Let Entrepreneurship Choose You

Thanks to the nature of my company, The Hub, I know a lot of entrepreneurs. Many of them use our platform to connect with and hire photographers, and as the intermediary, I call many of those small business owners up regularly. Because of this exposure, I’ve seen that there are typically two kinds of entrepreneurs: The ones who choose their path, and the ones who are driven toward their path. That is to say, entrepreneurship chooses them.

The first kind of entrepreneur is of a certain type. Maybe they worked as a consultant, and they know a thing or two about conducting cases and seeing the best results. They’ll test five different products to see which one has the most traction, and which of those spaces have the most potential and momentum. They’ll pick the winning product, and build their company around that. They approach entrepreneurship as a math problem, or an academic challenge. For them, it’s all about identifying a space that is ripe for disruption, and coming up with something to thrust into it that people want to buy. 

On the other hand, are the people who are tapped to follow a passion. Their product often comes out of like a real need, and an honest place. They are proof positive of the adage, “I had a problem, and I solved it for me. And then I realized other people had this problem and I started solving it for them.” In those stories, it almost always sounds like entrepreneurship and the company is pulled out of the person. They didn’t mean for the company to happen, but now that the ball has started rolling, they’re continuing on this path. 

Not only do I tend to have much more respect for the people who start out of passion, but I tend to think they succeed more than most because no matter how smart you are or how big the opportunity, entrepreneurship is hard, lonely, and really treacherous. And in those moments of darkness, your heart and your passion can carry you through if you really believe in both what you’re selling, and yourself. 

I let entrepreneurship choose me when I started The Hub as a means of solving a pain point I both witnessed and experienced in the early years of my career. I've worked at an ad agency and watched content being made for large companies in the most inefficient and expensive and thoughtless ways. At the same time, I got to know thousands of young, incredibly talented photographers who lack the connections to turn their passion into a lifeline. It was in this contrast — that the big brands are doing it so wrong and these little photographers have so much talent — that I tasked myself with helping them find each other.

There’s also a deep passion for what I do in that I respect photography immensely. It was the first thing I really felt connected to as a young person. I remember the first real photograph I took, when I was on vacation with my family as a 17-year-old. My grandmother had let me borrow her camera, and I captured a moment in which two pelicans were mid-dive, their beaks  just resting on the water. The way people responded to that photograph gave me such a thrill, which propelled the next several years of my life. I studied photography at Princeton, apprenticed for a photographer in New York, and even worked as a photographer for a newspaper in Hong Kong. 

I really thought I was going to be a photographer for a moment, but I slowly began realizing that I’m more of a creative person than an artist. Maybe deep down, photography is still the path not taken for me, which is why I am so driven to help these young photographers succeed. I see some of myself in a lot of the talent that we work with. Not only do I want to help them pay their bills, but I want to help them grow. If I can be the person to foster the connections and relationships that facilitate not only their careers, but their dreams, why wouldn’t I take that leap?

At the core of my entrepreneurship is efficiency of connectivity. Right now it's connecting photographers to brands in a way that is more efficient than the ways in which they're currently able to find each other. But I've always been really interested in bringing together a really interesting group of people and creating something really beautiful as a team, whether that’s a dinner party or a company. Hopefully that something is even greater than the sum of its parts, because it is correctly orchestrated. 

Yet even with the support of a team and other creatives who are in this work with me, entrepreneurship has been the only thing that needs as much I can give as much all the time. When it works properly, it's like I'm powering something that is powering me, and it is incredibly self-sustaining work. I've never found anything else, professionally or otherwise, that can tolerate my level of energy. Most things, whether it's a boss or a girlfriend or a friend, they need me in small doses. The only thing that hasn't needed me that way is my company, because it needs all of me all the time. 

The reward of seeing something I’ve done out in the world fuels my enthusiasm and excitement to then pull more out of myself. The entire process has leveled me up and made me a better version of myself than anything else ever has. I’m being challenged daily and weekly with the highest highs and the lowest lows, but I’ve been able to soldier on because entrepreneurship chose me.

If entrepreneurship chooses you, chances are you will have no problem committing yourself to the work fully. The hours are long, and the first few years will challenge you in ways you can’t even begin to imagine. Yes, you will have to look at the numbers and data, but let your heart lead you and point you in the direction of your path. Solve a need for yourself and let that inform your next step. Things won’t magically fall into place, but you will find that the path is much more bearable as you go along.