When you think about your biggest dreams, what comes to mind?
Traveling the world without any care in the world? Being a professional athlete? Creating the next great innovation?
See, everyone has these dreams somewhere inside of them. However, we allow a myriad of excuses hinder us from chasing our dreams and most dreams die right where they started.
At the age of 17, I decided to challenge this notion. After 6 years of venturing into the world of entrepreneurship, I’ve learned a lot from my experiences and have accomplished a few things along the way.
My name is Jeet Banerjee and I’m a 24 year old serial entrepreneur. You can find me at the gym shooting hoops or spending time with my friends just like any other ordinary twenty something, but my friends who know me think that I’m the farthest thing from “ordinary”.
I’ve sold two businesses for a profit, built a handful of successful companies, given a TEDx talk, mentored other entrepreneurs in their businesses and written a best-selling book. While many might think I’m sort of genius, I’m really not. I just chased my big dreams at the age of 17 while still in high school. From there, I ended up attending Cal. State Fullerton for roughly two years before deciding that my entrepreneurial dreams were too big for the classroom.
According to my father, he thinks that I was a “born entrepreneur”. He loves telling a story about the time I was 9 years old and I had this big aspiration of learning to build my own website. My father was fully supportive of it by buying me the books I needed and purchasing me a domain name. Over the course of a summer vacation, I was able to build my very own website showcasing my favorite basketball content.
Then, there’s another story that my father likes to share with a bit of agony on his face. It’s about the time I received a cease and desist letter at the age of 13 from a major online gaming company. I had created my own currency exchange within the game that was being used by thousands of players and the game makers weren’t very happy. While the letters scared my father, he knew that these were the signs of an entrepreneur being born.
While these early ventures were far from successful, they showed me that no dream was too big.
Everyone said I needed a degree, tons of experience and money to do anything in this world. But I was always able to do whatever I put my mind to without any of those things.
That’s when the light bulb went off in my head because I knew everyone else had it wrong.
Between the ages of 15-17, I ended up taking a variety of jobs. I quickly realized at that young age that I was unemployable. I would either quit or get fired from every single job because I just wasn’t cut out working for someone else.
Just a few days after my 17th birthday, I decided to launch JB Media Force, which was a multimedia agency offering services to businesses of all sizes. I had no money, experience and was still in high school, which of course caused me to face numerous setbacks.
However, these challenges only motivated me to work harder so that I could be successful and prove everyone wrong.
I often get asked about who my early business role models were that motivated me to get started and helped me find success. Honestly, my dreams really came to fruition when I was extremely frustrated with working for other people and I began searching up my problem on the internet. Turns out, other people had this similar bug inside of them and I came across content from Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Mark Zuckerberg. All of these individuals thought the same way I did. They didn’t care what others had to say, they went out and got what they felt was theirs.
From a young age, I’ve understood that you’re going to have doubters, haters and naysayers all the time. As long as you believe in yourself, that’s all that really matters and you have the potential to do anything.
My first company JB Media Force grew to 20 employees within 2 years before I decided to sell it to move on to my next passion. I then launched an educational company called StatFuse, which was an educational portal for college students to find their chances of admission into Universities, which I also ended up selling 4 years after launching it.
After selling these businesses, my newest venture is now on track to make more than 6 figures this year via online sales. Not only that, but I continues to speak at events all around the world sharing my insight on what it takes to be successful.
I get tons of emails from people asking me what they can do to chase their dreams and achieve a similar level of success as me. Here are my tips for achieving anything you want in life:
1. Start Now
The biggest factor that led me to my successes was that I didn’t put my dreams off for later, I started immediately. In fact, I had always been terribly impatient my entire life. As a result of this, I didn’t wait for the right circumstances to come around so I could chase my dreams, I did it as soon as I knew what I wanted to pursue!
As an impatient child growing up, I was constantly punished and criticized for it. However, this was the first time where my impatience paid off because I was able to pursue my dreams immediately without having to wait for anyone.
2. Work Your Butt Off
When I was 18 years old, I wasn’t going to parties with my friends. I was working all the time. 16-17 hours a day of working my tail off. Even in my college classes, I would bring my laptop in and try to balance taking notes while creating estimates for my clients.
I had to quickly learn the business world on my own because I really had no prior experience. When I started my company, I wasn’t very educated. I had to learn through experience and as I faced each problem. Because my learning curve was so extensive, I had to work even harder to be successful.
3. Failure Isn’t An Option
Failure is an event, not a definition. Do not ever let failure define you. It’s okay to fail as long as you learn and you get right back up. In this case, failure becomes an event. It’s just something that happened at a time and a place on a certain day. If you give up, that’s when failure defines you.
I never looked at failure as an option and for me it was a matter of persevering through every challenge that I faced. With business, I quickly learned that you only have to get things right once. It doesn’t matter how many times you fail because if you figure things out that one time, you can change the world.
4. Know Yourself
I took around 10-12 jobs for 2 years while still in high school feeling like there was something wrong with me. The worst part was that my ideal life plan was to go to school, get my business degree and work a corporate job. I thought that’s what life was for me. Here I was struggling to keep a 10 hour a week job because I was losing my mind.
If you aren’t happy, change and rid yourself of what is making you unhappy. It’s as simple as that, don’t chase the money or the fame. All that stuff means nothing if you aren’t happy. Don’t let people decide your fate and your life, do what makes you happy. Listen to the calling inside of you!
As a young entrepreneur now, I just have big dreams of changing the world. I’m solely driven by my passion and determination, which has allowed me to take massive action on my ideas.
However, my story should just serve as a simple reminder for the rest of you.
We are never too old or too young, never too poor or wealthy and never too experienced or uneducated enough to chase our dreams.
The best time to pursue your biggest dream has always been, right now.