13A Reading Reflection No. 1

1) You read about an entrepreneur:

The entrepreneur that I read about was Ray Kroc in his book "Grinding it Out: The Making of McDonald's."  This was an interesting read, but most interestingly, Kroc's success didn't occur until he was older, at 52 years old.  This is when he met the McDonald's brothers and they began to form a business.   Although Kroc tended to make hasty decisions and took risks, what made him successful and admirable was that he didn't let failure scare him or get him down.

2) What competencies did you notice that the entrepreneur exhibited? 

Kroc was a risk-taker who didn't succumb to the fear of failure.  He had a tremendous work ethic which is necessary in an entrepreneur, and was extremely tenacious.

3) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.

One part of the reading that I didn't quite understand was what his real estate work concerned.  The text didn't explicitly say whether he had been doing illegal activity or not, which may have been on purpose because he didn't want to give himself away.

4) If you were able to ask two questions to the entrepreneur, what would you ask? Why?

The first question I would ask, is how confident were you that your business idea would succeed?  The reason I would ask this question is because if Kroc was very confident about his business idea, then maybe he felt like there was less risk.  The second question is, how much of his success does he feel correlated with his education? Are most skills learned on the job, or do you learn valuable skills in school that help you later on in life?

5) For fun: what do you think the entrepreneur's opinion was of hard work? Do you share that opinion?

I think that Kroc's opinion of hard work was that of any other successful entrepreneur: you must work hard to be successful.  No entrepreneur has made it big without a dream that they believe in and are passionate about.  I share that opinion.  Success is not given; it's earned.