“What am I doing here?”

Earlier this year, I decided to understudy someone building a startup. Yesterday made it 6 months working at Famasi & I still find myself asking occasionally, “What am I doing here?”

My journey at Famasi started with an “I want to be your personal assistant” mail to Faruq while hanging out with friends. At that point, I was trying to get internships but none was forthcoming, so I decided to try out my last option. I’d procrastinated on Famasi because it was less than a month since they launched so I didn’t think there was any opening. I also had doubts about fitting in because my previous roles were student volunteer positions with non-profits.

I got a response one hour later and my interview was very funny. My interview question was basically — “Have you seen House of Cards?”. Per recommendation, I decided to watch the show & yeah, I find it annoying. It’s way too unrealistic for my liking.

A month after I joined Famasi, I moved from Personal Assistant to working Internal operations by asking to increase the scope of my work. What I find interesting is hearing Faruq constantly say “…but then I don’t know what I’m doing”. If I joined to learn from someone and he keeps saying he doesn’t know what he’s doing, what am I doing here?

I grew up with the belief that I was supposed to have answers to everything so accepting this new reality was something I struggled with at first. However, I think this stands out about how we work. By accepting that you don’t know anything, there’s room to make mistakes without feeling ashamed of it as long as you keep developing yourself.

This means a lot of my work starts with asking the right question(s) and carrying out research for everything directly and indirectly related to Famasi. I get added to Product meetings and I’m learning about Growth, Operations, Finance, Fundraising, Team Building & long term Strategy.

I’ve now come to realise that not-knowing isn’t necessarily a bad thing and there’s always so much more you don’t know.

Working at a startup means you have to be biased towards action and constantly find ways to make it work. I no longer shut myself up or say a thing can’t be done. I’m doing away with lazy excuses because they’ll always exist but it’s our job to make it work regardless.

So even though I still ask myself what I’m doing here if I don’t know anything, I’m grateful to be a part of what we’re building and excited about the coming months & years.

*in Miracle’s voice* We go run am!!!