Guest Speaker: Erik Hanberg

    Yesterday we had a guest speaker in our class: author and entrepreneur Erik Hanberg. To be completely honest, I started out a little skeptical of his advice. However, I started to understand his motivations and mindset over the course of the presentation. There were two parts that particularly resonated with me. The first was his depiction of the agonizing decision of whether or not to be an entrepreneur. After all, he was addressing a class full of computer science majors; with a little hard work we are all practically guaranteed a well paying career in industry. He drew the following on the whiteboard:

     The black line represents the entrepreneur's potential salary while the green line represents the salary of someone who works in industry. The worker tends to have higher pay; a guaranteed steady increase as they become a more and more valuable asset to their employer. The entrepreneur, however, is in for some terrible pay. The trade-off here is that the worker will at some point hit a cap. Even the best paid programmer or lawyer can only ask for so much money per month or hour. The entrepreneur, however, has a small chance of achieving their limitless potential. 

    The other thing that struck me was his depiction of his quarterly earnings. He showed us a graph that looked similar to (but more complex than) this:

    Each color represented a source of his income over the past decade, plotted quarterly. The blue and red represent steady money that came in from things like book residuals or a stipend from the parks department. The orange represents income from his old salaried job (which he had quit). The purple represents income from his and his wife's flagship company Side X Side. From the graph one can deduce a few things: He makes steady money off of assets (books) he has created and no longer spends time on. He was able to leave his job and focus on other endeavors. His main company, while having its highs and lows, constitutes of the lion's share of his income.
    The reason this was so inspiring to me was that it showed me one can make a living off a diverse and eclectic set of sources. Not only does this diversification reduce the impact of a single income source failing, it allows Erik the freedom to drop something like a salaried job to pursue something like his own book or company. Personally I have been having somewhat of an existential crisis; I am close to graduating with a computer science degree and the prospect of a lucrative job. However, coding is one of my multiple passions. I have been afraid that pursuing a job as a salaried programmer will take  away my ability to pursue money and fulfillment through other things such as game design and music. Erik showed me that it's perfectly viable to juggle, diversify, switch up, and even drop sources of income. I'm going to incorporate this into my mindset going forward, I am excited to enter the world and invest myself into all of my passions.