Thoughts on Guest Speaker Erik Hanberg

We had the pleasure of having Erik Hanberg come to speak to our class on Thursday morning.  His time spent with us explaining his progression away from the daily grind of working full time for someone else, and turning that into a money making machine for him and his wife was quite intriguing.  I found it interesting how he made steps with his book publishing to test the waters of entrepreneurship, the success and failures of small business ventures, and the lessons that he learned along the way.  Some of the things that I took away from his lecture was that you have to take risks, small ones.  Learn how to make 50 bucks, if you can do that, how do you make $100?  Try that first.  Simple as it may sound, it really isnt as easy as you might think.  I personally have tried my hand at numerous ventures in the past 20 years, but as Erik states, its all about making small calculated risks.  I liked how he said that you have to market yourself well, network and then do it again 10 fold.  I especially appreciated his take on how to evolve as a business person and know when the market is saturated with too many people trying to do the same thing you are.  He was insightful in the way that he clearly kept a log of his families earnings in a graph to illustrate how they took "dips" in their income at certain life events, and how they could depict the growths as well by changes they made in their strategies.  Knowing your strengths, and outsourcing the rest (even for barter) was also a great piece of advice.  Erik was a excellent guest speaker and I look forward to more great tips from the others further in the quarter.