Colportage

          An unbelievable business start-up! $5 in just 5 hours! Some women surrounded me and bought all the skirts that I had sewed in that hot morning summer day of my fourteens. Although it was not my first income in my life, it was the first business that I started and I accomplished it with my own experience. During summers, when the schools were closed, many students used to work. Most of adolescent students were working at car repairing studios, sewing workshops, photography ateliers, bakeries, smithies, and other temporary occupations. They were earning money and learning an occupation for their probable future careers. I started working in my uncle's sewing workshop since I was 8 years old. He had a small workshop to produce garments in bulk and sell to wholesalers. During 6 summers I had learned many things about sewing, kinds of textiles and fabrics, how to cut fabrics to make clothes, how to use sewing machine, and how to sell garments to people. After six summers, I was being paid $5 a week. It was fair but I was thinking about something rather than working in a dark and wet workshop. I needed to use my experiences in a more exciting way. I needed some adventure. I liked to do my own business.

          Eventually I decided to start. I threw myself into a deep pool. You cannot learn swimming in a shallow pool and you cannot swim in a deep pool unless you conquer your fear. It wasn't easy to leave a permanent job after six summers and adventuring on a new and strange path. In that morning, I got up early and went to the wholesalers' market. I bought some fabrics and puff, brought them home, cut them and sewed 8 skirts. Immediately I went to the big market and start to marketing to sell them to some small clothes retailers. Before they could buy them, some women saw them in my hands and bought them in less than one hour. I could start and finish my first business in just five hours. I had have dived to a deep pool, I was swimming and I was enjoying that. Now I could continue. I continued my business at next summers. Communicating with people and persuading them to buy my products was the ability that I learned it while I was selling my products to people on the streets. Most young students didn't like the job what I was doing. It needs to be outgoing, talkative, and strong to stand up whole day and not to be shy when seeing friends, neighbors, or relatives on the street. I didn't forget the day that one of my teachers saw me while I was selling a garment and the customer was bargaining. Actually, he was surprised because I was one of the best students at school and he didn't expect me to be a colportage.

          When I went to the university, I continued my job in new ways. The first business was buying the textbooks of "Electric Circuits" class from a bookstore in downtown and selling them to my classmates. During my education, I was working as a merchandise representative in pharmacies and drugstores. My last experiences were in my hometown, a small industrious city close to Tehran, but in my new job I could experience a huge marketing activity; more competitive and more risky. I was studying in a public university and it meant that I didn't need to pay tuition and fees. Therefore I didn't need to work many hours. After four years, when I was 21 years old, I started to find full-time job. The first company that I send my resume called me for an interview and then I started my first full-time job as a sales expert. Although I was so self-confident, there were many new things that I had to learn. The main thing that I learned during 2 years in my first job was professional marketing in large scales. The owner of the company that I was working for was an old gentleman who had more than 70 years old. He had more than 50 years experience in doing professional business; he was one of the biggest exporters of Iran's saffron and carpet to Europe. I started my occupation with minimum wage but after 4 months, my income raised more than three times due to bonus that I was earning from sales. I was working hard and earning reasonable money, I could meet many famous businessmen in healthcare and medical equipment market. I learned a lot of practical and unwritten laws of business in Iran like the importance of relation and communication, the role of corruption in governmental supply chain, the impact of financial problems on benefit and loss of a company, and the significant role of honesty, trustfulness, reliability, and commitment in being a successful businessman. However, I couldn't finish my education in time. I had passed 120 credit hours before starting my full-time job in 4 years and it took more than two years to pass just 20 credit hours while I was working.

