The MOMENT He Realized His Options Were ENDLESS // The Happiness Blueprint e014

Peter, a student at Salve Regina University, shares what he learned last year, the business ventures he pursued as a kid, and the pros and cons he sees in becoming an entrepreneur!

0:00 Peter from Salve Regina
0:40 Lessons from Last Year
3:35 Youthful Business Ventures
7:46 Deciding on an Entrepreneurial Venture
10:59 Advice for Past Self
13:18 What Makes Peter Happy

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A special thank you to Vibe Arcs for sponsoring today's episode. To get started on tracking your personal, team or project happiness metrics, visit https://vibearcs.com/ 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is the Happiness Blueprint.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

The podcast where we uncover how people build happier lives.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome back to the Happiness Blueprint Podcast. I'm here with another Peter Grang name man out of my own heart here. Help me understand uh your role today and how you helped put today on.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Uh so I'm just attending today. I'm just attending here today. Awesome. Uh I'm a senior here at Salve. I'm an accounting major. Awesome. So we mean business day is basically just a day-long networking event, bunch of seminars, uh getting us prepped to, you know, get into the real world and be a member of, you know, whatever line of business we're we're going to do.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

We've got to that big crossroads in life where everything can change right now and everything will change in a couple months. Uh we're here at this event last year.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Uh yeah, I attended this event last year. It was the the inaugural one. We had a great time. So what did you take away from it? What I took away from last year was just that my options are definitely endless. I mean, um you put your mind to anything and and you work hard enough, and you can definitely succeed in in ways that can make you happy monetarily. And, you know, I think as we're maybe going to touch on, happy, you know, spiritually as well. And you're you're not as boxed in as you think. You know, leaving college can definitely be a scary experience. And yeah, you can think that, you know, you can think that the world is your oyster, and you can also think that it's out to get you. And I think the tree flies somewhere in between.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

So that's a really powerful realization, though, to realize that you do have the opportunity to do so many things, and it's great that Salve helped like bring you to that realization where it sounds like this was a yeah, a nice turning point for you, or maybe one of many turning points over the last four years that you've been here. Uh, incredible. And then how has today gone for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

It's been great so far. Um, I dabbled in a little bit late this morning, um, and there's been a couple seminars so far. We spoke about one uh just about some general, you know, after college tips, you know, building your credit, um, finances, things of that nature. And then I just recently stepped out of a uh a seminar titled Take the Leap, uh, talking about, you know, starting your own venture and becoming an entrepreneur. Um, I'm an accounting major, but I do have a minor in entrepreneurship. It would definitely be something I'd be interested in would be owning my own business and and building something of my own from the ground up.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

So there's a uh a lot of businesses you can own. That's a enormous array to walk into. Is there a dream field you end up in? Is it is it media, is it sports, is it medicine? Would you yeah, there's a hundred different businesses you could own. Do you have a sense of what your dream entrepreneurial venture would be?

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yeah, so I mean, I I think like I was just saying, the world is your oyster. It's kind of deciding between what you're passionate about and and where the money is. And I think that's something that all the panelists touched on today. We had uh a man who founded his own AI venture capitalist business, uh, a woman who founded a childcare business. And um it's you can you can go all sorts of routes. I I have a big passion for for sports and media myself. I I commentate hockey and lacrosse games down here at school. And you know, I've had a couple of uh Instagram accounts throughout my life where I've created some content of my own. So I think that would be definitely an interest for me. But you know, we'll we'll see where it takes.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

That's awesome. Yeah, I think that's the goal. I think you're right that it's about finding a problem and solving it. I think is the other way to look at these businesses. And that problem, we often think of like inventions, like shark tank style inventions, but the problem could be that the salvoy lacrosse team doesn't have coverage and you're the guy who steps on thrills. And so it's about kind of kind of getting creative like what are the problems and how do we solve them and appreciating that problems aren't always like we need a hammer for this thing. It can be, yeah, it can be a social media account and that kind of thing. Yeah, sure. Um, have you started any like businesses? Have you done any entrepreneurship where you're a lemonade standing at the kid growing up? Like it doesn't have any roots in your past?

