20 - Matt and Toni talk with Cole Rickles about the value of grit.

The Urban Engine Podcast

Highlights

(01:32) Grit is not choosing the easier path because long-term you're actually going to be more satisfied with the decision that you made.

(08:05) Cole explains the impact of having entrepreneur parents are entrepreneurs (see the academic paper listed below with data on this subject; children are 1.3-3X more likely to be entrepreneurs when their parents are)

(08:30) Cole describes his first business in middle school (pressure washing). He printed out 250 flyers and received zero calls.

(13:59) Cole tells the story of his 1st Amazon business he started about 3 years ago with the idea of selling gun grips. The day after getting the delivery, Amazon stops allowing sales in that product category. Instead, he had to pivot to selling on EBay (more manual labor than Amazon, but was able to clear the inventory). Now have an actual successful business selling other products on Amazon today.

(17:59) “You gotta be closed-minded on the end goal, but you can’t be closed-minded on how you’re going to get there”

Summary

Cole Rickles sits down to tell quite a few interesting stories of the various startups he has been involved in going all the way back to middle school. Most attempts fail, but the successes only occur because of the presence of grit. Good things never come easily, so persevering while being open-minded on how you are going to get to your clearly-defined end goal is essential to success with any entrepreneurial undertaking. The idea of grit has been popularized in the last few years (especially by Angela Duckworth’s book on grit listed below released in 2016), but the idea of how one can instill grit in another person is still up for debate on how that is done. One significant advantage Cole (and many other entrepreneurs in the Huntsville community) has is entrepreneur parents who provided first-hand real-world lessons in the value and results of grit.

Links

• (SpaceX failures video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ

• (TED talk on grit) https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance?language=en
• (Grit from a psychology perspective)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/media-spotlight/201606/the-truth-about-grit

• (How Parents Are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood: Today’s “snowplow parents” keep their children’s futures obstacle-free — even when it means crossing ethical and legal boundaries.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/style/snowplow-parenting-scandal.html

• (Podcast: How I Built This)

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this

• (Academic paper: Why Do Entrepreneurial Parents Have Entrepreneurial Children?)

http://ftp.iza.org/dp6740.pdf

Books

• The Little Engine That Could

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Engine-Could-Original-Classic/dp/0448405202

• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

https://www.amazon.com/Grit-Passion-Perseverance-Angela-Duckworth/dp/1501111116