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Gen Z Entreprenuership
171 Plays7 years ago
This episode dives into entrepreneurship, innovation, and inspiring Generation Z's big ideas. Haley Hoffman Smith shares her experiences in engaging in entrepreneurship at a young age and how she works to empower and support entrepreneurs through her work as an author, speaker, and the Director of Community for the Next Gen Summit. We talk about finding passion, supporting one another, and aspiring towards our Big Ideas.
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Transcript
Introduction to Hashtag Gen Z and its Focus
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Ashtag Gen Z. I'm your host, Megan Grace.
00:00:18
Speaker
Hashtag Gen Z is a podcast about, as you guessed it, Generation Z, the generation of young people born between 1995 and 2010. It's about who they are, what they believe in, why they do what they do, and what makes them different than any other generation.
Gen Z's Entrepreneurial Aspirations
00:00:32
Speaker
In this episode, we're diving into a topic that has fascinated me for years, entrepreneurship. While at the University of Arizona, I was able to teach a course on social entrepreneurship and how leaders can create positive change through business.
00:00:45
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Since then, I've remained intrigued by the bold individuals who start their own businesses and chart their own course. But starting a business is not just reserved for those of older generations. Entrepreneurship has a broad appeal for those in Generation Z. In fact, the Northeastern Innovation Imperatives study found that 42% of members of Generation Z want to work for themselves. Another study by the marketing firm, Millennial Branding,
00:01:08
Speaker
found that 64% of members of Generation Z have aspirations of wanting to start their own business. With nearly half desiring to be their own boss and two thirds wanting to make a leap into starting their own business, entrepreneurship is on the brains of many Generation Z young people. But where is the surge of entrepreneurial spirit coming from? Well, for starters, they've seen millennials come before them, create businesses that have shaken up industries. They see people like Mark Zuckerberg create Facebook, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy create Snapchat, or Michelle Phan
00:01:38
Speaker
take her YouTube presence and turn it into a successful beauty brand, Ipsy. Entrepreneurship, while it has its risks, also has some very alluring benefits. Flexible hours, being your own boss, and setting your pace for your professional success. Until recently, training for entrepreneurs
00:01:55
Speaker
likely reserved for students enrolled in the business school, but for many in Generation Z they desire creating a business out of their passion, which they might pursue outside their academic studies, or they might not attend college at all but still aspire towards engaging in entrepreneurship. So how will Generation Z go about getting the training, information, resources, and support they need to start their own business?
Introducing Haley Hoffman-Smith and Her Mission
00:02:17
Speaker
My guest in this episode commits her life to doing just that. Haley Hoffman-Smith
00:02:21
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is the author of the book, Her Big Idea, which is about inspiring creativity, ideation, and women's empowerment. Her Big Idea debuted as a top three bestseller in women in business. He leads a recent Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University where she wrote her honors thesis on how women develop their sense of self-agency and entrepreneurship and venture capital. During her time at Brown,
00:02:41
Speaker
She's president of Women's Entrepreneurship and served the first ever Women's Entrepreneurship Incubator. She's also the co-founder of the Her Big Idea Fund, which is a partnership with Brown's Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship toward grants to women who apply with big ideas. Hailey's start in entrepreneurship began at age 18 when she founded an international nonprofit for girls literacy and empowerment.
00:03:02
Speaker
Since then, she's committed her personal and professional life to helping entrepreneurs grow. She currently serves as the Director of Community for NextGen Summit, a premier entrepreneurship community with over 2,500 members. He is not only an entrepreneur herself, but is a passion for supporting and empowering her peers as they aspire towards their entrepreneur goals. She's such great insight and I'm so excited to share her story.
00:03:29
Speaker
I'm so excited to welcome my guest today, Haley Hoffman-Smith. We were connected through friends of friends and we've kind of been joking as we've been chatting. The universe has worked in mysterious ways in bringing us together and we've really jammed out since our first conversation.
Haley's Role at NextGen Summit
00:03:43
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So I'm excited to welcome Haley.
