What do you think is the starting point of an Entrepreneur? Is it the beginning of an idea, a passion, or strong desire for success, or just merely courage to step out of our comfort zone?
I think it would be better to share with the humble
beginnings of a young entrepreneur before he entered the world of business. Perhaps
it would give you a better idea on what it takes to be an entrepreneur. This will be a personal story and I hope my readers will enjoy it.
There was once a young boy who had a lot of passion for his
games, namely playing with game cards such as Pokemon, Duel Masters and even
Yu-Gi-Oh cards. While he was playing
with his friends in a regular gaming session, his friends who admired some of
his cards made remarks of wanting to acquire his cards. An idea hit him then.
“Why shouldn’t I sell my cards for a profit?” Because of he
asked this question to himself, he started his journey to package his cards and
to sell his cards. He roped in his mom for help to provide him with the
materials to store his cards in a nice plastic-wrap and he arranged the cards
neatly taking into account of putting weak cards as well as good cards in a
ratio of 1 good cards: 4 weak cards.
By such arrangements, he managed to make some profits and
even developed some reputation as someone who sold good cards at good pricing.
More customers came along to him to acquire cards, and his biggest debut was a
yearly fun-fair initiative where students get to put their products and test
their ideas in booths to sell to the public crowd.
Although he didn’t make a lot of money from this stint, it
taught him the fundamentals of entrepreneurship, which he didn’t realize then.
Afterwards, when he had finished his Primary School Leaving Examinations, in the
final days of primary school he roped in a group of his classmates to start a
makeshift in-school gaming ring. This gave all the bored primary 6 students of
school to enjoy gaming leisure such as competitive eraser-game, card-dueling as
well involving paper bumper-cars.
They made money through the entry fees as well as the cost of renting the paper bumper cars, as well as erasers. Although they didn’t make a lot of money, it was another good initiative that provided great experiences to the young boy then.
What can we learn from these two experiences from the young boy?
1. He learnt the value of his own products thru personal experiences and shared with people boldly.
The young boy turned his passion of playing card games into an activity that can be enjoyed by everyone. This is also what we coin as sales. If he hadn’t played the cards games, erasers games or bumper-cars himself, he would not have known how fun it would have been to play it as a group.
Many entrepreneurs failed to succeed in business because they are too busy fearing what would people think of them if they failed. In truth, they should have considered how they themselves thought of their product and service, and shared their belief boldly with people.
Some people will buy into your idea, some people will not.
Take action and you will realize the universe will move along with you too.
2. He did not have any limiting beliefs on himself.
To be an entrepreneur, another very important element is
self-belief and belief in the goodness of the products and/or service that we
are promoting to the world. This young boy because he had experienced the joy
of playing, is able to influence people to be part of the fun, because people
are naturally attracted to positive emotions.
He did not place limiting beliefs like whether can he sell or will people like him, or even the fear that the authorities like his school or teachers will stop him. He followed his heart and went all out, getting the tremendous results. If this young boy, who is barely 12 at that point is able to follow his heart, how about all of you all who are much older and much more wiser than him?
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| The 12 years old young boy with his younger sister. |
With this, I hope you all enjoyed the part 1 of my blog-post and get inspired
to go beyond just living an ordinary boring and unfulfilled life. The sharing
comes from my personal experiences, and it is as authentic as it can be. =)
See you all next time,
Stanley Kan
Stanley Kan
