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The Urban Community Newsletter is a monthly newsletter that features startup stories with Startup of the Month, massive professional development experiences with Humanoids of Huntsville, and a dynamic showcase of our greater impact in other hyper-local communities to reflect the innovation movement and startup growth ecosystem that fuels the Urban Engine economy.

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What brought you here?

The Urban Engine team loves this question.
We rarely hear the same answer twice.

After asking hundreds of people how they ended up at Urban Engine we began to realize the dynamic impact our work has on the communities we serve. So, we started to capture the stories of people in our networks and the unique ways our programs and resources have made a difference in their entrepreneurial journey. Thus, The Collective Ambition was born.

The Collective Ambition™ is Urban Engine’s central hub of impact stories. It is our collection of the notable people and ideas that inspire us to spark, fuel and ignite the next generation of visionaries through our community programming. You will find features of founders and their startup stories with a focus on how their professional developments make an impact in their local cities. Experience the waves of transformation these motivational influencers have stormed through their hard work.

In the Urban Engine podcast, we discuss entrepreneurship and success. We interview local entrepreneurs in Alabama and the South, discuss how to succeed, and how to propel your idea forward.

In episode #20 of the podcast, the team discusses the importance of having grit and what it means to possess that trait.

Highlights (01:32) Grit is not choosing the easier path because long-term you're actually going to be more satisfied with the decision that you made. (08:05) Cole explains the impact of having entrepreneur parents are entrepreneurs (see the academic paper listed below with data on this subject; children are 1.3-3X more likely to be entrepreneurs when their parents are) (08:30) Cole describes his first business in middle school (pressure washing).

SUMMARY

Cole Rickles sits down to tell quite a few interesting stories of the various startups he has been involved in going all the way back to middle school. Most attempts fail, but the successes only occur because of the presence of grit. Good things never come easily, so persevering while being open-minded on how you are going to get to your clearly-defined end goal is essential to success with any entrepreneurial undertaking. The idea of grit has been popularized in the last few years (especially by Angela Duckworth’s book on grit listed below released in 2016), but the idea of how one can instill grit in another person is still up for debate on how that is done. One significant advantage Cole (and many other entrepreneurs in the Huntsville community) has is entrepreneur parents who provided first-hand real-world lessons in the value and results of grit.

Links

(SpaceX failures video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ

(TED talk on grit)https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance?language=en(Grit from a psychology perspective)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/media-spotlight/201606/the-truth-about-grit

(How Parents Are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood: Today’s “snowplow parents” keep their children’s futures obstacle-free — even when it means crossing ethical and legal boundaries.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/style/snowplow-parenting-scandal.html

(Podcast: How I Built This)

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this

(Academic paper: Why Do Entrepreneurial Parents Have Entrepreneurial Children?)

http://ftp.iza.org/dp6740.pdf

Books

The Little Engine That Could

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Engine-Could-Original-Classic/dp/0448405202

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

https://www.amazon.com/Grit-Passion-Perseverance-Angela-Duckworth/dp/1501111116