Fadillah Iskandarsyah Putra

19217011
EM3 - Online Course 2

1. As the saying goes “men become great mariners when sailing on troubled waters, not
calm seas”, thus persistence is a vital characteristic or skills that an entrepreneurs must
possess when facing particular hurdle in a business. Entrepreneurs are more likely to
experience mistakes than others. In this kind of situation, persistence is crucial for
entrepreneurs in order to sustain their business. When they give up too early, they
cannot learn from their mistakes and their business will be more likely to suffer a
failure. Many companies experiences failure because the owners or the main decision
makers are not willing to go extra mile to make the business a success. Even so,
business failure teaches invaluable lessons for entrepreneurs that can be applied by
them in their next journey, in this context persistence is still a vital key so they won’t
fall into the same hole twice. In addition, business failure oftentimes leads to uncover
more opportunities for entrepreneurs, as some of the biggest discoveries and inventions
have often taken place after difficult situation was resolved.

Having persistency in running a business is important if we want to survive in

today’s competitive business scene. If we are willing to go all out to achieve the
business goals that we have determined, our business will be more likely to achieve
stability and profitability. Moreover, the characteristic of persistence in an
entrepreneur is important to show a good example for the employees. Entrepreneurs
have to become a role model for its employees in the company, and by showing a
good example to them the company will be more likely to have a better productivity
and efficiency.

2. In summary of The Promise of a Pencil book, I learned about Adam Braun’s

struggles in the journey on establishing his NGO, Pencils of Promise. He came
from a holocaust survivor family that managed to achieve their privileged status
again after much sacrifices and hard works. From there, Adam learned how to be
persistent in his life, including on managing his NGO.
 Currently, I don’t have the same level of persistence quality like Adam Braun.
However, the persistence characteristic that I have was built from the stories, books
and someone else’s experiences that I have previously read or heard about. The
desire to become like one of them has driven me to have the persistence quality
that I have right now.

3. The definition of persistence is the ability to maintain action regardless of our

feelings. Therefore, in my opinion there is no “best time” in order to become
persistent. We have to always be persistent in order to achieve what we believe is
important or what we have determine to be our goals. However, in this context what
I meant to be persistent is in the positive way. Persistence is not good when our
intention is obtain something negative.

4. In these uncertain times in relation to COVID-19, entrepreneurs have to hopes for

the best and prepare for worst. What I meant is that, we all have to hope this
unfavourable situation will end soon while also preparing for the worst case that
could happened to the business. In my case, in order to maintain and keep track on
the development of my business, I use online platform to conduct weekly meetings
with my team. So far, Google Meet is the best platform for me to use while
conducting the social distancing in the mid of this downfall. This platform really
helps because we can share each other computer screen to minimize such
misinformation.