As many of you all know, my dad sold our family business, India Chef, in the middle of last year after more than two decades stewarding one of the first fine dining Indian restaurants in the metro Atlanta area. Though the restaurant’s sale was profitable, my ever-industrious father immediately began searching for the next thing to do. I knew that Abbu, who had been working hard as a proud business owner for all his adult life, would not be able to sit idly for too long, else feelings of lethargy or depression would hit. So, together, he and I opened a COVID-testing site in February of this year as the Omicron variant surged. Starting this business with my dad taught me many things, above all, it opened my eyes to the difference between theory and practice when it comes to entrepreneurship.
My Entrepreneurial Journey
Like my father, I, too, was pondering my next steps in entrepreneurship at the onset of 2021. When I joined the entrepreneur training fellowship Venture for America, after college, I set an intention: by the end of the 2-year program I wanted to be running a business that addressed the growing incidence of loneliness amongst young adults full-time. Over the course of those years, I, alongside others in VFA motivated by the same mission, sponged wisdom from the startups we worked at and tinkered with various side hustles. From organizing a communal meal prepping service, to hosting themed weekend Socratic retreats, to launching a co-living community, we learned deeply about the problem, the needs of today’s young adults, and ourselves as we grew with our work.
By the time the fellowship ended, two of our side hustles had served almost 100 young adults, changed numerous lives for the better, and net over $60,000 in revenue in a year. I was pitching our latest idea to potential investors, co-leading our team through an incubator program, and managing Venture for America’s startup accelerator. On paper, it felt as though we were so close to hitting that 2-year goal I had set. Yet, whenever I would take a step back, I couldn’t shake the feeling that our team, our project, and my own self did not have the operating skills, the business metrics, nor the overall conviction to take our idea to market.
So, I made an ultimatum. Either our team figured out a clear, researched pathway to go full-time on our business by November 2021 or I would leave the team to determine my new direction. In the ensuing weeks, we worked hard: networking vociferously and holding many meetings, but as the deadline approached, the writing started to appear on the wall. November came and there still seemed to be no clear consensus. Our team seemed more fractured and indecisive. My patience was wearing thin. After two and half years working with this team, I quit.
Once I had left our team, the first order of business was to unpack and understand why things didn’t work out. I also needed to identify where I fell short and could grow. Numerous questions plagued my mind. Did I lack the self-confidence to be a full-time founder? Was I an ineffective leader? What essential business skills was I missing? If I wanted to try building something again, these questions had to be resolved. So, when a friend told me that he and his mom were making good money conducting COVID tests, I saw an opportunity to test myself with an established business model that had real stakes: creating reliable income for my dad. Embarking on this next step of my journey helped me reflect on my years in VFA and envision what might lay next.
The Lessons
A Good Leader Empowers
Kudos to my dad. This man not only had to pivot to an entirely new industry but also learned to wield new technology in order to get the job done. However, it was not easy. Before we could begin administering tests and actually running the business, the CDC required us to take a few online courses and familiarize ourselves with their database. Online exams and data entry, these were easy for me to breeze through, but these tasks alone were entirely new frontiers for my dad. And, rightly so, he initally struggled with both.
Like many children whose parents do not regularly interact with Internet-enabled devices, I initially felt a surge of impatience when my dad struggled with what seemed to be simple tasks. However, instead of catastrophizing the situation and getting frustrated, I recognized that if my dad could not do these tasks, our project would only ever remain an idea. I couldn’t do that again. So, I focused on how I would best enable my dad to get this job done.
For instance, when it came to data entry, my dad managed fine when I told him step-by-step what he had to do. Obviously, I couldn't be with him for every test, lest it’d be a waste of our time, but I could simulate my coaching. First, I made a Google Doc with screenshots of every single window that he would see while submitting a patient’s insurance information and logging an administered test. Between each screenshot, I wrote down each thing that he would have to do, highlighting buttons on the screenshots to make it easier for him to navigate. For our first few tests, I stood by him as he went through the process and noted any new situations that I had not included in my document. After the first few tests, I printed out the documents, making a one-pager for his quick use and a longer version for random situations. Over the course of a month, the calls for support from my dad began trickling to a stop, signaling that he could do it on his own.
Enabling my dad to run the tests on his own not only ensured that the revenue-generating side of our business could function without me, but doing so also gave my dad the confidence to apply his own entrepreneurial chops and take our business to the next level. From all his years organizing the Bengali community in Atlanta, Abbu had built a strong reputation for himself. Sooner or later, word got out that my dad was running his own COVID site, the first Bengali to do so in the metro Atlanta area. Eventually, Abbu linked with the local Bengali travel agents and established a partnership where we provided their clients’ COVID testing before travel. To sweeten the deal and to further differentiate us from other local sites that could deliver their results faster, my dad offered to drive to people’s homes for their tests, which many people found comforting and convenient.
This new partnership created a steady source of income that led us to occasionally double our weekly test goals and keep my dad active and engaged with the broader Bengali community. Had I not enabled him to do these tests by himself, he would not have gained the flexibility to offer driving to people’s homes nor the confidence to administer their tests right then and there.
