How a 17 year old international student thrived in both the service and entrepreneurship worlds in 5 years.

Before I start to talk about my first day as a full-time employee at the bank, I’d like to reflect back on what I think the biggest catalyst was in my journey thus far. Upon thinking deeply, I think the whole journey of learning to code myself, after I had given up Computer Science in grade 8 during my school time, restarted while I worked for the Honda factory (my first job). The city, Barrie, where my college was located, was considerably small compared to where many part-time opportunities were located; thus, I had to travel 174 KMs to get to the Honda factory located in Alliston, ON; and work at 12 hours/day, twice a week. The travel and the monotonous work at the factory gave me enough time with myself, in solitude, that I began to write computer codes (algorithms) in my head. Such that, everyday before I left home for the factory, I’d create a challenge for myself like coding the game of sudoku, chess, etc, using Java. This got me so excited that I’d come back from work and jump onto my laptop to try out the algorithm I had created in my mind. Very soon, I had learned to code good enough such that I could afford to miss classes and submit the assignment on my own. This later came in very handy when I participated in the Master the Mainframe World Championship where students had to complete coding challenges in the shortest period of time, correctly and efficiently; and after a few weeks I secured the second position in all of Canada and top 20 around the globe. I believe this very skill has made some of the most complex things in IT very easy for me, thus, working at the bank, I never felt stuck or underqualified among my teammates all of whom had at least 15+ years of experience in IT.

Coming to my first day at the bank as a 19 year old full-time employee and a new graduate with a 2 years diploma and a few IT certifications, this was the first time that I felt content; not because I was proud of myself, but now I had all the independence to get involved, volunteer, and enroll for as many tech events happening in Toronto as I could without having to worry about getting a full-time job or returning home early to complete assignments or go to a class. Soon while taking on the responsibilities of a Db2 Systems Programmer which was my job, I started to broaden my horizons by taking training and courses of other technologies like Cloud, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and soon got involved with the teams at the bank who work on these technologies. After a year working full-time, I started to juggle two jobs simultaneously - one which I was paid for, Db2 Systems Programmer, and second that I was working for free, doing POCs for new technologies at the bank. This kept going for 2 years and 5 months, when I got interviewed for a team lead position in another bank (which also defeated RBC to become the biggest bank in Canada in the same year). Within a month I took 5 rounds of interviews, and despite my age and short experience in the IT industry, I was selected for the position where I was supposed to lead the innovation pillar of the bank’s core IT infrastructure. Although I had led 150+ students in the past, managing full-time employees with 15+ years of experience was a completely different experience. I wouldn’t call any specific phase of this journey a success as I had enjoyed every single second of it which for me is the biggest success!

After completely being submerged in the organized and structured world of the service industry, switching to entrepreneurship was a slow process. I always believed in getting my basics right, similar to how I strengthened my coding skills when I started; I needed a mindset shift to think like a business person. Thus, my first step was reading books like - “Marketing Management by Phillip Kotler” and “SPIN selling”. And then I just put the books aside and observed the world around me - how things are being marketed on the bill-boards, banners, online, and on TV. Reading the case studies of brands, people who’ve done big in business, etc. After doing this for a few months, one thing that really stuck with me is “solving problems' - entrepreneurship is not about becoming a millionaire, but it’s about how you make people’s lives easier by providing them a practical solution to their biggest problems. And I had done it before by solving problems using technology for the bank. The challenge, however, was what problem to solve. As I looked around, I constantly kept getting ideas of what I could turn into a problem-solving business. So I picked up a pen and paper, and started to write about the biggest problems that I have faced in the past and if a third person could come & give a hand; and that third person would be the service-provider, the entrepreneur. It was after a couple of days that I figured that the biggest challenge I had faced was choosing a gift for a retiree colleague when I worked for RBC. And as I surfed the internet, I found two things - false-perceptions and research papers. There were many websites with no authenticity ranking on Google for keywords like - “Best gifts”, “Perfect gifts”, and “Top 10 gifts for abc”, and on the other hand were complex research papers from psychologists around the world. However, there wasn’t any interlink - nothing to bridge these two extremes, the theory and the trustable practicality.

As a result, I decided to build this bridge, and started looking for researchers and psychologists in the industry who were conducting research on gift giving. As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and everything switched online, I started to spare some time to research online and connect with some psychologists researching these topics. Soon, a few psychologists and I gained some momentum and got to the root cause of this question - “What to gift”. Our goals were the same - solving this problem and helping people, so we started off educating people on these through various means including Zoom conferences, writing blogs as well as utilizing all social media platforms. Although my other mates were fully focussed on sharing just the content, I kept debating if we have really solved the problem. Eventually, this is what everyone else has been doing - educating through blogs and then ordering from Amazon. I had been through this before when buying a gift for a retiring colleague where there wasn’t any interface between the content consumption and the practical application. Thus, I decided to create a platform to bridge this gap between learning and buying and this was the beginning of “GiftAFeeling”. However, a short note to break this thought cycle of what many people think what GiftAFeeling is, which is “it’s a gift e-commerce store”, I would rather say that it’s a learning platform where you can learn the practical psychology behind proven-to-be-loved gifts via edutainment (education + entertainment). And as I always say - I never tell people to buy from GiftAFeeling because I don’t believe anyone can ever get someone to buy from us. I understand that there are a lot of companies out there investing fortunes into their marketing strategies to snach every single penny out of the customer’s pockets, but it only takes one badly received gift vs. all their promises that would mark the downfall of these companies. However, what I believe in and recommend to people is to get educated through GiftAFeeling. Learning the science behind gifting is of utmost importance, not only to gift well, but to also refrain from falling prey to these other giant companies with their fake promises of “Best gifts”.

With the ​​vision to leave zero questions in the mind of people when they are gifting, my goal is to make gifting as easy as grabbing coffee; no over-thinking or questioning. And this I believe is what I call a success being a solopreneur, not the sales, but how many lives I can impact - afterall gifting is all about sharing emotions and strengthening relationships, and today, post-pandemic, we need it the most!