A Young Third Generation in Rug Business

The day before yesterday, Sunday November 9, 2008 was my older son's birthday. Ashkan turned 22 on this day. He is a senior at California State University Northridge here in Los Angeles. He has one more semester to go to get his bachelor's degree in Information Technology and Information Systems. He established his own company in 2007. He does web designing, search engine optimization and online marketing.

Ashkan is a member and also board member in different nonprofit professional organizations. He knows he should give back to the society in which he lives and works. In his university, they have roughly 1,500 Iranian American students with a very active Persian club, of which Ashkan has been the president for the past year and a half.

Ashkan helps me a lot not only with web mastering my company's web site, but in sales, marketing and its management whenever he has time. When he is in my rug gallery and a customer comes in, he usually gets up and helps the customer. Although he is still very young, he acts so maturely and presents himself proudly to the customers as a third generation rug man.

I believe in supporting local businesses, therefore on Sunday evening, we all went to our next door Mexican restaurant, La Cienega Mexican Grill & Cafe for dinner. The food was great and so was the service and the atmosphere. The owner of the restaurant, Ignazio who somehow knew it was Ashkan's birthday, provided us with a beautiful and well decorated cake with candles and the waiters and waitresses who brought in the cake while singing HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU. We were all surprised because we did not expect that.

As a father, I let Ashkan make his own decisions. I watch him doing so but try not to interfere and let him make acceptable mistakes. In my philosophy, making affordable mistakes is acceptable as long as you learn from it and do not repeat that mistake twice. It only has to be done once.

Khosrow Sobhe
www.RugIdea.com
310-770-9085