Meet Inc.’s new editor in chief.
Hi. I’m Scott Omelianuk. Or, as most people call me—my last name being hard to spell and pronounce—Scott O. I’m the new editor in chief of Inc., and I’m honored and, to be honest, a bit surprised to be talking with you right now.
You see, being here is kind of ironic, coming, as I do, from a long line of failed entrepreneurs. On one side of the family, there were the relatives who treated business like an outlaw hobby. Keep books? Pay taxes? Why do that, they’d scoff—right up until the IRS came knocking. It’s a wonder none of them starred in the calamities featured in “Adventures in Entrepreneurship,” which you can find on page 56.
On the other side were the relatives whose wholesome hobbies could have been businesses—for example, my grandfather, who, decades ago, wrote software for large companies but gave it away because he’d taught himself to code and thought it was a kick.
With those role models, it’s no wonder I’m an underachieving entrepreneur myself, with a couple of broken businesses behind me, too.
You know that line “Those who can’t, teach?” Yup, I’ve taught at university. Fortunately, and unlike my forefolk, I think I understood and passed on some valuable lessons, ones I suspect you might be familiar with. How hard it is, for example, to persuade people to look at—let alone truly see—your idea. How your ego gets more bruised than your nose when someone slams a door in your face. How much of a real burden it is to ask your family, a family that’s counting on you to be a breadwinner, to go along for the ride not knowing where it will end or even if the wheels will come off at some point.
There are a lot of ways that running a business can run you ragged. And, yet, so many of you do it. That’s inspiring, really. You’ve built something, made a living, changed lives (see, for example, our cover story on Chip and Joanna Gaines, on page 46), and conquered, perhaps, the Inc. 5000. Or perhaps you haven’t—just yet. But you will.
And Inc.—the magazine, the website, the events—will be right there with you on your journey, offering the inspiration, the information, the tools, and the solutions that will help you succeed better and faster to ensure that you not only keep the wheels on but grow wings, too.
Which brings me to one last thing. The most important lesson I learned as an entrepreneur is that you can never be too close to your customer—a position, by the way, you’ll see play a crucial role in our story on the cloud backup company Backblaze on page 70. Your customers can teach you more than you can ever offer them.
So, in the spirit of teaching and learning, I’d love to know your story, what you’re thinking, what you know. It’ll be good to connect, and I bet a lot of what we talk about would be worth sharing with the whole Inc. community.
You can drop me a note, at ScottO@inc.com, or find me on LinkedIn or Twitter, or in our forums for solopreneurs (inc.com/solopreneurs) and Inc. Masters (inc.com/incmasters). I know from my own experience that being an entrepreneur can often seem like a lonely undertaking. But at Inc., you’re among, if not family, certainly friends.
Scott Omelianuk scotto@inc.com