We can look to Immigrant, Inc. and step into a culture of entrepreneurship.
Omid Kordestani, Google’s 12th employee whose net worth is reportedly over $1 billion, echoed this sentiment in the commencement speech he gave at San Jose State University in 2007:
“To keep an edge, I must think and act like an immigrant. There is a special optimism and drive that I benefited from and continue to rely on that I want all of you to find. Immigrants are inherently dreamers and fighters”
Interviews with dozens of successful immigrant entrepreneurs make clear that an innovative approach to business is part of a larger approach to life. They may hail from myriad cultures and backgrounds, but high-achieving immigrants display a common body of beliefs and personality characteristics. Most, we have found, possess these success traits:
1. A Keen Sense of Adventure
Explore the world. Become an “outsider” by traveling and living abroad. Immigrants have often leveraged the advantage of being an outsider or traveler to see opportunities that go unnoticed to Americans. International travel and relocation creates an intense appreciation for the opportunities and resources in the United States, which often have gone unnoticed and therefore under-utilized by many Americans.
While most of us can not simply pack-up and move to another country and become a temporary immigrant (although this is highly recommended, even if only for a year or two), you can become a virtual immigrant by visiting foreign countries, particularly countries that are off the beaten path, to view completely different cultures, markets and lifestyles.
Become an explorer/pioneer like Marco Polo. Get out of your comfort zone. International travel is often hard, with lots of unexpected surprises, that forces one to think on one’s feet, adapt, and be self-reliant. It builds up tolerance for the pain of the unexpected and the deprivations of creature comforts that you may have in abundance at home.
Much of the good things in life and in the business world can not be anticipated nor planned for. They just happen.
Keep your eyes open for fortuitous events, and be ready to explore deviations from the beaten path. A bit of dislocation will give you “fresh eyes” to see new opportunity.
2. A Reverence for Education
Regardless of your age or stage in life, never forget that your “inner immigrant” craves life-long education and reveres education as an asset than can never be taken away from you. Advanced education is the tool through which you can harvest the immense opportunities of countries like the United States.
Take night classes to get a bachelors or advanced degree. Enroll in continuing education at your local college or on-line courses. Challenge your children to the pursuit of excellence in their academic pursuits. Get on them. Parenting for excellence is a full-time job!
Given the emphasis on education in many immigrant cultures, it is no surprise that immigrants bring this reverence for education to America. Nearly 2/3 of all the Intel Science student winners are children of immigrants. As is often seen in Asian and other immigrant families, education of children is the reason for being.
3. Love and Respect for Family
The mantra, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” resonates with a guiding force in many immigrant households. It’s often because the children have witnessed a great sacrifice.
Honor this sacrifice with every step you take toward your dream. Leverage this motivation --- fulfill your moral duty to achieve success, regardless of the personal costs, as the only way to repay your parents’ extraordinary sacrifice.
4. An Eagerness to Collaborate
You can’t do it alone. Find the very best partner (often this will be an immigrant) and team-up. Forming companies in today’s complicated, hypercompetitive economy requires tremendous amounts of collaboration and complimentary skills.
Looking back, Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems’ Chairman, attributes much of his personal success to hanging out with smart immigrants. In a 2008 interview, he advised aspiring entrepreneurs to follow his example.
“First of all, I would suggest, when you go to school, hang out with really smart, innovate, super bright, off-the-charts people,” he said. “Stay at the party as late as they do. Become their best friends. That’s what I did.”
His foreign-born business partners (Vinod Khosla and Andy Bechtolsheim) valued his friendship as well. For if there is one lesson immigrants learn quickly, it is that native guides can help steer them through new terrain. They may spy opportunity others missed, but they usually have to work with the locals to seize it.
Immigrants can offer an added dimension to a partnership, like cultural savvy, multiple languages and contacts in growing overseas markets (where 95% of the world’s consumers live).
To find immigrant partners, go to where the immigrants are.
Outside of colleges and keg parties, a good place to strike up a relationship with professionals from abroad is within the networking groups that have sprung up in immigrant communities across the land.
