Early entrepreneurial days mentoring young team members.
In 2006, I finished my Executive MBA and founded my digital marketing agency. Our team had me plus four 19-20-year-olds, who came to Hyderabad from small towns.
They were from humble academic backgrounds and simple families. Somehow finding a job and surviving was their main objective and they joined me through a common friend. They had no connection with marketing or content creation.
Recently on my birthday, I received a call from Karthik and I was overjoyed to hear that each of them is doing extremely well in their life. I have many memories of their raw perseverance and how we connected back then across 8 years beyond just being colleagues.
In the beginning, Karthik and Hari had just completed electrical diplomas from a government institute. Kiran wanted to supplement his existing income from teaching at a local government college nearby and worked with us part-time as a designer. All four of them worked with our clients as I mentored and initiated them into the world of marketing.
I most fondly remember watching them develop and fight for their ambitions.
“Ma’am, how did you get into business?” They would ask.
I explained how I never gave up on my efforts, accepted my painful situation, and conquered new challenges to eventually start my own business.
We were candid and friendly and I described things just how they happened. “Is this possible for me?”, “Can I do this?”, this was their mindset. No real awareness of all the possibilities. I encouraged them to have big dreams in life and not to settle for less.
Our relationship grew strong to a point where in one economic downturn, I couldn’t draw my salary for three months, but I worked to pay them and felt good about it.
On my birthday when I learned about their success, I could understand how their perseverance made a big difference. Hari, the most introverted of the four, works at the Central Secretariat as a Class-1 officer. After many attempts, he cracked the Civil Services exams, something that I couldn’t manage to do. I know how hard those exams are and the kind of grueling work it takes. Karthik is now the Regional Sales Head at an MNC in the electrical industry. Kiran leads the UI/UX team at Tech Company.
Along our journey, we shared the common trait of perseverance, the ability to be humbled by life and still survive tough times.