HOW BUSINEES IDEAS ARE BORN?
There's been something I've been thinking about a lot lately, it's something you won't learn in your economics class at unit, it's something that can make or break your career it's about how to turn anger into something, highly essential for your progress in work and in life, now let me tell you why I am uniquely qualified to talk about this for one, I've studied economics in combination with another subject for the past four years so I know that side and I've also had the pleasure to be working full time during all that time in the real business world.
I'm talking about talking to investors founding my own startup and really fulfilling a vision that's in your head so you could say I have learned to love both sides it started, when I was 15 years old I always wanted to be my own boss and have my own startup so naturally I started looking up books that were about entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneur are born and not made discuss
I started buying up all the books that the people that the students used in the first semester I was about 17 and I read every one of these books I highlighted every word not only because my English was not strong enough and I had to look up every word but also because it was very interesting and new to me so after every book.
I was hoping to find an idea that I could work on myself but sadly that moment never came and I was wondering if reading all these books was actually the right way to go about this, I started looking elsewhere for answers I started reading fortune and Forbes magazine I was hoping for some in-depth interviews with some personalities like Marissa Mayer Sheryl Sandberg.
I was looking for people to look up to and yeah these magazines did a great job in doing that I understood why these amazing personalities would move their business in one direction instead of the other but still it didn't quite motivate me to get off that damn couch and stop watching Netflix you know how difficult that can be so yeah my sister picked up on my mood she literally picked me up from that sofa.
I was like aiyah we need to go shopping just to get your mind off of things so you do something else and just reading books and magazines at home all alone it's like okay guys that was her best idea yet let me tell you a little story on why we went to a sneaker shop and there the guy would show us automatically to the women's section we were looking for some cool sneakers with crazy patterns and bright colors and what we would encounter in that women's section maybe you know it's not what we were looking for these shoes were kind of boring kind of basic I mean you see what kind of shoes.
I like not what I wanted and we thought we were at the wrong store as our eyes glanced over to the other side and I was like oh this is what I've been looking for but the guy said oh oh no that's the men's section no need to go there really I was like why like we don't have your size like why would you not have my size like I mean these shoes they're just not feminine enough they don't suit girls or women and they don't ask for it women just don't wear these needless to say
I felt offended how dare you make stylistic choices for me first second it doesn't make any sense for me that a business would exclude 50% of potential customers from buying their product so as I became more furious outraged and disappointed because I found out that they wouldn't sell the right sizes my sizes in their online stores or at any other shoe store for that fact I was like here this cannot be you want to find my shoes and I became more angry and angry and let me tell you what this moment showed me that being pissed off was actually the best thing that happened to me because then and there I realized I had a business idea what if the world just needed a skateboarding brand or a sneaker brand for women that would cater to all these people who wanted bright colors in their shoes and crazy patterns just like I saw in the men's section
I knew that this was an idea where I know what needs to be done and I couldn't believe it, this was actually a real business idea where I felt motivated enough to just go out so this emotion gave me something that the books couldn't give me that the magazines couldn't give me and that all these professors and teachers who talked about entrepreneurship couldn't teach me, it finally gave me the kick off of that damn couch,
it was the anger that led me to coding my own solutions for the problems that I was looking for in this world and it was anger that led me to write a book about Wall Street and it's actually anger that makes me do that skateboarding trick for the 50th time over and over again even if I fall so yeah I had my very own business idea but it didn't start there
I'm not popular for that skate brand I'm still wearing these shoes that I found in the men's Section this is way too big for me and this chapter for me is still not close so yeah I'm still angry and for awhile I challenged myself to write down ten business ideas every day at first I had my problems with it because I asked myself the question okay how can I make money off of something but that question later changed into what pissed me off, today and how can I make something or how can I make sure that I'm not pissed off tomorrow about the same thing, obviously so I started having lots of ideas just straight out of my head onto that blank paper so if you struggle with this if you want to come up with your own idea for your next project or a business maybe the question you need to ask yourself is what pissed me off and what can I do about it yeah thanks so much.
-AYA JAFF-
