PraktikTess

My mentor wasn´t here today either, but luckily I had the chance to sit down with the founder of this company, which was even better! I was told that if there is anyone who knows what it means to be an entrepreneur, it´s him! He described his current project which is a book about entrepreneurship and he already has a great contact with an author who will help him. He went on by describing his idea for the book. It was fun because he mentioned a lot of facts as well as tips to use in the business world.

I then asked him about his opinion of which attributes you should have as an entrepreneur. I would say that this was the best part of my internship so far because I learned things which are going to come in handy someday.

First of all I´m going to tell you about the worst thing in an entrepreneur and what you should not do if you want to succeed. So what I´m about to describe is the characteristics, that the boss of this company, think that people should avoid if they want to succeed.

The “I want to become rich” attitude does not work. You shouldn´t concentrate on numbers, instead you have to do what you do and you do it well! The next thing he tried to explain is that you shouldn´t be an excel-nerd. To explain this further, he told me about the terrible entrepreneurs he has met who lay all their time on changing the numbers in the budget, but that doesn´t save the company! They forget about the important thing which is to change the actual process in the company to reach the new numbers. And then what the world doesn´t need is yet another “Gyro Gearloose”, you know the person who has come up with a project he/she loves. You might wonder what´s wrong with that, and I’m telling you that this person is satisfied with his/her product and doesn´t care what the customers say. In his world the main thing is his product and not the customers´ request. This doesn´t work because in the end everything revolves around marketing and selling to the customers.

What many people forget is that you shouldn´t be too credulous and naive as an entrepreneur. Then you risk being fooled and stabbed in the back. And maybe the most important thing of all is to never sit down in your office and speculate and hope that everything will work out. Entrepreneurs are doers, not slackers. You have to get out there and propagate your brand, develop, improve and do something!

And now to the good entrepreneurs who are everything this person is not. They are passionate about their job and enjoy building, improving and developing because they are creative. They think outside the box. In the founder’s opinion, one of the most important attributes is being stubborn. A stubborn person gets what he/she wants in one way or another. You can probably see how that would be a preamplifier when you run a company. An entrepreneur has to have a huge drive and ability to make the initiative necessary in order to carry out his/her visions, without giving up.

The next important thing is to be positive. There will always happen things to a company and there will always be obstacles, but you have to be able to handle these complications. One way to handle stress and become more optimistic is by concentrating on the solution and not the problem. It´s also good to disconnect your mind from the job when you come home.

A great thing is to be “street smart”, meaning that you should be creative and come up with new solutions. You can always negotiate so that you can get a better deal, which is necessary for a company. Then you should also have a lot of energy, determination, a big social network, be flexible and always focus on the customers.