Today’s Mass Comm Week exploration involved entrepreneurial thinking, presented by Chris Perez , CEO at Left/Right Media. Trained as an electrical engineer, his passions for business led him to form the mobile application CityGram, a kind of “city guide in your pocket” for Austin. He expressed his and his team’s hopes to expand the app to other cities in the future, such as San Francisco and the like.
I found his expression of entrepreneurship as a mindset to be very interesting. I have had small entrepreneurial experiments in the past, one even having to do with building apps for small businesses! For the app experience, that mindset was more one of sales than entrepreneurship, but the idea of self-confidence was still very much required.
I believe being an entrepreneur also takes thick skin, since you’ll need it to protect your pride! A friend of mine regularly uses one of Chris’ tips to “reach out to someone you admire”, but in her case she believes she is entitled to top dollar for her work. Sadly, her eagerness to not conform to career expectations, expectation of top-dollar compensation and lacking work ethic alienates potential clients. In this case she’s overly confident.
Though perhaps her behavior aligns with Chris’ quote to “fail often”, but I wonder if it aligns with the “fail forward” portion, since she’s still acting that way. I sincerely hope, in all my endeavors, that I haven’t acted snobbish and that hopefully I’ve gone forward all of the time.
For more advice, blogger Samar Owais offers 53 Common Freelancing Mistakes.