My circles have expanded somewhat in recent months. I’ve made more of an effort to get out there and meet people and do stuff and be involved generally.
When you meet new people quite often the initial conversation will go along the lines of ‘what do you do?’ or ‘where do you work?’ Subsequently I’ve been saying well I’m working for this company until the end of the month and then I’m going off to DO MY OWN THING! The key word here of course being OWN.
So why do people insist on throwing business ideas at me? Three times in as many weeks I’ve had new acquaintances mention that they have a really great idea for my business. Despite my earlier explanations of tourism, visitors to Helsinki and similar clues. So thanks but no thanks. I am not interested in being a distributor of all-natural products from a scheme that seems to benefit no-one except the person at the pinnacle. Similarly sitting at home sending out emails definitely doesn’t cut it (is that even legitimate?). Finally, opening up my home for family day care is so far away from me being me as to be just plain ridiculous.
I do have to accept some responsibility. With fresh acquaintances there are many unexplored trust issues. Plus you don’t know who they know. Helsinki can be frighteningly small on occasion, so until all of my ducks are lined up or the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed I am going to be not 100% forthcoming about my future plans.
Seriously though, if you are going to start a business doesn’t it make more sense to take something you love doing and work with that? There is a forum for foreigners in Finland, called Finland Forum funnily enough, and a couple of weeks ago some one posted a question asking “what kind of business to start-up?”. So he’ll be fresh out of college, with all of this theory and a heap of cash (if his claim of 100,000 € start up capital is true), and no idea of what he wants to do. I find it really odd that this person was prepared to put his whole future in the opinion of complete strangers who knew nothing about him.
He could, of course, invest in yours truly. Except, I’m not looking for that sort of business partner!
On a not so unrelated point. 10 days of paid employment remaining.
Helsinki Buy Design 