Very Short Interview Pt.2

I didn't get to post up my first interview with an entrepreneur although I was able to speak to one sometime during the beginning of this course. I was speaking to my old boss who started a skincare company in Sweden, Cicamed, and is now expanding to the U.S. and I mentioned I was taking this class. He didn't go to business school because he was actually a doctor and he owned a clinic where they conducted surgeries such as plastic surgery and did botox as well and this made him then want to develop his own skincare line.

To him however, being an entrepreneur meant seeking a solution to a problem everyone faces and being knowledgeable and passionate about this to the point where you can stick with and manage a company on this solution and profit from it.

Now toward the end of the class, I understand what he means because there is a lot that goes into the process of creating a business or product and sticking to it.

He mentioned that something important I should learn in an entrepreneurship course is finding a gap in a market rather than just a great idea. Looking back I now understand that it can be simple to come up with great ideas, but there needs to be a market for these ideas to be sold to. If there isn't a need for this then your business can fail because after a while people can lose interest in things that aren't necessary to their everyday lives.

Before setting out on his path to become an entrepreneur he wishes he had been taught more on the power of social media to market a product because he still isn't quite sure what people are talking about when it comes to trends on social media. He just hires people to do that but he really wishes he could understand it better himself so he could have more insight on the ideas they pitch.

Because of distance I didn't interview this person directly face to face so I couldn't record it. I interviewed him via email and these were the questions I came up with and his responses.

1. Have you had a time where you’ve felt you’ve made a mistake along the way of carrying out your business and how do you recommend to act in these circumstances?

I don't think anyone has started up a company without making any mistakes along the way. For us, one of them was that the packaging of our product was actually ruining it because it was allowing oxygen into the bottle of our collagen boost masks so a lot of customers complained that when they pumped the product out of the bottle it came out really watery rather than as a cream which is supposed to be how it works. We had to apologize and send them a new bottle of course free of charge because this was our fault in production. Even years after running a company you can make mistakes, the best way to handle them is to just accept it and find a way to do better from it.

2.What do you think is the best marketing strategy nowadays that we live in a digital world to get word of a business out there?

Social media. I wish I knew more about it but I can barely get my daughters to get off their Instagram and Twitter pages long enough to show me. I just know it's what everyone is plugged into today, especially our target audience which starts from the age of  16 who use our acne products.

3. What are some life lessons you have learned along the way of becoming an entrepreneur that can’t be taught in a classroom?

Don't let one mistake or one word of criticism stop you from doing what you're passionate about. You have to learn to get back up and learn from it.

 I definitely felt more comfortable during this interview than the previous because I understood more about what Mikael was talking about when he mentioned profiting off a passion. It sounds fun to create something for others based on what you love but if you don't know enough about the industry and the product then it's easy to fail. I've come far enough in this class that I wasn't afraid to ask a successful entrepreneur about failure because I've learned that everyone comes across it at some point, no matter how successful they are now.