 By Nick Glavan In my early days as an intern at UARF, one of the mentors who regularly checked in with me before or after he visited the office’s conference room for his startup’s meetings, once handed me a page containing the follow story [The Fisherman’s Parable]: A successful businessman on vacation was at the pier of a small coastal village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tunas. The businessman complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The fisherman proudly replied, “Every morning, I go out in my boat for 30 minutes to fish. I’m the best fisherman in the village.” The businessman, perplexed, then asks the fisherman “If you’re the best, why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish? What do you do the rest of the day?” The fisherman replied “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, spend quality time with my wife, and every evening we stroll into the village to drink wine and play guitar with our friends. I have a full and happy life.”
The businessman scoffed, “I am successful CEO and have a talent for spotting business opportunities. I can help you be more successful. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats with many fishermen. Instead of selling your catch to just your friends, you can scale to sell fish to thousands. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to the big city, where you can oversee your growing empire.” The fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?” To which the businessman replied, “15 – 20 years.” “But what then?” Asked the fisherman. The businessman laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions!” “Millions – then what?” The Businessman said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, spend time with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends. There are several ways to interpret the parable, but what has always stuck with me is that no matter what job I am working at, there has got to be some amount of enjoyment in the tasks I am doing. Happy to report, I enjoy tons of things in my current role as Program Coordinator. Now, I don’t want to vilify the businessman in the story. In fact, there are definitely a lot of similarities between him and me. Perhaps, we both really like helping talented people expand their ability to serve more customers. Where we differ, at least as of right now, is that I’m not racing towards a retirement where I can do the things that make me happy. I’m doing things that make me happy right now! I love that I am always thinking about a customer’s perspective in nearly every activity I do daily. I love getting to coach motivated researchers and artisans and inventors on how they can acquire more resources and do “more” of the things they love spending their time doing. I love sharing in the entrepreneurial community, whether that be advising founders through challenging times or celebrating their successes. Getting to work with entrepreneurs on their new ideas and passion projects has helped me learn a lot about what I like to work on and who I like work with. A lot of entrepreneurs contemplate dropping the busy work of their day job to pursue more fully their passion project startup business. That can be nerve-racking. How do they know whether their business idea will be worth the risk? And will they even be happier working full time on all the activities involved in running a small business? My best advice is to put in the investigative work about your side hustle before making the jump. Once you’ve determined that the idea can be a real winner, then you can confidently make the switch. This idea has been the guiding principle in developing our programs (Starting Line, I-Corps Sites, and STRIDE) at UARF. Starting Line helps early stage, first-time entrepreneurs get their wet through a completely online, at-your-own-pace training course. In I-Corps Sites, a cohort full of innovators explore if their ideas will meet a customer’s demand. In STRIDE, we do some deep dives on business skills any startup founder needs but hasn’t had the chance to learn on their own yet. By participating in these programs, all of which can be done on a “part time” schedule, you’ll get a sense of whether your business idea has the potential and get to try out what it feels like to work on entrepreneurial activities. They act as a great way to test out if running a startup is the way you can reach your “full and happy life.” What is your passion project? And what are you doing to decide if it is worth the jump? Applications for all three programs are open now for you to give a try!
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