Dear Ram,
As you say, “Our lives are a summation of our experiences. Every experience we have ever been through impacts us” and then ask “Where did you learn to love your trade?”
I, murat ulker as being the youngest member of second generation of a family known as baker and chocolatier never been asked to join the business. But I saw that an obligation as a respect to my family and I still feel the same way. Although I remember that my father very wisely always kept me close to business, for example when I was a kid, on Sunday he took me to the factory with him at his usual trips and that place was an exciting playground for me. Later in coming years while he told me performing different jobs like loading/unloading trucks, performing salesman, quality/process checks, financial auditing … his reasoning was: “one day if you are in a position to tell people do something, I prefer that you have already been through, so you can empathise.”
Of course that helped me a lot, but I am afraid, now I became a workaholic.
I grew up in India where my family owned a shoe shop. It is there that I learned the basics of business, to diagnose the most complicated businesses in the world, and my work ethic, all of which have led to my success. I came from a hard-working family without much access to education. At a young age, I learned discipline. I opened the shoe shop at 7:00 am before school, saw one customer before my brothers came in, went to school and came back directly at 4:00 pm. When there were no customers, I used to do my homework. They still have the shoeboxes where I used to solve my Arithmetic work. That was where I learned how to diagnose a problem. I learned to work hard but I also learned that I loved business. It was this passion that fueled my work ethic. Our lives are a summation of our experiences. Every experience we have ever been through impacts us. Where did you learn to love your trade?
Ram Charan – Linkedin