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As Our Family Celebrates Babson’s 100th, a Reminder on How to Make Money

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The Ecosystem of Entrepreneurship. A Babson Event at the Escolade Negios Auditorium, Sao Paulo. 10/23/2017. Photo by Reinaldo Canato / Ricardo Yoithi Matsukawa-ME / Sebrae-SP

Last night Becky and I had the pleasure of attending Babson’s Summer Reception in Newport.

Hosted by Mary and Thomas Gilbane, Jr., it was an opportunity for the entire Babson community in Rhode Island to get together and speak with Babson’s new President Stephen Spinelli MBA ‘92.

Spinelli as President makes this year for Babson—it’s 100th–even more special.

As you may know, Babson has played a special role in our family with Becky’s dad Richard Young ’63 (a former trustee), brother Matthew Young ’92, Becky ’94, and me ’94 all graduates of the college.

Seeing and hearing Spinelli talk about Babson was wonderful.

Spinelli basically said, “I work for you, the alumni because my job is to make your diploma more valuable.”

How refreshing it was to hear the words “value creation” in his talk.

So simple, yet incredibly powerful.

Spinelli was saying that because of his previous roles as head of the Entrepreneurship program at Babson, founder of Jiffy Lube, and President of Philadelphia University, he viewed the world through the lens of an entrepreneur. He made sure he created value.

Why is value creation important?

With so many leaders in ivory towers and C-suites focused on social issues, value creation often gets lost in the effort.

And when institutions get away from value creation, then what’s the point of their very existence?

Spinelli noted that this is the 36th year that Babson has been ranked #1 in the country in entrepreneurship, and he said—only half jokingly—the pressure is on to make it to 37.

But, he noted, if he focuses on creating value, then the ranking should take care of itself.

Spinelli emphasized that if you focus on value creation in your life’s work, then a lot of life’s other problems take care of themselves.

A great example was when one of his former students, whom Spinelli kept in touch with after the student graduated from Babson, called to chat.

Spinelli asked the student some questions about how his start-up business was going.

“Do you have proprietary technology?” Spinelli asked.

“No.”

“Do you have a distribution channel in place?”

“No.”

“Do you have a customer that would refer your product?”

“No, not yet.”

“Well,” Spinelli said, “I’m not sure I see your vision.”

“Steve,” the student said, “I didn’t call to talk about the business, I called to ask you for an investment; a check.”

Having written a check to the student (not a very large one Spinelli admitted) the student called several months later.

“Steve, it’s 6 am Seattle time, and I’m leaving Jeff Bezos’ office. He just wrote a check for $1.3 billion to buy my company.”

Who knew a doorbell camera called Doorbot would turn into a thing called Ring?

As it turns out, when you focus on creating value as Jamie Siminoff ’99 founder of Ring did, it’s a sure way to find out.

It takes more than luck to create a company like Ring or to become President of Babson College.

Congratulations Dr. Spinelli.

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com