Alex Dunn, a managing partner of the Larry H Miller company, provided his time and insight to students on Sept. 19th and shares his personal experience in the world of entrepreneurship.
He started out as an entrepreneur in Boston, starting a company and moving onto the next. During his lecture, Dunn expressed his passion for building, and he had many opportunities to practice and improve upon those skills throughout his career. At one point he was the chief of staff for Mit Romney when Romney was running for governor. Romney suggested to Dunn that he instead buy companies instead of starting them. Dunn took his advice, and eventually purchased fifty percent of a company called Apex Alarms for twenty million dollars.
The company, later known as Vivint, grew drastically in size under Dunn’s management and eventually had a worth of twelve billion dollars in enterprise value. After his success, Dunn took a break from the business world and moved to Puerto Rico with his family, as he had good memories of the country, and he wanted his children to have a similar experience while they were there.
At some point, the Larry H Miller company contacted Dunn and asked for his help Dunn and asked for his help in rebuilding their car dealership. The company had been doing well and after selling off some of their assets, they decided that they wanted to rebuild the dealership business and wanted Dunn’s help in doing it. After contemplating the idea for a time, Dunn accepted. Since his involvement with Larry H Miller, Dunn has diversified the company’s portfolio by purchasing majority shares of several businesses, one of which is Swig, a company he is now the CEO of.
The main takeaways Dunn had for his lecture was the importance of strengthening your strengths, knowing what those strengths are, and valuing yourself and your strengths as you progress through your career. Dunn also highlighted the idea that actions are rewarded, and that many people try to begin with the end in mind, but often stop short of doing it because of fear.
Not everyone knows exactly what they’re doing all the time and Dunn stressed the importance of just showing up, and just beginning the work to further your career. One of the questions he was asked was if college was worth it, and to that he answered yes, if you learned something from it.
Dunn’s lecture about his success as an entrepreneur taught students the importance of valuing yourself, and the power of their strengths, and that those strengths can make you valuable in your chosen field.
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