Should One Go The Entrepreneur Route?

Thanks Naari but I cannot disclose much here . I wish you all the very best !

 

That's one of my fav shows as well . It's pretty addictive !!

 

Actually, this entrepreneurial bug is pretty addictive . Once you are bitten by it , it's hard to get over it.

 

@Sunburst

Congratulations on your post getting nominated to the FP section by @Rihana. She has the knack of finding the best in IL from the various forums. I am here to write about myself. I didn't mean to get appreciation from ILites but to simply encourage others to join the entrepreneurial spirit when they feel motivated to do so.

I have migrated to the US in 1995 (41 years old at that time) to join as Vice President of a software company. Soon after I joined in the US, the company listed itself in NASDAQ and I had the privilege of learning how to take the company public. We also did a secondary offering soon after the IPO as the stock price skyrocketed very quickly.

I was the Executive Vice President in-charge of overseeing many international operations including Australia, England and India besides reviewing the RFPs sent to Fortune 500 companies for multi-year software development, re-engineering and maintenance to make sure the margins quoted could be achieved. From that position, I was asked to get involved in IPO and right after the IPO and follow-on offering, I was moved full-time to be in-charge of acquisitions worldwide. In two years, I have reviewed over 400 companies, visited about 60 companies and closed 14 transactions. This experience of acquiring companies and integrating them into the operations of the public company got me very excited. Luckily, the CEO of the company assigned a lot of stock options to me prior to IPO that had risen in value substantially.

Unfortunately, the dot.com bubble took all the software companies' stock prices down to the lowest level eroding $4 to $5 million in stock option value personally for me. I didn't give up life because of this huge loss. Luckily, I have bought a home for my family without any mortgage and obtained Green card during that period. In 2001, our company got acquired by another major software company in Canada. I resigned my job and started my own consulting firm (I was 49 years old) to provide M & A advisory to software and other companies. Soon after that, my colleague who was in a senior position who has done over 100+ M & A transactions in his career came out and started his own firm. We merged two of our business together and started providing services to small to mid-sized companies to execute inorganic growth strategy, position their businesses for sale or raise Institutional funding for their growth.

So far, all of our businesses are obtained unsolicited through referral from friends, other M & A firms, acquaintances, etc. We don't have a website and don't do any proactive marketing of our services. We have been in this business for 16 years. There are a few clients who have done more than one transactions with us and one of them have done 7 transactions so far and expected to use our services more. As we have worked in the corporate world acquiring companies, our understanding of the strategy and execution of M & A transactions and services are much appreciated by our clients.

We struggled a lot in the beginning until we closed a very large transaction. Even in the past few years, some years were bad for us but we learned how to save money from good years to survive the years in which we are not likely to close any transactions. As a family, we sat together and discussed whether we can afford to take the risk of being on our own in 2001. My son was only 13 years old at that time. We decided to take the risk. We became US citizens in 2004. My son is now doing his Ph.D. in Computational Fluid Dynamics. I am 63 years old now and I plan to retire in the next 3-4 years and return to India after my son gets employed and happily married.

Working from home is a unique experience too. Initially, my wife was all smiles as I was traveling internationally so much earlier. Later, she realized what a pain I was watching everything happening around the house. But she is struck with me. I see a lot of smile in her face when I cut vegetables, cook from time to time, wash dishes, put clothes in washer/dryer, clean the house, attend spiritual classes, visit temples, etc. from time to time which I was not doing when I was in the corporate world traveling so much. However, I learned to work smarter (not long hours) at work. Whatever took the entire day for me takes only a couple of hours for me now. I don't work more than 8 hours a day now. That is why I can write a snippet regularly, participate in @Gauri03's Fire up your neurons thread, post my exploration of Instant Pot Recipes in @Justanothergirl's thread and post the Carnatic Music I enjoy in @kkrish's thread and occasionally write my opinion in Relationship Forum.

Viswa

 

@Rihana

I have purposefully used the word "Luckily" twice, once for the stock option assignment. Even though it is assigned for the role I played and my hard work, I have no direct control over how many stock options could be assigned to me. Besides, all of them lost most value (if not all) before I could cash in. Buying the house in 1998 (again I used the word luck here) without mortgage gave me a lot of comfort to start business as otherwise, the monthly mortgage payment would have made me shiver a little until I picked up revenues in the business. I always believed (as I mentioned in my parting speech from the company I worked for), the knowledge I gained at work is more valuable than the stock option value. The money will lose its value quickly but not the knowledge as it is capable of generating potential future earnings.

Viswa

 

Hi @Naari , when I started my journey, I wasn't really dreaming of becoming a boss or making a name for myself. I am a SAHM and my priority has always been my 3 children, so at that time, my mindset then was just to make extra spending money without having to rely on anyone to look after them, including my ex.

Before everything started, my husband suffered a huge financial loss due to career and gambling. I borrowed from my Dad and paid off all the debts and the rest I used as a down payment to buy 3 properties to lease out, so no mortgage coming out from my pocket. This and my husband's career back on track put my mind at ease.

I looked into different business ideas but settled for a fondant cake business for my first venture. Since I'm not a very good cook, I really struggled in perfecting my baking skills. I baked when my children are sleeping at night, decorated the cakes when they are in school, took pictures, created my FB page and marketed them thru FB as well. It was slow at first, even with discount promo. Then it picked up that I have to limit my orders to 5 a day because my first buyers became repeat buyers and referred my business to friends and relatives. I was making around $2000-3000 a week, sometimes more. With this business, I'm still able to bring/drop off my children to school and extra-curriculars, etc., on top of this, not much overheads


After 2 years, I sold off one of the properties. I bought another investment and ventured into my second one which is liquidation/closeouts/wholesale. I would buy in pallets and store them in commercial storage, then create an event such as cosmetic warehouse sale. An example is a branded nail polish, regular price is around $10. I buy this at about 10 cent per piece, so a pallet of it is about $10k.


My new venture is a niche product with my own branding and I'm very happy with it. I have to buy 50 000 units in order for me to get each @50 cents per unit and sell them for $49. I have also set up the website and offers great commissions to affiliate marketers. All I do now is ship them when an order comes in.

Anyways, sorry for the long post. I just want to tell you from personal experience. Plan, research, and execute accordingly. I'm sure you will be successful if you put your heart and mind into it

 

Entrepreneurship , , among other things requires a strong and sustained passion for what business you choose to do. You can't just pick one from a list of say cupcake making, daycare, ethnic wear etc,, based on your criteria of flexible hours and being your own boss. You need to play to your strengths . identify an area which interests you strongly, research on that extensively . meet other entrepreneurs , the best way to learn is to observe them. If you have a natural talent in that area thats a real added bonus. if your plan is to open a serious business and not a part time home based one , then this requires a lot of your time and effort, no shortcuts here. This will be a parallel project of the same scale to raising your child .