Overview:
Know when to start
Life defines where to head without any consent
Challenges are inevitable, just don’t stop
Life is too short to learn everything on your own, learn from others
Don’t hesitate on your skillset
Intrusive Start
Starting is necessary, even when you have no clue where the journey is headed. Have you ever wondered what to do, where to go, or what exactly your skills are as an individual? Short answer, you won’t know until you try. You don’t need to have a defined purpose or skillset at the start of your journey
In this blog, I will share some tips that helped me in my journey
Beginning that Defined Path
For context, let me tell you a bit about my past. I am a 21-year-old marketing professional. I started my professional journey in 2015.
Back in 2013, my father had an accident, causing him to have his L4 and L5 bones in the spinal cord removed. My grandfather had a heart attack the same year. They were both bedridden, and we couldn’t afford house help back at the time. I grew up watching my mother managing house chores, family, expenses, and raising two children simultaneously. This made me want to help in any way I could, so I stepped up. Two years passed and somehow I ended up in a grocery store sitting behind the counter helping my mother.
Those two years were a great learning experience for me; I learned it is not the age that makes a kid an adult, but responsibilities. Learning from her, I somehow managed to balance chores, studies, and helping her at the grocery store. Somewhere between that hassle, I grew up.
Setbacks Carve Who You Are
The motive behind sharing my story is to communicate the importance of resilience being than a rebound. June 2015 to August 2016 was life-changing for me; a lot happened. In 2013 the government of India started Swatch Bharat Abhiyaan - a mission of clean and green India. In October 2016, my school had a drill for Swatch Bharat Abhiyaan. My three friends and I started collecting waste into three categories—biodegradable, non-biodegradable, and recyclable waste. We were taught to make fertilizer out of biodegradable waste and used non-biodegradable and reusable waste to make craft material, which we later sold with the help of our school. The recycling waste went to the recycling plants. That was the first business we did. But at the end of the day, we were all kids, so it didn’t work out as we were too immature to understand the intricacies of running a business.
I was persistent, and so I started again with some friends in college and we had a successful startup. It was a digital service provider where we helped our clients with their online businesses. We generated revenue and had several clients.
Although I was one of the startup’s founding members, I was the only one on the team with no defined skillset. Despite this, I was resilient enough to try things: I used to manage the team, try and get clients, market our business, and write for our website.
For some reason that didn’t work out either but you know the idea by now not to give up.
Learnings Define Your Success
My only professional goal back then was just to be successful. I had no specific dreams and no idea where to go or what to do. All I knew was the end goal. My life experiences, mentors, and books taught me a few things that can be summed up with an example:
In my final year of college, I got my first job in sales at a startup. One thing I learned from my time and experience there was that every employee should have the mindset of being the owner. The company’s Director of Sales was very persistent and he always iterated this to us in every meeting, “Think like you own the business and the sales will be generated automatically.” That helped a lot and during my time there I realized that this approach doesn’t just help in sales but in every other aspect of a business. When we approach work not as a job but as our own company, both productivity and fun increase.
When I switched to my second job in an MNC for personal growth, I found the culture to be different. At MNC it was more about being not known to the upper management and there was a well-defined hierarchy that often made employees feel unnoticed. I had a female manager who was being pulled down by her colleagues, but she never let it affect her. She managed to exceed expectations and targets every month. She taught me a very valuable lesson on how to mold your morals and life philosophies into the business and use them in practical applications.
Now, in my third job at Girl Power Talk, I have learned it is good to have ideas, but carving your ideas into roadmaps and roadmaps into actions is important.
Don’t Make Right Decisions
I shared my story to share the things from my experiences that helped me grow from a point where I had nothing to a point where I am happy and have the things I always wanted. My life taught me the most important lesson which I can never forget—work for what you want, not what you have. Learned call that power of manifestation. It is important to start and try rather than sitting and wondering later, what if. Don’t overthink making the right decision. Instead, make a decision and make it right. Better things always start from good, not perfect.
