Students and other members of the Brandon University (BU) community learned to welcome, rather than fear, mistakes during a recent Business Administration Speaker Series event.
Adam Morand, a serial entrepreneur and CEO/President of Brandon Fresh Farms, shared his experiences in his talk “1,000 Mistakes: Entrepreneurship, Risk and Failure.”
“Literally the biggest mistake in the world today is trying to avoid mistakes,” Morand said. “You should be running headlong into everything that you possibly can, because it’s the only way to actually have a meaningful life.
“When you make a mistake, it’s an opportunity to learn,” he continues, “and every time you make a mistake it’s a lesson that sticks with you.”
Morand began a remarkable entrepreneurial journey in Vancouver as a key player in the West Coast tech scene boom of the 1980s and ’90s and a pioneer in eSports through online gaming and financial payments systems. He later ventured into agriculture as founder of AgriPlay Ventures and has most recently been working on redevelopment of the former McKenzie Seeds building in Brandon.
“When you make a mistake, it’s an opportunity to learn.”
Adam Morand
A key message in Morand’s talk was to never expect anything to say the same for a very long time, and to embrace change, including the thrill of a new venture.
He also urged the audience to make use of technology, which is bringing opportunities to them like never before.
“When I got my start in Vancouver in the early days it was with a bunch of people from Manitoba. We all left Manitoba to go to Vancouver because of the opportunities there,” he says. “You don’t have to be anywhere specific anymore. You can do everything online. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know is available at your fingertips in a way that wasn’t even imaginable 10 years ago, never mind 20 or 30 years ago.”
Dr. Keith Edmunds, an Assistant Professor in Business Administration at BU, says that Morand’s passion for entrepreneurship is infectious.
“This was a real eye-opener for our students,” Edmunds says. “Many young people today don’t consider entrepreneurship as an option, but Adam’s presentation showed them how rewarding it can be to create their own opportunities.”
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