I’m Gabriele, 18 years old, and I’m really passionate about web design and digital entrepreneurship.
I chose to join EYE because I genuinely wanted to understand how you actually build a business from a strategic angle, not just the technical stuff, and learn from someone who’s been there.
These first 15 days here in Las Palmas have got me thinking a lot about how this whole experience is playing out.
I’ve got to be honest: it’s turning out pretty different from what I expected going in.
When we first talked about working together, it sounded like we’d have this real partnership thing going, co-creating projects and all that.
But in reality, I’m spending most of my time on operational stuff: managing his social media, writing content for his channels, cleaning up his Facebook groups.
Meanwhile, he’s mostly focused on his own personal projects: Excel spreadsheets for his courses, materials for his business that are really specific to what he does.
What really gets to me is that it doesn’t feel like we’re collaborating as equals. Instead of two entrepreneurs working together, sometimes it feels more like I’m supporting his way of doing things rather than co-creating equally.
And that makes me wonder how much I’m actually learning about entrepreneurship.
There’s this pretty big disconnect between what he’s good at (statistics, online private lessons) and what I was hoping to learn (entrepreneurial strategy, business management, growing a digital agency).
I’m doing these day-to-day tasks when what I really want is to understand how you make strategic decisions, how you scale a business, how you deal with real entrepreneurial challenges.
Emotionally, I’ll be straight with you, there are moments when I feel pretty discouraged and wonder if I’m going to get what I came here for.
I don’t feel like I’ve had the chance yet to fully show what I can do, and that’s frustrating. It’s not anyone’s fault really, we probably just have completely different backgrounds and goals.
We’ve also had some tense moments when I wasn’t keeping up with his pace or doing things exactly his way.
That’s when it hit me that the whole dynamic feels off: I’m working more for him than with him.
I really hope that in the next few weeks we can figure out something more balanced. EYE is supposed to be a learning experience for both of us, and right now it feels like I’m putting in a lot and not getting much of what I actually need.
I’m still hopeful though that I can somehow turn this into a real growth opportunity.