According to Inc.com, Gerard Adams was the second most influential millennial entrepreneur to watch in 2017, only behind Mark Zuckerberg. Adams has started and invested in a number of businesses, many of which have become huge successes. He spent
one semester at Caldwell University before dropping out and going off on his own. His father worked at Prudential Financial which grew Adams’ interest in the stock market. He started several companies in the financial industry. One of these was called StockSpot, which he says grew to a revenue of $10 million before the 2008 stock market crash. In recent years, Adams has invested in or started nine companies, all of which have made over a million dollars.
The business Adams is most well known for is Elite Daily, a news platform for millennials. The site reached over 80 million monthly visitors. In 2015, Adams and his two co-founders sold the company to Daily Mail for $50 million.
Adams calls himself The Millionaire Mentor. His goal is to inspire millennials in their passions. He does this through a few avenues. The first is his website (GerardAdams.com). On this he has blogs, videos, and other information to help entrepreneurs. He also has a business called Fownders, which has classes, articles, and other things that encourage social entrepreneurs.
Gerard Adams is very passionate about helping entrepreneurs, especially millennial ones, in pursuing their passions. It is great to see a successful person using their gifts to help other people who are starting out just like he did at one point.
Archive for Building – Page 2
Troy Kumprey created a Ladder Lockdown saddle after one of his employees fell from a ladder while working. Kumprey saw the dangers that normal ladders have so he wanted to create something that would make ladders safer and guarantee his employees would return to their families each night. So Kumprey created a versatile setup that accommodates extension ladders up to seven meters and most A-frames up to 1.8 meters. Ladder Lockdown is adaptable to hard soft surfaces, from concrete to wood to snow. Ladder Lockdown reduces lateral movement. Kumprey saw a problem and need that should be filled, he took a problem and created a solution. Kumprey also found a niche market for his product; construction, homeowners, and firefighters can relate to ladder safety. Ladder Lockdown saves lives and forever changed how ladders are used. Kumprey turned a dangerous tool into a safer for everyone to use. Here is a link to Ladder Lockdown website to learn more about the product, mission, and Troy Kumprey’s story:
It seems as if entrepreneurs keep getting younger and younger. A 13 year old boy, named Hart Main created what would become the Beaver Creek Candle Company. The company started off producing and selling ManCans, a new kind of candle. ManCans are candles that have many manly scents such as bacon, campfire, coffee, fresh cut grass, and plenty more. The idea came about when Hart was teasing his little sister about the girly scented candles she used to sell for a fundraiser. With a bit of financial help from his parents they created the product, ManCans. ManCans is in approximately 150 different stores nationwide, and is very successful. From ManCans he has created other products for the company as well, including SheCans and specialty scented candles that smell and look like apple pie, cherry pie, and more.
Hart Main originally launched his business because he wanted to earn $1,200 for a bike to compete in triathlons. Hart has now surpassed his goal by a great amount. His business has given 100,000 cans of soup and $35,000 to 25 soup kitchens in four states. What is very interesting about this company is that all products are hand handcrafted, and each candle is carefully prepared, packaged and shi
pped by people in their workshop. They guarantee a high quality, long burning candle that pools evenly and delivers fragrance from the first light to last. This company has been surprisingly successful and they only plan to keep growing.
This young man, and his company are very inspiring to young people and he shows that entrepreneurship has no age. This young man started his company at 13 by simply noticing that candles are very femininely scented. Hart then created his product in pursuit of a goal, buying himself a bike. All entrepreneurial ideas start with a problem and I believe this demonstrates that concept perfectly. He noticed there were no manly scented candles, and wanted to do something about it. From that, the Beaver Creek Candle Company was born. As a person this shows that Hart is very goal driven, determined and innovative. Hart Main is also genuinely a great person and this is shown by his efforts to help soup kitchens by giving them soup and a portion of all of his sales. He is a great guy with great intentions and I hope this is an insight to others of what makes great entrepreneurs.
“Close your eyes and picture an engineer,” opens Debbie Sterling in her Ted Talk in 2013. She continues by asking the crowd to raise their hands for how they pictured an engineer while their eyes were closed. Hands rose for images of train drivers and nerdy men at computers, but when she asked the crowd if anyone pictured someone who looked like her- they were silent.
Debbi
e Sterling was born to a Jewish family in 1983 with no intention of becoming an entrepreneur. Her path didn’t intertwine with entrepreneurship until after she had received her B.S. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 2005. “Years later,” she says, “I did some research, and I learned that I was actually at a disadvantage. Like a lot of other girls, I had underdeveloped spatial skills. The other interesting thing I learned was that kids who scored better on spatial skills tests, grew up playing with construction toys.”
Sterling took this new knowledge, her engineering degree, and pursued a solution to the problem of the lack of females in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (also referred to as STEM). She quit her job and spent months working out of her apartment on a construction toy for targeted to girls but was faced with resistance from investors. “They whispered to me a well-known industry secret: construction toys for girls don’t sell, and they took me by the arm and showed me what does sell- the pink isle.”
So how does someone overcome the culture that has previously been established for the past century? Sterling knew that things didn’t have to be the way they always were but saw 
that girls get easily bored when playing with construction toys. When she asked what they do enjoy, the young girls responded that they love to read. It was this discovery that led her to create GoldieBlocks, the world’s first female engineering character that is teaching young girls around the world that they can be more than a princess.
GoldieBlocks combines the narrative that little girls love with construction and building toys. Girls can build with Goldie and as a result develop both their verbal and spatial skills. Sterling did what nobody else thought to- she took a toy that had been historically targeted for boys and re-imagined it for girls. Her idea is revolutionary because it’s not just taking an idea and targeting a new market, she is equipping young girls with the tools they need to develop their spatial skills in an enjoyable way. She didn’t just accept that little girls aren’t interested in those type of toys, she bridged the gap between girls and engineering. Despite the resistance she faced, her company has since flourished. According to Forbes’s 40 Under 40: “[GoldieBlox] has had more than 1 million app downloads and more than 1 million toys sold across more than 6,000 major retailers worldwide.”
As a female studying and pursuing both engineering and entrepreneurship, what Sterling did is what I strive to be able to do one day. She broke the status quo by becoming an engineer as a female, and she broke it again when she took a “boy’s toy” and redesigned it for girls. She is using her engineering skill set to help other girls discover a love for building and creating.
Debbie Sterling is more than an engineer and an entrepreneur; she’s a world changer, and although her business was originally meant to inspire little girls, it’s inspired me to use my passion for STEM to make a difference for girls like me.