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Uh so I mean, I guess sort of kinda. Uh, not in the most recent years, uh, ever since like kind of high school and college, been more focused on my academics and put put some of the ideas to the side. But I would say when I was in middle school, actually, funnily enough, I I created uh Instagram content just of me like playing hockey in my backyard and uh whether it was on the ice, off the ice, making a GoPro video, something like that. It never never grew into something where I was I was getting paid for it, but I did a couple product placement stuff, just getting free products from brands and things of that nature. So, you know, there's a little bit of history there and maybe something I can build off of with that experience.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

So funny, that's exactly where my roots were, where my job now is yeah, camera stuff's with a lot of concerts, so we do a lot of events. Uh I look work a lot in the music industry, the music world, so it's yeah, content in the music space. Uh, but it started filming myself playing soccer in my basement and just doing like freestyle soccer tricks, kind of similar to the same thing. Right. And it was one of those funny things that like at the time I was just doing what felt cool, and then I got left college, kind of in a similar spot to where you are now, and went like there are a lot of great jobs, I think a lot of fill a lot of great roles. I don't see myself going down that path. I think my path is gonna be similar to what you described of like building my own path, and that's gonna come with a lot of risk and a lot of trials and tribulations and a lot of ups and downs, and it might not work, but I'm gonna try while I'm leaving college and I have the chance to, and thankfully at this point it has paid off for me. Um, but it is that thing of kind of following what your inner child likes to do, and almost we forget that our inner child was into these things and into these like media, and like, yeah, filming yourself doing hockey is entrepreneurial, yeah. As your six-year-old, eight-year-old, ten-year-old, whatever old you yourself wouldn't appreciate that you were starting a business, but it's like that's what you were doing on a very micro scale. Yeah, so that's awesome. Uh, what did you learn from those processes?

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Uh, I definitely learned that work is easier when it's something you love to do. Uh, and I think that's definitely something I might have strayed a little bit away from in terms of I had a couple major changes while in college, um, things of that nature, but just finding what you love and finding a reason to love it. Maybe it's not something you love right away, but kind of finding that balance between, you know, satisfying that inner child of yours and and then finding what you love and what you do, um, it creates a purpose for you and it creates that drive to to create not only the stability that you need in your life and you know paying your bills and things of that nature, but also to to pay your soul and you know, to do what you need to do to feel fulfilled outside of the bank account as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

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SPEAKER_00 8:09

Yeah, so I think honestly, I I might have gone in the opposite direction as as you. So um, I grew up uh with a single mother, I lost my uh my father when I was really young. So that kind of led me down the psychology path and potentially wanting to do something in in children's breed therapy. And you know, there there are financial struggles that come with, you know, being in a single parent household. And I think all that kind of came together into a decision where I wanted to go to college and I I wanted to try and to try and help my mother and to to give back to my siblings, things of that nature. But I realized after a year and some change of being a psychology major, it was something that would be difficult for me to pair with my paycheck. So I switched to marketing and eventually ended up on accounting. Just I felt like an accounting degree holds a little bit more weight at the undergraduate level. And now I'm kind of neck deep in all the internship recruiting, doing stuff with accounting and bursting into my career. And I think I'm at that second half of the change where now it's all right, I'm gonna have the degree, I'm gonna have the solid entry-level gig, I'm gonna start to, you know, build my bank account, a little bit of financial stability. And then when does that change come where maybe I would want to start a venture of my own that is a little bit closer to home, feeds the soul a little bit more, but can still, you know, keep me afloat and bring me back to those goals of, you know, help my mother retire and pay my student, my sister's student loans, etc. Uh, so you know, it's it's definitely been a difficult change, but you know, just staying true to myself and not letting anything external really change me too too much at my core has has been the biggest goal. And I think I've done that well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Something you got a lot on your plate, so I commend you for being brave and taking it all on. I think it's a lot of weight for anyone to hold, especially someone still in college. Like this is a uh a turmoil, a treacherous time in life, like this is a challenging time to finally be away and finally be saying, like, okay, when you're in high school, here is the class you're taking. Now finally it's like, what do I want to do? What is what does my life look like when I'm in the driver's seat here? And that's a tough leap to make for anyone, especially someone's on your plate. So you should be very proud of making it this far and like actualizing those goals so much. And I think the the accounting part of it is like that can also make people happy, right? As you've learned, I mean you mentioned like financial stability is happiness. Those two things are unfortunately correlated, and not that supreme wealth or supreme poverty mean guaranteed happiness or lack of happiness, right? There's a spectrum there. But certainly if the water's getting turned off, if the electric bill's not getting paid, it's a little bit harder to find comfort and peace and happiness in that. So I think there's a nobility there that, like, yeah, maybe psych was the obvious way to make people happy. But it sounds like helping people accounting, and it could be tax accounting, could be yeah, accounting can be a hundred different things, but like helping people stay on top of those goals is a path to happiness for them. So I think you're still you're still doing it, and it just is a different uh context than the one you originally planned for.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Um, awesome. Uh, we have two last questions we'd like to wrap up on here. Uh, one of them is advice you'd have for your past self. Uh, so we're talking about anything that would help like past you get better, it's talking about like coming out of your shell with trying to find like the life that fulfills you the most here. What's some advice you'd have for your past self, the the high school version of you or the freshman version of you who is a little bit more lost?

