Grant Aldrich founded OnlineDegree.com with a purpose-driven mission: make college more accessible and affordable for everyone. After graduating college with an overwhelming amount of debt, he was determined to change how students embark on their college education. Grant has spent his entire career working in startups with nearly 15 years of experience and 2 prior exits to a publicly traded company. He’s been a board member and donor to a number of non-profits, an advisor to many publicly traded companies and a guest speaker at seminars and graduate school courses. He graduated with honors from University of California Irvine in Economics.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
A family friend and mentors
When business started difficulties overcame:
“one of the challenges of course is that you don’t make any money in the beginning… So essentially we bootstrapped it. I really value that experience because when you are young you are willing to endure a lot of pain and misery in a way in terms of your expenses and living hand to mouth because you don’t have a lot of expenses, you don’t have a family, it’s possible at that point. But the lessons that I learned during that period of time to be living really very spartan lifestyle, appreciating other aspects of life and controlling my expenses have served me so well even until today…”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
How to Win Friends and Influence People Book by Dale CarnegieFavourite Quote:
“know thyself” Temple of Apollo, Greece
Recommended Online Resources:
Upwork – You can find The Perfect Freelancers For Your Projects! It’s easy and affordable with secure Payments and will help you to increased your productivity
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“know thyself because I think that you are going to even if you come up with the best business idea you are going to make the fatal mistake of not potentially making one that’s best fit for you. I think that’s the first step because again getting your personal philosophies and house in order before you embrace what you are going to do for the next five, seven, eight, maybe a lifetime when creating a business… It’s a big commitment. In the second thing I would recommend is to start exercising. Entrepreneurship is like a muscle in that sense where it’s fun to come up with business ideas, and then shoot them down, and come up with more business ideas and keep playing those exercises and sharing it with friends and mentor is that you trust. Those are all excellent because ultimately the first idea that you come up with is unlikely to be the idea that you eventually run with. Just by sheer chance and odds most likely that will have some fatal flaws but you will learn from the exercise of identifying those fatal flaws before you embrace on this long journey to go and pursue it…”…[Listen for More]
More About Grant Aldrich:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“Integrity is the most valuable and respected quality of leadership. Always keep your word.” Brian Tracy
Other Quotes From the Chat with Grant Aldrich:
- “I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I knew I wanted that freedom and it’s funny that I knew so little about it. Really the only thing I did know about entrepreneurship was that it was the way to have that unfettered creativity and freedom but I didn’t know anything else past that”
- “the older you get you realise how little you know”
- “having wonderful people around you is such a key thing because they give you so much insight and wisdom that it would take you years to get”
- “you have to rely more on good advisement and wise counsel and that’s not always easy to get. But if I could go back I think that I would have tried to reach out and solicit more feedback and more mentorship in those phases because ultimately I think many junctures I feel that I pursued especially in my previous start-ups we pursued things far too longer or went down distractions or made bad decisions far too longer than had someone more seasoned been in the room would have said hey guys I think that you are going to encounter a lot of problems with this. And I think that is something I would probably have done a little bit differently”
- “ultimately success means happiness and it means your sense of accomplishment and that’s a very personal decision”
- “business books should be very personalised. We need to know ourselves and where we are lacking or what our tendencies are to our personality tendencies will typically go that are detrimental to our overall health. My viewpoint is always to try to hedge yourself off pass if you will. So I think the very first step is to look through and try to read books that help you set up your own personal philosophy and that’s critical. And I think that things that will lead you to figuring out your own happiness is the crux of that”
- “I found that in business more than anything else our relationships are what matter and conditioning yourself to be a good friend and build relationships with everyone without being perceived as a networker which is the worst thing you could possibly be perceived as is huge because if you are in networker that just means you go out there trying to find the relationship that’s going to benefit you the most and it’s a very selfish standpoint. Where the standpoint if you come in and you are interested in creating genuine relationships and making friends that’s a great mindset and that is going to serve you very well”
- “how could you ever obtain true knowledge if you didn’t know yourself”
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