In pursuit of happiness
“I cannot lose enough to have gained as much as I have”
By Ermila Jayasuriya
I am 35 and I have worked almost 20 years of my life. Eleven of them in learning that I can’t work for anyone else and nine years in running my own business. I have gained the most valuable lessons through near failures and having learnt how to expertly fail only to rise again and again – a cycle I value and owe all that I am today.
To young entrepreneurs
When I meet young entrepreneurs now who fear failure or find themselves at a low because
of it or sabotage themselves from even starting a business, I ask them to embrace failure as it’s the only way you learn how to be a great entrepreneur and carve out a path most unique and lead with greater might and clarity.
It is the only way you learn to develop and trust your own intuition. A sort of satnav where you unconsciously and automatically know just how to be the best at your game. Failure gives you greater insight into how NOT to do things. Learning to trust your gut comes with making mistakes and having a catalogue of them to refer back to is essential.
I cannot lose enough to have gained as much as I have. No sum of money equates to what I have gathered through all that I have lost only to master its gain and retain it even better than I ever did before. It is what makes us great business warriors and great leaders who change and shape the world in all that we do. There comes a point where very little rattles you or phases you. Nothing seems too daunting when you have lost it all and risen from it.
I write now with a sense of ease and clarity that I have never experienced before. I am no longer hungry as most young business entrepreneurs are for fame and glory but I am on a different path to find a balance where success is defined not by the money you make but how you live your life to serve a greater purpose. To find a place of peaceful calm that money cannot buy, where there is no ego to battle with and a world to live up to but your own desires to make a difference to the people around you and live by your own truth. Through this we find fulfilment.
Unsurprisingly failure has a great part to play in this journey. To feel fulfilled you need to face what scares you the most. As Charles F Kettering phrases it, ‘One fails forward towards success.
March to the beat of your own drum
Like all entrepreneurs, I started off with a desire to carve out a unique path and create the freedom and lifestyle that comes with being your own boss and knowing that you are in charge of your density. In doing so you hold all the cards and whilst for some this is a daunting and a rather stressful pursuit, for some of us it is the only way we know how to feel complete. We are often branded control freaks and yes to a great extent we are certainly that!
I was a difficult child and a rather mischievous pupil, never quite a follower but often found doing my own thing. I was naturally a non-conformist and a bit of a day dreamer. I did things differently and was often labelled the strange one amongst my peers.
The ability to march to the beat of your own drum takes a great deal of courage. The ability to carve your own path which is different to the rest takes enormous strength. The ability to stay focused and consistently confident in your beliefs when the world thinks otherwise takes determination.
Of course none of these qualities are much of what you are taught in schools and yes I was the odd one out. The one you never imagined much of … never saw coming. Life would have been much easier if I fitted in and went with whatever society expected me to be, instead I did things to a different beat and often created much distress to my poor parents who in so many ways left me to get on with it.
I do think that fussy mothers nurture weaker children whilst almost inattentive parents foster stronger ones as you are simply left to sink or swim. This is not to say being an inattentive parent is better but a certain balance of sorts is always the way.
In my limited experience, I find that most entrepreneurs have had very difficult childhoods and problems associated with how they were nurtured as children. It’s what drives them to create security and safety. My parents are wonderful and I have grown to really see that I would have turned out quite differently had they been any different. I was the eldest of four equally eccentric and highly intelligent children, so naturally my parents had a tough time balancing their own corporate careers and goals whilst attempting to play super nanny.
There is great merit is not doing what the majority do… I find that when you attempt to do things differently you will have several people try and convince you that it might be a bad decision or that you will most definitely find yourself out of kilter should things not go to plan. Very often what isn’t in the status quo is considered risky or a recipe for failure. Great inventors invent life changing things/inventions because they made what the majority would call ‘bad decisions’. Imagine a world without toasters? Thank God for all those who don’t follow the rules.
The entrepreneurial attitude – finding a business in everything.
I started my first business when I was six making notepads from off-cuts of paper I collected at my dad’s office. After school my dad would pick my Malla (younger brother) and I and we would be ferried back to his office where we were often left to entertain ourselves whilst he finished meetings.
I managed to make notepads from collecting offcuts of paper and stapling them into little notepads. I use to draw and stencil motifs onto the front of these notepads and soon developed a series of designs. I was so good at it that I started to take orders from the kids at tennis lessons charging Rs. 2 per note pad. I still remember taking my money purse ensuring I had enough change to dish out whilst taking a little order book along with my tennis racket. I was hopeless at tennis.
To this day my parents aren’t aware of this and will now find all this rather amusing as I had trouble memorising my times-table and often irritated my teachers with my bad spelling and inability to add numbers like normal children. Somehow it appears that I can now outsmart a banker in reading a company’s balance sheet, whilst they use my original business plan as a training manual.
I learnt that trying to please everyone is definitely not the way to finding your truth. Go against the grain – just because you can. Everyone forgives you when you make it big so don’t worry about disappointing people. The biggest disappointment is never knowing what could have been had you tried and persisted.
Do you need business acumen to succeed?
