Student Nick Abraham Shows It’s Never Too Soon To Become An Entrepreneur
In these uncertain times, many people are relying less on others for job security and taking matters into their own hands as the coronavirus outbreak disrupts our regular day to day programming. Take student Nick Abraham for example.
At one point in his life, he was conditioned to thinking the only way to make money is through a nine-to-five type of job. He was working 30 hours a week at a gas station near his house, for instance, stocking items in the cooler, helping out in the car wash, and working the register. Abraham was getting paid $10.50 per hour, which he thought at the time was a decent amount — then he scaled an Instagram page to 50,000 followers and started monetizing the account. What he made in a week he was making some days off of his phone with Instagram. So becoming an entrepreneur was obviously the next step for him.
Abraham said this was a surreal experience given that he was only accustomed to the traditional nine-to-five work grind, adding that "I never imagined that I would be able to create an income off of my phone." Today, he runs a marketing agency that helps businesses leverage social media to increase their sales, leads or exposure with the use of fully trained Virtual Assistants, including everything from growing their brands on Instagram, to nurturing leads on autopilot with virtual assistants.
Balancing school with a business
Balancing school with a business
Abraham admitted that handling school, a business, and social life is difficult but doable. "It just requires discipline," he said. "You have to live and breathe by your schedule."
One thing that helps Abraham maximize the most out of each and every day is time blocking. He writes his goals for the upcoming week on Sundays in a journal and creates time blocks to accomplish these goals in his phone calendar. "I also set daily reminders for things that I must do every day no matter what called my daily disciplines which include things like reading 20 pages of a business book, workout, and tracking my KPIs," he said.
When things get tough as they sometimes will
When things get tough as they sometimes will
Abraham is still a student and midterm and final weeks can be extremely tough if you don't prepare in advance. He makes it his mission to study a little bit every day consistently in order to avoid this problem. Many students wait till the week before finals to start memorizing and cramming before the test, but if you study every day and even if it's just a little bit, you're learning and not just memorizing. So when the test comes, you just have to review, not relearn everything.
Reinvest into your business
Reinvest into your business
The student entrepreneur has some years of experience under his belt in this field and would like to give others like him some advice to use to prevent them from making the same mistakes.
- Re-invest into your business. (Abraham said his first businesses he spent every dollar he made on pointless materialistic items when it could've been spent on growing and scaling my business.)
- Create a business, not a job. Have systems set up so your business can operate without you
- Outsource anything that isn't worth your time
- Never ever settle for short term money. Always think about how this can provide for me in the long term
- Build your credit early. Businesses that have access to large pools of money always win in the long term
- Always have a contract whenever you make a deal. You want to be protected at all times. You could lose everything you ever worked hard for
- You are only as strong as your team
Abraham is one of those who don't necessarily have to rely on others for job security, taking matters into his own hands amid COVID-19. Of his plans for the future, Abraham said owning a marketing agency is great, but it's only the start for his ambitions.
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