Entreprenuership

As discussed during class lectures and like Roxanne Quimby and Burt Shavitz, any ordinary person can become an entrepreneur as long as they have bright ideas and opportunities that they can tap into. The lemonade stories video, demonstrated in class, depicts that most of the successful entrepreneurship stories revolve around creativity, dedication, determination, flexibility, leadership, adversity, passion and confidence. Hence, anybody can be an entrepreneur if they happen to possess the qualities listed above (except adversity which is an unfortunate situation rather than a trait) and entrepreneurship can even be taught to a person as well!

In 1984, Roxanne Quimby began to question her lifestyle and realized she had to make a real income owing to family responsibilities. It was then she convinced Burt, who had some great ideas and was more likely to take risks, for this enterprise. Roxanne had the vision and Bert brought the technical expertise to the table. Bert taught her about beekeeping and she suggested to make candles with beeswax. Thus started a great partnership when they pooled $400 from their savings to launch the honey and beewax business. In the beginning, it was was more of a lifestyle business, wherein a business is set up and run by its founders primarily with the aim of sustaining a particular level of income and no more; or to provide a foundation from which to enjoy a particular lifestyle.

The first and foremost thing that made the Burt’s Bees Company succeed was Roxanne’s motivation to establish a company of her own by leveraging her knowledge of past experiences. She had a vision and was passionate about it. At the same time she found a person who had the required expertise and whom she could trust in Burt – which emphasizes the point that business ventures are seldom solo adventures. In addition, the company was profitable during its initial days because it was debt-free which could be attributed to Roxanne’s debt-averse and cash aware...