By: Taban Khajehnassiri
:"Wow! I've got it! I've got a great score! I've learned so many things, valuable know-hows about this kind of business, I've learned skills and I worked hard. Things sometimes didn't work the way I expected or as were planed. I learned from them. I looked for opportunities for obvious improvements.
There are two questions I have found myself answering most often these years since I left
The International Affairs of the Islamic Republic Of Iran Broadcasting (I.R.I.B.)
in November 1994. In I.R.I.B, I was working for a number of departments there including the
International Affairs, Sports Productions and Satellite Coordinations, I was working great
and earning a good enough money for those various programs I could handle over there.
However, since I always wanted to learn more and more, I made my decision and I left
the organization to find myself answering these two questions not in words but in action: "Why did you give up your
promising career?" (which my family and friends even continues to ask me
from time to time) and, "What would you do if you had to do it over again?"
For a long long time I was personally unable to provide them with good answers, I
was so busy with my own thoughts and the Idea of building a business of my own without
any capital and financial support, then turning to the Online world and constructing a
website for it on the net. I was so busy thinking and working on my own business plan, learning the fundamental
know-hows and gathering the most required information from here and there, quite frankly, I
could never gave my friends and family much thought about it. I was just on my way and I knew
it wouldn't be so easy.
After graduating from the University of Azad in 1991, I started to work for I.R.I.B as
a translator, there I could be and stay as a translator while I was working for some consulting
engineers business companies active in fields of Computers and Communications. When I left I.R.I.B,
I had to finance my own expenses for the business plan I was working on that at that time,
I found a new job, first started to learn about technical writing, then I found a client, I
started to write manuals and technical documents and create help files, that was more than a fun,
because at the same time, I could work right from my home with Shiraz using the computer and
a low speed Modem available at that time, then for my clients in Yazd and Isfahan. I was learning
more about Telecommuting and Telework. It was again no so easy working with my clients who were
almost all not qualified and experienced managers in Iran. There was not even a basic set of
rules and regulations for Telecommuting in Iran at that time or even now you can not find any,
and I found it required to first educate the general public and specially managers about it,
I wrote an article on Telecommuting Issues in Shabakeh Magazine to introduce the term and its
needed pre-planed rules and regulations and functions in and for the society. Unfortunately,
technical magazines in Iran are almost always ready to get the idea and by playing with the
words, creating false translations and publish what is not cooked for a given society, especially
for the Iranian public and society. I worked for several Magazines as a freelance news editor,
writer, reporter or columnist. I designed and webmastered the first web presence of Elm-e
Electronic va Computer - and I wrote series of articles to teach HTML to interested readers. I had to finance the business plan I had in my mind. I started
knocking on doors for more business, more clients and more prospects, and it was not so easy, not again.
When I started my freelance Web Page Design and Writing business. There was only two or three
more competitors for the Iranian Market. I knew I could not handle many projects at the same time,
and there is a large market would like to learn more about it, in my turn, I started to teach what I
have learned, not so many but some designers now in Iran have been at that time my own students
or at least readers of my online or offline published tutorials authored in Persian. Somehow I had to learn more, so I appeared
on many professional mailing lists. Day and night, I was reading articles and tutorials and
e-books from the best authors and web designers, then I had to work on them, I had to test some
of them to see the feedback from our own net surfers, to learn more and more. I started my own
newsleters back in 1998, gathering and distributing needed information about the newly added websites and studying their
content and materials in details for my own readers. That was not so easy, reading and writing,
all day and night long.
I've always wondered how I got here, became a person who dares to call himself, an entrepreneur.
With no financial support, no formal and academic training in business, and no mentor or
coach to show me the right possible ways, where could I have learned the skills I needed the
most to reach my goals? The skills made me stay and continue to be successful? Recently, I
finally faced the fear that I always had. Today, I wrote a letter to myself, I wrote about the
past, present and future of what I started about ten years ago when I decided to leave I.R.I.B.
I wrote on a piece of paper :"Wow! I've got it! I've got a great score! I've learned so many things, valuable know-hows about this kind
of business, I've learned skills and I worked hard. Things sometimes didn't work the way I
expected or as were planed. I learned from them. I looked for opportunities for obvious
improvements. I experienced, I tested, I learned from my failures, I created projects, I made proper decisions.
I gathered information, I studied them and the feedback in details, I saw and considered many things and issues in my life as projects, I treated them as true projects, learned to deal with them as projects. I taught
what I learned in the course of my life and business to those who were at least interested,
I made even money to keep this entrepreneurship somehow alive and active, I had fun with my work and even
my working environment, I thought so much about my goals and plans, I thought long and hard before
doing or putting anything up on the desk of myself or my client. I waited so long and hard for
the seeds I planted. I endured what many people considered or called me. Long hours of work!
Long hours of work! I am writing all these for you my long hours of work! I am a human with
goals in my head, I think I know and I have enough of what it takes to be an entrepreneur!
I got a great score today. Wow! Isn't that great!"