Exams

Phew, quite a bit has happened since my last entry, which I just re-read. I've already finished my studies — hallelujah. Now full speed ahead for the business.

What's happened so far: passed the written business licence exam, passed three of four parts of the oral exam, the last part will be re-examined orally between January and March 2025 (I find out the exact date 2 weeks beforehand, which is annoying). What's really bad is that I'm supposed to pay €396 again for this one small part (10 minutes oral) of the business exam!!??? I understand paying once for written (3 hours) and oral (40 min) exams. But if the entire written effort and 3/4 of the oral effort no longer apply for the committee, the price for re-sitting should in my opinion be significantly lower. I'm in contact with the BMK about this and hope the regulation gets changed. Getting to the right people cost me many phone calls and emails to various offices.

I also passed the computer exam for the taxi driver licence on my second attempt (the retake fee was lower there). I simply messed up the addresses and routes on the first try — oops. You basically need to know around 300 addresses: landmarks, coffee houses, hotels, police stations, hospitals, etc. The oral part takes place in mid-January 2025. So I'll be studying again over the Christmas holidays.

On the website, only small things have progressed. I created images myself and turned them into vector graphics and replaced everything on the website. One person reviewed the site and gave feedback — that was valuable. Another person briefly looked at it and just said "way too much text, nobody reads that, it looks like some kind of virus/spam website." So I created icons and reduced the text.

In the meantime I've also decided on a car — fully electric. I've also decided that for my small company with 1–2 employees I don't need a tax advisor, just a bookkeeper is fine. I attended entrepreneurship workshops and a trade fair at the WKO.

Business cards and magnetic advertising on the car itself are still on the agenda.

I'm trying to design a kind of pin-location on the website where customers can send their location to drivers, but I'm simply out of my depth there. I've asked two students about it and there might be a solution — that's being worked on. Then I want to build an app for my website, which is also possible with WIX. That excites me a lot, but still a lot of work. I need to learn how to use the cash register and get to know all the car's functions. Before my car arrives I'll arrange another test drive at the dealership, especially to understand how, when and where to charge efficiently. The website is still missing a privacy policy and detailed terms & conditions — thankfully the WKO has guides for that.

It's also important to me to finally film my short promo videos for social media. Otherwise how does anyone actually notice the company? Advertising is something I still need to think through generally. Print stickers with the logo and hoodies…

I'm still at it, and even if I have doubts sometimes because there are things I simply still don't know or can't do, I want to keep going. Uber France just presented an update where you can choose a female driver. I think that's great progress. I'm aware that my company could be displaced by Uber Women (or whatever they call it), but I'm convinced my offering represents an expansion and will be used. People don't all shop at one supermarket — they choose based on what suits them.

So I'm keeping this idea alive.