How to Know If You're Meant to Be An Entrepreneur | Kiki Ayers | TEDxBuckhead

okay by show hands how many people in here are entrepreneurs keep your hands up if you know the definition of what it means to be an entrepreneur okay so some hands went down so how are you an entrepreneur if you don't know what it means to be an entrepreneur at that point you have to ask yourself are you really an entrepreneur or are you just trying and inspiring to be something that you weren't meant to be right now in today's society entrepreneurship is glorified right everybody on social media is an entrepreneur or they think they

are right so they ask themselves what i call perception questions right the perception of what it means to be an entrepreneur they'll ask themselves you know do i want to work for someone else in my whole life or do i want to work for myself yes i want to work for myself they'll ask themselves that they want to make their own schedule right we're all going to say yes to that we want to make our own schedule they're going to ask themselves that they want to live a life that they don't need a break from

right we're all going to say yes to that but i like to ask what i call reality questions and these are the realities that also come with entrepreneurship like do you want to work 24 hours a day or do you want to work eight hours a day are you willing to take every last dime in your bank account and risk losing it you have to also say yes to those questions as well because that's the reality of being an entrepreneur we can't just take the perception of something and not take the reality so people hate

when i say this but i think entrepreneurship is something that cannot be taught they hate when i say that but i really stand by that there's skills that can be taught right you can go to a zillion summits conferences workshops you can find great amazing entrepreneurs to mentor you all day long right you can do all that you might even come from a wealthy background and have the finances to back this vision and monetize off of it but can you be taught to get up and go chase those rewards that come behind the risk that

you're taking can you be taught to get up and work when no one is over you and monitoring you and holding you accountable because you have to hold yourself accountable i don't think so i think that's something you either have or you don't and something that you're born with but entrepreneurship it's over saturated just like rapping right everybody wants to be a rapper in la everybody is an actor and model they all drive uber and work at restaurants everyone there is an actor and model right that's oversaturated and now entrepreneurship is and i didn't realize

how oversaturated entrepreneurship was until earlier this year i want to go speak at a middle school this was prior to the pandemic and the principal reached out to me and he said i want you to speak to these kids because they equate entertainment with success and he wanted me to talk to them about entrepreneurship and i'm like okay i'll do it so i go there and i talk to the kids and a few kids come up to me after i talk to them about business they come to me after and there's one kid specifically he's

12 year old boy and he was like hey kiki can you teach me how to start a business and i'm like yeah of course like i could teach you how to start a business i'm so excited because i'm like okay at 12 years old this little kid is already thinking about being entrepreneur i wanted to talk to him about the harsh realities of entrepreneurship right not just the glamorous stuff so i'm telling him you know it's stressful sometimes sometimes it's borderline depressing you never know you know if things are going to work out but you

have to keep going for it but as i'm talking to him i'm looking at his face and he looks terrified and i'm just like okay i hope i didn't just scare this little boy into not being an entrepreneur because that's the exact opposite of what i wanted to do but so then i go into rewards right but i don't talk about materialistic rewards i go into the rewards of being able to provide opportunity of creating a business that has legacy and creating generational wealth you know explain it as well as i can to a 12

year old you know being able to make your own schedule having you know freedom and he's excited again but then he goes you know i'm really interested but how do i know if i'm meant to be an entrepreneur and what if it doesn't work out and that question was so important to me and that's why he stood up but before i say how i answered it i wanted to stop right there because i think we've all had those moments right especially as a kid where we think that we're gonna just grow up and do something

and then we try and we're like that's not for me or maybe our parents pushed us into doing something and we just thought we were gonna do it just to make our parents happy and then we realized um that's not for me for me that was ice skating right when i was eight i used to love watching ice skating and i thought i was gonna be the black michelle kwan right it just looks so beautiful and fun and graceful and easy right so i begged my mom to take me to the ice rink and i

put on the cutest outfit asked her to put me my hair and one of those ice skating buns and i went out there so i'm getting ready to get on get out on the rink right and to go on ice and then i just get so confused how in two seconds i'm gonna be graceful and my face is literally on the ice right so then i'm literally like trying to get off the ice literally swimming at this point it's embarrassing to my my mom and everyone around me because i literally could not get up like

