Stephan Aarstol Shark Tank alumni, Founder & CEO of Tower Paddle Boards, and author of the Five Hour Workday, Stephan Aarstol has been in the internet space for over 20 years.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“just getting into business for yourself is kind of difficult if you are starting with nothing. I came out of grad school in 99 and had debt from school and I worked for somebody else. And even when I started my business for the first year it was a side gig and I did that not intentionally but I had no other option. I had to pay, I was working myself out of debt basically. So I didn’t have any option but to do my regular day job and then at five o’clock would switch over to my other job and sometimes work until midnight. And I did that for about a year until the other business made 50,000 in revenue”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way Book by Richard BransonFavourite Quote:
“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.” Bob Marley
Recommended Online Resources:
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Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“success in business is really about your burn rate especially in these environments where things move so fast. So you have got to figure out how to operate very legally and that will allow you to survive and thrive over the long term”…[Listen for More]
More About Stephan Aarstol:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“It’s okay to outgrow people who don’t grow. Grow tall anyways.” Unknown
Other Quotes From the Chat with Stephan Aarstol:
- “we faced a situation we had a 1.1 million-dollar defaulted loan and they were going to take my personal house and it was all because I was running the business in this wrong corporate structure and I wasn’t focused enough on the money. And I’m not hugely money focused but you’ve got to take a look at it or you can get yourself in trouble”
- “success is… You put the components together and you give it time… It is inevitable if you are doing it the correct way… and then just give it time”
- “what tends to happen as you get farther and farther into life is your personal burn rate goes up. And when you are in college you can live with five roommates and eat… You have this really low burn rate. So, the jumping off point to starting a business gets very difficult as you get older and older and older. So, you may have more experience but your burn rate is higher. So that is why I encourage everybody… And if I was to look back myself, I would say geez start right away, start out of high school because you can live with your parents, you’ve got no burn rate, that’s when you want to start experimenting with starting businesses. And yeah, you don’t know much but you are in a very good position to fail because you don’t have to walk away from a 100,000 dollars job and the expensive mortgage and all of this other stuff”
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