Today we had the pleasure of sitting down with Business Owner and Investor Antonia Stephenson II to discuss what it is really like to date an entrepreneur. Immediately Mr. Stephenson starts to chuckle and shakes his head. He says, “I personally think that it’s just the cool thing to do right now because of the illusion of what people think dating entrepreneur really is. They think its cars, clothes, exotic vacations and money all day every day, when the reality is, depending on what stage the person you’re dating is in on their entrepreneur journey, it’s more like a lot work and no play”.
In the more recent years you’ve seen an influx of teenage millionaires driving luxury cars, living in mansions and going on exotic vacations. This may not come as a surprise to many of us that a lot of that just comes from the evolution of technology. If you haven’t seen “The Social Network” before, it’s a movie based on a true story about Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg. During his time in college he created a digital social network to allow people to network from all over the world. Zuckerberg is 36 years old and has a net worth over a billion dollars based on the technology he was able to create while attending college.
Stephenson loves that movie and he loves the story behind Mark Zuckerberg, but he quickly illustrated a point to bring to light what entrepreneurship is all about. “If you recall in the movie, while Zuckerberg’s friends were out partying, he was working on his craft and I think that’s the separator for majority of us up and coming entrepreneurs, even the inspiring entrepreneurs. You have to come to terms with yourself and commit to building your business no matter what and in my personal opinion I think that the discipline it really takes is what stops a lot people my age from actually building a business or stunts their growth.” He goes on to admit, “Listen, I’m no different from any other 27-year-old, when I started my first company I was 23 years old and guess what, I still wanted to party and do all the things that most 23-year old’s want to do”. The separator for him Stephenson says, was the lost death of his father. Stephenson is a navy veteran who lost his dad unexpectedly while out to see onboard USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71). “Losing my dad shook my whole world honestly, it made me realize that time is precious and can’t be taken for granted so you have to spend as much time with loved ones as possible”.
To learn more about Antonia’s journey be sure to follow him on Instagram @TonyStephensonii