it was just so bad people can fall and get up i was literally embarrassing everyone so i knew in that moment like this was not for me and there's nothing wrong with falling there's nothing wrong with thinking you're going to do something and then not working out if you're passionate about it right i wasn't passionate about ice skating i just thought it looked cute so when i realized it wasn't that cute i just was like no right and that was just a girl no moment and i had more right i thought i was going to

be a singer and my parents were like girl no like your voice please stop so that was also something that i could have done but i wasn't passionate about putting in the work to be a professional singer i just thought it was cool and wanted to make a music video right because i'm eight and i don't realize what goes into that so we all have those moments where we think we're going to do something and then we don't end up doing it right so how did i know i was meant to be an entrepreneur well

all entrepreneurs have traits we have commonalities even at an early age we are doing things that we don't realize entrepreneurs naturally do right every entrepreneur i know as a kid they sold something right whether it was candy whether it was a lemonade from a lemonade stand whether they were making money doing yard work nowadays these kids like they're crazy they like sell brow boost and edge control and real estate damn they're like they literally do everything but you know back then that was what we did we sold things and we had this satisfaction in making

our own money even though the country said we can't make money so we're 16 we're making money at five six seven eight doing things hustling and we loved it we love the feeling of making our own money right entrepreneurs other traits is that we're never satisfied we can have this goal our entire lives right and then we reach it and then we're like okay what's the next thing we're never satisfied everyone around is like that's so amazing that you did that and we're like you know like it's cool it's whatever like we don't care anymore

we're looking for the next thing the next thing the next thing and we're really hard on ourselves because we're never satisfied at all dustin-born entrepreneurs they also hate being told what to do if you ask an entrepreneur why they want to be an entrepreneur 9 out of 10 times the first thing they're going to say is they don't want to work for anybody they don't want anyone telling them what to do we love being in control the idea and the thought of someone planning our work schedule our time telling us what time you have to

wake up being in control of our income it disgusts us like it's the most disgusting thing in the world we would rather work 24 hours a day for ourselves and work eight hours for somebody else we hate it right and that's the same thing too in corporate when i worked in corporate i hated it but i didn't know why because at the time i did not know that i was meant to be an entrepreneur so i worked at the biggest tv stations all of them anyone you can name i worked there i worked at the

biggest corporations and i would go from job to job to job trying to find happiness and i thought it was because of the job i could find happiness in a job and it wasn't so i saw myself changing right because at the start of every job i was super excited you know the first few months i was like this is going to be the job this is going to be amazing and then a few months in i saw myself transforming from this bubbly black girl to this angry black woman right and i'm like okay this

is not for me because of my energy while people were turning up on sunday going to brunch on sundays i literally isolated myself i felt depressed just the thought of going back into work on monday made me depressed like i hated it on wednesdays every wednesdays by wednesday i was ready to put in my two week notice like i hated it right fridays don't ask me to do anything on fridays fridays is just to make an appearance i'm just here to make an appearance because you took too much from me monday to thursday you're not

getting anything from me on friday i'm just here i'm just here i'm not into it you know what i'm saying i'm just here so i hated it i hated it so much and i don't know who's ever worked in corporate but there's always this one person in the workplace that you cannot stand and it's like the more you can't understand them the more they're in your face right the more they make a presence in your life every day and it's like i don't know if they know you can't stand them but it's just it just

happens right then we have the ccr's in the workplace where you could say literally is something you can email them like have a great weekend and they will literally loop in 50 other people in different offices in different cities that you don't know for no reason just to say i'm looping in people right i hated it i hate it i hate the people that say borderline disrespectful things because they feel like they are protected by this thing called hr right so i hate it so you can see i'm transforming now i'm like okay you guys

are making me so angry so at that point i called up on the only person i could jesus and i went to this church any church i wasn't even that religious i just needed something to make me feel better so i went to a nearest church near my job and it's funny how you know sometimes you go to church and you say you know people say they feel like the pastor is speaking directly to them so that was my situation my first time there and it wasn't just sunday no the way i hated my job