00:03:45
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onto the podcast today and have her share about her experiences with entrepreneurship. This is something I've been interested in since I started kind of working with this with students when I was working on a campus. But Haley's got such an incredible story. So I'm actually going to turn it over to her and have her, you know, really tell a little bit about yourself, your experiences so far in life and what you're doing.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, of course. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on. It's true that the universe brought us together. I love all of our synergy. Yeah, so a bit about me, I just graduated from Brown in May. And at Brown, I studied gender studies and entrepreneurship. It's really like the nexus of these two. So my area of passion is women's entrepreneurship. At Brown, I started the first ever women's entrepreneurship incubator. So I helped women on campus bring their ideas
00:04:30
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from concept to reality. And now my full-time job is working as the Director of Community for NextGen Summit. So I'm helping entrepreneurs all the time. We're a community of over 2,500 entrepreneurs now. So we plan events, webinars. We try to find ways to give them resources and just make sure
'Her Big Idea' and Supporting Women Entrepreneurs
00:04:48
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we're offering all that we can to help them with their companies.
00:04:51
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I also just published my second book. It's called Her Big Idea. It came out on June 11th. So just coming up on the two week mark of when it first came out and it's about women and ideation and coming up with your big idea. And I launched that book in conjunction with a fund called the Her Big Idea Fund in partnership with Brown University's Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship. So the idea is that a woman can apply to the fund and receive grant money to bring her big ideas to life to mitigate risk taking and half of the proceeds from the book go to the fund.
00:05:21
Speaker
That's incredible. I feel like every time I record a podcast episode, I'm like, wow, I was such a joke at 18, 20, 21, 22. It's incredible all the awesome things that you're doing. And I'm really excited to chat more about kind of your story and experience with, I don't want to say falling into entrepreneurship, but finding entrepreneurship, because in my experience interacting with entrepreneurs, I'm not one myself, but it's not necessarily something I don't think anyone plans to do.
00:05:49
Speaker
So how did you, when did you first start to think, you know, maybe entrepreneurship's a thing for me and how, what was kind of your pathway to finding this? Cause you're, you're definitely passionate about it and I'm always interested to hear more about what has helped people find their passion.
00:06:03
Speaker
Oh, I love that question. So for me, it was my freshman year of college. And I became obsessed with this idea for a nonprofit, which went on to be lit without limits to mean for literature without limits. But I really was obsessed with this idea of donating books to girls internationally. And my mom urged me to press further with that. And she was like, well, what else are you gonna do? And so I added a curriculum that I wrote to go along with the books we're donating. I am Malala.
00:06:29
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And then, yeah, I sent them out internationally to girls in mentoring groups so they'd form little like book club chapters. And when I started this, I had no idea that I was an entrepreneur. For me, I just thought it was like an initiative or no different from starting a club on campus, which I had done.
00:06:44
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And I remember my aunt commended me for my entrepreneurial spirit and that was the first time I saw myself as like potentially an entrepreneur because I think that there's this like misconception that nonprofits are like more abstract so you're not really an entrepreneur if you're doing a nonprofit as opposed to a for-profit where it's very concrete and you're making a profit.
00:07:04
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But what I learned is that it was the best experience possible for learning about business through this nonprofit because I had to understand how to raise money, the cost of donating the books, the distribution channels. So that was my first experience with it. My first experience, too, of being nagged by an idea and feeling like I had to bring it to life. And after that, I just became totally, totally enthralled with the whole entrepreneurship experience, the branding, the reaching out, the copywriting, all of it.
00:07:33
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And there's no real, I think, from my experience in working with students in entrepreneurship, there's not a lot of classes outside of your formal business education that is engaging young people in entrepreneurship. But I think that your work with NextGen is something that is serving as a program and a resource and a community
Inside the NextGen Summit
00:07:54
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for young people.
00:07:55
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But some of my listeners might not be super familiar. So can you give us just the 30 second, what is NextGen and then how did you get involved with NextGen? Sure. So NextGen Summit is an online community of, as I said, over 2,500 entrepreneurs. But what's special about it is that they, I mean, typically we're like in the millennial age range, but we have everyone from high school up into like 45 years old, very established in their careers.
00:08:21
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And we talk on the online Facebook community offering each other resources, opportunities, asking for help, just really driving networking, but we also bring it offline. So we have our big flagship event once a year in June. We just had it in New York City, the Nextion Summit. And then we also have smaller events like we had one in LA and at Harvard this past year.
