How to convince your parents to let you start a company?
Perhaps you have heard this line before, “When are you going to get a real job”? A lot of parents do not understand the world has changed from when they were in school. It is no longer possibly to simply graduate college and find a job. You have to network, have a unique skill, or conform to an “ideal persona” many companies have created.
So what do you do if at the end of four-plus years you do not have a job? In our case, we decided to start a company. Many of our friends tell us they would like to do something similar, but are saddled with debt or have other obligations that prevent them from making the leap. This fear would be understandable if many of these same people did not also spend huge amounts of time looking for work. Someone coined the phrase JOB = Journey of the Broke, and you see it play out across the corporate world. Mike, Evan, and I built Tradeversity never to be a “job”; instead, we are creating a platform of localized marketplaces that help students. It is not always easy to convince parents though, that YOU are capable of making such a dream a reality. In fact, what you have to do is
“Take the Leap.”
You can spend a lot of time trying to get your parents approval, or you can do it and allow them to see the benefit. For me personally, my parents were completely against the idea of starting EcoPort in Hong Kong. Some of these reasons proved completely valid, but I received a unique education I would not have gotten had I been in a regular job. It is always far easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. In the words of my mom, “find your passion and you will never work a day in your life”.
