Young entrepreneur Nathan Ruff's advice: 'Go and do it'

Nathan Ruff began watering plants for several Bellevue neighbors at 12, his first foray into developing a business. At 14 he began re-gripping golf clubs, asking those on Nashville golf courses if they needed an upgrade, and telling them why they did. At 16 he began selling T-shirts online before becoming a salesman at Carnival Kia. At 20 Ruff runs a Web design and branding business, OneNine, that includes five contractors and generates six figures in annual revenue.

With an early start in the business world, Ruff offered the following takeaways for other aspiring entrepreneurs:

College isn’t for everyone

It wasn’t lost on Ruff that Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors were all college dropouts. Although he recognized the value of higher education, he felt he could build his own business career regardless of his credentials. He enrolled at Nashville State Community College, while working at Kia and obtaining a real estate license, but he left after three semesters to focus on his Web-design company.

“The key to success is just hard work and hustle. It’s providing value, it's working very hard,” he said. “It’s not a piece of paper, if you are going to run your own show."

Failure happens

While taking real estate courses, Ruff saw a need for better website branding for real estate agents. He began offering Web design services to Realtors, just as Zillow was offering websites for realtors for $10 a month. He had invested money and time into developing that business, but the realty direction ultimately collapsed. Rather than thinking about creating sites en masse, he began focusing on building custom sites.

“Now I understand branding,” he said. “The first year was just a big failure.”

Find a niche in need

When Ruff was building OneNine, Nashville Armory reached out based on a referral. After building Nashville Armory's website, Ruff researched other gun-related businesses and saw that many lacked websites or had sites in need of improvement. He began reaching out to other gun businesses about changes coming to Web search algorithms, and three businesses eventually became clients.

'Go and do it'

For those who want to be an entrepreneur, become one, Ruff says. Focus on getting clients first, before getting caught in legal structures or crafting a perfect business model.

"Go and do it," he said. "That's how you learn."

Reach Jamie McGee at 615-259-8071 and on Twitter @JamieMcGee.