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
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