Dear Entrepreneur: A Spiritual and Technical Guide on How to be a Fulfilled and Successful Entrepreneur / Small Business Owner

By Rodrigo Laddaga

We have entered a period of human evolution where more people than ever are seeking higher awareness, true meaning, and clear purpose in their lives. At the same time, we continue to live within the parameters of business economics. With the guidance provided in “Dear Entrepreneur: A Spiritual and Technical Guide on How to be a Fulfilled and Successful Entrepreneur / Small Business Owner”, you will no longer focus solely on the growth of your business, seeking to “one day” live the life you envision. Instead, your business will walk hand-in-hand with your soul. As your business grows, so will you. As you grow, so will your business.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543922806

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

We need to talk to you...

My personal experience being an entrepreneur, coming from an entrepreneur family is where my journey started, I guess. After many years of talking with entrepreneurs and small business owners, helping them and studying entrepreneurship and small business, I started connecting the dots. As Steve Jobs once said in his famous speech as guest of honor at a Stanford graduation ceremony: You cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward. I suppose this journey for me started when I was about fourteen years old. I have an older brother, Rudy, who is about two-and-a-half years older, so at this time he was about sixteen years old. Rudy is a serial entrepreneur and was, even as a kid. My mother came to me and my brother, and told us that she and my father wanted to talk to us.

You know what it feels like when your parents say they want to have a talk with you. So just hearing my mother say that let me know that something was not right. The tone of her voice reinforced that thought. As I walked toward where my dad was seated, a thousand questions kept running through my mind, primarily,’ ‘What have I done?’’ We have an open Mediterranean house where everything is basically connected. The rooms, porch, living room, kitchen, garden, everything is connected with no doors. We sat, the four of us, on the porch next to the garden. My father had this look in his eyes when we walked in, and after we were all seated, he kept looking at the floor. He wasn’t even able or willing to look at our faces. We all sat there for what seemed like an eternity. Then my mother nudged him to speak. Come on, tell them. My father finally started to speak very slowly, very softly, still unable to meet our eyes. It was the first time I ever saw my father cry in my life.

The first words that came out of his mouth were: Well, the business has failed, and we’re in a difficult financial situation. He tried to say more, but it was taking him an eternity to finish, so my mother spoke up. Her words were strong, firm, and bold at the same time. She was somewhat mad and sad about the situation, but my father was dejected, ashamed. He looked and felt miserable. My mother said, Okay, we have to figure out how we’re going to live now because it’s going to affect our lifestyle.

That was it. That was what we were told. For me, it was like lightning had just struck my family. More than the difficult financial situation we would have to face, seeing my father cry, watching his defeat and shame was really painful. He was such a hard worker, pretty much the hardest worker I had come in contact with at that age of my life. He had been on the lookout for new businesses to try out, and he put in his all to ensure that those businesses were successful. But somehow, his hard work wasn’t enough, and that was what I didn’t understand at that time of my life. How could someone work so hard and still fail? Some years he was working about twelve to fourteen hours a day, and seeing him seated there feeling defeated and ashamed just broke my heart.

I think that it was at that moment in my life that a seed was planted in my heart and in my soul to find out why his business failed. Why do small businesses fail so frequently? And also, despite the serious financial debacle that my family faced, I wanted to understand why my parents could not better manage our crisis from the spiritual, emotional side. Being in a difficult financial situation was not what really shocked me. What really got to me was to see both my parents, especially my father, sad, defeated, and feeling miserable for a material thing. Though he made the best effort he could, he was unprepared to emotionally handle our family’s difficulty.

I believe this was the thing that intrigued me the most. How could somebody feel bad and ashamed when we all witnessed how he did his best? All these experiences planted a seed in my heart that gradually started to grow to help others to have a successful business and at the same time have a balanced spiritual life around it, as a part of it.

Why don’t I know how to run a small business, a startup?

So the seed was planted there, and I started my journey. I didn’t know at that time that this was going to be my journey, but that was how, where, and when it started. After all that happened, our family got through the rough times. I continued studying and finished college. After completing college, I had the opportunity to work for a big company that came to our campus to recruit people. At about the same time, I received a call from my brother that he was just starting a new business with two of my best friends and he asked me if I would join the business. Also, he said if I wanted to join, I had to do it now. So I had to choose between joining my brother and friends at this startup or taking the big company job offer. And I chose the entrepreneurship path.

I joined the new business just after I graduated from college. At this time, I didn’t have any professional experience, besides some internship programs that I took during my college years. But in fact, four among us (the founders and co-founders, like me) had little or no experience in starting and running a business, even though my brother had been an entrepreneur since he was a

Reviews for Dear Entrepreneur

[d-fbuser-520850648 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love this! Very practical and worth a million times reading!!!