Fearless & Flexible - Michele Petno's Best Skill

If you are interested in starting or growing a mosaics business, Michele Petno is someone to learn from. Michele has launched her 6th mosaics business which is centered on teaching mosaics. You can check it out at Mozaicarts.com. Because she is a serial entrepreneur in the mosaics space, we thought it was imperative to have her as a guest on a Mosaics Business podcast. Thankfully, she consented to share her experience and knowledge with us.

One of the questions I asked was, "What entrepreneurial experience and skill has been most valuable to your artistry?" Her answer includes what I think is a profound insight about what it takes to be a mosaics entrepreneur. It follows.

"There wasn't really any entrepreneurial experience and I did not attend college. I think growing up poor pushed me to figure out how to make money. Failure never entered my mind. I think my best "skill" was being fearless and flexible. I figured if it didn't work out I could always find another job I didn't like. Also letting my customers drive what I chose to do. I figured if one person asked for something, hundreds more wanted it too. When I started with a factory in Japan I found someone there who spoke English. She taught me what I needed to know in order to be an importer. It was to her advantage to teach me and have a new customer. Finding vendors then was really difficult and time consuming – no one had a PC yet! In fact. I did not know what a website was."

Be Fearless - Be Flexible