3 Business Lessons From Growing Up Poor

July 1, 2018 | Posted at 6:00 pm | by Eric (Follow User)

Growing up poor sucks. There are a lot of barriers to overcome even with simple goals. Want a family of five, nice home, and a white picket fence? That’s the American dream. It gets even more complicated when you’re naive enough to believe you can change the world. Despite the many challenges that come with growing up in the hood (finances, time, access), it comes with one fantastic gift—perspective.

 

“Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity” – Seneca

Create Opportunity

There is a lot of talk about being prepared to seize opportunity when it’s presented. Well, what happens when you prepare for opportunity that never comes?

Inner city Detroit is clearly not an easy place to live. I grew up in one of the most dangerous zip codes in America. Our school system was/is failing and a series of riots left our city one of the most segregated in the nation. A million factors and circumstances made one thing very apparent. Opportunities here come few and far between.

Early on, I was disinterested in ‘street life’ so I buried myself in educational programming, video games, and anime (Japanese Cartoons). The Discovery Channel taught me trivia, language, science, and cadence. Visual learning was my first foray into creating an opportunity for myself. Since then my formal education has always been supplemented by extracurricular studies.

I learned the basics of photoshop in high school and continued to learn graphic design in my own time. After a chance meeting at Wayne County Community College, I was all but pressured into going the entrepreneur route. I built a lot of great relationships doing freelance graphic design and even got my first office at Techtown Detroit, a one person cubicle, after a job opportunity fell apart.

I spent up to 2-3 hours on a bus to get to and from that cubicle every day. It was a time to think, read, and sometimes rest. I credit that Techtown space with changing my mindset around my business from hobby to business. It allowed me to have more structured meetings and eventually laid the foundation for the relationship I have today with my business partner.

My entire career has been built on seeking information, taking risks, and not expecting to be handed opportunity on a platter. From teaching myself how to design to fumbling my way through networking events. Throughout this journey of growing a marketing agency with a fantastic team and support system, I’ve learned that opportunities are rarely presented. More often than not, they’re created.

 

Confidence

Growing up in the hood as a skinny, short, nerdy kid that loves Japanese cartoons isn’t easy. In my life, I’ve faced down thieves, protected neighborhood kids from thugs, and been in numerous fights. The hood is a place where you either learn to stand up for yourself or get steamrolled.

To this day, I have not run into a client as scary as some of the guys in my neighborhood. No stage fright holds a candle to the anxiousness I’ve felt walking down my street, the ironically named Joy Rd, at night. I took the bus home every night about midnight so this was an everyday occurrence.

When walking down the street feels like an episode of the Wire (funny enough I spent a year in Baltimore as a kid too), giving a speech is a walk in the park. That is, if that park isn’t the one in my neighborhood.

Most of all I’ve learned that courage and confidence are muscles. They get stronger as you use them and atrophy when you don’t. Practice confidence every day.

 

Your circle informs your outcomes

There will always be people that will sit on the sidelines and tell you what can’t be done. Others will simply try to distract you. “Why do you work so hard? You need to sit around and do nothing with the rest of us.” This second group is not malicious, they’re just misguided. They prioritize friendship and fun over future planning. Over the years, I’ve minimized my time spent with people that don’t contribute to my overall goals.

At one point in my life, I bragged about my laziness. I actually thought that being lazy around was a virtue. That would shock anyone that knows about my 14-16 hour work days. I was never exposed to business or the day-to-day work ethic it would take to go from where I was to where I saw myself. But the same way I latched on to TV shows to inform how I should talk and behave, I paired myself with people that acted in a method that, in my opinion, was conducive to success.

When I changed my circle it changed my outlook.

How do you expect to grow your business if your circle is full of people that haven’t overcome your challenges? Saga wants to make a much larger impact and so we align ourselves with successful entrepreneurs and motivated small businesses. Our office and co-work space, In the Black Suites, provides downtown office space to local entrepreneurs. One of our main goals is to see tenants outgrow us. Hard work is a part of our culture. We challenge each other. We support each other, and most of all we push each other to succeed. Business isn’t a spectator sport, it’s full contact.