Describe someone you know who has started a business

IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card 392 with Model Answer:

Describe someone you know who has started a business.

You should say:

• who this person is
  
• what work this person does
• why this person decided to start a business

and explain whether you would like to do the same kind of work as this person.

[You will have to talk about the topic for one to two minutes. You have one minute to think about what you are going to say. You can make some notes to help you if you wish.]

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Model Answer:

Most of my friends, with who I have a close relationship with, hold either private jobs or government jobs, and show very little, if any at all, interest in starting and running a business. But, Fernandez, my close university friend, is an exception, and today I would like to talk about him here.

Fernandez is a good university friend of mine, but when we were studying at university together, he wasn’t really very much into studying hard and all that like us, simply because he wasn’t exactly interested to hold any kind of job. Instead, he would always talk to us during our university years about how some college drop-outs in some remote part of the world had become very successful entrepreneurs. But, of course, Fernandez luckily didn’t drop out of his university, as he somehow managed to finish his university education and started a job at a local accounting firm.

Anyway, when he started his job (probably because of his parents’ “consistent persuasion”), we all, appreciated his decision, but, as expected, he didn’t take too long to change his mind. In fact, he came to me one day about a few months ago and told me that he had started a web design and development company. He also seemed rather excited when he gave me the news of his newly-started business, so I didn’t really bother to ask him about the reasons behind it.

After all, I already knew that he didn’t like the “8 am to 5 pm schedule” and a “compartmentalized lifestyle” of a job holder. Besides, he also seemed to be very interested in learning internet technologies, and starting his web development company would offer him a perfect opportunity to do just that.

Now, if you ask me if I would do the same kind of work, I would say “yes” because I think that learning new technologies (be it the internet or otherwise) would be interesting. Besides, it would also offer me an opportunity to earn some extra money by treating it as a “second job”.