ENTREPRENEUR
CAR GUARD, WAITER, BREAD DELIVERY GUY
FROM RAGS TO RICHES
DECODED A
s a kid growing up in the 90s, Priven Reddy has had a rough childhood after the passing of his dad. “After my father unexpectedly died, my mom settled down with a man who turned out to later on become an alcoholic. There were times when we wouldn’t have food to eat,” he candidly recalls. It’s a stark reality, but one that laid the foundations for the man Priven would become, and he doesn’t shy away from unpleasant memories. Instead, young Priven soon figured out that he needed a paradigm of how he viewed the world, or he would be consumed by it. Over the years he has built up a framework of eight codes that he not only lives by but believes this has shaped his success and more importantly, the mindset that has been instrumental in achieving that success. By adopting them he has turned his life around and then used them to rapidly climb the success ladder of the corporate world once his foundations were in place.
Code 1: Find your inner drive and keep feeding it For Priven, the pivotal moment that forced him to shift his attitude in life is still a fresh memory, despite the intervening years. “I was 20 and waiting tables at a restaurant at the Gateway Theatre of Shopping. One of my customers had finished eating and gestured over his plate
containing some left over, half eaten pizza. ‘Here, this is for you,’ he told me with mistaken generosity. ‘Put it in a doggybag and take it home.’ His words were like a sucker punch to my dignity and my sense of pride. I couldn’t believe it. Was this how our society treated its poor?” That was the last straw amongst all the blows that, Priven had endured that day. He’d been rejected by a girl whom he had asked out, on the basis that she wouldn’t date anyone who didn’t own a car. That morning his family had also once again shared their disapproval over the way he was living his life.
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CEO 2018 Vol 17.3