Entrepreneurship Story
My Story
One of the most influential experiences I've had concerning entrepreneurship was when my family would help our family friend, Mr. Evan Keller. Mr. Keller was an entrepreneur working in Haiti, and his goal was to foster business opportunities for local citizens who wanted employment but couldn't find any. He works with Haitians to get them to think about the needs that their community faces and work to solve those problems, focusing on locally driven business, not reliant on outside management. He and his brother ran a tree trimming business in the past (which the brother still runs), and Mr. Keller uses some of the resources he has from that venture to fund ideas and business projects in Haiti, as well as raise support for them in Florida. One event that he hosts is called "Paddle Out Poverty", which is a paddle-boarding and kayak race his organization hosts to raise money for these Haitian entrepreneurs serving their community. My family has helped Mr. Keller run the event a couple of times, and he even sent me a copy of the book he wrote for young entrepreneurs to get my feedback. His dedication to do something more than just extract money from his business really inspired me, and he showed me that even a single person can change their community for the better and inspire others to do the same.
I enrolled in ENT3003 because I thought the subject matter would be interesting. I always think about how I would want to run my own business someday, and I thought that the information available in this course would be useful to that endeavor. I hope that I get a good sense of problem-solving from this class, as well as the confidence to actually create working solutions to the problems and not just think about what might work, not stopping because I think there are better people than me to offer answers.
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteVery well written post! I found the bit about your friend Mr. Keller to be extremely neat and inspiring. It's not everyday that you get to be friends with let alone know of such a kind and hardworking person. It is people like him who truly do make an impact on the world. That's one of the beauties of entrepreneurship- you can make an impact no matter how big or small.
Additionally, I found it very neat how we both enrolled in this class for the same reason. I too have a desire for knowledge, and I crave being able to learn from others and take lessons from their lives.