- Joined
- Mar 1, 2023
- Messages
- 8
Lurked around for a few weeks before deciding to enter.
Good day to everyone. My name is Iniyavel. Everyone calls me Shiva, which is my nickname.
I am currently a software engineer from India. I have been working in full-stack web development (MEAN and MERN) for a year now.
Now I am not here to make bold statements about quitting my job and starting a new business. No. I have no plans to do so for the time being (but it will not stay this way forever, that is for sure). I entered this forum after reading The Millionaire Fastlane two months ago (since it is March already). The book was suggested by Erik Abrahamsson (aka The Swedish Investor) on YouTube. Here is that video:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anJFf9pN16g
I got curious, so I decided to get the book, and I landed here. I am currently reading Unscripted , and I am on Chapter 8. I will read The Great Rat Race Escape later. I bought all three books from Amazon. Before all of this, I was under the impression that I had to work until I was 65 or six feet under. Being a late bloomer, I was worried how I would get there.
Reading Mr. DeMarco's book was like getting punched hard in the face. Reading through the chapters on the Sidewalk and the Slowlane made me really defensive. But in due time, as I pondered over it, I decided that it was simply not worth getting offended, since it will not change anyone's reality, and definitely not mine!
But I must admit: As a Slowlaner, I am glad I never entered the Sidewalk (although I admittedly still have some of those tendencies). I have not touched alcohol, cigarettes or drugs to this day (sadly I am not in good shape due to excessive indulgence in food even if mostly made at home).
Before all of this, I have never tried entrepreneurship in the past except for one aborted instance in late 2020, where I was thinking of opening a drop-shipping store on Shopify and dealing with products made in China (sounds familiar?). This was after seeing a number of people on YouTube and elsewhere suggesting this route. I did not have a job at the time. I told mom about this idea. Mom is the over-protective type. She got nervous and told dad about it. Dad gaslighted (for lack of a better word) and forced me to abandon the idea even before I started (in a way, I am so glad I did not start such a "business", for I would have been forced to deal with long delivery periods, angry customers, downgrading of my store's rating and potential lawsuits). After that day, I just made up my mind that I would not tell my parents what I am up to. They are not entrepreneurs, and they do not encourage that idea either (we are a middle-class family after all). They prefer certainty and safety to uncertainty. They think many people who make it big in India usually end up that way by doing at least something unscrupulous or are politically connected (this is true only to a very small extent) while people who make it big in western countries are far more legitimate.
I did ask them a few times about starting and running a business when I was a teenager/in my early 20s. They were not favourable to the idea. They pointed to a relative of ours who quit his job as a professor at IIM-A (Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, which happens to be the top management university in India - IIMs are highly competitive, and IIM Ahmedabad is the crème de la crème of brand IIM) and eventually ended up as a farmer (thanks to India's legendary bureaucracy, farming is a poor man's job in India, unlike western countries where farming/ranching is unregulated). Also when I grew up, I was told some jobs were simply not worth doing, like, say, driving taxis, working as construction labour, waiting/cleaning tables, etc., while in some videos I watched on YouTube, big achievers usually mentioned their doing such jobs on their journey to becoming big. In one of his videos on YouTube, Mr. DeMarco says the same thing those big achievers did. I do not plan on quitting my job and doing those jobs(!!), but should the need arise in the future, I will no longer hesitate to do them.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_58zPgArb4
It will take me awhile to unlearn every wrong thing I have been taught since childhood. Not everything I was taught was wrong. No. But there is quite some wrong views on life, and unlearning them and relearning the right thing, not to mention shifting one's mindset from worker to employer/self-employed businessman, may take at least some time.
Chapter 7 of Unscripted makes so much sense. Mr. DeMarco says Asian parents (India is also in Asia
) usually pressure their children to work until retirement. This is so damn true! My parents absolutely do not trust that I am fit for anything else except working a job until retirement! (To be fair to them, their fears re: me are not entirely unfounded, given that I am a late bloomer, and my past failures in university and slow start to life are their sole reference points.) But my elder sister is an entirely different story. She follows them completely, with no deviation from the norm. I am sadly not her type - I am the proverbial apple that fell too far from the tree.
But the one thing that separates me from the rest of my family is my curiosity: I do not hesitate to try out or at least check out something that is new or interesting. That is an instinct of mine neither my parents nor I have ever been able to suppress/eliminate.
I realise entrepreneurship is hard business. I first need to unlearn everything I learned wrong for decades, and I also need to work to establish discipline and consistency (I fail at both currently). Not to mention, I need to develop a very high pain tolerance and an ability to withstand big failures. Then only should I think of taking to entrepreneurship, which will certainly take years of boring (and in some cases repetitive) work in order to get anywhere, not to mention challenges and setbacks, which are another story.
