Choose Your Fellow: Evan Horvath
Meet Evan Horvath, 2022 VFC and RBC Fellow. He is currently working as a Sales Executive at Ratio, a company that helps small business become bigger businesses.
What does being a Lifelong Learner mean to you?
I think the biggest thing about being a Lifelong Learner is that we’re leading with curiosity.
Whenever you’re going into a new interaction, you’re not going into it presenting your ideas, but you’re going into it trying to take in other ideas. Whatever you’re doing, you’re staying curious and engaged.
As a Lifelong Learner, what are things that you engage with to keep you inspired and motivated?
A lot of inspiration comes from hearing other people’s stories. I just finished Nelson Mandela’s book, and am now starting one of Martin Luther King’s books. I find inspiration from people who are inspiring in completely different ways, and podcasts about successful people.
I find a lot of my motivation from being interested in things. It comes naturally if that makes sense. Of course, there are definitely days when you don’t feel as curious. But then that’s an opportunity to relax when you need it so that when you are feeling better, you have the opportunity to take it all in.
What’s one piece of advice you would leave for someone trying to step into becoming a Lifelong Learner?
My biggest piece of advice would be to remain open and don’t go into situations with an expectation or an answer to the question. Go into it by listening and understanding what the other person is trying to say. If you come in with your own preconceived notion of what the idea should be, or what the answer should be, you will have a bias when you’re trying to interpret what they’re saying.
Listen to learn, don’t listen to respond.
How do Lifelong Learners thrive in entrepreneurship?
This is something that I’ve had to find out for myself and I’m still figuring it out. But a big part would be finding something that is inspiring, or finding something that gives you excitement about learning. You can try to be interested in everything, but it’s inevitable that you’re going to have things that you prefer over others.
Figure out what motivates you. It doesn’t even have to be what your company or association is trying to achieve, but it could be your own interest in the process. Finding something that you want to learn about will get you more engaged and more prepared to learn in the entrepreneurship space.
