13A - Reading Reflection No. 1

The book that I decided to read for this reflection was The Wright Brothers.

1. Reading about the entrepreneur:

• The thing that surprised me the most about this book is about how many times the brothers failed but still continued to pursue their dream. Their success is one of the most true and upmost displays of tenacity that an entrepreneur could wish to harness. Even in the face of many failures, they continued to attempt to achieve the "impossible".
• Going off of my first observation, I would have to say that I mostly admire the tenacity and ingenuity of the Wright brothers. Traveling by air was seen by many as an impossible feat, and with enough failures, it could be enough to make one believe it. However, the brothers persevered through all of their failures never giving up on their dream.
• Not fully an undesirable trait, but the Wright brothers were so involved in their craft that they never married. Although it is important to be passionate about your pursuits, I still firmly believe in a balance, and that maintaining some sort of social life is beneficial to the entrepreneur. Not in all cases, but it's hard to point out any specific undesirable traits about the brothers.
• The Wright brothers faced plenty of adversity and failure. In fact, they are most well known for all the failure they did face. However, instead of giving up, they persevered. When they developed their first glider, the bad weather had messed up their flight plans and actually broken parts of it. With this adversity in their midst, the brothers used it as an opportunity to repair the glider as well as make it stronger and better before. Whenever they hit an obstacle, they always sought a way around it.

2. Competencies displayed by the entrepreneur:

• The major competency that stood out was that the Wright Brothers did not go into this project blind. They did not set unrealistic goals or expectations for themselves either. They definitely exhibited great quality traits of a successful entrepreneur. They spent years studying other experiments and aviation engineers so that they were able to craft together the best plan for the creation and prototype of their glider / airplane.

3. One part of the reading that was confusing:

• The one thing that confused me in this reading was how the Wright Brothers never attended college. The reading described many times about how intelligent the brothers were and they were incredibly successful at college, but I understand how it goes to show that one does not need a college education to be a successful entrepreneur. College will only show you the basics, but it is really your character and your traits that make you a successful entrepreneur.

4. Two questions I would ask the entrepreneur:

1. After all of the adversity that you faced, did you ever feel like giving up? Most people face adversity in life and feel like giving up all the time. This is especially true when the goal someone sets for them self is way above the standard and something that seems impossible. They may think that it is just too unrealistic and give up, even if it is their dream.
2.  If you could go back and time and change one thing you did, what would it be? The reason I would ask this question is because looking back on such an impressive feat would surely present a lot of hindsight. There are many things that people do and look back on thinking that if they had done something a certain way, maybe it would have been a more efficient process and they could have gotten more done in less time.

5. Entrepreneur's opinion of hard work:

• I think that we would share the same opinion of hard work. There are two important aspects of being a successful entrepreneur. The first is that you have to have a vision and be passionate about it. The second is, you have to work extremely hard. There are many people who have amazing creative and innovative ideas, however, if you do nothing about it and you don't put the work in, they just simply will never come to fruition.