My first exposure to entrepreneurship was with my father’s handyman business. I used to work with him painting houses, fixing toilets, etc. and would constantly hear him talk about projects he was doing or his customers and would see him filling out excel spreadsheets when he got home in the evenings. My mom would constantly talk to him about how he should grow his business by advertising and managing other handymen he hired but nothing seemed to happen. As I grew older I wanted to know how the aspects of his business worked, and when I started taking my business classes in college, I began to think of how I would go about growing his business. I started suggesting ideas and calling other handymen to see how they grew and overcame challenges in their businesses. I thought that the firsthand experience would be valuable to my future career as well. As I came to understand the obstacles he was facing, I realized how little I knew about actually running a business.
Then came my summer internship. I flew to China and worked with Andy Zhang, the founder of a startup called TCK Edtech. By the time I arrived he already had an idea, a network, and money from an investor to work with. I worked harder and longer than I ever had before doing the tasks that he assigned to me which included product development, hiring, presenting to clients/investors, product testing, and rapid integration of what we learned. I was constantly observing and reflecting on all the different tasks, thinking about how I could replicate the process when I got back to the States to help my father grow his business or to start a business myself one day.
After that experience I knew I had to take an entrepreneurship class. I wanted to learn the process my boss was using during my summer internship and to see how my boss got to the point he was at- to know the theory behind his actions, and to use my China internship experience as an example but not necessarily a guideline for future entrepreneurial ventures I engage in. Furthermore, I decided to take the class to get more examples of everyday entrepreneurship and to force myself to engage in the entrepreneurial process so that if I ever have a good enough idea to base a business on, I will be ready to go off into the world as an educated explorer.
