Last Wednesday as part as the ING2030 class, two entrepreneurs came to talk about their businesses, supposedly with the intention of motivating us to begin our own adventure as entrepreneurs. I was really looking forward to this talk, because mainly I have my idea of who I would like to be, and was hoping to start deciding a way to get there.

My hopes weren’t disappointed at all with the talk, but I was. The thing is i didn’t found a way to get to the person I want to be, but I found a path that absolutely wouldn’t take me there, and it was the path that (particularly one) this entrepreneurs took.

The first guy to speak said a lot of really coherent things, that put all together made a really incoherent person, for example: the talk about giving the best you could do to your project, and to be sure you were doing all possible to make it work –including staying late working, or not getting paid, among others–. Then he talked about having fun, and not getting absorbed because of your job, and the way to do so, he said, was to go to bed early, and leave the office on time, maybe delaying some emails in order to get time for yourself. These two made a lot of sense when apart, but for a person to do both at the same time it was a little incoherent, and this made me think about if this entrepreneur that was supposed to clarify things to us had his life even clarified for himself.

The second guy I hated the most. Well, I didn’t hated him, but i did hate the way he talk about his success. He defined his life success as to be able to buy a Porsche with his first million, and luckily he had enough money to buy a bankrupted company to then have even more luck so that three days later, Groupon would buy his company at a 300% the price he payed.  What did he do?, he bought a soccer team.

As he continued to talk about his luck in business, and attributing this luck to talent, I began to understand that I wasn’t jealous of him, instead I felt sorry for him. For guy to have so little ambition that with a million dollars he would buy a Porsche, and with all his luck to have accomplished so little, I then realized that than kind of entrepreneur was exactly the one I didn’t want to be.

I want to be a person that takes the most advantage of the situation he’s into, and tries to use that advantage for a better living, not only for him, but for the rest of the world as well. I want to be a guy that’s passionate about what he does, and not about the money he’s gonna earn for doing it. I want to be a guy that’s a lot more selfless than the entrepreneur in front of me that day, a guy that can inspire people to create, to build, to think, to contribute to the world on the thing they do better.

I don’t know what I would do with my first million, but as sure as hell I wouldn’t buy a Porsche.