Thank you and have a nice day.
Good day to everyone. My name is Iniyavel. Everyone calls me Shiva, which is my nickname.
I am currently a software engineer from India. I have been working in full-stack web development (MEAN and MERN) for a year now.
Now I am not here to make bold statements about quitting my job and starting a new business. No. I have no plans to do so for the time being (but it will not stay this way forever, that is for sure). I entered this forum after reading The Millionaire Fastlane two months ago (since it is March already). The book was suggested by Erik Abrahamsson (aka The Swedish Investor) on YouTube. Here is that video:
I got curious, so I decided to get the book, and I landed here. I am currently reading Unscripted , and I am on Chapter 8. I will read The Great Rat Race Escape later. I bought all three books from Amazon. Before all of this, I was under the impression that I had to work until I was 65 or six feet under. Being a late bloomer, I was worried how I would get there.
Reading Mr. DeMarco's book was like getting punched hard in the face. Reading through the chapters on the Sidewalk and the Slowlane made me really defensive. But in due time, as I pondered over it, I decided that it was simply not worth getting offended, since it will not change anyone's reality, and definitely not mine!
But I must admit: As a Slowlaner, I am glad I never entered the Sidewalk (although I admittedly still have some of those tendencies). I have not touched alcohol, cigarettes or drugs to this day (sadly I am not in good shape due to excessive indulgence in food even if mostly made at home).
Before all of this, I have never tried entrepreneurship in the past except for one aborted instance in late 2020, where I was thinking of opening a drop-shipping store on Shopify and dealing with products made in China (sounds familiar?). This was after seeing a number of people on YouTube and elsewhere suggesting this route. I did not have a job at the time. I told mom about this idea. Mom is the over-protective type. She got nervous and told dad about it. Dad gaslighted (for lack of a better word) and forced me to abandon the idea even before I started (in a way, I am so glad I did not start such a "business", for I would have been forced to deal with long delivery periods, angry customers, downgrading of my store's rating and potential lawsuits). After that day, I just made up my mind that I would not tell my parents what I am up to. They are not entrepreneurs, and they do not encourage that idea either (we are a middle-class family after all). They prefer certainty and safety to uncertainty. They think many people who make it big in India usually end up that way by doing at least something unscrupulous or are politically connected (this is true only to a very small extent) while people who make it big in western countries are far more legitimate.
I did ask them a few times about starting and running a business when I was a teenager/in my early 20s. They were not favourable to the idea. They pointed to a relative of ours who quit his job as a professor at IIM-A (Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, which happens to be the top management university in India - IIMs are highly competitive, and IIM Ahmedabad is the crème de la crème of brand IIM) and eventually ended up as a farmer (thanks to India's legendary bureaucracy, farming is a poor man's job in India, unlike western countries where farming/ranching is unregulated). Also when I grew up, I was told some jobs were simply not worth doing, like, say, driving taxis, working as construction labour, waiting/cleaning tables, etc., while in some videos I watched on YouTube, big achievers usually mentioned their doing such jobs on their journey to becoming big. In one of his videos on YouTube, Mr. DeMarco says the same thing those big achievers did. I do not plan on quitting my job and doing those jobs(!!), but should the need arise in the future, I will no longer hesitate to do them.
It will take me awhile to unlearn every wrong thing I have been taught since childhood. Not everything I was taught was wrong. No. But there is quite some wrong views on life, and unlearning them and relearning the right thing, not to mention shifting one's mindset from worker to employer/self-employed businessman, may take at least some time.
Chapter 7 of Unscripted makes so much sense. Mr. DeMarco says Asian parents (India is also in Asia
) usually pressure their children to work until retirement. This is so damn true! My parents absolutely do not trust that I am fit for anything else except working a job until retirement! (To be fair to them, their fears re: me are not entirely unfounded, given that I am a late bloomer, and my past failures in university and slow start to life are their sole reference points.) But my elder sister is an entirely different story. She follows them completely, with no deviation from the norm. I am sadly not her type - I am the proverbial apple that fell too far from the tree.But the one thing that separates me from the rest of my family is my curiosity: I do not hesitate to try out or at least check out something that is new or interesting. That is an instinct of mine neither my parents nor I have ever been able to suppress/eliminate.
I realise entrepreneurship is hard business. I first need to unlearn everything I learned wrong for decades, and I also need to work to establish discipline and consistency (I fail at both currently). Not to mention, I need to develop a very high pain tolerance and an ability to withstand big failures. Then only should I think of taking to entrepreneurship, which will certainly take years of boring (and in some cases repetitive) work in order to get anywhere, not to mention challenges and setbacks, which are another story.
Thank you and have a nice day.
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