My parents who are both refugees from the Vietnam War. Starting with nothing except a name and their hands, they got working. Growing up with the business-minded duo, I've been exposed to the entrepreneurial spirit since day 1. From coffee shop, to a chain of nail salons to day spas, I was no stranger to the family business and always provided a helping hand when my parents needed help.
In high school, after my entire family taking up tennis, we found ourselves spending quite a bit of money restringing our tennis racquets. My father decided to invest in an electronic stringing machine so that he wouldn't have to travel to the local tennis store often and spend hundreds of dollars on paying others to service his racquet. Self-taught, my father also taught me the skill. I remember stringing my first racquet. It took me over 2 hours! Slowly but surely, I found myself perfecting the craft and creating new blends and combinations of string tension and string material for the perfect play. 2 hours dwindled down to 20 minute sessions.
My parents would play regular matches with their tennis league and group of friends, and while learning the trade, found an opportunity to make extra cash. Utilizing my parents vast network of tennis friends and armed with my own business cards from Vista Print, "Kevin's Stringing Service" was born. There I found myself servicing many of the racquets of the various tennis players in my community. Having up to 10 racquets to complete in a weekend and having a net profit of $10-$16 per racquet, it grew to be quite lucrative. This experience showed me the entrepreneurial spirit within me and I hope to capture that same spirit to work as hard as my parents did when they became citizens of the US.
Why ENT 3003:
Honestly I took ENT 3003 because I needed another course to be a full time student. However, having friends who have taken the class before, I decided that ENT 3003 should be a sufficient business elective. Learning about this semester's unconventional course load for this class at first had be skeptical. However, doing these exercises now have me excited about this course and I hope to connect and collaborate with my colleagues, no matter how many miles exist between us.
Hey Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your "entrepreneurship story." I've always enjoyed going to the courts for a good game of tennis. It was very resourceful of you to make your own business cards after learning you could make a profit from servicing racquets. It was clever to use your parent's network of friends as a client base.
My entrepreneurship story started at a young age as well. You can read about it in the link below.
http://rogerstrobert.blogspot.com/2016/01/my-entrepreneurship-story.html