Your Name: Helle Fuglevig
Business Name: Market Select Aps, a network of contacts and partners in large parts of Latin America, Canada, USA and Europe.
Type of Business: Export assistance and consultancy
Business Location: Svendborg, Denmark
Website www.marketselect.dk
Vimeo vimeo.com/user15882838
Reason for starting
I like to take action – and I don’t like to wait for other people to take action. So, the fact that I can move things much faster by making my own decisions and not have to wait for approval from others is what is driving me. Morover, in private, I am a single mother with three young kids at the time of starting my own business, and I wanted to stay home more to be there for the kids. As a result of starting my own business at home, I would work in the daytime until the kids came home, and in the evening I would sit at my desk again and take care of for example, overseas contacts.
How do you define success?
When you earn so much money that you can start employing others in your business.
Biggest Success
There are more than just one: on a personal level, my biggest successes have been arranging and taking a Danish delegation of suppliers for the pig industry to promotional trips to big swine investors in Mexico, Chile and Argentina. I aim at doing business in the agricultural sector and with Latin America. At earning level – my biggest succeses are my contract with foregin business associations as Enterprise Estonia and Hungarian Investment and Trade Agencies where I keep receiving clients in the form of their members, for whom I make contact to potential clients for new export sales around Europe.
What is your top challenge and how have you addressed it?
Top challenge is to master the fine art of compromising – not to work too many hours and to have time and mind for family – and also to be able to concentrate on work even if the house is full of kids… I work at different hours – catching in late evenings or over the weekends sometimes. I have employed students to assist in peak periods – but it has taken time to train them before they can work independently and thus start contributing to the company so I do not have to be all over at all times. Keeping deadlines is always challenging for me, as I often have very many cases, and in times of crisis, everything takes so much longer to solve, so I just have to work harder…and spend more hours on same cases that would be solved at even less than half the time 4 years ago.
Who is your most important role model?
…..I dont think I have any. I challenge myself on a daily basis and try to keep ever more efficient (training on www.lumosity.com every day and running almost every day at noon to keep in shape and get more energy) – so I guess I am a role model for myself.