Why I feel Grateful to Duncan Abdelnour - Essay Example

There comes a point in ones life when an awareness of the future emerges. This is not exactly in terms of what is in store for a person like looking at the proverbial pot at the end of the rainbow. Rather, there is the idea of what the future holds with respect to how that person is able to shape it according to his will, decisions and capability. This is also not unlike that moment in your childhood when the kindergarten teacher asks you what you wanted to be when you grow up. The context is almost the same, only, here, one is more aware, more determined and ambitious when identifying the future he would want for himself. For the sake of brevity, I would like to call this a personal epiphany of sorts. I had this experience about two months ago and it involved a news report that talked about the coolest tech startups in the US. Certainly, I know about Silicon Valley or Facebook or how Instagram fetched a whooping $1-billion price tag when it was acquired. The tech world for me is "that far" - something that is within the realm of the probable but not exactly a game changing sphere where I see myself being part of or being successful participating in. Its realness is further diminished by the difference in the field I have chosen for myself, my interests and my skill-sets. What caught my attention was the portmanteau that is seemingly the preferred choice in naming most tech startups nowadays. It was Beatmerch. It was so interesting for me because the name tagged to it is someone I know or, at least, someone I am familiar with: Duncan Abdelnour. This person would probably not remember me from Adam. But he was indelibly etched on my mind. The perfectly coiffed and neat hair and that bushy eyebrows in the news photograph are unmistakably the same as sported by the person who sat before me at a conference I half-heartedly attended for an academic assignment last June. I knew him because we were handed these name tags and that was the only other memory Ive had of that event because he unknowingly dropped it in my latte. He did not apologize because he apparently did not know of it. I was annoyed nonetheless. Here is the thing: Reading about Duncan Abdelnour and Beatmerch sort of woke me up and inspired me at the same time. He is still currently in college, majoring in Marketing and Entrepreneurship in the University of Tampa but he already has this cool startup business, which made $126,000 in less than a year. I did google him up and my suspicion was confirmed. He is now the president of his own company, which – for its part – is rapidly becoming one of the largest merchandising firms in the e-music industry. He now found himself travelling the world with touring electronic music DJs. I cannot bring myself to envy Duncan’s fortune because his chosen field for his career is entirely different than mine. If that is the case, I would probably welcome it as a motivating force for me to do what he is also doing. I also do not have a strong entrepreneurial spirit. And, finally, his business could go belly up and it would not make any difference to me. My fascination and his impact on my life are within an entirely different zone and level. I have considered: Duncan knows what he wants. He probably likes to party or likes music or he likes to travel. What is incredible is his ability to be intelligent while he is about doing all these stuffs that young people like us do. I suspect he is probably taking stock of his market and calculating all the operational costs of his startup while he was dancing away with his college friends on weekends. I believe that this is what they call vision. And that I resolved that it is something I would want for myself as well. The problem is that I have difficulty in the area of multitasking. If I would be Duncan, for instance, I will dance at the bar and do it really well. However, I would be struggling to have the same visionary thoughts and innovative ideas while at it. I would be enjoying and have the time of my life but I see now that I am not very productive in the process. So this is what I am beginning to improve on these past months. I have opened my eyes more, listened more, learned more and become more interested with others and what is happening around me. I have learned how innovators in various fields have found inspiration in daily life, the mundane and the most trivial of things. I have always processed that knowledge with a grain of salt. Today, that is no longer my perspective. I vowed that, as a start, I will be more involved with my life and my future. I may be doing it on my own terms but, like Duncan, I am aware and eager not just to seize but be prepared with opportunities that would come my way. I have also concluded that being young is not an excuse for living the life that I have been leading. This is also the same as saying that education or finishing it should not be the sole ticket for a productive career and the beginning of the real world for young people like us. It is difficult to articulate what I have learned from Duncan Abdelnour but it began when we occupied the same space at that seminar. As I look back, that is the time when he effectively became – for me - the link to ambition and the explanation that dreams are closer to being real than how I imagined it would be. I have joined the collective sighs and applause for companies built from the ground (or garage) up but I have never appreciated the narrative, the process and the outcome. Now, I do. If Duncan Abdelnour could read this, he would probably be surprised. But he was the catalyst of how things have unraveled for me these days and I thank him for it. Read More