The entrepreneurship career panel was an amazing opportunity to learn about the working world and what it takes to make your name in the world of business and sales. The panel included six speakers: John Dinkel, the principal of Dinkel Business Development, LLC, Chris Daley, Founder and Principal of Whirlaway, LLC, Elizabeth Trimm, Branch Manager of the largest Enterprise Rent-A-Car in the Baltimore Division, Andrew Murphy, Partner and Owner of Flying Frog Publishing, Andy Brown, Founder and CEO of “Eat Pizza”, and Garrett Pfeifer of Maryland Brand Management. Each of these entrepreneurs had interesting stories and great experience, but for me, the ones that stuck out the most were Elizabeth Trimm, Andrew Murphy, and Andy Brown. I liked listening to Ms. Trimm speak because of her take-charge attitude; she was not ashamed of her talents in sales and I really respected that she could tell stories like one she did about making more than her bosses and managers when she worked as a sales person. Mr. Murphy had a very captivating way of speaking that could easily keep my attention; he mentioned at one point that to run a business connecting all the pieces and people that you need to work with as one is key to success. He also mentioned the importance of finding people you want to do business with to make your business work. Lastly, Mr. Brown was an interesting panelist as he, similar to Trimm, talked about how he just kept outdoing his bosses or coming up with better business plans than them. Brown also spoke on re-crafting your plan as you go; your plan can’t always stay the same and your approach has to change as your business does.
This event speaks well to the focus of our class: making a statement with your product. Of course, for digital publishing, you are working your hardest to make your work stand out and achieve its purpose by making it call out to your audience through proper visuals, text, and layout. In a business you are trying to achieve the similar goal of reaching an audience, but the considerations are more comprehensive as a whole company is being pushed to sell a product. Digital publishing can actually be an enormous part of running and advertising a business, especially with the rise of solely online businesses. As for my career path, which is nursing, there’s not too much I can do to apply entrepreneurship to my work. Yet, outside of my career path, I work for my family’s bar, creating flyers, advertisements, and social media pages. So I do have some involvement in the work of digital creations and this panel helped me to focus my attention better on outreach to the consumer and progressing business plans.
