Hello worldwideweb,
The-Upstart is about business and entrepreneurship, but more importantly its about inspiring you to start your own business, continue working on your business or become better at business.
I will do my best in sharing some of my biggest mistakes and successes so far on my journey to becoming a successfull entrepreneur. Hopefully you will find the information in this blog helpful and will help you on your journey.
At the time of writing these word I have been an entrepreneur for nearly 3 years. As Steve jobs says in his inspirational reflection on life at Stanford University (2005)as part of his Commencement Address; “It´s much easier joining the dots looking back.”
After graduating from Brunel University 2006 I was very happy when I got my first “propper” job as a branding strategist at Figtree in London (UK). At Figtree I was able to live out my ambition at the time, which was to work as a brand strategist with world leading brands. The joy did not last long. At the end of January 2007 I was fired. The message from my boss was;”Erlend, this is not really working out. If you want to be an egghead you should go back to university and become a professor, but to be honest with you i think you´re meant to be an entrepreneur.”At the time it was the biggest blow I had ever felt. It was as if I had been knocked out by Mike Tyson.
Many bottles of beer, a bottle of Whisky and a terrible hangover I started to come to my senses. You see i was living in a much to expencive flat (with my girlfriend at the time) and was desperate for a payslip. I didn´t really have much time to be depressed so I started to think back at what I REALLY had wanted to do from the get-go.
I was never the best at school and always used to draw non-stop. The first time I can recollect thinking about entrepreneurship was when i was 16. I was drawing some furniture that I really wanted and thought;” somebody should really make that!”. My family is full of the academic type, studious lawyers, engineers and the likes. In many resects I was never really told that you “can” choose to become an entrepreneur. It had never crossed my mind that it was possible or even allowed to do things that way.
By going even further back in my life I got my first job at a lokal cornershop when I was 14. Not because I had to, I wanted to make and have my own money. If i go even further back in my life I had always enjoyed building things. According to my mum i would frantically draw lots and lots when i was very young. The reason I´m telling you all this is so that you can try to think back on your life and see if there are things that you used to do that indicated that you really “fit” to be an entrepreneur. Anything from really enjoying selling lemon juice in your driveway, or charging money to rent out your toys. Of course its much easier to join the dots looking back. The-Upstart will try to share some of the dots I will be joining in the future.
This is work in progress and this article will change over time, but the story is the same just better 🙂