Very Short Interview No 1

For this assignment, I chose to interview a friend of a friend. I met Molly at a small gathering at a friend's house a couple of years ago. Molly started her graphic design company in 2004 out of her apartment bedroom when she was 20 years old. She decided that she did not want to work for anybody else and ventured out as an independent designer. Her company has skyrocketed and she now has about fifty employees and an office in Chicago. She worked tirelessly by herself for years to get where she is today. She is the definition of an entrepreneur. Anyways, for the interview, I asked her the following questions:

1. What does it mean to be an entrepreneur? "Being an entrepreneur means being a fighter. Every day, I wake up to a new challenge. There's always something going wrong or something I have to fix and it's very overwhelming at times. But I'm a fighter and I don't give up. We work through our problems as a team and take everything one day at a time. Life is nothing without it's challenges. So, to me, it means being a fighter."
2. What do you think I should learn in an entrepreneurship course? "Perseverance, business propaganda, how to make connections and network, leadership abilities. There are just so many things you should learn, but a lot of them you have to learn on your own. But those are just a few of the things that I would think would be very useful in your class."
3. What do you wish you had been taught in school before setting out on your own path as an entrepreneur? "How to run a business. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I first started. There was so much that I didn't know. I mean, I didn't even know how to interview someone. Like what questions are you supposed to ask? Or how to take loans out at the bank or how to get permits for my building. There's so much. So I wish there would've been a course that taught me all of the things that go into opening and running a business."

 In conclusion, I learned a lot from this interview. It surprised me that you have to have permits for your building and business. I had no idea that that was even a thing. I thought you only needed those if you sell alcohol. I also learned a lot about all of the things that go into starting up a company. It doesn't just take money, it takes experience, someone with connections, etc. to get a company up and going. And even after you do all of that, you still have to keep going and keep bringing in clients. There's so much work that goes into it, but it definitely has it's rewards at the end of the day. It takes a special person to be a true entrepreneur.