The Accidental Entrepreneur, The Survivor Edition

10What I wish I had known before I started years ago!

As you read from my story, I never did year 12 or went to uni, but I did go to the school of life. Being a traveller teaches you skills you don’t learn anywhere else — or not as quickly, anyway. I pride myself on my problem-solving skills and I put that down, in part, to the travelling that I did. You learn to look a little way into the future and see danger before it hits — an invaluable tool in business. When you have only yourself to rely on, you learn to trust your instincts and find resources within yourself you never knew existed.

Lessons from the traveller

Here are some specific lessons I learned in my early twenties that can be applied to many start-up business settings:

• You don’t have to put up with upsetting or unlawful behaviour at your workplace, and you shouldn’t.
• All people, even the successful or rich and famous, are just people with their own fears, dramas, happiness and sorrows. You are no more and no less than anyone else.
• Some people seem to think that because they have money they need to act in a certain way. Similarly, some women think that to be successful in business they need to act like a man. The most important thing: be yourself.
• If you’re ever given a job or an opportunity through someone you know or are related to, make sure you work 10 times harder to prove you are worth it.
• Look at what people do, not what they wear. At Boost and Retail Zoo, we don’t have a dress code in the support centre ...