Growing up from an immigrant family originally from the Dominican Republic, I was raised around a mother who practically was a member of a family of entrepreneurs in her household back on the island. Before she moved to the states, my mom was helping her sisters run a convenience store as well as a party and event rentals store they owned right off their house in their neighborhood, it seemed to be a family lineage of entrepreneurs. My mom would get called to work at the stores, sell street food, help arrange party favors, tailor a bridesmaid dress, do hair and makeup, or sell homemade ice cream popsicles all at a very young age.
Even though my mom moved here and created a different life for herself and for us as her children, she still brought us up with the little tips and tricks she learned back home. As a child growing up here in Florida, my mom and I used to really get into the baking scene, following tutorials, taking decorating classes at the local bakery and getting our hands dirty by making and baking whatever interesting goods we wanted to and share them with our family and friends in town. I'd bring homemade cake pops to school for my friends and sometimes sell them to others when they realized how good they were and slowly, creating, became a thing in our house. We made goodies all the way from Halloween biscuit witch fingers to Easter bunny candy pops. It was not only a start of a small business-like experience but a great bonding experience with my mom as well. We enjoyed the art of creating, even if it was making the simplest of things.
Exploring other DIY crafts to make, we looked into soap making and different kinds of nutrients and natural essences we can put into soap that could help those around us with skin issues, really just starting with ourselves (I thought I had terrible acne in middle school and wanted to find ways to solve this myself instead of spending hundreds on a product prescribed by a dermatologist made of chemicals no one's ever even heard of).
So we bought soap making books, invested in the making materials, essences, colors, natural ingredients and started making some soap. My mom did really well with this one oatmeal based soap in particular, shared it with some family and friends and it did wonders on our skin, she got great reviews from her peers. Although we mainly did what we did out of curiosity and for fun, if we really built it upwards, we probably could have made a real small business out of it. We tried packaging and gifting some of what we made but we never made labels or applied for a sales permit or made a name for our 'company'. It was just a couple of amateur crafters having fun and bonding over creating something pretty cool and useful. But, I guess, that's all you really need to start yourself up as an entrepreneur, isn't it?
I enrolled in ENT3003 because of my Innovation minor and I have previously taken this class before, but, I would like to say this class is definitely one I find a lot of interests in because I enjoy looking for new ways to solve problems around me and hope to be able to do more of that as I progress forward in this class and my career as a hopeful future entrepreneur.
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