By the SERDEF Media Bureau
Do you have plans of putting up your own business but are assailed with doubts you have what it takes to swing it?
Look back to your childhood.
Your early home and family life – the way you have been brought up by your parents – can provide clues on your entrepreneurship values and predisposition.
It is sometimes said the best entrepreneurship development institution is the family and that the best business training is family upbringing. This is because the early formative years are the most influential in the life of an individual. What happens during the first ten years or so in one’s life will have a lasting effect in one’s attitudes, personality and character traits, values, and predispositions. This is the time when the family or home exerts the greatest influence in shaping the adult person that the child will eventually become.
The enterprising culture is said to be ideally developed in the family from one’s growing up years until adulthood – where one is exposed to enterprising role models, where one gets to practice enterprising behavior, and where one gets to admire and enjoy such behavior.
Answering the following questions on your family upbringing will give you indications on how entrepreneurial you are.
- Were you brought up in an atmosphere of self reliance? Were you, as a child, encouraged to dress yourself, feed yourself, prepare your own food, choose your own friends, choose your own clothes, choose your own friends, fix your own room (without your mom or a maid picking up after you)?
- Were you inculcated early with the value of hard work? Were you assigned chores at home like washing dishes, dusting furniture, sweeping the floor, watering the plants, running errands, helping cook, etc?
- Were you allowed to take some calculated risks like cross the street by yourself, run errands far from home, take part in some rough and tumble sports and competitions?
- Were you, as a child, given freedom to express yourself? Were you allowed to express your views even if these differed from those of your elders? Were you able to participate in family discussions and decision making without being shushed or sent out of the room?
- Were you encouraged to tinker around and learn a craft during your childhood? Were you able to take up sewing, embroidery, crocheting, cooking, gardening, carpentry, appliance repair, livestock raising?
- Did any of your parents or older siblings set up a business? Did they enjoy the experience? Did you admire them for it?
- As you grew older, were you put to work in some business (store or factory) owned by your family or relatives or family friends as a young apprentice? Did you then learn to tend a shop, sell goods, count money, give change, pack or deliver goods, run errands? Did you enjoy this experience?
- Are you the first born in the family and therefore trained early to accept family responsibilities such as keeping an eye on younger siblings , setting a good example for the younger ones to follow, and taking care of the home when your parents were away?
- Are you and your family migrants to the place where you eventually settled down and therefore found some difficulty in landing conventional jobs, compared to natives of the place?
- While you were growing up, did your family experience a major loss or crisis — like death, separation of parents, loss of home, etc. — that might have required the younger members to be independent early?
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Photo: “Chopping Ingredients For Success” by Evelyn Lim, c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved