Guest Speaker: Erik Hanberg

    Last week we had the pleasure of having a guest speaker Erik Hanberg come visit the class. Erik Hanberg is a local author and entrepreneur who has done many projects in his life. Among his accomplishments are working as the Director of the Grand Cinema at a young age, which inspired him to start the Horatio, a live theatre company. After that, he started self-publishing books, and works with his wife at Sidexside, a marketing consulting firm, as well as running and being elected to be on the parks board of Tacoma.
    He offered some advice to the class, in the form of the ideas, be a starter, and practice shipping. By be a starter, he meant in order to be successful, you must go for it. If you have a good idea, do it. By practice shipping, he meant practice finishing something. He said the best way to practice for the ups and downs of starting a business is to do something on your own, start to finish. Whether it is writing a book or learning something new or whatever, getting through the rough times gives you the experience and the motivation to get through the rough times starting a business.
    An interesting tidbit he shared with us was that there are two basic kinds of income. There is income that you get for doing labor, such as a job or a career, and there is income you get from making things, like writing a book. In the example of writing a book, there is a certain amount of time you have to work on it, but once you are finished, any sales of the book makes your time more and more valuable, as you are spending no more time on it, yet you are gaining rewards. Conversely, there is the labor income, which is simply paying you for your time. He made the point that even the highest paid lawyers are still essentially being paid for their time, whereas famous authors simply reap the rewards of their previous work.
    Having Erik speak to the class was an informative and interesting experience, in which I personally learned a lot about his perspective as an entrepreneur.