Dreaming Big: 3rd World Entrepreneur
There is always nice quote how hard to be entrepreneur in life and how much you need to work to get somewhere. But sometimes when you look at it from view point of someone from Small 3rd world country, it is almost impossible.
Of course there is nothing impossible in the world, but let me explain…
Imagine you are living in a country with 150 million population. And one bright day, you are quitting your day time job to start producing The Product of your dream. You are 33 years old, master in your field and at least 12 year’s experience in your job. There is nothing to think. This is your chance. You may be not going to sale for all of 150 millions at once, but if you start from 15 hundreds, this will be enough to keep 2-3 people team working full time for 1-2 years.
Now imagine yourself coming from small city in ex-soviet country. You have all same years but working for small companies, having same experience and even same education. Now you want to quite your job to start making something new that you can. What will be feelings?
- Fear. You will be mostly afraid for your life and for your family. Life is hard there, and if you are not selling your product to big enough cluster from the first beta version, then you most probably will fail much faster.
- Isolation.There is nothing as important as team for startup. But it is very hard to get people together to focus on work, as every one have same fear. People are looking on you as on idiot doing something totally wrong. The only possibility people around you can see is that if you worked for same corporation for same time, you could collect much more money.
- Not professional enough. This might be the worst. You never worked in any western company and no experience to compare. Is it fast enough what you are doing? Am I managing risks good enough? Shall I make more specifications or more planing? My brother that is having small business in security systems keep asking me “Have you got any example of person from your city doing the same?”. Well NO, but should it stop me?
- Do I need to live normal life? This is mostly not the first question you will ask, but after some time trying and having troubles in everything you do, it will come. Am I doing something that I will be proud of? Should I continue to live normal life or keep doing this as much as possible?
- Inspiration. When you are in city like London or San Francisco, it is easy to get on events where you meet people like you. In small cities you meet totally opposite people. Mostly what they valuate is financial achievements that you had. There is no one who can inspire you for this.
BUT WHAT MAKE ME TO BELIEVE THAT I CAN DO THIS?
But really, what still makes me believe? It might sound strange, but all limitations can lead to much more opportunities. One of my friends told me that because we are such small country landlocked somewhere far from civilization, we just have to think global. Here is what makes me continue to work:
- I think different. I am not searching solutions for today’s problems. I am looking for opportunities in cosmic level. This might sound strange but being from small place in the world, make me bigger thinker. I just have to think big and look on issues that person from center of civilization will never see.
- I am structured. Because I have to handle much more networks in my life. Because of number of people I know in my local and civilized networks I have to be more structured to manage all of them. People like me have to get much more disciplined or will loose everything in minutes. I just can’t allow me to relax for one year like my friends in Europe. Or have one or two masters degree just incase it might be helpful in future.
- I am surprisingly creative. It might sound strange but I am doing things other way just because I am coming from different background and education. This might be difficult to explain but it is much easy to show: http://about.me/poghosyan
- I feel good helping people. I really do. I feel that I live my life fully only when help people with real life problems. It gives me impossibly a lot of joy.
What is in really for my life? Is it something that I am dreaming to have, or I am already part of it (only maybe small part)? It is important if I have achieved success already, or it is much important that I could create the environment where I can be myself and what I was always doing. As of it, success it only destination and is it much matter if I have arrived? Or I simply can enjoy every second of my journey? In fact I can come to conclusion, if it would be so much easy as it is for my friends from Europe and States, I would be totally different orients and would never had bigger dreams. On the other hand, as it is so hard that I have to achieve my first success story on my own (with out any single help), so I thankful for this challenge, as it keeps me dreaming Big!