00:08:42
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It's all about trying to mobilize entrepreneurs really all over the globe and bring them together and provide all the resources that we can for them. I first became involved in NextGen when I was a junior in college and I met with someone who was interested in coming to Brown. It's really funny how the conversation even got there and how serendipitous it was, but I was telling her about my own entrepreneurial experiences and she was an entrepreneur too and she said,
00:09:07
Speaker
Oh, have you heard of this thing called Nextion? And I'd never heard of it. And she was just raving on and on about it and how much it's helped her in her career. And she messaged the founders, Justin and Dylan, and asked if I could be a part of it. And immediately once I joined, I got my first ever paid speaking gig, which I thought was a really big deal because I wasn't necessarily established in my career at that time and started to meet the most incredible people and make connections. And it was really revolutionary, the power of this huge network
00:09:35
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that all they do is like they're there to help each other. So I feel really fortunate to come on board as their first full-time team member. I'll start full-time here in about two weeks but I've been working for them for a year now. That is awesome and I love that you use the word serendipitous because I feel like that is so much of a part of an entrepreneur.
00:09:54
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entrepreneur story, but I love that there's this community of young people and, you know, a lot of Gen Z is looking at entrepreneurship and you see it firsthand in the work that you're doing, both with the online community, but also the summits that you're putting on through NextGen. In what ways do you see entrepreneurship gaining popularity among your peers in Generation Z?
Rethinking 'Entrepreneurship': Innovation and Authenticity
00:10:16
Speaker
I think entrepreneurship right now, it almost has, and maybe I'll get some flack for this, but I think it's such a buzz word right now. It has this connotation now of anybody is calling themselves an entrepreneur, so much so that I don't even like calling myself one, just because I don't really have a company right now. Yeah, I work for a startup and I have a book and a fund, but I think people are seeing that entrepreneurship in general is about creating anything that you want.
00:10:46
Speaker
I like to use the term innovators instead. So what are you innovating? Whether you're a thought leader, you're starting a book, you're starting a podcast like you are Megan. How are you contributing your ideas and your innovations to the world? But the reason that I think entrepreneurship in general is gaining popularity is because it's so glamorized right now. But the part of it that I've noticed is that especially in communities like NextGen, everyone's very authentic about the challenges that come with entrepreneurship because it is no walk in the park.
00:11:14
Speaker
it is really difficult and startups fail all the time, like 90% of startups fail. So I think encouraging more people to be innovators first and to try something and put it out there before they're starting full fledged companies is a really good idea and to make sure that we're not necessarily glamorizing it because then when people get into entrepreneurship and they're starting companies and they're realizing how hard it is, it can be very isolating.
00:11:37
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think that it's awesome to use this idea of innovation and dreaming the big dream. And we're going to get to the big idea a little bit later. But in some ways, I'm seeing from, again, from an external perspective. So I'd love your viewpoint on it that there are a lot of young people today that want to change the world and they want to do it through business. Are you seeing that a lot of the people that you're interacting with, especially at the collegiate level or even younger, are engaging in these business pursuits with a socially focused
00:12:06
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motivation and mission behind it.
00:12:08
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Yeah, I would say yes. It's not overwhelming necessarily, but typically what I've seen is stories much like my own where they start something because they're passionate about making a difference and they don't know that makes them an entrepreneur or it's just an initiative that turns into a company. I've also noticed, and a lot of this is just from the methodology that I was taught at Brown about entrepreneurship, that innovation is really just about solving somebody's problem. So in that case, a lot of entrepreneurship and products are
00:12:36
Speaker
socially focused because they're intended to reach the target market, solve their problems, ease their pains and give them what they're looking for. So you work a lot with Gen Z entrepreneurs, which I'm just the confidence that young people today have to go out and do something like that just astounds me and not even in a way of like it's overly confident. It's like one of those things I don't think I could have ever done at some of the ages that we're seeing young people start businesses. Who are some of the Gen Z entrepreneurs that you work with or are inspired by?
00:13:06
Speaker
Or both? Yeah. So just as I was seeing the story of how I first heard about NextGen, the girl who told me about NextGen, when she was 15 years old, her name's Noamence. She started a company called Nanny's by Noah that has profited millions and millions of dollars when she was 15 years old, mind you. So she was on the Steve Harvey show, NBC, the Today show.
00:13:28
Speaker
gained so much press for it obviously it's just a remarkable story and that's really what blows me away like her I mean she didn't know much about business but she just went for it because she had an idea and that's always inspiring additionally in my incubator at Brown I was really inspired by the women who joined the incubator some of them had companies that were further along than others like really the intention of the incubator was to help them get their companies off the ground but some came just to learn
00:13:54
Speaker
So there's a girl named Joyce Sunday who goes to Brown and she started a healthy food snack company with Ethiopian grains called Che. And then another friend of mine in the incubator, her name is Elodie Freeman. She started a clothing company using all recycled materials and I think she has a really interesting business model. So I'm always inspired when I'm talking with
00:14:17
Speaker
all these Gen Z entrepreneurs and seeing the amazing things they're coming up with and the fact that they're doing it at a young age because I agree. It's really hard to venture into the area of entrepreneurship that these women who are going at it with all they have and really making a lot of success out of it. It's inspiring.
