Krishna Mehta: Exploring Entrepreneurship as a Student (Founder of Botana, Student at Schulich)

foreign [Music] we're so excited to have you on today's episode and to learn more about your career Journey so Krishna let's start from the very beginning how did your post-secondary experience lead you to where you are today I'm currently attending the show School of Business I'm pursuing my BBA with a specialization in marketing and I'm looking forward to entering my last year this September it was a little bit of a different experience because I feel like for a lot of us when we entered into University it was during the pandemic so first couple years we

had it virtually I think that the most important aspect of anyone's post-secondary education experience is the connections and the people that you meet so I'm really glad to say that Shula gets full of many talented and selfless individuals that have really helped me strive in that environment and the Alumni network has been great in terms of helping My Career Success and a ton of cool summer internships awesome that's great to hear and I'm sure plenty of our listeners might be interested in pursuing a business degree at chulix so I'm sure that's really helpful information for

them thank you for sharing I'd love to pass the mic off to Raj for the next few questions now hey Krishna so my question is Krishna what about entrepreneurship inspired you to start your own adventure can you give me a little bit of information on this Venture and also discuss any other Ventures that you've explored oh yeah I would say for as long as I can remember I've always wanted to be known as an entrepreneur and someone who started something you know something come in your head and then the ground up and you can kind

of see it flourish in real life what inspired me to specifically start botano was easily my parents we are first generation immigrants so I kind of saw them throughout my high school career working you know jobs that typically aren't the best and I've seen them work really hard to make sure that we had the opportunity that they didn't growing up and then specifically for my mom she had a love for flower arranging and anything in the Botanical space so that's the reason that we started this up about Hannah that it was Toronto's first fully customizable

floral experience we really wanted to reshape the way consumers purchase flowers typically you know you could go to a grocery store or even if you were to go to a more of a boutique location there's not too much thought in that process so we really want to make sure that each customer came in got a 10 to 15 minute customizable experience where we talked about pallets colors tones and even Arrow Attic So we really want to attach a memory to each arrangement someone bought for a special occasion and then we even transfer this over to

the B2B side of the business so we were able to work with a lot of cool and rep real Brands like tiso watches BMW Toronto so we're also able to take that attention to detail and bring it to their commercial space and clients and I have started a ton of different Ventures I feel like as any entrepreneur you have tried something failed kind of gotten back up so I think from my high school days it would probably have been starting in the e-commerce and Amazon FBA space I moved over to some freelance photography and video

editing work but I would say Botana was the first brick and mortar business I started and probably the most successful so for my next question I would like to ask you what would be your biggest tips to someone trying to do something similar to you and what are some challenges you face along the way I would say the first thing is to remove the word Perfection from your head I think being in entrepreneur is probably one of the most fast-faced Industries and being a perfectionist is not feasible whatsoever and that's something that I've you know

learned very quickly speed is sometimes equally as important in these industries is quality and then I found that quality is subjective so all three of us probably have a different variety of the criteria we have in quality so kind of being caught up on that it takes away from pushing out the product or pushing out the progress you want and all your ideas into the world secondly I'd say is be extremely comfortable with losing and failing 9 out of 10 businesses fail when they start up so you have to be extremely comfortable with failing every

day the term entrepreneur I feel like you could change the job title to Problem Solver because that is pretty much all you do you are just piled on with problems and problems every day so it's just being able to manage that and understand that you probably won't make the best decision every time but it's just taking from each of these experiences and learning deep biggest challenge I see a lot of young people in terms of when they want to start a business that I also face is funding I think when you look and you make

a plan and you decide that you want to start a business you realize your startup and operating costs add up very very quickly and for a lot of us loans are an accessible resource especially if you can't get a co-sign or guarantee or with a parent but I found that this was probably almost like a blessing in disguise starting at Young is because this really gives you the opportunity to use your own time in your own resources because you probably won't be getting paid a salary for a long time we need to get used to

that so being really resourceful being very Scrappy and learning every single aspect from you know counting to graphic design and trying to do it yourself I think that this not only helps you become a better decision maker in your business because you understand everything from the ground up but it also keeps you I'd say a little bit more grounded so when you know it does start to flourish a little bit you know that you are the captain leading your ship but you're not better than anyone underneath you and you have all a team working on

this together so that's some great advice for the listeners that are listening to this black ass for my next question I'd like to ask you how did Botana shape you for the future and is there anything you would have done differently if you could do it again I think botano is a great experience I love that I was able to kind of start it with my family so we got to spend a lot more time together as my first brick and mortar business it just kind of gave me the glimpse into the entrepreneurial space and

it really gave me a good idea if you you know whether I loved it and something I want to continue or not I really wouldn't change anything or do anything differently I think that you learn probably about this much from all of your successes but any of your failures you learned tenfold so I think anyone also looking to get into the space you really shouldn't be hung up on or looking to kind of change the past in terms of making a business because you're going to be making mistakes through and through that's some great advice

Christian for the last question I'd like to pass it back to Sophie thank you Raj and thank you Krishna for all those amazing insights I found them really interesting personally so our last question for you today do you have any advice or career tips for future entrepreneurs that might be listening to this podcast and I'd also like to know is there anything that you wish you had done differently in terms of your career path definitely it's one advice I would say is to get in the industry that you're interested in starting a business in I

know it's really exciting to start a business I know it's something that you're very passionate about but unfortunately sometimes the market conditions aren't you know very favorable so I would say definitely get your foot in the door at an established Fortune 500 or even another startup you'll be able to really get experience about seeing how the startup world is paced these are all learnings that you can take back to your own business I don't think you should sometimes start it right away do as much research as possible and in terms of career advice I think

I'm pretty happy with the way I approached it I would say throughout advice terms if you're in University and you're looking for career advice as all your summer internships I'd really try to try something new each time I would make a split between startups large companies different Industries I wouldn't continue throughout the same one this is kind of your opportunity to try every single thing that you wanted to so I would really kind look to do that during your Summers that's really great insight and I'm sure our listeners will really appreciate that so thank you

for sharing Krishna that was the last question that we have for you today so thank you so much for your time being a guest on the cast I'm sure our listeners will really benefit from all of those answers that you've given us today and we really appreciate having you as a guest speaker today so thank you no problem I appreciate you guys having me as well foreign