For weeks, I’ve been meaning to blog about a class I’m taking this semester, entitled “Taking the Leap – The Entrepreneurial Mindset.”

Basically, it’s a series of speakers who have done amazing, entrepreneurial things. The first day of class, our professor asked us whether or not we wanted to be an entrepreneur. I’ve never really felt I could actually invent something, let alone build a company and/or empire around said product, but these stories have nevertheless been incredibly inspiring.

Tonight we heard from Ram Chaudhari, one of the founders of Fortitech, a company that fortifies everyday foods with nutrients, minerals, vitamins, etc.

Mr. Chaudhari told us his incredible journey to success, with the requisite heartbreaking details—growing up in a home with water buffalo dung floors, walking away from his village at age 9, emigrating via a 37-day-long boat ride to the United States, and eventually living the American Dream, without even having spoken English upon arriving in the US. Classic success story.

However, what I took away was the humility interwoven through Mr. Chaudhari’s entire story. His mannerisms, whether it was deflecting sycophantic questions or repeatedly, repeatedly saying how privileged he’s been, that to me is the true testament to his success.

“Don’t hold back anything, even if you make mistakes,” he said. “Unless you try, you don’t know how good you are.”

Chaudhari started his career at a variety of labs, eventually quitting and becoming an entrepreneur. At the time, he was making nothing, scraping by with a wife earning her doctorate and an adolescent son. It wasn’t a fairy tale. Instead, it was a story of a man who literally made himself from nothing, yet maintained the retrospective attitude that he was lucky to have made it. He embodies the simple life, still sleeping in the same bed that he bought when he owned 20 years ago, living in the same 3-bedroom home he purchased before his company made hundreds of millions.

His work and his commitment to making a difference in the world, by means of his nutritional additives, made me realize something. Amidst all of these job interviews, I really want to find something that I care deeply about. I’ve been panicking because I simply want to solidify my future, but why solidify it into something that I don’t necessarily want? It’s the first time my life has been directionless, but I need to see this as an opportunity to guide myself unto a path on which I will feel fulfilled.

“All I had was my heart, God, and hard work.”

And that’s all I have, too.