It was an honour hanging out with Ha AnTrinh at the Asia Pacific Student Association today and helping some fine students with presentation skills. Got me thinking about starting out in my own life! Yay!
For all my weaknesses (which I have quite a few of), I can state with 100% confidence that one of my strengths is remembering how hard it’s being on the bottom, starting out, being totally isolated and having no-one support you.
I was very lucky to be invited by the hard-working Ha An Trinh to speak at an Asia Pacific Student Association Event on the Top of “How to Present”. The audience was made up of younger Asian students who mostly had entry-level jobs and were looking for the next step in their careers.
They were asking very intelligent and brilliant questions and it got me thinking about when I started out in not just my business, but several times in life when things basically went against me. They where great, awesome and innocent questions such as: “How do I deal with questions I can’t answer?”, “How can I make sure I get that job?” and I loved it. After helping them out for a while, they were so grateful and thankful and I said to myself:
– OMG! What if I could tell myself all this to my 20 year old self!
I have been homeless several times in my life and I remember when I first moved to Sydney to start my life again – I knew no one locally and I had to build my whole network from scratch. I had to originally find work and as that didn’t go too well for me, I had to start my own business. But then I had to find clients! Friends, Colleagues from scratch.
I remember two interesting things that happened to me at this point, I would meet some people who were very mean to me when I started out – but then I would meet people who were just amazing to me. Grant Dempsey, Monica Brewer, Eve Fennell, Matt Craig and more – they were so kind to me in my early vulnerable days and without surprise they are all very successful business people. They are very well liked people, have great client bases and lots of respect around town.
My advice and learning’s from today? Starting out in business, careers and life is really hard! It is for all of us and what is very important that as you get more successful in life you NEVER EVER forget where you came from and what it’s like for new awesome people like yourself who are getting started. People who were nice to me at the start of my business inspire me to pass on the love today – and I certainly like to think that the start-ups I help today, will be awesomely good to new start-ups a few years on and so forth!
Thank you for taking the time to read this, if you are starting out – keep at it my friends and if you are awesomely successful, well done and pass on the love. Thank you again to Ha An Trinh for inviting me to speak today and have a great day or night my global friends!
Edward Zia – Marketing Mentor who never forgets his roots!
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