Hey! Every business appears in different forms and sizes. I believe that every startup has its own unique purpose or a reason why it exists in this world. To solve a problem, regardless its a big or small problems. I would like to share it with you guys and hoping that it will somehow motivate anyone of you guys to take action and realize your dreams too!
I quit my job 6 months ago.
I’ve accumulated 10 years working experience in the startup, small & medium companies, and big corporates, you named it. Over the past 10 years, I lived comfortably. I was doing ok in term of my financial. At least I sleep ok during the nights not worrying about the financials. But, what bothers me was during the day. You see, over the past 10 years I woke up every day, prepared for work, traffic jams, work, meetings, lunch, work again, back home, dinner, TVs and sleep. Repeated this entire routine for almost 2,880 days on average.
I’m not happy or sad; just feeling robotic.
One day, my ex-company visited a children shelter home for their annual CSR activity. We donated foods, stationaries, books, goodies and presents during our visit. We played games with those kids, running around like we were 10 years old, taking selfies together, jumping here and there, and singing songs with me playing the guitar; and, every one of us was having so much fun.
They are all awesome kids!
We spent almost 4-5 hours there and then we called it a day. As we said our goodbyes, we hugged and shared our love with these kids; even we just get to know each another for less than a day. And, I remember one kid; she looked at me with her innocent gaze and asked if I will come visit them again and teach her to play guitar.
I paused.
And replied, “I’ll do my best”.
But deep down, I know I don’t have the time for them with my “busy routine”. Plus, I don’t think that my company will plan another visit within a short period.
Since that visit, on and off I kept thinking about those kids. You know, charity that is involving kids is a tricky bit. When we visit these kids living in the shelter-home and never ever show up again – it is a form of abandonment. Anything which is a “one-time thing”, a “Touch and Go” charity on kids is abandonment. Well, at least for me. After all, these kids are abandoned by their own parents. Child abandonment may lead to a later trust issues, self-esteem & self-confident levels and god knows what kind of negative side effects on these innocent kids.
So I talked to my wife (Hany – major in counseling – specializing in children) and both of us want to do something for these kids. Well, at least be with these kids for 4 months. Not so “Touch and Go” if you compare to a one time visit, right? That was the best we can do. And since we were committing spending 4 months with them, might just prepare and teach these kids some lesson programs. Which, we did. Our lesson focuses on emotional intelligence (EQ) rather than IQ (maths, science, english and bla bla blah). EQ such as regulating emotions, expressing feelings, communicating, leadership, teamwork and etc.
At our first lesson, we asked kids to draw a portrait of them. One boy, he refused to draw and claimed that he doesn’t know how to draw. After several of persuasion, he picked up a pencil and ruler and started to draw.
Why with a ruler?!
Well, this boy was so low confident and same time was so afraid to make mistakes that he needed a ruler to make sure his drawing stayed within his own portrait’s outline. At that point, my wife knew that these kids are full of fear, insecurity and low self-confident. This means she needs to put extra effort in lifting them up. After 4 months, Hany saw progress in term of kid’s motivational level and self-confident level. But, we just can’t afford to continue this lesson for free.
Look, during these 4 months all expenses were coming out from our own pockets. Hany and I are just like you. An ordinary couple with extraordinary financial commitments – mortgage, car loans, credit cards, PTPTN (raise your hand if you feel the same). If we thinking for a longer term lessons to these kids, we need to find another way.
A more sustainable way.
As we were discussing our dilemmas while looking at these kids’ artworks, we realized that those drawings are pretty good. Every artwork has their unique story coming from each kid. Then, that’s the ah-ha moment for us!
We can take these kids’ artwork and turn them into clothing designs. This solves 2 issues: * When adult buys clothing from us, they are directly recognizing kid’s creativity – build up kid’s confident level * Every piece sold, part of the proceeds can be used to fund the lesson. A sustainable business model!
Basically, everything took off since.
I quit my job, devoted full time to my business.
We started everything from scratch, learning and re-learning almost anything and everything.
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