Ben Hebert, Serial Entrepreneur 

I’ve known Ben Hebert for a couple of years. I’ve always been impressed by his obvious passion for the projects he is working on. I see a lot of potential game-changers waste a lot of time by talking about making moves; but Ben always seems to do it. I asked him to weigh in with his experience as a young entrepreneur. Enjoy.

Follow me on Twitter: @ZackHuhn @SINevents

Submitted by Ben Hebert: 

There’s No Such Thing as Getting Lucky

As I write this essay, I’m on the verge of the biggest success of my life. We destroyed all of our estimates for our first month of sales. We signed a huge lifetime partnership with a major influencer in our space. Our first wholesaler sent our pricing sheet back to us because they wanted to order more than we listed. It’s a company that I co-founded only six months ago. I’m on a fucking high. 

There’s only one reason though that I’m here…

umd.edu

It was 2009 and I had just transferred to the University of Maryland. Sometime while I was caught up in the bullshit college bureaucracy of trying to select a major and re-taking English 101 that didn’t transfer over, I decided that I had had enough. I wasn’t getting any smarter or closer towards my goals. 

I know what you’re thinking… no I didn’t drop out. Very few of us can drop out of college and then go on to building multi-million or billion dollar businesses. It just so happens some of the people who did happen to be very polarizing figures. 

Instead of studying and partying, I put all of my effort into learning business. I engrossed myself into the blogs, forums and any books that I could get my hands on. I kept reading about people making millions doing everything from affiliate marketing to running poker blogs. I tried it all and failed time and time again. 

The Shift

giftcardrescue.com

Eventually I was accepted as an intern at GiftCardRescue.com, an e-commerce startup that’s based in Ellicott City. The work was tedious. It was a lot of annoying SEO tasks like article marketing, directories and second tier link building that will make your eyes bleed. It was a learning process though and I was hungry and eager for more. 

The internship eventually turned into a full-time offer. We talked about it at a Panera Bread and I took a day or two to decide. Unable to commute to Ellicott City from College Park, I had a major decision on my hands. I had planned on getting accepted into the Smith School of Business and graduating with a pretty degree from UMD. A degree from Smith basically means you’re set for It was a gut check. Opportunity versus security.

I took the job and that same week ended up transferring to the University of Baltimore. For two years I worked non-stop, before heading to class at night and then doing at all again the next day. We worked weekends, we took pay cuts and even had a brief run in with the Secret Service. Sometimes it was hell. I wanted to give up and return to a normal life. My friends were out doing things 21-year-old’s do. I was working. 

But the experience changed me forever. We took a company that was NOTHING and did 250k year one, two million year two and six million year three. GiftCardRescue.com is now and INC 500 company. I stopped by the office a few weeks ago and that same culture that I helped create still exists. Building businesses is a beautiful thing. 

I took off at the end of 2011. WhiteRaverRafting.com was just picking up and I spent the next year traveing to music festivals and making up for some of the living that I thought I missed out on. But I hadn’t missed anything. Business, building, creating, solving problems and bringing things to market is my life. There’s nothing else that I’d rather be doing. 

The position that I’m in now is a testament to that hard work, those endless hours staring at screens and waiting for things to happen. 

The easy thing to do is to see someone else’s success and blow it off. To think that they got lucky in some way, shape or form. 

But the truth is, there is no such thing as luck. Your ability to capitalize on an opportunity when it appears in front of you is the culmination of all of your previous experience. Business is just like an athletic competition, your experience is muscle memory. 

So everyday you should be training. Reading, learning, testing, selling, hustling. Get off your ass, put down the controller and make it happen. 

Or else you’re going to be just another guy, thinking that people just get lucky. 

Today… 

I’m the co-founder of NaturalStacks.com. We’re changing the world with CILTEP, a natural smart drug for motivation, focus and memory. It’s an excellent alternative to the stimulants commonly prescribed for ADHD treatment. I know you’re skeptical (and who wouldn’t be), but I promise you’ll be satisfied… actually scratch that. You’re going to be amazed. We back every sale with a 110% money back guarantee. 

If you decide to purchase or would like to connect, I can be found on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Sometimes I blog here. -Ben Hebert

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