Foundr Magazine Podcast | Learn From Successful Founders & Proven Entrepreneurs, The Ultimate Startup Podcast For Business

At 18, Gerard Adams dropped out of college after one semester. That semester was all it took to confirm what Adams knew all along. Like all entrepreneurs, he just wasn't built to follow the rules. The idea of getting a degree, to eventually get a job, to eventually retire, wasn't going to be the life for him. "That's when I made the decision to ... really put the pressure on myself to learn how to build businesses on my own," Adams says. While most people would go out and look for mentors by joining a community of some sort, Adams brought the community to him. In order to pursue his interest in investing and stocks, Adams built an online community for stock traders and investors, growing it to more than 10,000 active voices, and allowing him to learn from the best of the best. From there, he had his share of wins and losses, from getting a job where he helped build a company to 18,000 shareholders, to having the product demonstration fail in a live demonstration. He then built his own marketing agency and sta