{"id":1661,"date":"2016-10-18T15:26:26","date_gmt":"2016-10-18T19:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/entr\/?p=1661"},"modified":"2021-12-20T09:05:00","modified_gmt":"2021-12-20T14:05:00","slug":"entr-20000-guest-speaker-offers-words-of-wisdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/entr\/entr-20000-guest-speaker-offers-words-of-wisdom\/","title":{"rendered":"ENTR 20000 Guest Speaker Offers Words of Wisdom"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"baird\"<\/a>

Bob Baird, founder and president of Inverse-Square, spoke to ENTR 20000 students about his career successes and failures, leaving students with five key topics to remember when owning a business.<\/p><\/div>\n

Bob Baird, founder and president of Inverse-Square<\/a>, shared his series of successes and failures with students in ENTR 20000, a Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation <\/a>course. He described his journey of finding how entrepreneurship was the right career path for him.<\/p>\n

A Purdue Computer Science <\/a>graduate (B.S. \u201904), Bair worked in industry for seven years before starting his own business. After learning what he did and didn\u2019t like to do, what type of environments he thrived in and what he could bring back to the community, Baird decided to start Inverse-Square.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked for a large fortune 500 company, a small consulting firm and a company that was right in between \u2013 not too big or too small,\u201d Baird said. \u201cThe last job I had before I became a business owner, closed without warning. This was the right time for me to start a business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baird started Inverse-Square five years ago\u00a0which has grown exponentially each year, now having 15 employees and 60 regular customers. The company specializes in operational automation, helping businesses create solutions that allow them to be more productive and efficient.<\/p>\n

After sharing his professional story, he stressed five key topics to students:<\/p>\n

Revenue Isn\u2019t Cash Flow\u00a0<\/strong>
\n\u201cCash flow is a very real thing. You have to manage your funds because money goes out faster than it comes in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every Day You Own Your Business You\u2019re In Vegas\u00a0<\/strong>
\n\u201cYou gamble every day, you can only plan for so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Have An End Game And Work Towards It
\n<\/strong>\u201cThe why will change, daily sometimes. Know why you are putting your time, energy and money into the business. Don\u2019t do it out of selfishness or ignorance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Write It Down Or It\u2019s Not Real<\/strong>
\n\u201cLog your time, measure what you are investing your time in. Use this as a\u00a0comparison to move your company forward, or just to hold yourself accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever You Do, Do It Intentionally
\n<\/strong>\u201cAt a year and a\u00a0half into my business I was running on four hours of sleep. This wasn\u2019t good for my home life. No one is going to keep you focused, you have to do that yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baird ended his presentation with a piece of advice that he lives by. \u201cMake your business fit inside your life, don\u2019t expect your life to fit inside your business.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Baird, founder and president of Inverse-Square, shared his series of successes and failures with students in ENTR 20000, a Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation course. He described his journey of finding how entrepreneurship was the right career path for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni","category-student"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/entr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/entr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/entr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/entr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/entr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1661"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/entr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2016,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/entr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions\/2016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/entr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/entr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/entr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}