Lucas Ames: Do one thing and do it well
Are entrepreneurs born or raised? The answer, in this case, lies somewhere in … Washington DC. Which is where member Lucas Ames is part of an organization that teaches entrepreneurship to young people from low-income communities. Lucas also runs an online bookselling business and blogs on the subject regularly (and currently holds the #6 position in Biznik’s Top Member Sites). I interviewed him recently to find out what can prevent low-income individuals from successfully launching a business idea, and what he’s doing to change that.
Q: Tell me a bit about NFTE and what you do there.
Through entrepreneurship education, NFTE, which is also referred to as Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, helps young people from low-income communities build skills and unlock their entrepreneurial creativity. Since 1987, NFTE has reached over 120,000 young people, trained more than 3,700 Certified Entrepreneurship Teachers, and continually improved its innovative entrepreneurship curriculum.
I work in the Greater Washington Program office. My primary responsibility is to recruit new teachers into the program and work with the first year teachers. I recently began working more with our alumni, offering business mentoring, entrepreneurship workshops, scholarshop opportunities, and more.
Q: Are you an entrepreneur yourself?
I have been working in the online bookselling business for over ten years. Currently, we are editing the Bookselling Online Blog, running a wholesale distribution of academic books for resale, and continuing to sell new/used books on large websites, like Amazon. I really want to continue to support the independent online bookselling community and we are excited to launch a new venture at the end of this month to expand on our current offerings.
Q: What do you see as the biggest challenge in preventing low-income individuals from successfully launching a business idea?
It is all about awareness. Many students, quite frankly, are not aware that they are “allowed” to start a business. At one point a NFTE staff member polled a class as to what type of government they lived in – 80% said a communist government. Most believe(d) that they could not play an active role in the market economy and could only be acted upon by the socioeconomic system in place.
Giving students the awareness and ability to create a business is like flipping a switch, offering many students from low income communities their first taste of direct agency in their own lives. Once this switch is flipped, we have found that students from low-income communities are actually well-prepared to succeed as entrepreneurs. Many of their life experiences fit well into the experience of starting and building your own business.
Q: What one piece of advice would you give to someone just starting a business?
One piece of advise, that I wish I could take myself: Do one thing and do it well. Entrepreneurs never stop seeing opportunity, but this type serial entrepreneurship can be debilitating if you are doing many things just ok, but nothing excellent.
Q: How’d you hear about Biznik, and do you think this group can be useful to someone starting a business in Washington, DC?
I learned about Biznik from Lifehacker back in early March. Networking is extremely important to all entrepreneurs, but especially in Washington, DC. I think Biznik provides an immensely efficient way for entrepreneurs to build their network.