00:14:32
Speaker
Absolutely. I love hearing about the cool businesses that people and these more ventures in some ways, because as you've said, some people don't realize that when they're innovating, they can be creating a business. I'm constantly amazed at the awesome businesses that Gen Z is sprouting up in and making a difference, but also learning how to make a profit at the same time. That's something that
00:14:56
Speaker
I think takes a great deal of confidence. And so I'm always wowed by that. I'm also wowed by the fact that you just released a book and I'm so excited to get my copy, start digging into it and learning from your experiences.
Themes of 'Her Big Idea'
00:15:09
Speaker
But you just released her big idea. People can get it on Amazon, but what can readers expect from it? So they're just about to pick it up. What should they be looking most forward to and expect out of the book?
00:15:21
Speaker
It's funny because how I explain the book and what it appears as from the outset is a book about women's entrepreneurship. It was inspired by the funding gap in VC. The fact that in 2017, only 2 percent of venture capital spending went to female founders. When I started to write the book, and this was alongside writing my honor thesis at Brown, I contacted the managing director of a prominent venture capital firm.
00:15:47
Speaker
I basically interrogated him about the statistic and was like, why do you think this is? He said, paraphrase that women don't come up with ideas that need millions and millions of dollars in funding, which didn't really sit well with me, obviously. I started to research what's behind this, like what's inhibiting women from thinking big or from pursuing the funding when they are thinking big, like how much legitimacy is there to it. Really, the book is a testament to the power of big thinking.
00:16:17
Speaker
how we can mitigate risk by big thinking, which is, you don't really think that. You think if you're gonna do something risky, then it's big. But actually, and what I've learned and what I've studied is that the bigger you're thinking and the bigger the idea that you're trying to bring to life, the less risky it is, which is awesome. So as you go through the book too, a lot of it is having big ideas about your own life, what you're intending to bring to yourself,
00:16:44
Speaker
Um, I, I bring this up because actually today Forbes released an article in the book and it was written by somebody who typically writes about women ascending in their careers. And so she was asking me how the book can be applicable to women who aren't entrepreneurs. Uh, and I, I might admit and it's not necessarily just for women. And it is really this idea of like, if you have an idea of an initiative at work or even an idea of how to like make your personal lifestyle better, like how do you bring that to life and do it in a way that changes your life? Well, I feel.
00:17:13
Speaker
Again, I'm excited to read it and have you sign it when I see you next, but it's going to be, I'm excited to get that, that like dose of inspiration because I think there's even days that, you know, you wake up and you don't feel like an entrepreneur, but
00:17:28
Speaker
in days I have to do my own business and my own affairs and sometimes you'll not kick in the butt, but like a little bit of a nudge and a nod to like, you can do this, go out there and do it. So I love that there's also this element of, you know, pumping people up and encouraging them to do the things that they, they aspire to and dreaming that big dream. And I think.
00:17:45
Speaker
that is incredible that you are providing that for other people, but also at the same time providing an avenue for people through your Fund at Brown to be able to pursue that dream and make that an actual thing. Because I think a lot of people get really excited about these ideas, but they just let it become an idea. I see that from, I've always had friends that are like, how did you write a book? And how did you make that happen? I said, you know what?
00:18:10
Speaker
sometimes you just have to be a little crazy enough to think that your dream can be reality and just go get it. So I love that you're helping provide that inspiration to other people and being a light to other people I think is incredible. I think that more people, especially members of Generation Z, are going to see examples of that and engage in entrepreneurship. But what do you think are some of the potential barriers they might face? And how do you think older generations can help them along their journey in entrepreneurship?
Challenges for Young Entrepreneurs and Intergenerational Learning
00:18:38
Speaker
So I think like what I was saying earlier along the lines of entrepreneurship so clear my eyes and then you get into it and it's just like so much harder than you anticipated that can really discourage people. But I also say that because so many of them are starting out young and they don't have the formal business education.
00:18:56
Speaker
I don't think you necessarily need it, but a lot of it is things you're going to have to learn along the way. There's a really steep learning curve at first. There is no way you're going to need to know everything. Even if you do feel equipped and that you do know everything and you've been studying it for however long, you're always going to come up with some aspect of business that you don't fully understand. The older generations can help them, and I think we can all help each other. It doesn't necessarily have to be the older helping the younger.
