Entrepreneurial Lessons from the Leg Quarter Cook-Off

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I've been on the road a lot and have been thinking about the leg quarter cook-off from last weekend. It's this event that we do in my neighborhood. It was the fifth annual - if you want more information about that check out legquartercookoff.com if you want to dig in further.

In putting together the event it reminded me of three lessons I've learned over the years about entrepreneurial endeavors, whether it's putting on an event or starting a business, that I wanted to share here.

Number one - things always take longer than you expect and it it never ceases to amaze me how much that is true no matter what business you get in or whatever you're doing and uh if you think you've got the market or the timing or the people and it just and it just takes longer I mean this took five years to get to the point where it is and started off with just a few people in the front yard and slowly grew from there and we finally got all the pieces together to make it big to where we had a couple hundred people show up and we're gonna raise some serious money for a good cause but it took time to get it to that point

Number two - navigating advice. You never really consider how many people have opinions, but it's everybody. Everybody has an opinion about what you're doing, and sometimes it's good advice but sometimes it's bad advice. It'll be people you know or people that have done it before but maybe they did it five years ago or ten years ago when the technology was different or the times were different or the people were different and so you have to learn how to navigate that to make sure that you're doing what's best for you and whatever it is in front of you right now. But you also have to be able to somehow kind of learn from the lessons of people that have done it before you that maybe just did it a little differently

Number three - there's always going to be haters. Always! As my boy, Keith Frank says here at the cook off - "Put your hands up if you've got some haters"

It wasn't any different for the event. I'm trying to cook chicken, trying to compete. I've got people all around me saying "oh why does the chicken look like that" or "why is the grill putting off smoke that that color" or "you sure you want to put the sauce on right now because it's gonna make it chewy.'

I ended up coming in second out of 23 teams! But the whole time I had somebody next to me trying to make me doubt what I was doing or the way I was going about it, and you're gonna have that in your entrepreneurial endeavors, as well. Friends, family, loved ones, strangers - people throwing shade and making you doubt yourself all along the way. It's gonna happen and you have to remember that whatever it was that made you believe that you should go out and do it, you've got to hold on to it because it's going to get questioned along the way.

Those are my three lessons from the leg quarter cook-off as it pertains to entrepreneurial endeavors. Hope you have a good one. Catch you on the other side.