i had to go on wednesdays too so it was midweek so i go and the pastor is talking about happiness and he's talking about imagination versus reality and in that moment it hit me and i know about you guys but there's always signs in our life right and we we ignore them we get another sign and we ignore it we get another sign and sometimes that comes in the form of heartbreak sometimes that comes in the form of you know befriending someone that we shouldn't friend sometimes that comes in the form of making a bad

business choice but when you ignore it things continue to happen to tell you to stop so the pastor said when your imagination does not match your reality you often find yourself depressed because you feel like you are missing out on the life that you were meant to live and that resonated with me so hard it just totally put everything in full circle that's why i wasn't happy because when you work in corporate and they give you these positions you think oh i can do all these big things right and then you have people over you

who put you here but natural born entrepreneurs we dream big we want to do the impossible we don't want to do what's here we want to do the big things right so they gave you this position they make you feel like you have all this power and control they give you a little raise and you think you're going to do amazing things with that company just to know stay here and that's why i hated it so that was my sign and i did eventually that job but what did i do i just looked for another

job right i ignore the sign and i've always had a job from the moment even in college i interned so much people used to joke and say i'm minor to internships i was always working and always doing something but this time i couldn't find a job i was applying differently i was looking for a job specifically that would make me happy not just any job and the first time ever i wasn't getting any callbacks i wasn't getting any my emails returned i had nothing so i took my time and invested in something i liked to

do and it was journalism i became a celebrity reporter i interviewed any of the biggest stars you can think of i interviewed them any of the biggest red carpets i was there i was i was on it i was working but the only problem with that is the income right the corporate income versus this income was completely drastically different so now i'm making like you know maybe fifty dollars here and there maybe a hundred and fifty if i'm lucky if i'm editing hosting and writing an article i might get 150 and mind you i'm living

in l.a and i'm not from l.a so i eventually end up homeless and i thought it was going to be short term ended up being 16 months i was homeless so i went from couch to couch i went from floor to floor i exhausted every option and i had friends but in la people tend to have like three or four roommates because it's so expensive so i could only stay there for so long because they do have roommates right so then i went to hostels i would stay in a hostel with 16 plus people men

and women and i would just condense all my stuff i started off with a lot of suitcases and had to condense my stuff down to one backpack by the time i was like 14 months in to my homelessness right so all i had was my laptop and a couple of shirts and a pair of pants so then one night i had nowhere to go i didn't have money for a hostel so i walk into a hotel bathroom lobby and i'm scared i'm like i hope the people at the front desk did not see me walk

into here and not walk out i go into the stall and open my busted laptop i had since freshman year of college and i connect to the hotel lobby wi-fi and i go into survival instincts because that's what entrepreneurs have i didn't cry i didn't do on it i was like what can i do to make the money that i deserve get the credit i deserve and live the way i want to live in la and that's when i founded my publicity company survival instance that's what entrepreneurs have so then i did all that i

came up with a great plan and then i was like you know what i can do this i've worked so hard for other people's companies i've worked 80 plus hours a week for other people's companies and slept under my desk because by the time i get home i have to go right back to work i flew out to la to work for a company 60 days straight before i got one day off because they needed me to launch i didn't even have anywhere to stay they put me in a hotel for two weeks and the

rest i figured out on my own so if i can do that for somebody else i could do that for myself that's what i told myself but then i started doing what a lot of entrepreneurs do and a lot of people a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs do i started thinking you know what if this doesn't work out i asked myself the same question that the 12 year old boy asked me what if it doesn't work out and what what if i was not meant to be an entrepreneur i had to let that go because fear

is the number one reason people do not do what they were meant to be so i let it go and i say you know what if i fail i really have no other option right now right i'm literally at the bottom i literally hit rock bottom and below that like i have no other option so i'm gonna try it and it ended up working out beautifully so the number one way to know if you're meant to be an entrepreneur is simply to try thank you