Touching Entrepreneurship Story
So – I have been in business for a month now and one thing I have noticed is the lack of detachment because it is mine. Running a budget for a large corporation is very different from running your own budget from your own pocket. Doing a project on behalf of someone else’s brand is different from doing it in your own name. Your heart is more in it.
I read this great story in the book How She Does It and thought it was inspirational for entrepreneurs. It is a story about entrepreneur Andre Guglielmo who was raised by deaf-mute grandparents and upon seeing the high unemployment rate in the deaf community (80%) she decided to start the marketing company Diversity Partners. It ended up to be the first for-profit corporation in America for people with disabilities. Here is the story* of her first deal:
In 1996, I got a meeting with American Express, and I knew nothing about walking into corporate America. And I went into my closet: No business clothes. And I had a babysitter coming and you know what that’s like – of course, the babysitter never showed up. So I got myself together in a mismatching outfit with a two-year-old in tow. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life. Ten men, with a two-year-old, wearing not exactly a New York City business outfit.
My two-year-old was going in and out of the table until this one man put the two-year-old in his lap and gave him a yellow pad; the kid scribbled through the rest of my presentation. If I met that man today, I’d buy him a steak dinner. I was able to get the first big sale for my company. It was for $20,000 worth of mouse pads. I didn’t even know what a mouse pad was and kept wondering why Amex had such trouble with mice. But I just said yes. I’d figure it out. Nowadays we get sales of $2 million, but that one was so important.
*P 134-135 How She Does it | Margaret Heffernan
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