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Disown – Family or Startup!

By Aman Jha on 30 Comments / 6436 views

Family is against business. Family wants you to take up a job. Family asks you to choose one of them. And family asks you to disown them or your Startup. How difficult our life becomes in such situations, we love them both, it’s impossible to choose one of them.

I remember my childhood when my mother used to tell me, study hard and then you will get a nice job. If you don’t study hard now, then you will have to work hard in a not so good job. And if you study hard now then you will have peace the rest of your life. Later on, all you will have to do is sign a few documents and take fat paychecks.

I believed her then, no doubt, because she said those words with conviction. Maybe even she felt that was the case in job market. This is not just my story – this happens with every middle class family entrepreneur or wannapreneur. Once you grow up, reach your late teens or early twenties, your family knows that now it’s impossible to fool you using old techniques, so they use techniques. Like emotional blackmail, discouragement, comparing with the job-success story of your peers… Comparing is the worst thing family can do to you, you hate it more than anything in this world.

But the other angle of this story is, your family is over protective and concerned about you, about your social status, about your marriage, about your financial security, about their yet to born grand children. They have been made to believe by the society in their times that job is the only way to achieve financial security and business is very risky and not for middle class families. They have been wired to be pessimists about business and high ambitions. They fear if you are very ambitious and your business close down then you may want to jump in a well.

So (according to them) they do their best to prevent you from becoming an entrepreneur. They are ready to discourage you, break your morale and insult you and all this with the conviction of saving your life. Keep in mind, it’s for the fact that parents always try to do good for their children but that good may not always be right for you, so you have to take a call.

If your family is against starting up, remember it’s purely out of genuine concern. So instead of cursing them and succumbing to the pressure, ignoring their words would help you lot. It’s like a litmus test for you, if you can’t sustain the family pressure better take up a job because you are not gonna survive the pressure of starting up and competing local players, MNCs, freelancers, and specially customers.

I remember how my family reacted when they first came to know about my entrepreneurial aspirations – I was 16yrs old at that time. My father asked me to choose business or formal education, and I happily chose business only to realize later that they were only trying to discourage my aspiration by giving me such weird options. They tried every possible trick on me but I didn’t budge.

Of course I continued my studies and they allowed me to run my startup too but their trick was to not allow me invest my time in startup and soon it died. But I didn’t budge, I kept on starting something of my own, tried to monetize and my family kept on discouraging me and using tricks.

After two years into engineering, I dropped out and joined Bachelors in Management Studies (BMS), my calculation was in BMS I had to put in only 3hrs in college so I can shell out time for my startup. Three years of BMS passed happily with my ventures running alongside and my family still discouraging me.

As I dropped out of engineering my family friend’s son/ daughter completed their education two years before me, they got their jobs 2 years before me. So again this was something always my family compared with me. They would give me examples of their family friend’s children, they are earning Rs.18000 per month and you still not done with your studies. Your venture will lead you nowhere, etc, etc.

By this time I was already 22yrs old, so I was mature enough to not react to their words. All this time when my family discouraged me I didn’t curse them or hate them because I knew it was out of genuine concern. All I did when they used to discourage me was to promise myself ‘No matter what happens, No matter how many times I fail, I’ll keep trying, the day I succeed people will get their reply’.

Now I am 23 and my patience and hard work has started paying off, I struggled for 7 years continuously and still striving hard but then now my hard work is paying me fair returns. Recently I got a fat cheque from one of my clients, I went home happily, handed over the cheque to my father and told him, “It took me 7 years to reach this level but then this amount is more than any of your friend’s MBA Son/Daughter earning with an experience of 2 years. Now you can be assured of my career and social standing.”

He was smiling and relaxed. Now no one in my family discourages me. My dad happily introduces me to his friends as an entrepreneur. He happily refers his friends to me for any business consultation. My relatives happily approach me for consultation. 

And this is what I suggest to all aspiring entrepreneurs. You will have to carry your cross on your own shoulder. No one can help you in convincing your family. You will have to make yourself strong enough to sustain all the discouragement, insult, pressure, etc and that too without hating them. You might even get thoughts like going away from your family, disowning them but then if later you succeed you will regret disowning your family because you won’t have anyone to celebrate your success with.

I have gone through this phase; there were times when I had such thoughts of running away from home. In fact once I even planned it but then today I am happy that I didn’t take that step. Today I understand that you need your family equally during your success as much as you need them during failure. So disown the discouragement, not Family or Startup!

image source: www.patheos.com, www.thegardenworshipcenter.com

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Recommended inspiring reads by Aman: How I doomed my first venture

Why Tom never killed Jerry?

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30 Comments

  1. very very nice aman!

    from celebrating failure to disowning family vs startup…!

    i think you have the ability to inspire many many other young folks who are facing similar probs at the homefront. and my sincere wish is that they too have a happy ending story like this to share with all of us…

    p.s: am very happy to hear about the FAT CHEQUE :)))) many more your way!!!

    reminded me of this story – https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/on-the-worst-day-of-the-seaso…

  2. Inspiring !!!  Aman

  3. Wonderful Aman…. It’s like going through that phase of life all over again… Sometimes you don’t even realize but your determination helps you pass the litmus test without even letting you know that it’s a test. You just don’t budge and one fine day you feel, it was all worth it.

