From attending the Entrepreneurship Career Panel I gained a lot of insight on how much hard work it takes to build your own brand. This career panel included John Dinkel who is the principal of Dinkel Business Development LLC, Chris Daley who is the founder and principal of Whirlaway LLC, Andrew Murphywho is partner and owner ofFlying
Frog Publishing, Elizabeth Trimm who is branch manager at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Andy Brown who is founder and CEO of Eat Pizza, and Garrett Pfeifer who inherited his fathers business Maryland Brand Management. All of these entrepreneurs have built their own brands from the ground up and each told a significant story of how they got into entrepreneurship. Many of thir stories included timing in life and knowing that they could do so much more than their bosses. The one that stood out to me the most was Garrett Pfeifer who inherited the family business from his father. Maryland Brand Management is a company that creates designs for clothing like shirts, hats, leggings, and polo’s He told the story of how his father started the business, he would go to every Ravens game and would sell shirts during the tailgates doing his best to make money and get the brand out while. His friends would always tell him to give up and just enjoy the tailgate with them but his father pushed through and followed his dream. This is where Garrett got his inspiration, his father told him that if he continued to sell shirts for $1 it would only take selling 1,000,000 shirts to make $1,000,000 dollars. Along with telling their stories they each gave the audience three words of advice. The words of advice they gave included:
- build networks early
- prepare to work hard and be humble
- know your strengths & weaknesses
- learn and understand sales
- understand what you are willing to give up to get what you want
- know your “why” and your passion
- set goals early
- don’t let anyone get in your way
- get lots of input but be ready to ignore it
All of the advice and input they gave really made an impact on my thoughts of entrepreneurship and how much work it truly takes to get where you want to be.
This event really connected to our course because in digital publishing it is all about how you design and portray the point you are trying to get across. These entrepreneurs had to build their own brand and image from the ground up. By interacting with people and selling their company is all about the way they come off the and connection they make with their customers which is exactly what needs to be done in digital publishing. Not only did the career panel connect to class but it also connect to my future career goals. This panel really taught me how to prepare myself and set myself up for success but also potential failure. I want to become a Web Designer for a company where I can create and update their website content and design. By taking the different advice from the panelist I can set myself up to be able to attain my career goals in the best way.