Very Short Interview No. 1

I interviewed David Haslam, the owner of Campus Scooters in Gainesville, Fla. He has been an entrepreneur for over a decade and has owned another business beforehand, a tow-truck business.. Below is transcribed interview.

Kristine: What does it mean to be an entrepreneur, to you?

David: What does it mean to be? There’s so many different ways and opinions of what it means to be an entrepreneur. For me, I – the tow truck thing was never what I was passionate about, I just knew it was a profitable business. The end result needs to be profit or you’ll go out of business. So I knew we could make money doing that so that’s where I started out. I immediately did not like anything about it. My whole life and working career have been involved in the automotive industry in some way or fashion. And I really like the automotive industry. So I want to get myself a job where I can make more than just the normal mechanic position here in Gainesville, frankly. I like being a mechanic. I like what I do a whole lot, but as an entrepreneur I am able to raise the bar of what I can provide for my family. So instead of being the lower income spectrum that a mechanic makes, I’m able to make a much more comfortable middle class income. That’s what it boils down to. So that’s what it is for me; it’s the fact that I can do what I want and make the money I enjoy. With the skill set I have, I’m never going to make doctor pay or actor pay with the skills that I have. So I used the skills that I had to improve upon my situation. I own my business that way.

Kristine: What do you think I should learn in an entrepreneurship course?

David: What to learn? I have taken several different business and entrepreneur classes myself. And some of them I don’t agree with what they said and some I agreed with everything they said. Some of them are very specific. If you’re going to be an entrepreneur, you need to be happy about what you are doing. Now, there are certain entrepreneurs that their whole goal is to launch a business, sell that business and making money selling that business. If you can have fun doing that and appreciate your situation, then that would be great. You need to know the joy, the concept of owning a business. You need to be able to enjoy entrepreneurship. Enjoy it more than you would than just a regular job though. I’ll enjoy being a mechanic regardless, but I enjoy it more with my own shop.  Because “A”, its exactly what I want, “B”, like I said, the financial gains of owning your own business can be there, they don’t have to be. You can run yourself right into the ground. I have friends that are business owners. And there’s a couple small, small entrepreneurs out there. That’s something you maybe should learn from an entrepreneur course. What it seems like is that with a lot of the small guys, either they have all the money in their pocket or the business has all the money. You got to be careful with that. So that’s one thing you should hopefully learn from an entrepreneur class, is the proper cash flow. Don’t think your business is your piggy bank, it’s not. There’s often times it has much more times than you personally. Doesn’t mean I should or can just go there and take money out though. If there’s $100,000, it doesn’t mean it’s yours.

Kristine: What do you wish you had been taught in school before setting out on your own path as an entrepreneur?

David: For me personally, probably the financial side as far as- there’s so many- there’s no one stop shop on how to learn to do taxes for your business; there’s no one stop shop on payroll roll and sales tax, all this sort of stuff. When you learn it in school, it doesn’t specifically fit your business necessarily. So for me, the financial side – when I say the financial side, not how to control the money, but taxes, the payroll. I would have understood better sooner, I would have been better off. I ended up paying some companies to help with that. Some of it was a waste, some of them told me what I needed, some of it was just badness altogether. So, the financial side, control of the financial side would have been much more important for me.

Reflection: I found the interview to be very interesting. Haslam's concept of entrepreneur was simple, yet intriguing. As a child, we dream to be the best in what we love to do. In college, it is not always about what we love, but what we are good at. Entrepreneurs get to say that they make decent to amazing salaries, and they get to say that they love what they do (most do).  I am aspriring to be an entrepreneur like Haslam and do what I love for a living.