The best known, TiE, has an Indian-American flavor and a busy schedule of gatherings nationwide. Taiwanese entrepreneurs welcome newcomers to the Monte Jade Science and Technology Association, named for the highest mountain in Taiwan. Latino entrepreneurs focused on high technology, biotech, and green tech collaborate through Hispanic-Net. Chinese immigrants are trying to build bridges between the American and Chinese business worlds with Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association, better now as HYSTA.
The networking groups provide opportunities to find teammates, capital, energy, and optimism. They may also offer a window onto the global economy.
5. A Tolerance for Risk and Failure
Make some big bets in your business and professional career.
Immigrant business success has a lot to do with high risk tolerance. Risk tolerance is the core common value shared by both immigrants and entrepreneurs. Reflecting this commonality, MIT Professor Edward Robert has said, “To immigrant is an entrepreneurial act.”
A very small percentage of people in the world ask themselves “why not?” move to another country, and then actually take the plunge, uprooting themselves from the only place and people they have ever known. If they had actually listened to the “why” voices in their head and those around them, they never would have made the move. Try to anticipate future trends in your industry, try to identify big opportunities before anyone else does (even if it labels you a contrarian or a little crazy), and place a big bet or two on an which you are passionate about.
This is more than a lottery - this is a hybrid of informed decision and gambling. No one knows who will be the winners. It might be you.
Break away from the pack and dare to be different in your business.
While no one wishes to fail or celebrates failure, prepare yourself for inevitable failure. Failure is part of the process of success.
If you are not failing and hitting insurmountable obstacles, then you are not trying hard enough to succeed.
Adopt a new outlook, and adopt a “why not?” approach. And keep moving.
6. Passion, Often Borne of Desperation
Act like you have nothing to fall back on, and work like your life depends on it. Convince yourself that your savings account is empty, and that your daily work offers the only hope of survival. Eat what you kill.
We know, this one will be difficult, since most of you are, unfortunately, not poor.
Many successful immigrants tell a similar story of coming to the U.S. with the proverbially few bucks and shoddy suitcase in hand. The poverty and deprivation of their homeland stands in sharp contrast to the wealth that abounds in America. There is motivation to permanently escape the limits of poverty, so they work. They work hard. In the new book, “Outliers: The Story of Success,” Malcolm Gladwell tells a great story in the chapter entitled, “Rice Paddies and Math Tests” about the grueling and complicated work in working a rice paddy.
He cites proverb used by Chinese rice paddy farmers: “no one who can rise before dawn 365 days a year fails to make his family rich,” to illustrate that there is no quick easy fix to success.
Referencing the Asian students who study late into the night at Western colleges after most have gone home, “Working hard is what successful people do, and the genius of the culture formed in the rice paddies that hard work gave those in the fields a way to find meaning in the midst of great uncertainty and poverty” - Gladwell writes.
7. A Tendency to Dream
Above all, dream and dream big. Immigrants have much to teach on this account.
Immigrants are the Dream-Keepers. Immigrants remind us that the American dream is alive and well.
Through the struggles and success of immigrants, Americans are able to witness the strategies employed to harvest this countries rich bounty of opportunities. Americans often take these opportunities for granted, sometimes to the point of being unaware that they even exist.
By the lessons they unconsciously impart, immigrants help Americans re-connect to the American Dream and to an awareness of the skills and attitudes required to achieve it. The survival, entrepreneurial, educational and work-ethic skills honed by our nation’s immigrant forefathers generations ago -- and now brought to America by a new wave of adventurous, rugged, indomitable immigrants who are committed to “making something out of nothing,” can help our American workers and families regain their optimism and game-plan to tackle the economic challenges of today.
Part myth, part reality, the promise of the American Dream is what unites Americans, helps up look to tomorrow rather than wallow in the problems of today. We need to keep this dream alive, because that is what binds as together as a people.
It was never about achieving heterogeneity of culture, religion, ethnicity or national origin: it was all about a shared belief that in America, anything is possible.
Not all seven traits are present in all immigrant achievers, Often they are all present at once.
[ via Immigrant, Inc ]
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