Youngsters entrepreneurship is no longer a fresh thing in this day and age because entrepreneurship regardless of age. Although this journey is full of difficulties, in order to achieve their dreams, more and more youngsters would rather give up their nine-to-five working career, step out of their comfort zone and move towards to entrepreneurship journey in order to live without any regrets.
She started her entrepreneurial journey as she wanted to a new mobile phone, she gave up the freedom to enjoy the reading life of secondary school student and started a business with zero fund at the age of 17.
In the beginning, she learnt divination by herself, and then gave her classmates and some online strangers to look on some relationship problems or academic problems. She made about 8000RMB in the first month and she bought the mobile phone she wanted smoothly.
Later, the money earned from divination was used as her-start-up business, and then she added open up channels for products, then improved the company’s system and process, and finally started the model of investment promotion and franchise.
In fact, from the beginning, she had made it very clear that she must do a brand. So, all the actions after that are actually for the development of the brand, and then to expand the scale of the brand.
From the zero to now, she has her own brand – Upkurama, from the establishment of the brand in 2015 to the present, with her hard work and persistent efforts, it has successfully entered the 8th year, with cumulative sales reach 1 billion.
With 7 years of entrepreneurial experience, she has become a model in the heart of every young entrepreneurs. She is Kurama Fu Ying Rui, 24, founder of Upkurama which is a fashion brand of crystal ore and jewelry, mainly carrying mysticism, divination and healing culture.
Click here to more understand Upkurama's the most special and the best selling rock crystals as well as the meaning behind each series of crystals.
Kurama’s parent is her strongest support in entrepreneurship journey, especially her father
Kurama is especially grateful to have such a good family as her parents are very supportive on her.
She said her father heard that she started to use divination to start her business, he did not stop her and he did not think it was a bad career to do it.
“Instead, he allowed me to learn the relevant professional knowledge to improve my skills. It is because these things may have been not a very popular thing in my father’s era, which was a great tolerance.
“My parents have been helping me to maintain the production chain and the resources over the years, and dedicated themselves to my career,” she said.
Kurama experienced difficulties that her contemporaries could not experienced
Happening in around 2016, this is first hardest challenge Kurama encountered an agent who commodities fleeing in sales and overhead her to sell the fake product.
She said because of this behaviour, everyone was affected as the team size was not large at that time.
“The reason why this experience was difficult was because it was the first time I encountered it and it was a big blow to me at the age of 18.
“In the end, the incident is so severe that I had to write a lawyer’s letter and go to the court.
“The solution is to reassure the customers, redesign the agency, reorient the brand and so on,” she said.
At her age, it was great to be able to solve problems with these companies. However, the road to entrepreneurship was bumpy, and she encountered another dispute with her agent in 2020.
Kurama said this is also one of the incident also had a great impact on her, she had the conflict with her one of the agent at the beginning of 2020,
“That agent wrote a dozen-page article with personal attacks to abuse me on the Internet.
“It allowed me to understand a lot of handling methods of crisis public relations and legal knowledge,” she said.
In the end the problem was solved, and she was no longer entangled in that matter. Instead, she is grateful that the coming of difficulties has made the people around her have a closer relationship with her.
Kurama put in 100% more effort in the process
From one person to a thousand-person team, as a leader, there will definitely be a lot of pressure, and there will be many challenges.
However, at her age, she should be enjoying studying life, but she still kept breaking through herself when she was studying.
Kurama said there were many challenges because she was relatively young at the time.
When everyone was busy in studying, graduating and enjoying college life, she had to constantly deal with her company problems.
“For example smuggling, bad reviews towards company, agent job-hopping, agent conflict, team instability so on.
“But these are more common in the first three years, and now they are used to it, and I think it is not the challenges at all,” she said.
When she experienced something, she realized that it must experience something as soon as possible. Going through them at a young age can be especially frustrating, but it will take a long time recover. “There are still some 40-year-old who are struggling with team problems, and I have already encountered and solved them at the age of 20.
“So, when I reach at age of 40, there will be more complete solution which can save a lot of negative emotions time,” she said.
Once Kurama had the negative emotions when she met the difficulties, most of the time is bite the bullet.
She said although there have the solutions to solve the problems but the negative emotions do not disappear as soon as possible.
“So, at that time, I was slowly felt my bad emotions, give myself more psychological construction, and use time to heal myself.
“I usually call to my father, he is someone I trust, and I feel a lot more at ease with his guidance,” she said.
