Transcript of video:
My entrepreneurial journey was really impacted by three stories in my life that I heard as a child. The first one was from my best friend in the whole wide world, Colin Davidson. His dad was starting a trucking company. His grandfather had a trucking company, but his dad wanted to branch off on his own. The week before he was getting his flatbed with boom truck, I just really distinctly remember him saying it's the longest week of his life. Just that anticipation of looking forward to something, it must've resonated with me.
The other story is another friend of the family, but he was starting a quarry. His father also had a business in the town where we grew up, but ... I think seeing those two influential people I could relate to starting a business really impacted my decision making to become an entrepreneur, and just really what was possible as a career.
The third story that I just absolutely love was when my parents were working at the Spectator, a newspaper in Hamilton, Ontario. One of their coworkers was told to go on the night shift, and he just said no. Didn't want to. They said, "What do you mean? You have to, otherwise we'll fire you." He goes, "Okay. Fire me. I don't care. I don't do the job for the money, I do it because I like it." They fired him.
A week later he was back working days. Turns out he was a silent partner in a barbell company, so he had that freedom to not have to do anything he didn't want. He only showed up to work because he loved it.
I think those three stories are really what made me an entrepreneur. I joke around about how I got started selling pencil sharpening when I was seven years old to my mom's coworkers, but the truth is, I really did make my first cold call when I was 13 years old. I was trying to get funding for my fighting robot battle bots, if you remember that show.
Actually, the guy who owns the quarry, one of my family friends, he was willing to put a few grand into it. I cold called Molson, the biggest brewery in Canada, now part of Molson Coors. I said, "Hey, can I have some money for my fighting robot?" They said, "Unfortunately, you're not legal drinking age, so we can't do it, but we love it."
I just thought I would share those stories that I'm getting a little bit nostalgic about, talking. We're all in this together. Thanks so much for reading. John, hopefully you can get this transcribed. But, yeah, thanks for letting me contribute.
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Lucas Walker is a serial entrepreneur with a focus on revenue growth. Currently leads Marketing and Partnerships at Gorgias. He is also the Town Crier of DTC Twitter.
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