How I Made the Leap from College to Entrepreneur at 25
When I was 16 years old, my dad introduced me to Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
One quote that stood out in particular for me is this:
“The love of money is the root of all evil.
The lack of money is the root of all evil.”
As you can imagine, it was a controversial statement. But today, I know that to be true.
I’ve struggled with the idea of starting a business since I had no role models.
No mentors.
The people around me work at jobs all their lives.
I thought I had it all worked out—study hard and get into a good university—then get a good, stable job. Climb up the ladder.
But in reality, I just didn’t know what to do with my life.
I was just following a set of paths laid out for me.
Why did I eventually choose to study Engineering?
I guess most people would see that studying Engineering brings prestige and guarantees some sort of preconceived notion of financial security.
For me, the only reason I decided to enroll in Engineering School at my University was because I heard a professor mentioning that Engineers had the best set of tools given to them:
- You acquire logical thinking and critical analysis skills
- Decision making skills improves
- You become more objective and less emotional when it comes to work
Looking back, I guess he was right.
What engineering school does to good students is that they eventually make you a better and more productive employee.
How I Started—and Kept—the dream alive
I discovered the exciting world of entrepreneurship back in 2008.
I was a young freshman student then, and finally taking random ideas I had as seriously as I did with my studies.
As part of my program, I was involved in several competitions that required me to produce and idea and present a business plan. The business plans were pretty complex, but at the end, what I thought I had as an ingenious idea had already been done by someone else.
I just Discovered the Internet – (yes I’m a slow adapter of technology)
At that time, back in Malaysia, where I went to University, I’ve just started to get myself acquainted with the internet.
My idea stemmed from the fact that I often find it troublesome referring to dictionaries while reading something and not knowing the meaning to certain words. That really dissuaded me from reading in the first place.
So, I had the idea of a device where people could read digital books and click on a word, and instantly find out the meaning. That would certainly solve my reading problem.
I really thought at that time, I was the first to come out with this idea of a device to read books.
Only later on, did I actually realize that Sony already came out with its on e-reading device.
Bare in mind, nobody around me even knew that e-reading devices would become the next trendy gadget.
Amazon announced the Kindle Fire, on Sept. 28, 2011.
And the rest was history.
It became the next revolution.
I moved on.
I know now that what’s more important than just a great idea was massive action—and, in some cases, the execution of ideas.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to stop idle dreaming, and start taking your first step.
Naturally, you may think you discovered a million dollar idea but there’s a huge gap between the conception of your ideas and reality.
Don’t fall in love with your ideas.
Test out your ideas by building a prototype.
What is mind-blowing to me at that moment was that I didn’t even know that the Sony e-reader even existed.
Of course, my experience might be drastically different from yours.
Are you thinking of making that leap of faith into business or entrepreneurship?