          After two years, I realized that there is nothing more to learn. In addition, I thought that I deserved more salary and income. My boss didn't accept, so I resigned. Immediately I hired in an international company with higher fixed salary and desirable sales bonus. The company was importing raw material for domestic industrial manufactories from China and Europe. It was a brilliant opportunity for me to learn about international business and strategies in importing and doing business in large scales. Although the first months were very challenging, I could employ my last experiences and educations to establish new methods in marketing and implementing the contracts in the company. The company had two owners, two partners who were completely well joined in work but distinctly difference in their personal characteristics. One of them was outgoing, well experienced in international business, skillful in public relation, and costumer oriented. The other partner was well experienced in domestic trading, detailed oriented, and strongly conservative in economic relations. They had known their strengths and weaknesses and had made a couple that could manage a huge enterprise with extremely efficiency and effectiveness. During three years, I could meet many famous and talent businessmen and learn significant strategies in financing and banking issues. My income rose gradually and I was earning an average of $700 that was about 5 times more than minimum wage.

          After three years, domestic economics start to decline. Consequently the activity of the company decreased and my income reduced. During five years that I had been working, most of my friends and classmates had been continuing their educations and a main part of them had migrated to the USA, Canada, and Australia, the dream-lands for Iranian top students. I found that I have missed a worthy opportunity; higher education. I decided to compensate. Although I had not enough time to study for the next entrance exam of public universities, I started to review my lost knowledge perseveringly. I decided to change my major from Biomedical Engineering to Industrial Engineering. Therefore I had to read new textbooks to prepare myself to entrance exam. After five months I took the exam and I succeeded to enter to one of the best engineering university of Iran. It was absolutely hard to seat on wooden chairs after five years and completely boring to do homework at home after work and classes. Despite all difficulties, I graduated after 18 months with rewarding first rank due to highest GPA. In addition to changing my majority that helped me to find better jobs in my future job career, being successful in my master education raised my self-confidence and self-esteem. I found that I can reach my goals with hardworking, being perseverance, learning, and relying to my abilities and talent. I was not cleverer than the others; I just was employing my sources more efficiently.

          After finishing my education, I decided to find a new job in a new field; production industries. I send my resume to many companies and attended in several interviews. I found that getting hired in higher positions need to difference attitudes and discipline. I had to change my strategies after each interview to increase my chance in the next one. After one month, I had three attractive suggestions. I had resigned my job one month before but I had connection with my ex-boss. I talked with him and he advised me to choose one of three options. I always owe to my boss due to his extremely effective consultant on my life.

          I started my new job I have to reveal a big secret in my life; honestly I am very lucky. Sometimes I acquire a desire extremely  much better than I expected before and sometimes I confront unbelievable and worthy opportunities. One of the best chances that I have had in my life is that I always have been working with clever, ingenious, understanding, and successful bosses. When I started my new job, I gradually found that the boss is the best manager whom I had ever worked for; a highly educated, strongly disciplined, consistently hardworking, well-organized, elocutionist speaker, spiritual-goals oriented, smart planner, and young entrepreneur. During five years overtime working I learned many things from the environment and especially from my boss; for instance, the intelligent ways to developing and marketing new products, strategies in customer services, pricing, human resource managing, and the last improvement in sales strategies. I had the opportunity of attending in the best seminars and conferences related to my responsibilities which the company had paid the cost and instead, I had to implement my learning in accomplishment my duties. I developed my experiences and abilities in many diverse fields of a pioneer production and industrial business while I was undertaking several positions like marketing, production line, and finally customer services manager. In addition, I was the editor in chief of the Weighing Industrial Magazine, one of my new ideas to expand the market throughout the country.

          Everything was going well in my job, completely in converse of my life; it was not my chance but my choice. My longest serious emotional relationship broke down after five years. It was the first and greatest dramatic fail in my life. I tried to avoid impacting my life challenges on my work, but it was impossible. It was the first time that I found my characteristics are completely emotive. The proactive, self-motivated, energetic, creative, and talkative manager replaced with a passive, exhausted, erratic, sensitive and depressed employee. Suddenly I crashed, I couldn't able to continue. I decided to hide my fail and solve it lonely. But I didn’t have enough energy to fight. I had to leave the battlefield for the first time. I had to leave my home, my friends, and my job. I had to leave the existing situation and refuge to a reliable shelter. I resigned my job and came back home. My family embraced me at my hometown after thirteen years.

