This Young Intern Is Light Years Ahead of Some Older Entrepr…

I wanted to find out where Newman’s passion and drive came from and what advice he had for young entrepreneurs moving forward. After talking with him, here are the three things I learned:

1. He learned from his refugee-parents how to deliver more for less. TAMID Tank may have been his most recent success, but Newman learned to “get sh*t done” well before he arrived at USC, drawing inspiration from his parents, who escaped from Iran during its 1979 revolution, with no money, no English language skills and no family in the United States. That didn’t stop either of them from learning English and studying to become, respectively, a pharmacist and an optometrist.

Seeing his parents succeed against such odds had a huge effect on their son’s desire to push himself to success, he told me. He considered working as a tutor for about $15 an hour but realized he could start a tutoring company himself, call himself the founder and charge twice as much for the same services.

Although he didn’t intend for that venture — TutorYou Beverly Hills — to outgrow his own reach, before long, other seniors started asking him to hire them. With more employees came more demand; just like that, he had a real business. “I learned two huge lessons in that experience,” Daniel said. “First, deliver more, and you’ll slowly gain market share. Second, execute an idea shortly after it comes — move fast while you’re still inspired.”

Related: 7 Reasons to Start a Business While in College

2. He quickly seizes (and maximizes) every opportunity. With those philosophies in mind, Daniel and his best friend quickly developed another company. They’d noticed a barrier to entry for people who wanted to use geofilters on Snapchat but weren’t graphic designers; so the pair decided to help small businesses reach their younger targets on Snapchat’s platform. Drawing inspiration from the success of TutorYou Beverly Hills, Daniel and his partner planned and launched Geocasion almost overnight.

One obvious thing about him is that Daniel has never taken his smarts for granted. People hard-wired for entrepreneurship can be overconfident. And when they believe they’re smarter and more equipped for success than others, they may find it hard to know how much more they need to learn.

Not Daniel. In fact he’s taken several internships to make the connections and fill the knowledge gaps he sees in himself. That’s where I met him: in his role as a business development intern.

Eventually, our company, thanks to his diligence, promoted Daniel to my point person, allowing him, among other things, to develop proposals, referral agreements and service agreements for onboarding clients and driving revenue. These are rare and valuable opportunities for an intern and aspiring young entrepreneur. And he was grateful: Aside from learning the ins and outs of marketing, Daniel credited his time with us for helping him get Geocasion off the ground.

“I increased my marketing knowledge tenfold within weeks, which gave me the foundation to launch this company in the first place,” he told us. “Without that experience, I might never have seen the gap that existed between small businesses and Snapchat’s geofilters — and Geocasion wouldn’t have existed at all.”