Entrepreneurs who become successful at an earlier age can have a bigger impact on the economy, one expert told DX Journal.
But entrepreneurship also presents unique challenges for young people, who don’t have as much experience to draw from.
It’s why that expert, award-winning business advisor and global entrepreneur Craig Elias is passionate about mentoring students.
“The first time I became an entrepreneur, it was super hard, but I was super lucky that I had some amazing [work] experiences,” Elias said.
“But if you’re young, or a new Canadian, or if you’re a student, you don’t have that 15, 20 years of experience you can then throw at something, and be as lucky as I was.”
A top sales performer at every company he worked for, Elias’s first startup won the $1,000,000 prize in a global billion-dollar pitch competition, and was later twice named by Dow Jones as one of the 50 most promising companies in North America.
LinkedIn named him as one of its top 50 B2B sales experts in 2019, Forbes magazine named him one of the most social sales people on the planet, and he was named one of the “Calgarians We Love” by Avenue Magazine in 2021.
Today, Elias is the entrepreneur-in-residence at Bow Valley College in Calgary, where he conducted a 2019 study with student research assistant Issha Shah that suggested a first-time 23-year-old entrepreneur can have quite an impact: they’re likely to generate an almost $24 million increase in GDP and add nearly $14.5 million to local economies.
“It’s a bit like investing early, right?” Elias said.
However, Elias and Shah’s research also suggested that first-time entrepreneurs between the ages of 23 and 25 are also in need of the most support — and after experiencing a lot of success, Elias is paying it forward.
Through his role at the college, he taps into his years of experience and serves as a mentor to students hoping to become first-time entrepreneurs.
“I will tell you what I would do if I [were] you,” Elias said. “I’m really focused on giving people honest, candid, authentic feedback.”
In a conversation with DX Journal, he offered insight into traits of successful entrepreneurs, some of what he offers young people in mentoring sessions, and how mentorship is changing.
Useful traits in entrepreneurship
A useful thing for young entrepreneurs to understand, according to Elias, is that entrepreneurship can’t be taught.
“It’s learned,” he said. “[So] the question is, how do you help somebody learn?”
Curious people who are lifelong learners, coachable, and like to read tend to have advantages, he added.
A lack of prudence is also an asset — those who are willing to break the rules and do things differently are often rewarded in entrepreneurship.
And finally, you’re only as good as your network.
“The data says the number one predictor of success for an entrepreneur is how big is your network,” Elias said.
“[And] if you suck at networking, you simply just find a way to get better.”
The goals of a mentoring session
When it comes to a mentoring session, Elias says his first priority is finding out what the mentee wants to take away from it.
His second priority is finding a way to be helpful — and not necessarily nice — with that honest, candid, and authentic feedback of his.
Often, his goals include helping a mentee think about things they haven’t considered, and an example is helping them understand the difference between competitors and competition.
While competitors do very similar, or the same, things that an entrepreneur does, Elias says the competition is “all the different ways the same problem gets solved.”
“I say, ‘Okay, well if you want a jewelry store and I own a jewelry store, what do we compete against?’” Elias said.
“People say, ‘We compete against each other.’ And I’m like, no – you compete against all the other ways that someone could say to someone they love, ‘I love you’ or ‘I’m sorry for being an idiot.’”
It means that in actuality, a jewelry store owner is also competing against flowers, chocolate, perfume, cars, purses, shoes, pets, and trips, Elias says.
“So, helping them understand,” he said.
“They go, ‘Oh, no one does the exact same thing I do. We have no competition.’ You always have competition.”
Mentorship can also help foster diversity among entrepreneurs, Elias says, and one of his goals is to help facilitate that.
“How do we get more people that are not like me — stale, male, and pale — to [get] into the ecosystem?” Elias said.
It led him to establish a program that pairs successful people with mentees who share life experiences.
“It’s all about helping people understand that they belong.”
How mentoring has changed in the last five years
The pandemic changed the way we work, and Elias says it changed mentorship, too: young entrepreneurs no longer have to travel to sit down with someone they are hoping to learn from.
“Everybody’s so used to doing things virtually,” Elias said. “You don’t have to be in the same geography as the person you want to get some time with.”
Students have a unique advantage because people immediately understand why they’re asking for help, Elias said.
LinkedIn is also a place for easy introductions that he says is frequently used by senior executives.
And speaking of those executives, a lot of them have become more approachable, Elias says.
“I think because they got some help, they’re much more willing to give it back. Karma, you know,” he said.
“And for some people, the way they make a difference is by mentoring.”