          My hometown is a small city in central part of Iran. Most of my relatives are living there. The first days were so hard. Most friends and relatives were interested to discover the drama. It encouraged me to scape people, more loneliness, more suffering, and more weakness. Nobody could help me because nobody knew my problem. The only thing that I needed was quietness, composure, and concentration. After one month, I started working out. I decided to give help from my desire to pass that difficult period of my life. One of my old desires was doing my own business. It was a good opportunity to implement that. I remembered the first day that I sold my first product. Thinking to new business made me busy enough to escape from depression. Now I was able to manage myself. No time to waist, I surveyed some alternatives and decided to rent an office and run my own company.

          I had long and diverse experiences in doing work for big companies but running a small business was much harder that I expected. On the other hand, it was a strong challenge to evaluate my abilities, educations, and experiences. I design a small business in which water purification units were bought from wholesalers and sold and installed to homes, schools, hospitals, and factories. My sister, brother, brother-in-law, cousin, and one of friends were helping me. All of them were my first employees in my first company. They all were paying but honestly not much money. I was doing my best efforts to find and expand the market, giving good services to customers, making a reliable brand name, and winning the competition with older and richer competitors. The first year was awesome. We could place in third ranking according to market share. But the economic sanctions against my country affected our business like many others throughout the country. Most of our customers couldn’t able to pay their installment. We bankrupted at the eighteenth month of our business. I lost all my saving and lent almost $50,000 to payback all borrows. Despite all financial disasters, it was not the finishing point. I redesign the business plan and changed company’s mission; maintaining and repairing services instead of selling the equipment. We could survive the company in spite of reducing the income. The revenue was enough just for some part-time workers.

          After two years entrepreneurship activity, I had have lost all my saving during 13 years hardworking and has become a big debtor to the bank with a high brutal interest rate. On one hand I was a defeated businessman, on the other hand I had gotten more experienced. My last boss who was always watchful about my activities invited me to occupy a new unbelievable position; managing director of a new subsidiary company in his huge enterprise. My doubt removed when he suggested an unbelievable for the first year. The activity of the water business had declined and my brother in law was able to manage the company. I left my entire asset there and moved to Tehran again, actually like 15 years ago, when I started my university courses. Immediately I started again. Actually there was nothing except a name for the new company. There was a lot of jobs to do; hiring new technicians, train them, supply equipment, and start to inspect more than 15,000 working weighbridges all over the country. Although I had experienced pressure, tension, and complicated challenging in my last positions, daily unforeseen incidents, huge pressure, unsustainable tensions, and unfair challenging were confronting our company. We could pass all the fluctuations by tactfully conscious strategies that our boss was planning and I was responsible to implement them. After six months, most of the problems had been solved and the stress and tension declined. The new experience proved that there are always a lot unknown facts to learn and showed me again that hardworking, perseverance, critical thinking, consulting, being creative, being honest, being benevolent, and finally, belief to achieving the goals are the keys to be successful.

          Although I was well paid in my position, I need much more money because I had to pay back my expensive loan. After one year, one of my ex-coworkers who was working as the human resource manager in a rich company, proposed an attractive post with enticing salary. I talk to my boss and he admitted that it was a good opportunity for me to boost up and also he mentioned that he couldn’t afford much salary. I changed my job once again. In comparison to my last jobs, the last one was completely effortless, comfortable, low-responsibility, and unstressed. I could pay back my loan and save some money to invest in a stock market. I had enough time to do many things that I had never have done before; spending more times with my family and my friends, reading books, learning new skills especially computer software, traveling around the country, and regular exercising. I started thinking about the past years, whatever I had earned and whatever I had lost, thinking to future; what are my real dreams? What is my plan to the future? What are the most valuable facts in my life? How can I build my future while I am enjoying from my life?