Starting my first business: How it changed me

It was June of 2021, and we were on our family’s annual trip to Florida. Our first stop was our close friends place in Tampa, a usual part of our Florida trip. As usual, we spent a lot of time talking about life, interests, future dreams etc. Somehow all of this led to a proposal of starting a new business. My initial reaction was a strong No – “Yes, you guys can start a business, but I’m not really interested in it”.

See, I have read books like ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad‘, and was pretty happy with the Poor Dad’s approach. Have a good job where you can use your talents and make a difference, be generous with time and money outside of work, save enough for retirement, and spend the rest of the time with family and friends. That sounded good enough to me. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the Rich Dad’s approach too, but it felt like that wasn’t me. It probably didn’t help that, when growing up, I often heard my parents say “our family doesn’t do business”.

The Idea

But my friends did not let me get away with an easy “No”. This is why you need good friends who can push you out of your comforts in a positive way. They insisted I still join, just as a voice of reason to prevent taking any unnecessary risks. This seemed reasonable to me. And so I began the journey of starting a business.

Once I was on board, we started our discussions around what problem we wanted to solve as a business. After going through several problems that had overly complex solutions, we finally ended up on a very unexpected product, Laundry Detergent. You might wonder why. Let me explain.

So leading up to this trip, I had been doing the laundry at home and between 2 toddlers and our many guests, we were doing multiple loads a week. Being an engineer, I naturally started looking at different ways to do laundry, different types of detergents, dryer sheets, fabric softener etc. This research into different detergents lead me to learn about the harmful effects of some of the harsh chemicals in detergents and how over time it could have adverse effects on humans like cancer and infertility. Yet, I could not find detergents that could clean really well while being free of these chemicals. So I brought up this problem to my friends and after a day of discussion and research we decided, this is the problem we wanted to solve.

Glorious Purpose

There is something deep within us, maybe the intangible image of God the creator, that drives us to find creative solutions to problems in the world. Maybe you have also experienced it, but there is nothing as satisfying as working together with a group of close friends to solve a problem for the greater community or world. You feel so united with your friends, not just because of each other, but because of a problem you are trying to solve together for the world. I have to borrow the words of Loki (from Marvel) and call it, ‘Glorious Purpose’. You feel this glorious purpose, this mission, that drives you forward.

We had a lot to figure out. We spent the next few months researching ingredients of detergents, reading research papers on the harmful effects of different ingredients, hiring chemists to make us a detergent formula that met our specifications, a manufacturer that could source these ingredients, finding bottles and caps, designing our logo/label, building our on packaging solution, shipping etc. It was a lot of work and we faced a lot of challenges. It didn’t help that we were both doing this part time. But something about this glorious purpose kept us going. It took us almost a year of perseverance to get there, but in August of 2022, together we launched Spring Detergent, my first business. I knew my perspective on business was changed forever.

The Impact of Entrepreneurship

We did not know if this business would succeed. But we knew we had succeeded in creating a business. We had a tangible product, and a good one at that. This was probably one of the hardest parts of starting the business – creating the right product, the combination of creating a custom formula that worked and getting it manufactured. We learned a lot. I will have to write more on that process later. But we felt empowered as entrepreneurs. We knew we could take another problem in the world and build a solution to it. I now understood the driving force behind entrepreneurs around the world. To take an idea, rally many people of different skills, overcome all the challenges and build something that is greater than the sum of all the parts? Yes, that is pretty addictive.

A new look on life

After starting my first business, I continue to look for problems that can be solved. It no longer feels like I need someone else to solve the problems I see in the world, but I can do it too.

Am I a good entrepreneur? Not sure. Am I a successful entrepreneur, not yet. Will I be a successful one? No idea. But I sure do enjoy the process and so I think I will keep at it. And keep everyone posted as well.