Today was another great day in Ireland. We started off the day with another site visit at Guinness Enterprises (GEC). Their facility was really cool to see, as they house several different companies in a variety of different office spaces, and it was great to hear from Madison and her perspective on their company. After that, we grabbed lunch and groceries from Lidl (my new favorite place) before heading back to Griffith for some classroom time. I finished out today with many, probably too many, hours of shopping—but I purchased some cool clothes and found my new favorite store, Penny’s. A long, but wonderful day, that topped my previous steps record: currently at 22,575 and counting!

From the visit to Guinness Enterprises, we learned a lot about entrepreneurship through talking about many of the start-up companies that rent space at their facility. Personally, I would love to be an entrepreneur, if I had a good enough idea to be one. From what Madison told us today, as well as my own understanding, being an entrepreneur involves a lot of working with “ingredients” rather than “recipes”. As Dr. Kelley explained yesterday, certain people accomplish tasks by “following a recipe”, meaning they want a detailed set of guidelines and framework to follow. Others, just use the “ingredients”, meaning they take what is handed to them and interpret it in their own way when accomplishing things. Having an entrepreneurial mindset requires one to think fluidly, work things from different angles, and create your own guidelines from which you work. 

I think I would thrive in an environment like this. In most aspects of my life, I enjoy doing things with little to no framework and interpreting things in my own way, whatever that may be. I’m not much of a planner: I prefer to go-with-the-flow and do things as I see fit. I’ve never really thought of it in the way Dr. Kelley described it to us, but the more I think about it I am definitely more of an “ingredients” person rather than a “recipe” person. Entrepreneurs, by nature, have to create their own framework and work with the ingredients they have, as their business is entirely their own, and there are no guidelines to follow. Many of the clients Guinness Enterprises have are new, start-up companies and likely operate in a similar manner. Everyone thinks and works differently, and I found it to be interesting to see the comparison between the analogies Dr. Kelley gave us and what we learned at GEC today.