Today is Entrepreneur Day at MBV, and we had a great day sharpening our leadership skills, navigating our roles in our company, and getting inspired! We have our partner Allianz to thank for this day and the many opportunities we had to grow, learn, and have fun.
We started our day with a keynote from Biel Wiel, a University of St. Thomas student who founded the startup Drvn, an app that collects data and forecasts the most profitable times and places for Uber and Lyft drivers to get riders. Biel’s story of self-discovery is so interesting, and taught us the importance of leaning in, learning, and not being deterred by failure. He also gave us great insight into what it’s like to pursue business versus entrepreneurship, highlighting the constant change and new experiences he gets to have pursuing his entrepreneurship degree and founding a startup. There were so many takeaways from this keynote, and it helped us as students discover one of the many avenues for growth that we can take.
Following the keynote, we headed into Business Plan Breakouts. In these breakouts, the Marketing, Operations, and Finance departments each went into their respective sessions to learn more about their role and gain skills to use in the business plans we are developing. It was a great opportunity to find our niche in the company and even take away skills that we can use in school and life. Thank you so much to the volunteer speakers from Wells Fargo, Ecolab, and Hiway Credit Union for taking the time to speak to us!
After lunch, we had the much-anticipated activity of the day – mock interviews! All of the students prepared a resume and practiced questions for a job interview. A lot of the students hadn’t had a job interview, or had an interview in-person before, so it was a little scary at first, but we were so happy to have had the experience. A huge thanks to the amazing volunteers who came to serve as mock interviewers!
In the second keynote of the day, ‘Great Leadership,’ Roz Tsai of Thrivent encouraged us to lead with compassion and conviction. She taught us that leaders take ownership, spread kindness, and put others before themselves. Using the growth of bamboo trees as a metaphor, she shared that growing takes patience and be willing to learn. There is no such thing as overnight success and being ‘the boss’ does not mean that you should have a big ego. Her message was humbling and extremely timely as the chief members of each company help lead their companies through the business plan.
Just like an entrepreneur, we put a lot of work into ourselves and our ideas today, and we will certainly be seeing the payoff as we continue the week. Tomorrow, we turn our attention to the extremely important topic of ‘Financial Freedom.’ See you then!