Parham Parastaran is an Iranian-American entrepreneur and author with a passion for discussing mental health issues in the business community. Although he enjoyed success as an entrepreneur, he had a secret: He suffered from severe depression and addiction. A rock-bottom moment led to signing himself up for psychoanalysis, starting a journey that opened up the darkest doors within himself and found him revisiting a childhood of trauma. Over 15 years after that first psychoanalysis session, he chronicles his powerful story in new memoir, Perfect Pain.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“my difficulties was I took over a business that was borderline bankrupt, one week away, weeks away literally from not being able to make payroll. So my challenges right off the bat were financial, clearly a capital issue. And obviously the fact that I was inexperienced to say the least when you first start out. So money was a huge problem, my own psyche was a problem… obviously I was 21 so I wasn’t developed, I wasn’t mature enough in many ways and at the same time doing some of the things for the wrong ways. But that became a huge challenge and just not knowing and having to adapt to this learning curve. But the learning curve is dependent upon how much money you have. So you can have a longer learning curve if you have enough capital to be able to whether that, and in my case I did not. And so the learning curve really had to accelerate. And that was by far the most difficult thing I’ve faced and at the same time it was the best thing that ever happened to me because right off the bat I was struggling… it was actually great to be in those positions”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement Book by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Jeff Cox
- Plain Talk: Lessons from a Business Maverick Book by Ken Iverson and Varian
Favourite Quote:
“you get what you think about, good or bad you are right”
Recommended Online Resources:
- CNBC – In depth world business news from Europe, the Asia Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and global market coverage
- TD Ameritrade – online broker for online stock trading, long term investing, and retirement planning
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“the deeply deeply deeply honest with yourself. Now why you are doing things. And it’s okay if the reason you are doing things is because you are pissed out of anger, but know that… Know that you are struggling and be able to talk about it and get help. If you are not honest with yourself then you are just doing things and being an entrepreneur for all these other wrong reasons and typically speaking in my opinion never reached the success and the potential that you are destined to have if you can’t be honest with yourself and your insecurities and the things that you lack. So being honest with yourself numero uno”…[Listen for More]
More About Parham Parastaran:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
Steve Goodier “The world can use more light and less noise. More solvers and fewer blamers. More folks showing a better way and fewer folks complaining about how much better things used to be. More folks offering help and fewer folks wringing their hands about the problems. More hope bringers and fewer hope killers.”
Other Quotes From the Chat with Parham Parastaran:
- “I learned was how to create processes…how to create processes that does not include me as one of the components. Obviously it includes me in that I am setting up the strategy and I’m doing the thinking and I’m doing the bigger design. But at the end of the day for the cash register to ring… it doesn’t particularly involve my time it just involves my thinking”
- “you don’t have to love everything that you do along the way…you are probably going to dislike a lot of the things that you have to do. But the problem is if you feel that you have to love it and you are not willing to do it well even though you dislike it then it won’t be done well… even while you are doing those things that you hate and don’t like to do really focus on doing them well because you will get to your outcome faster and then you won’t have to do the things you don’t like to do.”
- “it’s so easy to say think positively, it’s so easy to say think things are going to happen and things are going to work out great”
- “I truly truly truly believe if you genuinely believe that something is going to happen if your mindset is correct and the actions will naturally follow. If your mindset isn’t correct the actions will follow, they will just be actions that aunt delivering any movement towards your goals. So I think just thinking is just the absolute most important thing. ”
- “You don’t know what you don’t know”
- “businesses is fun, work is fun, life is fun”
- “don’t take things so seriously that you forget to be yourself”
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