Ben Buie Eating Icecream

Ben Buie

Dream Big

benbuie | 6/4/14

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite things to do is to watch video podcasts. Some people watch the nightly news on TV, I watch it on my phone. It is not only more convenient, but I can also watch it at 2x the speed and get twice the information in the same amount of time. The podcasts I subscribe to currently are TED Talks, Anderson Cooper 360, NBC Nightly News, General Conference SD, and Flatirons Community Church.

A couple days ago I was watching the TED feed and saw a video that surprised me (watch below). It was Sting talking about his life, mostly from his childhood. He talked about how he set a goal at a very young age and worked towards it. His story inspired me to keep pushing towards my own goals.

Sting’s story brought to mind an experience from my own life. . .

When I lived in Kansas almost 5 years ago I started talking to my wife about how I wanted to open a co-working space. I figured there were other entrepreneurs like me who couldn’t afford their own office, but could pool together to do so. I also wanted the sense of community that a co-working space could bring. I toyed around with this idea for a while wondering if this would be my next business. It was about this time that the idea for HappyFreebie.com came to me, the most fun place to discover new products online. With that, I promtply forgot about the co-working space and spent the next 3 years building a website.

Fast forward 3.5 years, HappyFreebie had failed and I was deep in the middle of launching Spark Boulder, the first space for student startups in Colorado. Spark was never supposed to be a co-working space, but because of our funding circumstances it morphed into one. On February 21st, 2104, Spark had its grand opening party. It was awesome to see the community come together to celebrate this new resource for students. At about that time I was standing in Spark and it hit me that I had done what I had wanted to do clear back in Kansas, I had opened a co-working space. The crazy thing is that I didn’t even realize it!

I’ve learned that we can achieve anything we put our mind to, if we just believe and work like it is possible.

Take a minute to hear Sting’s story, it may just inspire you to do something great.

About the Author

Ben currently works as a contract web developer and business consultant in Boulder, Colorado.

His passion for entrepreneurship led him to study business and learn to code. Although he never anticipated working on the web, Ben has spent the past 9 years learning everything he could about building and operating websites and web assets.

When not at work, Ben spends a lot of his time with family. He is married to a “beautiful” woman and they are raising 4 energetic boys. In his spare time he loves keeping up with technology, playing guitar, eating Sweet Cow ice cream, and painting (although he has very little time for painting these days). Other than that, Ben is a supporter of freedom and liberty, a fluent speaker of Russian, and he tries to be a humble follower of Jesus.

Read more about Ben.

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