Short stories by an entrepreneur #1
Introduction
There are a lot of us out there — People with good ideas and a passion for innovation, knowing that given the right circumstances we will kick … we don’t care about norms or what other people think, we are creative, hardworking and don’t take no for an answer. Some of us have already made it, some of us are on the way. We are humble, we are team players and we know that a good idea is not enough — it´s all about the team and the execution.
In my case I always knew I wanted to start something of my own. As many others, I started working very young, my first job was not really a job, more like a hobby. I was nine and collected used newspapers, in our neighborhood, together with my best friend. Every 3 months, we would ask our parents to drive us to the recycle center where we would get paid. Those were the days… I still remember once, we watered down the newspapers with a garden hose adding additional weight to the newspapers, before going to the recycle center. Not sure how that would fly today, but we were young and didn’t know better.
Later when I was 12, we got our first summer job, cutting the grass at my uncle´s furniture store. The place was huge and my uncle was known for not paying the highest salaries. Needless to say that it didn’t last for long. It were happy days though, we did 6 km on our bicycles in each direction every day and it would take us 3 days to cut the grass with the small lawn-mover. There was only one lawn-mover, so we had to split the salary — fair enough though — we took turns doing 2 laps each, while the other was lying on the grass eating candy, spending the money we were earning. Once we were done with the full lawn, it was time to start all over again. We ate a lot of candy that summer.
When I was 14, I started working at my father´s company after school. It was a mid-size transportation company and I was working in the mail room. Everyone that ever worked for their father, knows it is not the easiest job. Never the less, friends would comment that “working for your father is not a real job”, so when I was in high school, I quit and got a “after school job” working at McDonald´s. No comments after that. But the fact remains — although it was a short time period — I loved working at McDonald´s, it was nice to see something that streamlined and gave a lot of fuel for thoughts.
At university, I got a job working as a consultant for my professor. I was obsessed with innovation and made a lot of different concepts and presentations. I was fortunate having a great mentor, who basically allowed me to work on my own ideas. Not bad for a student job. I barely finished university, since my head was elsewhere, but I did ok...
Since then, I have worked in some big companies before starting on my own. It was not easy in the beginning and I have had some bumps on the way, but it has gone well and today we are +100 employees divided on several companies (I have good partners).
My biggest accomplishment though, is teaching my kids “Danish” (a lot of goodnight stories). I´m Danish and grew up in Denmark, my wife is Portuguese and we live in Portugal. Basically we have a lot of fun around the dinner table. I speak Danish with my kids, my wife speaks Portuguese with them and we speak English together. Although my wife speaks Danish and I speak Portuguese, we started out in English and just kept it that way. As for the kids — well kids learn fast. For them it seems to be just one big language.
As most others like me, I dream big and see opportunities where others see problems. I avoid the negative and try and spend my time on the positive. Once again — there are a lot of us out there and given the right circumstances we will kick …
Feel free to connect — you can find me on LinkedIn
Stay safe/ Stay well — and make sure to enjoy the process.
Ricki Madsen
