(singing
“La Bamba”) “Para bailar la bamba…Yo
no soy marinero, soy capitan. Soy capitan….Ba-ba-ba-bamba”.
No, this isn’t a Richie Valens’ impersonator
concert or Karaoke night in Lodo. It was the start of the
monthly “Start-Up Junkie Underground” meeting
held by the DaVinci Institute at the Rattlebrain Theater
in the basement of the D&F Tower in Denver.
The
Start-Up Junkie Underground is a monthly networking meeting
for local entrepreneurs, inventors, and business folk with
too many ideas in their head. The Underground’s purpose
is to help these people succeed by providing an environment
to share their ideas, to pick up useful business tips, and
to give root to those new business concepts.
This
months’ guest speaker was Steve Masias, an IBM-er
for 25 years, who no longer wanted to be a “marinero”
(a sailor) on the ship of life; he wished to be his own
“capitan”! Next month, Steve will be opening
Colorado Bean, a burrito restaurant, in Colorado Springs,
and will start sailing along on a new adventure.
Steve’s
motivational speech to the attendees provided many insights
into starting your own business as well as some of the pitfalls.
While this new restaurant isn’t Steve’s first
foray into the industry - he has owned two other restaurants
with partners while working at IBM - it has taken him some
time to overcome an entrepreneur’s greatest challenge:
Fear! He finally realized the biggest fear is to just “sit
there with your idea and do nothing.”
After
a 45 minute, interactive presentation, all of the attendees
came away with some useful nuggets of wisdom from Steve’s
experiences:
1)
“Never use your own money. As an entrepreneur you
need to get other people to believe in you. You need to
convince them that they want to invest in you!”
2)
“The biggest challenge in starting a new venture,
which is also the biggest cost, is managing and motivating
employees.”
3)
“Make sure you are passionate about your business
or product. You don’t want to spend your time and
money to one day realize that you don’t like what
you’re doing.”
Along
with a featured speaker and networking time, the Start-Up
Junkie Underground allows any attendee to give a “30
second” elevator pitch to the audience and ends the
evening by presenting the “Sigmund Freud Action Figure
Award” to the entrepreneur who is brave enough to
share their most pathetic business failure. This month’s
winner… a businessman who owed the IRS nearly $100,000
because he invested in an already bankrupt photo studio
business… ouch!
For
more information about the Start-Up Junkie Underground and
the DaVinci Institute, contact Tom Frey at 303.666.4133
or visit their web site at www.davinciinstitute.com.
