individuals with common values and a shared vision that together can change the world.<\/p>\n
Two- Never be afraid to fail.<\/p>\n
Trying and failing is how we learn.\u00a0 It is how we grow and improve and figure things out.\u00a0 We had a rule at my company and that was that you could make any mistake once, so long as you didn\u2019t repeat that same mistake again.\u00a0 A different mistake was fine to make, as long as it wasn\u2019t repeated, and so on.\u00a0 By allowing yourself as the leader to be human and make mistakes yourself, you set the example for your team that its okay for them to make mistakes and grow as well.\u00a0 It is NEVER a failure if you get back up and keep going. The only time you fail is when you don\u2019t try or when you don\u2019t get back up again, that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n
Three \u2013 There is only one area in life you never want to make a mistake and that is with your integrity.<\/p>\n
Life will present a million opportunities to take shortcuts and cut corners or to do something shady. And sadly you will watch many others take those chances and you will see that it allows them to get ahead or even win and that is hard to reconcile.\u00a0 But the fact is that no opportunity in life will ever be worth trading your integrity for.\u00a0 We kept a sign on my office wall that read \u201cDo what is right, let the consequence follow\u201d\u00a0 – that sign served as a reminder to all of us to never get sucked into doing the wrong thing, even when it could be said it was for the right reason.\u00a0 Do the right thing and feel good about it, no matter what outcome it produces. And never forget that success will come and go, but integrity is forever.<\/p>\n
Those were my three points but I found myself wanting to share why my passion for entrepreneurship is so strong and why I started a charity to encourage young people to become entrepreneurs.\u00a0 I was a single mom for a very long time and I had to support my family on my own.\u00a0 For me the path of entrepreneurship became a road to self-reliance and self-respect.\u00a0 It allowed me to put food on my table and a roof over my kid\u2019s heads.\u00a0 It allowed me to create a future for my family.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know where I would be if I hadn\u2019t become an entrepreneur.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t finished college because I had my kids and couldn\u2019t afford the tuition and needed to work full-time.\u00a0 But the field of entrepreneurship didn\u2019t fault me for that.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t pass judgment that I wasn\u2019t someone with a degree.\u00a0 It allowed me to take my talents and abilities and turn them into an amazing business that accomplished amazing things and employed amazing people.\u00a0 It allowed me the ability to try and fail, to get back up, to try and fail again, and to get back up again, over and over again.\u00a0 It allowed me to put aside my self-doubts and shoot for the impossible because the worst case was failure, and in my mind as long as I got back up every time I fell down then I would never be a failure, so I knew that I could control never being a failure by simply standing up and moving forward. Entrepreneurship allowed me to become self-reliant, a gift I am forever grateful for.\u00a0 That is why I love being an entrepreneur and that is why I decided that after selling my company I would dedicate my time and my talents and my resources to help educate and encourage others to become entrepreneurs, especially our young people who might be like I once was\u2026scared, uncertain, and unsure of what they can become in life.\u00a0 I want them to see that they can become anything they choose\u2026anything!<\/p>\n
~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today I was humbled and honored to receive the UVEF Entrepreneur of the Year Award.\u00a0 At the awards lunch they asked me to share a few words about the things that I would like to pass on to other Entrepreneurs from the lessons I have learned from my own journey.\u00a0 I struggled deciding what lessons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[168,501,500,46,672,1151,224,163,1434,41,2915,83,171,218,51,93,7,2920,30,364,76,479,34,1016,324,2921,228,233,232,530,53,692,1050,1629,2898,283,27,112,2922,2923,145,2918,2917,149,2916,98,28,613,78,2919,2914,79,130,1426,541],"class_list":["post-4111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adversity","tag-appreciate","tag-appreciation","tag-attitude","tag-award","tag-charity","tag-confidence","tag-courage","tag-do-what-is-right","tag-entrepreneur","tag-entrepreneur-of-the-year","tag-experience","tag-fail","tag-failure","tag-family","tag-fear","tag-future","tag-get-up","tag-gift","tag-goal","tag-goals","tag-honor","tag-integrity","tag-journey","tag-judgment","tag-keep-going","tag-leader","tag-learn","tag-lessons","tag-mistake","tag-motivation","tag-opportunity","tag-recognize","tag-repeat","tag-resources","tag-right","tag-self-confidence","tag-self-improvement","tag-self-reliance","tag-self-respect","tag-service","tag-shared-vision","tag-smart-know-the-most","tag-success","tag-surround-yourself-with-good-people","tag-talent","tag-talents","tag-team","tag-time","tag-trying","tag-uvef","tag-values","tag-vision","tag-wrong","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4112,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4111\/revisions\/4112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}