SPEAKER_00 11:18

I would say just be where your feet are and and stay true to who you believe you are as a person in that moment. Um, actually, just in the last panel I participated in, one of the speakers said that information and and things and realizations, they they reveal themselves in layers, and you're only capable to make the best decision that you can with the information that you have in hand and how you see the world at that time because your knowledge is it's your entire worldview. And when I declared to be a psych major, I didn't know that I was gonna be a counter major now, but you know, I made the best decision for myself that I felt was right in that moment. And if those decisions had been different, I wouldn't be where I am now today. So just staying true to who you are as a person and staying hardworking and staying tenacious and wanting to learn more, but also understanding that you need to be where your feet are, and there's only so much you can know, and you can't let that angst and anxiety of the unknown or potentially making the wrong decision get to you, because then that just takes away from the weight of the decision you are making. And at the end of the day, you make one wrong decision, you're gonna make the next right one. And there's a million paths to to that end finish line that you want to get to, and maybe that end finish line might not even really exist.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

So, you know, just just staying where you are and staying humble and staying focused, and be where your feet are is a really brilliant simple thing that I don't think I've heard put that simply, but it is an incredible, like, yeah, it's so easy to be like shoulda, woulda, coulda as we look at our past, and it's like, well, you're using what we know now to judge the system you made four or five years ago, and that's not realistic, right? You have to go at the time with the information you were given, and that unfortunately wasn't all the information because we don't know the future, right? Who knows where we are in five years from now and what conversation that looks like. So I think it's a really powerful way to kind of summarize this the idea of living in the moment. So I think that's a good mantra to live by here. Uh, my last question for you here is something that makes you happy. So it's the happiness blueprint podcast. Uh, we've talked a lot about kind of yeah, facilitating happiness and happiness kind of on an abstract scale, but what's like the day-to-day? Is there a hobby? I know you mentioned hockey lacrosse. Is that still the happy place for you? Is there uh, I don't know, skiing? Are you a cook? Are you into some other hobby that we're not aware of here?

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Yeah, so I mean, obviously I love doing the commentary and you know, I like cooking a good meal every so often. But I think for me, like the thing that makes me the most happy, just in life in general. I mean, as you know, with all the decisions that I've described on this podcast so far, I could have ended up in a million different spots. I mean, I almost didn't go to college, I almost tried doing something with my hands and and maybe being an electrician or something of that nature. But I think just no matter what path you're on in life and in the society that we've created as human beings, the anchoring part of all of that is the human experience. And we're we're tribal animals, we're communal beings at our hearts, and keeping people that appreciate you and that you appreciate around you, and people that appreciate your worldview and you appreciate their worldview, and maybe challenge your worldview every so often, and just people that love and care about you. I I think love and and the shared human experience is the core of who we are, and whether that's you running your podcast and being in media or me eventually being in public accounting, doing taxes, at the end of the day, we're still the same at our core, and we are still both walking different paths, but on the same road, and the human experience and and keeping people around you that you love and care about, I think, is what keeps me going and what makes me genuinely happy.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

I think that's brilliant and profound, and yeah, it's something I've definitely learned as well in media is that like the security guy and the guy on stage are the same person in a hundred different ways, and they're so much more alike than they are separate. Their paychecks look very different, their status, their job looks very different, but on a human level, they're both trying to pay their bills, they're both trying to support their family in whatever way they can. And uh yeah, I think that that uh unity between people and that common ground between people is a really powerful place to really powerfully to be aware of and to remember because it is so easy to get divided by all the things in the world that can divide us. And uh, I think you're right that it's good to keep people around us who challenge us and support us, and also remember that if even the people who don't challenge us and don't support us are still pretty similar to us, we should find common ground with them as well. Um, beautiful. Thank you for taking the time to come chat here, Peter. It's been a beautiful one. Um, yeah, calling you Peter sounds crazy. I feel like I'm talking to you myself here.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Solid name, solid name. Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Another episode of the Happiness Blueprint friends.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Thanks for listening to the Happiness Blueprint, powered by GBM6. It's about making people happy.