My career had started in corporate, and as I excelled the ranks into becoming a Managing Director of a Data Analytics MNC after 24 years, I decided to call it quits and resigned. It was certainly not an easy decision when I had it all – title, compensation, recognition, but deep down in me, I knew I was missing something. I’m sure, many of you reading this have felt that “missing” feeling when everyone looking at you is envying to take your place at any time, but you feel it was not what you wanted. I realized what I was missing – freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom of decision making, freedom of creativity and simply freedom to be who you are. I no longer wanted to wear a corporate hat and carry someone else’s brand. Perhaps it was the best decision that I had made in my life and am enjoying every moment of it.
However, my father, my mentor was certainly shocked by my decision, as his mindset was very clear, he had raised all his children to have doctorates, holding high-rank positions and that was the goal for a successful risk-free life. It took me some time to convince my father that he did in fact thought me all the skills required to be successful on my own terms. As I reminisce, I realized if I had been exposed to entrepreneurship much earlier in life, I would jump the wagon back then, but guess it is never too late.
Now, as I sat down to pen my thoughts on entrepreneurship, I realized that I needed to get a different perspective on it. A perspective that hasn’t been tapped, a perspective that we typically ignore but in fact is the perspective that will shape the future. Hence, decided to call upon my gals who are fourteen and twelve to write what they thought being an entrepreneur was about.
Here’s what I got from that assignment. Rasvini my fourteen-year-old shared that to her the simple general meaning of being an entrepreneur is when someone starts their own business single-handedly making them their own boss and not having to work or listen to other people’s rules or orders. To her being an entrepreneur is a way of working for yourself at your own pace, being able to choose what products you want to sell, how you want to advertise them, who you want to work with etc. To her being an entrepreneur allows you to have more control over what you’re doing and pursuing without having to worry about a boss’s expectations or co-workers’ judgments but your own thoughts. ‘Although being an entrepreneur has many positives it can also be quite risky as you now would have to work on your own meaning more stress on certain costs, getting connections and so on.’ But to her, although there’s a risk, she believes everything you do has varied risks as well so it’s a risk worth taking.
My second one who is twelve, Dhareni, narrated that to her entrepreneurs are innovators and people willing to bear the risks and people who have a lot of passion for their business. She thinks being an entrepreneur needs a lot of determination, and cooperation skills and can differentiate between what works well for their business and what doesn’t.
Their thought of entrepreneurs seamlessly aligns with mine and am sure with most. As Christina Canters quotes “Everyone has creativity within them, it’s just a matter of unlocking that creativity”, I firmly believe that entrepreneurship is the key to unlocking your creativity. The thought that you own your destiny, drives accountability, pushes you out of your boundaries, brings the best out of you and you get to make the choices!
As I reflect on my career journey, I was moulded into having entrepreneur skills from such a young age by my father, without even knowing what entrepreneurship really meant. Creativity, communication, continuous learning, courage, self-motivated and perseverance, were drilled down in our thoughts and it was to equip us to be successful in our lives. The only one lacking skill was risk-taking. Perhaps having to undergo many hardships, my parents always cushioned us to ensure we didn’t experience what they had gone through. Risks were calculated and scrutinized and only taken when chances of success were above 80%. Whereas, as an entrepreneur, although you do calculate the risks, you have way more tolerance in taking the chance as even a mere 0.1% may be what is required to determine your success! Fear of failure is something you need to feel comfortable with. I particularly feel this fear of failure is something we Asians have cultivated in ourselves a lot more than what is needed. In our community-based culture where whether you are good or bad is perhaps determined by how the community judges you – shame-driven; we tend to do a lot of things in fear of not meeting other people’s expectations of who we should be. This paralyzing thought has been a hindrance for many in achieving their personal passions.
I feel that entrepreneurship thought processes or skills are not only needed for someone who owns a business but is essential skills for you to lead your own life, whether you are employed or are the employer.
Here’s another snippet of Rasvini’s entrepreneur journey: Over the years of my life, I’ve not only seen the journey of being an entrepreneur but have also tried it before. In primary school, we had an entrepreneur year project where we would get into a group of about 3 people and work on a business on what we would sell, how we would advertise etc. We then followed up on the plans and one day we all set up shops for parents to come in and buy our products. My team had chosen to sell Malaysian ice lollies. The thing about any business is that when creating a product, you need to think of the customer’s necessities and what they would want to buy. At the time in Malaysia, it was the peak of the hot season so people by right would be feeling hot. And what better way to cool down on a hot summer day than to have a refreshing ice lolly. By thinking from the customer’s point of view we were able to attract more customers hence selling out of ice lollies in the end. They were really good though! Other than that I’ve also seen many people online through social media and even some of my friends start to be young entrepreneurs whose businesses have succeeded amazingly.
Dhareni has had her own share of experience too: I have had a few experiences when running a small business, one where I and my team made games for people to play. During the journey of building our business, I learned that it’s very important to stay focused and determined as there will be challenges and unexpected obstacles that you will need to overcome. Another thing that I learned is that cooperation is an imperative skill that you need to be able to use during your planning. It’s important to be able to communicate ideas, listen to ideas, and know who is doing what and this just keeps everything organized and easier to keep everything on track. I have had a lot of experience with this next point, differentiating things between good and bad. Whilst making ideas on what we should produce, I and my team had to think about what might be a big hit if we were to make something, do we have the materials for it all those questions had to be put into thought and not to mention we had to make sure everything was in the budget because we were broke and the source of money for our business came from our parents.
As they say, children’s mind is built to explore, play and learn. Just reading the above non-adulterated text, you’ll know how much of a difference and impact we can make in exposing the young future generation to entrepreneur mindsets.
In the end, being an entrepreneur is like your door to a new journey where you’re the one making the choices of which path you would want to take and why. Having an entrepreneur-like mindset not only is helpful in a business sense but is applicable in any workplace or even our daily lives. From being able to problem solve and communicate with people, entrepreneurship teaches you skills which help you grow as an individual and is the foundation for any business growth. Entrepreneurship isn’t just about changing the way we think but unlocking new ways to think – tapping one’s creativity. It allows people to break free from their nest and spread their wings to explore, think and view one problem from a different perspective to get a better understanding or solution for it and lastly gets people to start blasting more stereotypes like risk-taking consequences.
As Kimberly Ann Jimenez puts it: I’m a doer, a dreamer, a thinker. I see possibilities everywhere! Let’s plant the seed of entrepreneurship everywhere.