When she encountered the problem, her father always be her side and always give the advice to her. Her father gave a sentence from the Chinese Diamond Sutra to her, “You Should Produce the Thought Which Abides Nowhere”, which means do not go to the horns, do not take anything to hear, you will know your true self what do you want.
She did not understand when she was young at that time, but now that she has experienced a lot, she gradually understands why her father gave her this sentence from Chinese Diamond Sutra.
In her perseverance, Upkurama has achieved very good results but her mentality has changed for a while
At present, there are more than 7,000 peoples in the authorization system of Kurama’s company.
Besides, Upkurama was gave by government a social responsibility award, won award of 2020 Liangyou Redtown International Youth Art Season, most influential brands in the jewelry industry, won award of AAA Enterprise Credit Rating and so on.
The company also cooperated with celebrities such as Grace Chow, Hani Kyzy, By 2, Alan, Jin Qiao Qiao and so on.
In addition to their cooperation with celebrities, her brand has gradually expanded to outside countries such as Malaysia, Australia, Canada, United States and so on.
In fact, Kurama’s company achieved such the result, she had some mental changes in the third and fourth year in entrepreneurial journey.
She became overconfident, she started to spend money lavishly.
But later, she knew that showing off wealth would bring disaster and she understood that there are still many years in life and the best way is to keep flowing.
“In fact, I used to think that it was important to make a lot of money but now I don’t pay much attention to how much money I can make, and now I will care more about how much money my team makes,” she said.
If 10 marks, she gave her own only five marks
Kurama said she will give her own only five marks in entrepreneurial journey.
She said give herself one mark for her original decisiveness, one point for her luck, another one point for her choice and remaining two points to reward herself for sticking to it.
“Life is still long and I can do a lot more. I hope that in future I will continue to control my weight, complete two master’s degree, not get sick and be able to go through every stage of my life,” she said.
Kurama want to express most is her gratitude because she was so young at that time and she thought that she was not a very good in study, but she had the courage to build her own business.
“I have been attacked by many people, because at the time everyone felt that divination including giving energy to crystals, are very mysterious, and many people do not understand, but I still have the courage to do it. “So continue to work hard, because the days to come are really long, and I still have a lot to do. The next 50 years and 60 years are all risks along the way. It's all about difficulties and challenges. I hope I can still have the courage to face these difficulties,” she said. She hopes that her company can continue to operate in a healthy situation in the current environment of the epidemic and hopes to makes the company more rigid in more ways. “I hope can giving my agents a place to shelter from the wind and rain. In fact, there are many small projects being launched, I hope that this year’s supply chain will not do the mistakes,” she said. The end, she hopes that through this company she can continue to realize her dream which is set up a stage to show her little self-confidence, and hopes more people can through this platform to prove themselves.
Many young entrepreneurs often overlook some qualities that are part of being an entrepreneur or even a leader.
In fact, it is not an easy thing to do it because it needs a great deal of strategy, preparation and qualities.
Kurama said the most important qualities of an entrepreneur are integrity, responsibility and persistence, which are what her value the most. The secondly is boldness, rationality, and execution.
She said entrepreneurs should pay attention to talents, it is necessary to cherish talents and love the talents.
“Entrepreneurs should have a correct attitude and it is important be on an equal footing with the employees.
“Lastly, ability is very important, but for many positions, ability can be replaced.
“I think that being able to speak, be diligent and be able to read the subtext of customers which is not the ability, it is just the method.
“The courage to take responsibility and integrity, these are the abilities,” she said.
4 lists of advice for young entrepreneurs
There are four lists of advice that Kurama wants to give young entrepreneurs:
Firstly, take the initiative and do it boldly. You can start over if you fail, but you will never succeed if you don’t do it.
Secondly, don’t spend money indiscriminately. Every penny should be spent on the edge of the knife. Do not be extravagant or wasteful. Remember be thrifty and keep your family thrifty.
Thirdly, choice is more important than effort. Choosing the right track means choosing the right destination. You must consider you own competitiveness before starting a business. Remember to pay attention to the real time of the country, understand the changes in the general trend of the world.
Forthly, don’t back down when you facing the pressure. Pressure is always present, trouble and problems are the norm. Even if you back down, more problems will come back. Whether it is an entrepreneur or an employed person, everyone will face different problems, but the difficulty of the problem is different, but the pressure is the same. If you don’t want mediocre pressure to overwhelm you, then work hard and face the advanced pressure.
Kurama proves age is not a barrier to startup success.
Let us listen to the story behind her entrepreneurial journey!
Special thanks to Kurama Fu Ying Rui
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