Keep Moving When Roadblocks Emerge
When my dad and I first started moving forward on this idea, we were excited, as expected for any new endeavor. We flew through our preliminary work: signing contracts, finishing online coursework, etc. However, our enthusiasm was tested when our testing equipment failed to deliver to us twice, preventing us from seizing the increased demand spurred by the Omicron variant.
The first delay came as a result of a clerical error I made inputting our mailing address. When I realized this, I had a surge of guilt and self-criticism. Those emotions have caused me to spiral into inaction before, but the urgency of my new role demanded that I quickly move on. All was not lost. I immediately re-submitted my order with our lab (double-and triple-checking the address this time) and brainstormed what we could do while we waited.
Make signs and buy gear! I asked our partner at the lab to send over marketing collateral. Over the next few days, my dad and I went to street sign stores and negotiated our way into nabbing some cool, eye-catching banners for driving onlookers to notice our site. Afterwards, we grabbed CDC-compliant testing gear to look the part.
But, as the expected delivery date came and passed with no equipment still, we hit a doldrum once again. I felt like we were missing a valuable moment. The thought crossed my mind that perhaps this project was not meant to be. Thankfully, my dad’s entrepreneurial experience snapped some sense into me. He reminded me that we because we had set out to do this, we had to see it through. This time, he took initiative, phoning community members about his new project, directing me to post on the restaurant’s old Facebook page, and even placing signs up on our site so that people could get familiar with the location. Because of these early marketing steps, we had patients right when we started.
When the materials did arrive, they were missing some labels and shipping materials that we needed in order to send the tests. But, neither my dad nor I grumbled for a second, we quickly printed out our own shipping labels and bought a label maker the next day. Roadblocks were just new opportunities for us!
The Benefits of Sailing a Red Ocean
The concept of blue and red oceans was coined by INSEAD business school professors Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne to help describe market landscapes in their famous 2005 business book Blue Ocean Strategy. Within red oceans, most successful business models and value propositions have been validated and adopted across the industry, leading businesses to compete on either price or marginal quality improvements. In a blue ocean, however, a lone upstart ‘discovers’ an entirely new market space in an industry by inventing a game-changing value proposition. If a business successfully discovers and sails across its blue ocean, like Marvel, Nintendo, and Cirque du Soleil did, then it will quickly make its competition irrelevant and gain a headstart that could last for a decade or more. Everyone wants to find a blue ocean, from founders to investors, since doing so often grants immense wealth and prestige.
However, blue oceans, while seductive, can be difficult to traverse if you’ve never built and successfully sailed a ship. My teammates and I, like many young entrepreneurs enamored with the idea of making something bold and completely unique, got so caught up with our ideas that we sometimes disregarded established blueprints for our industry or ignored our customer’s feedback. Again, in our defense, finding a blue ocean requires using unconventional approaches and thinking, but we did not know where to draw the line.
A COVID-testing site is not a blue ocean. By February, (thankfully) thousands of testing sites had opened throughout the country. Because of this, the laboratory we partnered with felt comfortable covering our start-up costs. With that, the job was very clear: set the testing site up, train my dad to administer tests, and drive patients to our site. Fifteen tests a week would cover my dad’s expenses. That was my goal. After two years of trying to find a blue ocean, I finally began just operating a business.
While demand for COVID tests eventually subsided and larger players cornered the market in Atlanta, this business created an income stream and bought my dad time to determine his next steps. And, it gave me the opportunity to actually start and manage the operations of a business without getting lost in the long process of finding a unique value proposition. Doing so allowed me to test the doubts I had about my business acumen and leadership skills.
What’s Next?
Abbu and I continued COVID testing for about three months, or for about as long as travel testing requirements and government subsidies existed. Abbu will still receive a test request here and there, but by and large, we have moved on to our next entrepreneurial journeys. In hindsight, the COVID testing stint served as a transitional project that helped us renew our passion for entrepreneurship and ascertain what would come next.
For my dad, this project showed him that he could manage something in an entirely new industry after over 35 years in the restaurant industry. He learned that not only could many of the skills he garnered over those years transfer to other occupations, he could learn new ones, too. So, Abbu has decided to take an even bigger leap. This summer, my dad started studying for his real estate license, with the plan of leveraging his customer service and sales expertise on a much larger scale.
It has been wild to walk in on my dad blazing through online courses and taking long tests on the computer. We have come very far from our little CDC exams. And, as soon as he gets his license, we plan on testing out a “quickstart” business to build something together again.
Meanwhile, building a COVID-testing business with my dad showed me quite clearly where I wanted to grow next entrepreneurially. I identified three growth areas: 1) get better at maintaining consistency, diligence, and perseverance on a long-term project; 2) learn more about the differences between starting a business with and without venture capital; 3) practice crafting my vision, distilling it, and eliciting action through a pitch. These areas steered my next steps after COVID testing.
Thanks to Katherine Rapin for her ever-ready copyediting help 🙏