    My mom introduces me as, “Ye delhi mein apni khud ki agency chalati hai” 🙂 It feels like I own the world at that moment!! 🙂

    Thanks for this wonderful post…

  4. Very well written indeed. One point about parents is that they have grown up in pre-liberalization era and we are in post that era. The value they give to a decent job is much more because it was so scarce back then.

  5. Lucky to Be born In Gujju middle class family But Business family , SO NO PRESSURE ..!!! Luck to have Dad Who say that i am happy if my son is not earning but happy with work he does rather than earning lot and not happy with work .!  🙂  

  6. So Now You are Happily Married!!! Congratulations!!

    To your Life Partner (Your Startup 😉 ) You are in Fact adding to the Family than actually Getting discouraged.

    And Doing it with AMAN (Peace) aur Shaanti is the Best Results to get as Reward, no matter however long it takes. Just Keep at it!!!

    What you Deny or Ignore, you Delay. What you Accept and Face, you Conquer. and WIN!!

    Keep adding and Inspiring more. AMAziNg, Cheers!!! 

  7. My Story….

  8. Thanks Asha, its always an honour to receive encouraging comments from you.

    Also, I’d like to call this as happy beginning 🙂

    Regards

  9. Exactly, more or less unknowingly your family and society acts like an incubator. They help you grow unknowingly!

  10. Thanks Saif

  11. I liked this sentence; My mom introduces me as, “Ye delhi mein apni khud ki agency chalati hai” 🙂 It feels like I own the world at that moment!! 🙂

    Yes it’s really feels like king of the world!

  12. Yes, it’s important that aspiring Entrepreneurs understand this. No use of blaming them, it’s not their fault.

    The motive of this post was to introduce other angle of the motive behind the anti-Startup behaviour  of the family.

  13. Ha yaar, Gujarati and Marwari family me hone ka ye fayda hota hai…! In fact you get lot to learn about business from your family itself. They become your management institute!

  14. Hi Darshan,

    It’s your comments that I await most whenever I see a new post and may be this is the first time you are commenting on my post, so it feels great now. At times your comments have more learnings that the post itself.

    Thank god you mentioned Startup as my life partner or else my future marriage prospects would have been endangered, hahaha.

    Right now m still not adding to the family, coz m clearing some old backlogs but in few months I see this happening. The quotes you mentioned here are like cherry on the cake!

    Regards

  15. Then Govindji, get going, post it and inspire us asap!

    Waiting for your post!

  16. Hi Aman,

    Great writing, you bought my childhood memories & discussion with parents back. Are you based out in Badlapur? my brother is planning to start his own venture in same locality. I believe you have very good experience in the field of business. Would you be able to mentor him. It would be of great help !!! 

    Please let know.

  17. Hi Jayesh,

    I am based out in Dombivli, my Pizza outlet setup was at Badlapur. I am still learning but I will be glad to share my learnings and experience. Ask him to connect with me.

    Regards,

    Aman A Jha

    9892621090

    aman4apex@gmail.com

    https://in.linkedin.com/pub/aman-jha/21/711/5a7/

  18. Thanks Aman. I will ask him to get in touch with you. 

  19. absolutely!

  20. Aman,

    As always I introduce you ….. awesomely well written bro ….. keep the cheques flowing in bro …….. 

  21. Great to hear its all working out 🙂

    I have had a totally different experience. Something I wrote related to Family & Starting up. Its my own “String Theory” of sorts :).

    https://medium.com/what-i-learned-today/406cb66e28e3

  22. Thanks Karan! More the no. of startups coming up, more the cheques will flow in… Right now, m waiting for ur startup :p

  23. aman,

    check this out – https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/DB879tJcFIOR4FRjZmh8GK/Cubiclenama–How-families-cripple-entrepreneurs.html

    looks like everyone’s writing about entrepreneurship vs family 🙂

  24. hahha…. It is a common issue in India among Entrepreneurs…. A Hot topic of discussion…

    Some are busy fighting the issue, some who won are busy mentoring ‘How to fight this issue’, while Some are still pondering why they have to face this issue!

  25. I read it, why don’t you post it here again in Rodinhoods?

  26. I can’t make out if this reply was directed at my comment. If so, will do 🙂

  27. Of course, it was directed to your comment…. 🙂

  28. Great my dear friend !!!! Yes you are right most of the time it’s your own family and near and dear ones discourage you to take the plunge for their own reasons. They don’t do this because they don’t trust you they do this because they are conditioned to think that way from generations ago. We from the middle class families ( here middle class is expanded to all the classes except families who own and operate businesses ) have been wired not to even think of risk. I’m really happy that the younger generation now is waking up and trying to unshackle them from these limited beliefs and throwing themselves out by taking risks. I’m happy that your venture is stabilised now and as suggested by The Editor, your story will definitely become inspiration for all the wannaprenuers to battle against all the odds and become successful. Great going Dost let me wish you all the success in all your future endeavours.power to you Man !!!!!!

  29. Very well written.inspiring for the young & immature who surely have to face these kinds of experiences.Do not disown your family which is done in haste or due to passion to his venture by many entrepreneurs.In the end the entrepreneur has a success story to tell.Will be happy only when they are with their family to celebrate their success.very good point to be noted.

      All the very best  & congratulations for the patience throughout, present success & future endeavors.

  30. Very nice Aman… since my family have very good faith on me, they are not forcing me to go back to Job.. I’m trying my best to strengthen that faith..!!

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