My parents were shocked when I said I wanted to start a business in a field I knew nothing of and at a time I had nothing but a feeling it would work. Worse yet I was going to attempt this in a foreign country with no experience or money.
I remember my father saying ‘but you don’t speak Chinese and you’ve never been to China and you are trying to set up a manufacturing base in China and sell products in the UK with a Sri Lankan passport!’ … my answer was ‘YES’ – and that’s exactly what I did.
In 2006 I set up Winter-in-Venice a brand of luxury gifts and toiletries with 60 pounds and a phone book.In its first year I turned over a million pounds. Today Winter-in-Venice sells products to over 1,200 retail stores in the UK and EU. We now supply some of the largest retailers in the world. Our products are also retailed in Australia, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Sweden and Algeria and even in Azerbaijan!
Being corporate isn’t always key
If ever you see a tortoise on top of a fence, you can guarantee that it never got there on its own. Each member of my team understands our mission and contributes intricately to how we create and make products. We work like a pack of wolves. Each of us taking turns to lead the pack, thus taking care of each other as a family would.
When you stop chasing profits and focus on creating ‘The Experience,’ the profits come hand in hand with delivering great products and exceptional customer service. It’s why Winter-in Venice enjoys over 90% repeat customer purchase.
My point is, as a leader when you leave the ego behind and lead almost as a parent would in protecting and taking care of your team you seldom go wrong. Good leaders genuinely learn to love the people they lead. Humility is as an important quality as strength. People work for people, not companies or titles. Be a person first, then a boss. This involves creating a culture where you stand equal and shoulder to shoulder. Your team will love you first and respect you second. In doing so they will always perform their duty with great pride and take joy in delivering the best results first time.
My management team comprise of some of the greatest people I have ever met. Incidentally we never have any HR issues either. Birds of a feather do quite literally flock together in our case…
Not quite 300 Spartan warriors to build this army…
Having started the company with a phone book and my cat Tom sat peacefully in my in-tray, Winter-in-Venice has certainly come along way. Today we have offices in the UK and in China. We source components in China and work with over 300 component suppliers in China whilst we also manufacture in the UK. Our distribution centres are still based in Wales and we are in the process of expanding our brand into lifestyle products that cover all items in your bed and bathroom.
We have won various awards for our formulations, innovation and growth. My eyes tear with the intensity of what we have achieved when I see production lines of staff making our products. To think over 2,000 people are involved in creating Winter-in-Venice and benefit from it is truly heart-warming.
We create jobs, fuel industry and oil the wheels of both economies. I wonder if that annoying science teacher who told me I’d never quite make it even remembers me. My message to you young entrepreneurs and leaders is simply this – we are different because we cannot lead being like everyone else.
Embrace your uniqueness and celebrate your authenticity. Whether you think you can or can’t, you are right either way. Half the battle is in your mind. Roar like a lion, rise like a phoenix and follow your true calling. If your start with a desire to make a difference and create good for not just yourself then you are bound to succeed. It’s the universal laws that conspire to give you everything you desire.
Is life about the winning?
I use to say that life was about the winning not just the taking part. Today I feel it’s all about savouring the journey – taking part is key, trying and persisting is everything. Knowing that all you put in you reap. Your existence is no accident. You are therefore responsible in finding your own drum beat – march to it with all your heart and never be afraid of being authentic. It is only then that you truly find yourself and understand the depths of your own strength. We owe it to the universe, God and ourselves to be of service to the world around us and not a slave to fan our egos and worry about fitting in.
If you are worried about what others think, then they own you! Worry about what you think, then you stand in your own power.
My journey to find happiness stems from an insatiable appetite to use my abilities to make a difference not just to pay the bills and carry an expensive handbag but to sit with a beggar in the cold streets of Bath and sip a cup of coffee and listen to their story. To make them feel human again. Isn’t that the difference between being human and just being?
Are we so blind as to think we know it all and that we are better than most because of our material success and size of our wallets or our double barrel surnames and endless paper qualifications?
My paternal grandfather George Godwin Jayasuriya once said: “Everyone is better than you in something, find out what that is and learn from it. Even a beggar counts coins better than you.”
My maternal grandmother Daisy Perera always reminded me that a paddy stalk when heavy with rice seeds bows down and never stands tall. Humility is a great quality in a leader. Some may disagree but it certainly has worked for me.
Start your day by asking God and the universe what you can do for others and not what God can do for you. Ask that you be your best to fulfil your life’s purpose and in doing so fill your life with abundance.
Find your beat… Find your purpose. It is truly then that you own and know your true self and the depths of your strength and character.
You never need to fit in. You owe it to yourself to embrace and celebrate your authenticity.
[Ermila Jayasuriya (also known as Mel Smith), is a Sri Lankan born British award winning entrepreneur and branding consultant who founded Winter in Venice – a luxury brand of British toiletries and gifts distributed worldwide and based in the United Kingdom. Ermila is the eldest child of Dr. Nalin Jayasuriya, Business Consultant/Management Trainer, and Ranjani Jayasuriya, LLB., Attorney-at-Law. She is a past pupil of CMS Ladies’ College, Colombo 7.]
