Reflecting on why Bhaumin and I have successfully run our Odoo consulting company for the last eight years, I realize that those who want to start their entrepreneurial journey today can learn much from our experience.
In our careers' initial phase, we spent a few years doing jobs working full-time on Odoo.
When I took the interview, I was GM in one company, and Bhaumin Chorera was selected to join that company. It was his second job.
I left that company later, but I observed dedication, discipline, and a commitment to work in him that few could match. Later, this was one of the reasons we connected after he left that job.
During our jobs, we worked tirelessly without worrying about how much we were being paid.
At that time, we focused on learning and contributing to the organization that trusted us.
We treated our jobs like they were our own business in terms of the level of dedication and commitment, and now we are doing business like a regular job in terms of discipline and accountability for our clients to grow with them and for our people to grow with us.
When we rented our first office after three months of operating the business from our home at the beginning of our entrepreneurial journey in 2016, we rarely listened to lots of terms like EBITDA, Operating Cost, Capital expenditure, and depreciation... as they were not our family's topics of discussion on the dining table as like today.
But at that time, the one thing we knew very well was hashtag#Odoo, how it could improve people's lives, and why the world sought more help to use it properly. We started our first company with this knowledge and experience as a valuable asset and kept building things around it.
We both worked for 18 hours per day when we did the job in various companies at the beginning of our professional career; most of the time, it was our choice rather than forced by our manager.
We had no idea how valuable the attitude and resilience we developed at that time when we started our own business would be.
Now we know how painful it was. I suffered from frozen solder and neck pain during those times, so today, we prefer our people to rest well, spend good time with their families, and add value to the time that they have been hired for.
The biggest benefit of our entrepreneurial journey is that it makes us more mindful and good human beings.
Of course, there is no universal rule for becoming a successful entrepreneur, and no rule is permanently valid. However, the timeless core values remain the same—doing business with ethics, truth, kindness, empathy, and perhaps many more, depending on who you are.