00:19:19
Speaker
I'm just sharing experiences and being there to help what we see in action is that people will post and they'll say like I don't know how to do this and all these people will jump to help them and we have that sense of camaraderie kind of like that quid pro quo.
00:19:32
Speaker
between one another where we're all helping each other regardless. And given the diversity of our experiences and backgrounds and industries, it makes the layers of our ability to help each other that much richer. So my next question and my last question, it's something that I like to ask each one of my guests, what is your favorite thing about Generation Z?
00:19:52
Speaker
I love this question. My favorite thing about Generation Z is that they're not following the status quo. They want to do things differently. They want to inject entrepreneurialism into anything that they do. Even if it's, you know, they're working a corporate job, they want to make their own hours and they want to wear what they want to work and they want to start initiatives at work that
00:20:13
Speaker
that kind of move the needle on what the corporate life really looks like. It's really exciting to see that we have this new age of people who want to do things differently and push against old norms that are sometimes antiquated, but just maybe don't work for them. I think the assumption that millennials and Gen Z are lazy is absolutely not true. I've never seen so many young people doing so much. I really think it blows people away. I'm told all the time, and a lot of my friends are told all the time,
00:20:41
Speaker
I can't believe how young you are when you're doing what you're doing. And how can that be if at the same time everybody's saying that our generation is lazy? I just, I don't see it. And I think we're all motivating each other. I'm right there with you. I'm always just like, I feel like I'm doing a lot of stuff, but then I look at Gen Z and I'm like, they're doing more. And I'm like, I'm always amazed by that.
00:21:00
Speaker
at such young ages. I think that you're spot on if anyone were ever to be like, oh, millennials and Gen Z or lazy. I'm like, no, they just do their productivity at different hours in different ways and in different avenues.
00:21:13
Speaker
I'm right there with you. Yeah, I definitely agree. And it's like, it's good to have conversations like these and to talk about demystifying those stereotypes and empowering more people because something that you don't consider
Empowering Gen Z Through Mentorship
00:21:25
Speaker
is that when you are growing up in a generation and other people are constantly calling you like self entitled and lazy, like on one side of it, you can
00:21:33
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Seek to prove them wrong but on the other side you start to believe it about yourself once you're told something about a group that you belong to So I really think empowering the next generation and talking about these things is key
00:21:45
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think that you bring up a good point of after a while, you start to believe it in yourself. And there's a lot of negativity about, you know, different generations. And I always say that it's exactly that is just generations exist in different ways, because we learned the world from at different times and different perspectives. And that's totally okay. Like difference is good. And we need that.
00:22:06
Speaker
I think that you're spot on in this idea of how do we empower each other is a huge question. I don't even think I have it fully figured out in some ways. I think that you brought up this really important aspect of learning from one another across generations, providing mentorship across generations, but also there's so many ways that generations can be teaching older generations as much as older generations can be providing life experience
00:22:32
Speaker
guidance and mentoring to younger generations. So I think it's this idea of what can we learn from one another? What are each of those generations really good at? And how do we harness that to the best that we can in those settings? I love that. I love that.
00:22:45
Speaker
perfect words and conclusion. Well, thank you. Well, Haley, thank you so much for taking the time to chat and hang out with me today. As usual, it's been so wonderful to connect with you and hear more about your experiences and your stories. So I appreciate you sharing today. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me on. And yeah, I love talking about these things and especially with you because I know you get it. So yeah, I'm really excited to be on your podcast and to support you.
00:23:13
Speaker
You can't see me, but I'm blushing right now. A young person said I get it. But no, thank you so much. It was fascinating to hear from Haley and learn about her experiences working in entrepreneurship and supporting fellow entrepreneurs. Her insights on innovation and inspiring big ideas definitely re-energized me and made me think about how I can support and help the Gen Z entrepreneurs and innovators I know.
00:23:41
Speaker
I want to thank Hailey again for spending some time chatting with me and the work that she does. And a thank you to you for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed it, please rate, review, and subscribe on your preferred podcast listening platform. And if you have an idea for a podcast episode or a guest I need to chat with, head over to my website, meganmgrace.com, and send me a note. I appreciate all of your feedback, words of encouragement, and suggestions, so please keep them coming. Thanks again for hanging out. Let's continue this conversation, and we'll chat soon.