Hello everyone! For some reason, I'm having some technical difficulties today and YouTube is not wanting to cooperate with me, so I'm going to have to postpone the video upload and translate the interview into text instead. So the other day, I met up with Richard from Best Jewelry & Loan Pawn Broker. Richard has been in the Pawn Broker business for nearly 31 years and has managed himself for almost that entire time period. I asked Richard a few questions and here were his answers.
1) What do you wish you had been taught in school before going out on your own and becoming an entrepreneur?
Richard replied that he wishes that he had been told to do what makes him happy as opposed to what somebody else may want him to pursue. His first year as a student at UF in 1980, he was an engineering major, because that's what everyone wanted him to be. He said that he felt he wasted his entire first year, because it's not what he wanted to do. He switched and later became a business major, but he was disappointed that he wasted an entire year of his college experience on something he did not enjoy doing.
2) What have been your biggest struggles as an entrepreneur?
Richard replied that his biggest struggles were regulations and finances. Richard elaborated on one of his experiences with the law where he stood up for his beliefs on business-related action, and was arrested. Richard also explained how his bank account was once seized for not filing a certain tax form. Richard said that the most important thing to remember as an entrepreneur is to keep up with your forms because as a small business owner, you have many more responsibilities than the average person would.
3) What advice do you have for someone who is interested in becoming an entrepreneur?
Richard replied that his biggest piece of advice is to be self-funded and never borrow money. He says that you should go out and work for experience and money FIRST before trying to start your own business, because borrowing money is the quickest way for your business to shut down. If you're going off of your own capital, nobody can shut down your business due to unpaid payments. He also said that the less employees, the better when you're first starting out. Richard said that this is because of wages, and workers taxes, and other factors that make your experience less pleasurable than it should be.
I learned a lot from Richard's answers, and I look forward to interviewing him again soon. I learned that entrepreneurship has a lot of struggles, but if you handle them right, you can overcome them.
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