3A - Your Entrepreneurship Story

Had I been asked six months ago if I personally knew any entrepreneurs, I would probably think for a moment before saying I didn’t think so. However, within just a few weeks of this course I realized that I would have answered that way because when I heard the word “entrepreneur” I immediately think of the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffets of the world, when I should be thinking more of the Ronnie Patels of the world. When I think of the people I know who did things like Ronnie, the list is much longer.

I haven’t dappled much personally in entrepreneurship, but I can think of a few instances. In high school, a group of friends and I wanted to raise money for the International Baccalaureate program we were in, since it was the first year it was established at my high school. To do so, we designed T-shirts, then redesigned them, then redesigned them again to make sure they were good. After, we went around to all the classrooms of IB students and pitched our T-shirt design to the students and teachers, available with whatever your graduation year was, along with the purpose of our endeavors. We were able to get a very good price on them because of buying in bulk, and afterwards had over $400 of “profit” to give back to the IB program. Although it was a very short venture, it was the first steps of entrepreneurial behavior.

I also know a few entrepreneurs in my personal life. My grandmother was an entrepreneur, as she opened and owned a very successful restaurant in Greenville, South Carolina in the 1950’s. She has long since been out of the restaurant business, but she often told stories of the long hours involved and the stress that came from having to be the boss of a staff of people at such a young age and with such little experience. I imagine her struggles would be very similar to that of Ronnie Patel, as he said, you basically have to be married to your business, with little time for anything else. Of course, as a wife and mother of three, that would have been hard for my grandmother.

I also have a friend from home who started his own lawn care business when he was 12. This seems like a difficult feat in itself, and almost just a joke, but it becomes more impressive when you throw in that he is also disabled, suffering from Cerebral Palsy that greatly affects his mobility. Despite everything, he is 20 years old now and serves many of the homes in his area and makes a great income. I have seen his struggles firsthand from spending a great deal of time with him, and one of the hardest parts about his business is finding reliable employees. There is definitely a high degree of persuasion required to convince someone to work 40 hours a week in the unbearable Florida sun for $15-$17 an hour. However, he continues on, and finds help from his friends when he is in a bind with his actual staff. He moves forward, continuing to upgrade his business, and he just recently implemented credit card billing to his patrons. Now they have an option of enrolling in an automatic payment program, so they pay their monthly bill for their lawn care on the first of the month, and it just comes directly out of their accounts. This is much more beneficial for my friend because he had previously been receiving handwritten checks from his customers, some of which he had to all but chase down to get them to pay every month. In addition, he no longer will have to worry about checks bouncing from his customers that enroll in the credit card program.

Ultimately, I enrolled in ENT3003 because it fulfills a major requirement, but I do hope to get a lot of beneficial information from this class. I think that the principles learned in this class can be useful even to someone who is not planning to start their own business, because the qualities that entrepreneurs have are good qualities for any businessman or woman.

https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/01/27/18/business-mentor-are-you-ready-to-become-an-entrepreneur