In 2004, the average age of a CEO was 55 years old, according to Spencer Stuart, an international consulting firm.
Yet four young entrepreneurs at the CEO Panel and Resume Review at vitaminwater® uncapped LIVE today revealed that anyone—especially young adults—can start their own business.
“It’s a lot easier when you’re 22,” Crooked Monkey CEO Micha Weinblatt said. “You don’t have a family so you should be putting as much into [your venture] as possible.”
Weinblatt started Crooked Monkey, a t-shirt line that specializes in funny as well as graphic t-shirts for college students, while at the University of Maryland a few years ago. Other speakers on the panel included Jon Dugan, the founder of Goozex.com, which is now the No. 1 video game trading company in America, Nicolas Jammet, CEO of Sweetgreen Restaurant group, a sustainable salad and frozen yogurt chain, and Svetlana Legetic, who created BrightestYoungThings, a webzine dedicated to the cultural coverage of DC that is now the biggest independently-owned website in the metro area.
Dugan warned of the need to balance relationships and work when starting a new business. “If you’re miserable, you’re not going to be very productive,” he said.
Jammet highlighted passion and hard work as the keys to a successful endeavor. “Passion is so much greater than experience,” he said. “You have to work your asses off, you have to go for it.”
Legetic agreed, saying, “I’d never really hustled before BYT. The hardest part is really standing up for yourself.”
The four also discussed ways for students to market themselves through resumes and cover letters such as catering to specific positions, listing interesting hobbies, taking risks and keeping all documents short and succinct.
“Business in itself is a joke,” Dugan said. “It’s whether or not you’re confident in what you’re selling, including yourself.”
