The Reality of Entrepreneurship

Born on September 9, 1984 and raised in the impoverished south side of Chicago in a single parent family. He began his entrepreneurial, personal and civic development at six years of age selling home-made body lotion and his own hand-painted rocks door-to-door. At age seven, he was carrying business cards that read "the 21st Century CEO." At age eight, he became co-founder of Urban Neighborhood Enterprise Economic Club (U.N.E.E.C.) on Chicago's South Side. At age 13, he started a fast foods business which he sold a year after for $1.5 million dollars. By the age of fourteen he was already a self-made millionaire. Today he is the youngest person to have an office on Wall Street. His name Dr. Farrah Gray a remarkable young man with an entrepreneurial mindset. His story, truly, represents a true picture of the reality of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship among many things gives you the opportunity to stretch your potentials, explore opportunities in your environment, provide solutions to the problems of the society and explore a wide range of avenues to better your lot.

Dr. Gray is truly a representation of the reality of entrepreneurship. He was able to transit through the three realms of the path to economic emancipation; Passion to Product to Profit. Identifying needs or opportunities and providing products or services to meet the identified needs is what entrepreneurship is all about. Meeting needs! Every society has needs and it takes only people with entrepreneurial eyes (mindsets) to be able to identify those needs and fill the gaps.

Like Gray, every one of us is born with that spirit of enterprise. However, the problem lies in our unwillingness to exercise and stretch our minds to think and provide solutions to the problems in our immediate environment.

Entrepreneurship is and will always remain the only solution to the problems of unemployment and poverty in most nations. We each have a responsibility to challenge ourselves to engage in entrepreneurial ventures. Nations have been and are still being transformed on this platform.

There is something in you that you can give out. There is a wealth of talent and skills in you that can meet a need. Gray made it from a slum, single parent home and as a vulnerable kid that needed all the support a child can get. He went on to become a real business owner and founder at age 6! Remarkable, you say! Well, I couldn’t agree any less.

Take that step today. Stretch your mind and experience the reality of entrepreneurship.

Cheers!