Advertisement
Published: December 4th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Beauty
Gorge, clear water stream and palm trees. Ahhh, this is life Morocco! What a beautiful place to be. I've been travelling all over for the past ten days and every city feels completely different from the last one. There's these big squares in front of the medina at Marrakesh and Meknes where people gather around to listen to music and storytelling! Performers would draw a big crowd and just start playing the drums. The storytellers had the biggest crowds though and always drew laughters and loud applause from the audience. The mountains are beautiful, the deserts are tranquil and the cities are bustling. I'm learning to love life more everyday!
A Learning Entrepreneur The other day I met a pair of travelers who were juggling balls in the open space of our desert camp. I approached them and asked them to teach me how to juggle. As these circus performers were teaching me, I suddenly realized my passion. No, my passion isn’t to become a professional clown. My passion is to learn.
I love learning about everything. There’s absolutely no desire for me to be a clown but I truly enjoy the learning process of it. The actual process is what excites me. The state of confusion, the nervous
jitters, the unknown, the frustration of failing, the ‘aha’ revelation, the understanding moment and finally the first taste of success. Some people wish to jump to the future and skip the whole learning curve but I appreciate the journey more than the destination. It’s what makes me happy.
My fondest memories of learning did not happen in the classroom but in the bathtub. As a little boy, my dad would allow me to ask 2 questions about anything during bath time. I would think about the two questions all day. Why is pee yellow? What do the stars do? Where do babies come from? He would explain everything in such an entertaining way that learning became more like a game to me. His teachings weren’t aimed to make me smarter but aimed to captivate my imagination. And sometimes there’s no lesson at all, he would just pull a prank on me to mess with my mind.
I remember when I was 5, my dad got three bars of soap and pressed them together, then he said to me, “Di di, I made your favorite food: sandwich. Eat!” Without hesitation, my fatty instincts kicked in and I took a
huge bite out of the soap. My face cringed in disgust as I spat it back out. I gave a clueless puppy look to my dad but he just chuckled. I was hungry and confused. I can’t decide if I was a bigger fatty or a bigger idiot because the next thing I did was take another bite out of the soap just to make sure it wasn’t a sandwich. Yep, definitely a bigger idiot. The lesson? Not exactly sure there was one, haha. But one thing was clear; he was a teacher that allowed me to find things out for myself. He gave me the freedom to learn.
With that freedom to learn, I enjoyed exploring all the different things in my surroundings. I learn best when I am free and I learn worst when there’s a structure. That’s why I was no good at school. I was forced to learn things I didn’t want to and so I never paid attention. Learning started to get really boring in middle school and got even duller in high school. I decided I couldn’t let college be the same. I had to choose a major that was exciting and
Kahlia
so good challenging at the same time. I chose something insane; I chose entrepreneurship.
Some people think entrepreneurs are crazy, but a kid that chooses to go to a school to learn entrepreneurship is even crazier. Becoming an entrepreneur is risky enough, but to risk your college education on entrepreneurship is like taking a risk on top of a risk. Babson College is ranked #1 in the world for entrepreneurship but nobody is really quite sure what criteria were used to determine that. After all, can you really teach entrepreneurship?
I remember on the first day of Babson College a professor said, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat every day. Teach an entrepreneur to fish and he’ll spend the rest of his days figuring out how to make an industry out of it.” The idea was that we could be entrepreneurs before we even start a company. It’s the spirit that makes us an entrepreneur, not the measure of success. They wanted to instill the entrepreneurial spirit in us and equip us with the right mindset.
To say the least, our way of learning
Alley
one of the alleysinside the medina of Marrakesh was a lot different from other colleges. We had quite a lot of eccentric professors who were always using unconventional ways to open up our minds. We had this millionaire professor who drove two and half hours in his Prius from New Jersey to come and teach us twice a week. He barely ever used the textbook but was able to deliver a powerful message to us: an entrepreneur will fail many times but does not give up. It’s a simple message but it was inspiring because he’s living proof of what we could achieve with a resilient heart. There was this other professor who was quite a character and hated rules. He would tell us that entrepreneurs need to break rules and push boundaries so that they will always be ahead of the curve. He was like a mad scientist but I eagerly learned from him because he started 5 companies of his own. His most unforgettable advice to me was: Vic, trust your crazy ideas and go for it.
On our last day in Babson, the school invited somebody very special to come and speak at our graduation. It wasn’t a CEO or a hotshot business man;
it was a blind mountain climber who climbed K2 Mountain. At first we were confused by the selection, but it became clear he had the kindred entrepreneurial spirit as soon as he opened his mouth.
He spoke with such honesty and humor that I hung on to every word. He told us how he was destined to be an entrepreneur as a blind man. A blind man needs to love learning otherwise they’ll walk into a wall over and over again. I broke into laughter when he said, “I know an apple is red. I’m blind, not dumb.” Haha, so true. But the most memorable thing he said to us was about not being afraid of the unknown. He lived his whole life in the darkness and every step is like reaching into the unknown. The only thing that is important is to believe in what you're doing. As he finally reached the paramount of the 2nd biggest mountain in the world, he knew that no amount of obstacles would stop him from achieving his dream. While his fellow mountaineers marveled at the glorious panorama, he reveled in his happy moment with the darkness. He was comfortable with his
Medina in Fez
The center of arts and crafts of the world darkness and never let the unknown scare him. He left the speech with a lingering advice: “Don’t be afraid of the unknown, believe in yourself.”
I moved on from that school believing in myself and believing that I was an entrepreneur before I even began. But I wasn’t ready to dive into the business world quite yet because I felt I wasn’t done learning. I went on this journey to learn about all the things I’ve ever wanted to. I’m discovering the human side of being an entrepreneur more than the business side. I’m learning about what motivates me. I’m finding what my passion is. I’m understanding how to be comfortable with the unknown. I know better than anybody that I’m going to fail many times in my entrepreneurial ventures. But hey, I win some and I learn some, right? Either way, I’m going to do what I love and that’s more than I could ever hope for. I am a learning entrepreneur and I am ready to give it everything I've got.
An entrepreneur needs to know who he is before he can lead. Find yourself. Dad
Advertisement
Tot: 0.204s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 56; dbt: 0.1064s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
steve Chang
non-member comment
learn vision from a blind , cool !
when CNBC asked me " why don't you persuade your sons to succeed your business ? " i answered " i don't have right to kill their joy of entrepreneurship process " , but i should have added " they are simply much better than me " with this article , Jon and Vic are ready to change the world , go for it ! Dad