The jubilee 50th Business Café in Zagreb was held on the 24th of January at Hotel Academia in Zagreb. The event was attended by 280 entrepreneurs from all parts of Croatia and neighbouring Slovenia, who every day demonstrate it is possible to succeed with hard work and persistence. This is the ninth year of the existence of the Business Café, which promotes the culture of success thanks to which it spread from Zagreb to the neighbouring country.
The first guest was Gordana Nikolić, an entrepreneur from Rijeka, the owner of the business school PAR. She told her story of going into entrepreneurship, from just an idea without initial capital, and, as she says, no money in the wallet. She has won numerous awards, and after the Women’s Excellence Award at the worldwide level in India, she confirmed her conviction that everything is possible in life. Her motto for success is persistence, and she told the gathered people “don’t be afraid.”
The second guest was an entrepreneur and mother of three, Irena Orlović, owner of the Harfa publishing house in Split. Having a child with developmental difficulties she started from the idea of creating a publishing house that will publish books on the early promotion of intellectual development in children. Many thought she was “crazy,” but at no time did she doubt the realization of her dream. She emphasized that it is important to know that mistakes will happen, and that all entrepreneurs make mistakes and need to be allowed to make them, because they learn from them. One of the mistakes was that initially she did not delegate jobs but tried to do everything alone. She thinks this was the biggest mistake because the most important thing is to delegate tasks to other people who are good at work and most likely to be better than us in certain things.
The third guest was a well-known entrepreneur and investor, Nenad Bakić, since recently the chairman of Varteks. Nenad thinks the culture of success is something everyone has to work on. He commented that people in Croatia are too burdened by failure, and it is actually part of the success. He stressed that success requires grit, because while everyone fails, only the winners rise again. It is extremely important to always learn, read and be persistent in your goals. Today, knowledge is very accessible so there’s no room for excuses. He is currently busy with the rebuilding of the Varaždin textile giant Varteks. In the end, participants enjoyed the presentation of Varteks’ suits for women and men.
Along with the main guests the audience was also addressed with some of the guests of the previous Business Cafés, who left the biggest impact on the audience: Nikola Žinić, Manuela Šola, Ekrem Dupanović, Davorin Štetner, Josipa Maslač Petričević, Tvrtko Gačić, Ivana Ničević Lesardić, Bruno Šimleša and Tomislav Car.
Finally, Alis Marić, author of the well-known blog Čitaj Knjigu, who presented a new joint collaboration with Business Café – the Business Cafe Book Club – and recommended to the entrepreneurs a range of local and foreign business books.
Part of the ticket revenues Business Café donates to the Portal Dobrote.
The message of the event all the guests emphasized was – appreciate someone else’s success, don’t be ashamed of failure, don’t be afraid to dream and be persistent in pursuit of your goals.
More information is available at www.businesscafe.info
