Through hardships and austerity, some people are born to write stories of success. This is what happened to Mariam Fath El-Bab; an Egyptian girl who scored 99% in high school exams. Although Mariam lives in one room with six members of her family, she managed to achieve her goal and to be a role model. However, if we look closely at Mariam’s story, we will be inspired by many entrepreneurial lessons. Here are seven of them:
1- Successful Goal Setting:
Actually, if you start without a goal, it is never really a start. In Mariam’s story, her goal was to make God and her parents satisfied with her, then, she would work hard to be a successful person. Likewise, in order to be an entrepreneur, or to start your own business, you should always have a dream to chase.
You should be clear and focused about your main objective, about what you want to be in the future. Whatever the goal is, you must have one. Moreover, you must think ahead and organize how you are going to reach it. You must make a plan to achieve it.
2- Build Your Self-Confidence:
To start anything in your life, confidence is an essential element of the whole package. Despite Mariam’s lifestyle, and despite being raised by illiterate parents in a humble family, confidence was her inner motivation to reach her ambition.
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She was proud of her parents and of where she came from. Similarly, to be a successful entrepreneur, you are going to be hindered by many obstacles, for sure. Thus, confidence will be your only incentive that helps you to prove your ideas futuristic success and face your fears. You have to be confident enough to know that your circumstances will not define you, but your confidence will.
3- Seek knowledge:
Every company has a certain research culture. Allocating budget and time for research and development might be the main factor that would define your brand position among competitors. For entrepreneurs with limited budget and time, what is even better is to depend on yourself when you cannot hire a huge R&D department.
Mariam said that she always studied by herself. She liked to be independent and tried hard to get information, because once you get it on your own, you will never forget it. That is exactly how we should search for information.
An entrepreneur should be work independently even in searching for information and knowledge. We can ask mentors for help, but it will be better if we try harder to get it yourself.
4- Manage Your Time:
Time is gold. If you want to be successful, you should manage your time effectively. Mariam chose to save time by avoiding social media. Regardless, if this was good or bad decision, the point that she knew how to manage her time in order to reach her goal. To be an entrepreneur, not only; you should appreciate time, but also; you should seize every minute to plan and work on your aim and always remember one golden rule: wasting your time is wasting your target.
5- Do Not Give Up:
In your way to achieve anything big, you are going to face various obstacles. For more illustration, Mariam’s financial and social circumstances were tough enough to make anyone give up easily. However, she challenged her circumstances and the environment she came from where most of girls did not go to school.
Even at the exams time, she had some health issues, but that did not hold her back or make her give up. On the contrary, this gave her a push to believe in herself more and to overcome any hindrances.
Correspondingly, it will never be easy to start your own business, you should have perseverance and the ability to confront any strenuous circumstances. You should fight to reach your aim. Â You should be in charge on your own destiny, do not make circumstances control you.
6- Be Inspired and Inspiring:
Most of times, being inspired by a role model, is our secret motivation to follow our dreams. On one hand, Mariam was inspired by the Egyptian theoretical physicist Ali Moustafa Mosharafa and by his story.
An entrepreneur should be aware of other experiences, should learn from them and be inspired by their stories of success. This is what happened with Mariam and other successful people.
On the other hand, Mariam appeared on 90 Minutes program only to give hope to the next year high school students, reassure them, and inspire them with her story. Likewise, an entrepreneur should try to be a source of inspiration to the upcoming generation and people who want to be like him/her.
7- Surround Yourself With Support:
In order to go through all these steps, you need someone to support you. You need someone to lift you up, whenever you are about to surrender. Mariam was surrounded by a lot of supporters; starting from her father to the rest of her family and her friends.
That is exactly what we should do. To start your own business, besides financial support, you will need moral support. You need someone to be your source of positive energy. We should stay away of negative influence, and surround ourselves with supporting people who will always help us to get up again and continue what we have started.
At the end, Every entrepreneur can be a source of inspiration on his/her own way.
To be entrepreneur, you may have a lot of other qualities. However, those are the ones inspired from Mariam Fath El-Bab’s experience.Â