Like many successful entrepreneurs, the career of Justin Halladay didn't necessarily begin with some singular grand event or life altering moment. It wasn't the product of a so-called "hero's journey" the way some people on the outside assume it to be. Instead, the kernel that would become an incredibly prosperous professional career began with a simple idea:
Halladay simply wanted to synthesize his skills and interests, allowing the latter to inform the former in a way that leveraged all facets of his life to his advantage.
During the first half of his career, Justin Halladay devoted himself to climbing the corporate ladder. Over the following 15 years, he gained experience in a wide range of different fields including business development in the educational space, what it takes to put together sales and support teams that operate on a national scale, and more. He worked for both smaller organizations and massive global corporations. His efforts took him to Pennsylvania, Colorado, New York and beyond. Before moving to Jacksonville Beach, he even spent six years putting time in for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in the World Trade Center in Manhattan.
Flash forward to today and Justin Halladay has built the type of inspirational career that most people aspire to have. Since graduation, he has found himself in general IT, customer support, sales, education, software development, and more. Getting to his current position has certainly required a great deal of time and energy, but it's also paid off in more ways than one by allowing him to become the tech entrepreneur and philanthropist that he always assumed he would be.
Justin Halladay's Advice to New Entrepreneurs Everywhere
By this point, Justin Halladay has enjoyed a long and lucrative career - and that's something that he wants to help as many other people as possible achieve, too. While he was able to accomplish a great deal through hard work and perseverance, he didn't get to his current position in a vacuum. He had a network of colleagues and mentors who offered him sage advice along the way, and now he sees it as his duty to do the same for those around him.
Halladay has always been one for self-reflection, saying in a recent interview that he has always been fortunate enough to have "worked with some really exceptional and amazing people." They helped him become who he currently is, which is why giving back is of paramount importance to him.
Regardless of the type of business you hope to one day be running or even the industry that it is operating in, Justin Halladay said that one of the things that helped him achieve success involved going out of his way to surround himself with those who were much, much smarter than he was. This was true at every stage of his early career. The smarter the people are around you, the more you're able to learn from them. The more you begin to emulate them. He would observe each individual's best qualities and then work to incorporate them not just into his business life, but into his personal one as well.
Another piece of advice Halladay gives to budding entrepreneurs is to not get discouraged, especially in the beginning. This is especially true when making connections and trying to expand your network. Successful people are busy people and not everyone has the time to mentor you - but that's perfectly okay, because somewhere along the way you'll find the person who can and the connection you'll be able to forge will be much stronger because of it.
Even going beyond the fact that mentoring other entrepreneurs and giving back is "the right thing to do," Halladay believes that there are other essential reasons for it, too. As this type of reciprocal flow is created, it in turn helps to develop a critical and "self-sustaining business ecosystem." The value of the relationship between a mentor and a mentee becomes clearly defined and everyone gets to a position where they can not only help themselves, but one another as well.
For Justin Halladay, the process involves first learning something new, then mastering whatever that thing happens to be, then going out into the world and teaching other people to do that thing in the most efficient way possible.
Learn. Master. Teach. It's a mentality that has gotten him far to this point and it's also one that shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
The Future of Technology is Here
But for as much as Justin Halladay has been able to learn over the course of his career, he isn't necessarily one to spend time looking backwards. Instead, he chooses to keep one eye fixed on the horizon - he's much more interested in those developments that will change the world that may only now be in their nascent stages, particularly when it comes to technology.
Case in point: the implications of the Metaverse. This is a term that has been bandied about a lot in the last few years, particularly when it comes to things like social media. In the simplest possible terms, the Metaverse is a term describing a virtual space built on state-of-the-art technology where people can not only shop and socialize but can also work, play and more. In essence, people can interact with one another the same way they could in real-life, only they're doing it via technologies like virtual and augmented reality.
Imagine a shopping mall that had everything you could ever want in it - all your favorite stores, a place where you could go to spend time with friends and family members, many attractions that supported your hobbies, etc. Even your job was there. The Metaverse is a lot like that in theory only instead of being "real," it's entirely virtual.
For Justin Halladay, the implications of this are truly enormous - particularly when it comes to real estate. Because the Metaverse is built to support both social and commercial activities, savvy entrepreneurs like Halladay are already in the process of buying up virtual land. As more and more people embrace the hardware and software required for the Metaverse, the value of that land is only going to go up. In a way, it's already happening - real estate sales in the Metaverse already amounted to more than $500 million in 2021 and are expected to nearly double by the end of 2022.
For Halladay, another interesting implication has to do with how the value of virtual land is determined. In reality, land is valued in large part based on location. In the Metaverse, it will be valued based on what the owner chooses to do with it. This, too, represents an exciting opportunity that Halladay and other entrepreneurs are excited to take advantage of.
In the end, Justin Halladay can truly serve as a lesson for people everywhere. He didn't become an entrepreneur because he had "one great idea that was sure to be a hit," he had many. He had passions that he wanted to explore and ideas that he wanted to bring to life and, slowly but surely, he built a network of colleagues and mentors who were able to help make them a reality.
But he was also always on the lookout for opportunities that existed within that which he was already excited about. From his first tech-related position in the World Trade Center all those years ago, Halladay knew that IT was a legitimate source of joy in his life. Based on that, he was always on the lookout for not just what was "hot" right now, but what was right around the corner that would really inspire people and make them enthusiastic.
Once he realized how important that simple idea truly was, there was no limit to what he was able to accomplish in both his personal and his professional lives.
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of techtimes.com
