All of these were my thoughts and mindsets, not until I had a great breakthrough with my ideologies. For the first time, I understood that business is not about my personality or nature, it is a principle. It has no respect for persons or place. Wherever you are, whoever you are, business is the same all over the world. And it also doesn’t matter who is doing it. If you know how to run a business, you can be successful at it, even more than the people who are teaching it. The principle of business first of all is the principle of give and take; the principle of transaction. If nothing is given, nothing is taken. They say nothing ventured, nothing gained. Baggage in, baggage out. When you put in something, you will get out something.
The principle of transaction in business allows value to be traded or exchanged in the bid to make profit. The profit can be in different forms. It can be pecuniary; in terms of monetary gains and it can be intangible in terms of support, social value and human capital. But there’s always a final goal with every business. No business is established just for the sake of doing a business, but to engage in productive transactions. So, how exactly did I start my business? And how did I overcome those limiting beliefs? There was a day I woke up in the middle of the night and started meditating. I do this most of the time, even sometimes during the day when I need to fix some things. While I was meditating in the midnight, I asked a question within me that “What exactly can I do to make money?”
That time was a difficult time for me because my mom was the only one sponsoring me and she also has my siblings to cater for. So, that time, things were difficult that she couldn’t send me any money and I was without food for many days. One of my friends who observed that I didn’t have money bought me some food items and asked me why I didn’t tell him what was going on. I always don’t like putting my own burden on other people and I believed that whoever would help would help without me asking for it. Though, this might not be applicable for everyone and not in all circumstances. But that time, that was my belief. So, I told him I wouldn’t want to bother him with what is going on with me. Though, I knew he wasn’t happy about it. I appreciate the love and support but I just prefer to be myself and learn whatever I’ve got to learn in that situation.
So, while I was meditating and asking that question, an answer came almost immediately -“go start a food business”. I was like – how would I start? I know a lot of my friends have commended my food before and told me that I know how to cook, but I had always reject that in my mind – thinking it’s because they are my friends and the food that I cook should not be sold or no one would buy it. When there are people who are professionals at cooking, what am I doing there? All of these were self-limiting beliefs I had created in my mind to fight against that idea coupled with my wrong mindset about business.
Eventually, I had to surmount courage to start anyhow. I started with beans. I knew there were many people who wanted to eat beans but couldn’t afford the stress of cooking it for long hours and have the exact taste they wanted. So, I got little money and went to go and buy pressure cooker which can make the cooking faster and easier. When I got the pressure cooker, I cooked my first beans. The beans burnt very well. I didn’t know the technique on how to use it. I washed the pot and cooked another beans the following day, the result was much better, I didn’t allow it to burn as was before. I made sure I lowered the heat well and allowed the pressure within the pot to cook the beans. This was how I started gradually and began to introduce the beans to people.
I would prepare it and put it in small plates as samples that I would give people for testing. And a lot of people liked it. I was surprise at those comments because I would wonder what’s the big deal out of what I’ve done? There are even some of my buyers who have become so addicted to the beans that they can’t do without it in a week. So, gradually I was reaching out to more and more people and I also printed my business card which I was giving to everyone I saw. But after I gave out the sample of my food and my business card and a lot of people told me they liked the beans, something interesting happened that taught me a big lesson in my business. After I got all the nice comments and gave people my business card so that they can call me anytime they want food or even at least for my support on anything about food, I didn’t get any response. No one called me. I waited and waited. What’s going on? I asked myself. Was it that these people were just deceiving me when they told me the food was nice or they just wanted me to feel happy to appreciate my effort of trying to make a living or do a business? Different questions flooded my mind. I said –anyways, I’ve got to find out what is really happening.
So, I decided to go out and meet a lot of them. Many of them were students and they live in the hostel. So, I went to one of the hostels where there were most of the students. When I got there, I started going from room to room and meeting with the students. I was shocked at the result that I got. I realized that many of these students had been waiting for me to bring food to them. I was like- but I gave them my contact, why didn’t they call me? If you understand human nature that people don’t remember you until you remember them and people won’t come to you if you don’t first go to them.
Now, this happens in different ways, but the principle is the same. For you to be known in your business, you must first let people know you. You must bring yourself to the mind of people all the time. Let them have your image in their minds all the time, so that they would remember you more and contact you. But if you expect that they should remember after just one contact would mean close-to-zero probability. People know you after you’ve known them. And people value what you give to them after you have valued what they give to you.
So, the action or process starts from you. If you don’t do anything, nothing remains undone. I learned this very well in my business and since that time, I had never wait on people anymore to do anything, I would just go ahead to meet them. Imagine how much opportunities we miss when we don’t reach out to people. When we expect them to come to us while they are there waiting for us. We need to be proactive and make the move towards everything that concerns our progress and success. This is one of the key principle in business that I learned in the early days of my business. I know there are still many more things to share, but this is just the idea/highlight of how I started my food business.
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