Exposure: Does your past guide your future?
December 3, 2006 – 10:28 pm
It’s funny when people start businesses, companies because a lot of times when you first start a business it’s all new… or it is? Chances are whether you are 25 or 55 your home life growing up dictates a bit of what influences you to start a business. If you were raised around parents who were teachers then there are things you’ve seen them go through and perhaps you found a way to build a company to teach others or you became a consultant.
Some people believe that home life does not have anything to do with business but what about the type of business you start up? Think about it someone who is exposed to certain things from a young age and grows up around certain types of business will probably have stronger ties to starting something related when they grow up. It’s sort of similar to the idea of “you are what you eat” because lets face it; its part of what makes you who you are and can be attributed to the interests that you have later on in life.
Growing up in my home was different. It was my dad and mum and my brother and I. My dad was in Human Resources ever since I’ve known him. On many occasions I said to him growing up “I’ll never do what you do for a living”. My father started off employed for other companies in various Human Resource related roles; my mum found her calling in Sales and more importantly interior design. Both my parents currently work from home and are self-employed (more or less). I always remember thinking that they should employ other people and take more of a management type of role in their respective businesses and to this date they have not. Growing up I tried a lot of different businesses on for “size”. Everything from a drink stand when I was in my early teens, delivering newspapers, clearing snow off driveways in the winter, running a landscape company in my late teens and later on a web development company.
When I was in College I decided to start a web design company called “HardWerX Technologies” my only goal for this company was to create a profit. I advertised the business in local computer papers and in June of 2003 I got my first big project during my summer semester of Computer Science and Technology at Sheridan College. I decided to recruit a web designer to develop the site, I’d meet with the client and discuss changes and revisions and manager the developer accordingly. By the end of the summer the website was done and I’d learned a valuable business lesson. Recruiting Rocks! And little did I know… people get paid for it. I didn’t know it at the time but I’d stumbled into my niche (the top 20% of things I am awesome at) and it eluded me for the next 3 years because I wasn’t ready to except responsibility for it. All i know is i wanted more of it!
In managing the web development team I learned the skills that I was best at were planning and organizing, leading, and recruiting. Fast forward 3 years to September 2006, I was feeling a bit hopeless until I realized that I wasn’t focusing on my skills and maximizing that top 20% of skills that I am truly strongest doing. Now I had a few options to choose from because my end focus is running and managing a business…
- Hope that I am offered the opportunity to learn and earn with a company until I am ready to embark on my own journey
- Go back to school part-time – now I’ve never been to University or really studied business in school in the past but I was willing to consider it now; I wanted something that was inline with the views and interests I had so if I took this way it was time to research.
- Do nothing at all – always the easiest option… and the hardest one too
I spent the past few months thinking this through, over and over (more so in the last month) and came to realize my goals and dreams were inline with running a people-centered business. Sure, I love new technologies but felt like something was missing for me. I also realized that in order to do this I’d need to spend some time learning because it was not in my background of knowledge, maybe intuitively but not formally.
Having the geeky background is definitely a skill because I can envision building online components to my business and the beginnings of online marketing and networking. The thing that all this has taught me is that you need to play to your strengths and leverage your weaknesses. I decided to head back to school part time and do a diploma over the next year and hone my skills. What diploma path did I choose to embark on? Human Resources, of course; it’s a path that I thought I’d never walk down and yet here I am ready to get started. I realized that the skills at which I truly excelled in were best covered by this path and that the areas of business I am most interested in are in part contained in this area of study.
In part, my exposure over these past 27 some odd years has led me to this point… I wonder where it’s going to take me next because I never thought it would take me here. I am interested to here from you. Did you ever have a moment where things seemed to click either in your personal life or in your business life? How did you choose the path you wanted to walk? I look forward to your responses.
Luc
Knowing yourself is half the battle