When you think of 23 years old, what do you think of? College, partying, figuring out your life, debt and recklessness. That’s what immediately comes to my mind when I think about most 23 years old.
As much as our younger generation may be classified under these characteristics, there are exceptions to the rule. Who you may ask?
One young man from Orange County, California is proving to the world that age is just a number.
Meet 23-year old serial entrepreneur, Jeet Banerjee.
You may find out Jeet partying with his friends every now and then, but this 23-year old hustler isn’t any ordinary young man.
In his young career, Jeet has accomplished many things that most dream of doing in a lifetime. He has launched and sold two companies, delivered a TEDx speech, headlined at conferences as a speaker around the world, written a best-selling book and mentored other aspiring entrepreneurs with their startups.
Not only that, but at the young age of 23, Jeet is completely independent financially. In fact, he owns his own house, cars and pays all of his own bills without anyone’s help. He is able to do this because he’s launched a handful of 6 figure businesses over his entrepreneurial career.
According to his family, Jeet is a “natural born entrepreneur.”
At the age of 9, he purchased a book on web design and spent an entire summer learning how to design and develop websites. He ended up launching a website called PowerDunk.com where he shared his favorite basketball moments.
By the age of 13, Jeet began showing the inner-hustle that he had by buying and selling currency from a video game that he and his friends played. He ended up earning a couple thousand dollars doing this while spending just a few hours a month.
When Jeet turned 15, his parents told him that he had to get a job and earn money to participate in leisure activities. After 2 years of working odd jobs, Jeet quickly realized that working for someone else wasn’t for him. This was when a light bulb lit up and he decided to become an entrepreneur and work for himself while still in high school.
“I always had this vision of going to college, getting a corporate job and thinking my life would be great….but I couldn’t even work part-time jobs. That opened my eyes up to the fact that I needed to create some kind of change in my life,” says Jeet.
“Many people including my parents thought I should wait till I got older, but I was never very patient. As soon as I learned about entrepreneurship, I dived right in,” he adds.
With his new found enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, Jeet began using the experience from his part-time jobs to launch a multimedia agency that offered web design, web development, video production, graphic design and online marketing. On his own while attending school, Jeet managed to grow this company to 20 employees and sell it for a profit just two years after launching it.
Once he had his first company under his belt, Jeet launched his next entrepreneurial venture called StatFuse. It was a problem he dealt with when transitioning from high school to college. StatFuse helped high school students with the college admissions process by calculating their odds of admission and analyzing their college applications to better showcase themselves to admission officers.
When asking Jeet about his business role models, he will tell you that he is inspired by visionaries and entrepreneurial geniuses such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs who impacted billions of people with their innovations. Born and raised in a middle-class family, he never had anything given to him. He says that his hard work is the reason why he has been able to come as far as he has today.
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“My family always supported me emotionally by being there for me and believing in me. However, I never got a single penny put into my ventures from family. Every thing that I have achieved through my businesses has been as a result of my work,” said the 23-year old.
“I want my legacy and impact on the word to outlive me,” adds Jeet.
Apart from his talent and ability to build companies from the ground up, Jeet has some other skills that are far beyond those of a typical 23-year old. He was invited to deliver a speech at TEDx, which is one of the biggest speaking platforms in the entire world.
“I had never been so nervous doing a presentation until I saw the magnitude of how large TED really was,” says Jeet.
Jeet very recently sold StatFuse as it got acquired giving him yet another taste of success and reminding him that hard work does truly pay off.
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Entrepreneur Jeet Banerjee Proves Age Is Just A Number
I asked Jeet, “How is it that someone so young can achieve so much?”
As a reply, Jeet gave me the following tips as advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners:
1. There is no substitute for hard work.
Jeet told me that the most important factor to his successes has always been the fact that he was willing to outwork everyone else. He told me that everyone looked for shortcuts while he was willing to try anything and everything regardless of the time involved to make sure he found success.
“When I wasn’t working on my own businesses, I was growing as a person and learning more. I would spend so much time networking, listening to podcasts, reading books and watching other entrepreneurs talk about their grind. Putting in hard work isn’t just on your business, but yourself as well.”
2. There is no better time to start than now.
“When I first started in high school, I was 17 years old and I couldn’t even legally create my own Paypal account. I had to use my parents Paypal account to charge my clients. The point is, I didn’t wait till I was 18 because of that small obstacle. There is no perfect time to start, just do it as soon as you know what you want to do.”
“Everybody has excuses, but if your dream is really that big….nothing will stop you. I began with no money, no experience and I didn’t even have my high school degree at the time. None of those things mattered. The only thing that mattered was that I was willing to go out and take a risk that most others weren’t willing to do.”
3. Chase something bigger than money.
“Many people ask me why I sold my first company just two years in if it was growing so well. The issue for me was that I wasn’t truly passionate about what I was doing. I was in it for the money, it was all about how profitable can I be and how can we make even more money.”
“I quickly learned that money would come no matter what I did. For me, I wanted to do something bigger. I wanted to create change and impact the world in a positive manner. My biggest recommendation to people is to chase their passions. Money is the most illusive object on the world when chased. If you don’t chase it though, it’ll come to you.”
4. Surround yourself with the right people.
“A lot of my success as an entrepreneur came when I decided to network and meet tons of other young entrepreneurs on a similar journey as me. Seeing them go through the same struggles I was and being able to relate my problems to them was huge. It not only gave me motivation, but it gave me the courage to continue when things got tough.”
“It’s not always easy to find people interested in the same things as you, but with the right amount of time and effort….you can get yourself inducted into different communities. Surround yourself with people that will motivate you, help you and support you as you tackle the challenges of entrepreneurship.”
For a young serial entrepreneur who has already achieved success that most others chase for their entire lives, he says this is just the beginning. He says comfort and change don’t go together and that he’ll never be comfortable until he’s able to impact millions of people with his work.
He shows that hard work, passion and massive action are just a few things you need to change the world.
For the rest of us, the story of Jeet Banerjee is just a reminder that age is just a number and anyone can achieve anything that they want.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi