Starting a one-woman project feels daunting. I didn’t know where to start after declaring which problem I’d like to focus on. So I retreated to my childhood memory. What did my non-English speaking, immigrant parents do to start their businesses in the U.S.?

To be clear, their success wasn’t quite the American Dream tale that most republicans drool over. We wouldn’t have made their cut as the poster child of the “model immigrant” nonsense. They fought a lot. We struggled. I got so sick and tired of eating eggs every day that it took me over a decade to start appreciating them again. Here is what my parents did. This is where I’ll start, too.

Network

It helped that they didn’t start from absolute zero. They had help. They sought advice from their newfound friends in the Korean community. It wasn’t labeled as an “informational interview,” but it might as well have been. They got advice on pricing, known competitors, and how to bring in customers.

Reduce risk

By learning from others’ successes and failures, they were able to fast track some of the work. To borrow phrases from gaming, they knew their opening hand and their “build order.” This was important for them. It enabled my parents to work on the right thing and reduced the risk they were taking.

Wear a lot of hats

If I had a penny for every time I heard my parents say “we can’t take time off. No one can keep the business going while we’re away,” I would be a millionaire by now. After I married into a family who also had a small business, I got to hear it in both Korean and Portuguese!

My parents and my in-laws are extremely hard workers. They kept their shops open 7 days a week. They had a half day off on Thanksgiving. They worked on Christmas Eve. They wore all the hats at all hours. That was their problem. Even as they scaled, none of them thought much about which hat to wear. Or which hat to give away to someone else. A major fashion faux pas.

I’m going to dream big. I don’t want to be employed by my project. I want to be the owner and founder.

I’ll have to give more thought on how I can network, reduce risk, and sustainably wear a lot of hats.