Journey of a Startup

1980s.. Startup as a word did not exist, there were companies being formed, ideas being implemented, breakthrough inventions happening, big names turn to dust and new names become a trend setter overnight but the word Startups did not exist, there did not exist a need for a mentor or a guide to sit you down to tell you what you need to do for your growth. We had our parents, teachers, friends and fools who would always advice us on how to go about, we would listen to them and move on to do what we felt was right, so heres to the journey of Startups, the speed, the hurdles, the highs and the lows...

SPEED... When we begin the first step towards becoming an entrepreneur, we start to believe that we are on a flight, we are the pilots and we just have to fly and fly fast, we never stop to ever think that it is now that we need to be steady, slow and careful about the steps we take ahead. Lets take an example of everything we do regularly, slow and steady has actually won races but we forget that, very easily.

I experienced the same urge for speed in a aspiring entrepreneur who has just started her journey. With all my mentoring hours spent with her, we have become good friends and I am able to know, why she says things she says and she as well knows when she has really pushed me over the edge with her questions. So, as friends as we are, Satamita calls me up exactly after 3 days of her decision to go ahead with the new found idea and tell me that she needs to travel for a month in January and she needs the business up and running before that.. She is surely not abnormal or wrong, there are many out there like her, in fact, just few years back, I was exactly like that, my co-founder suggested to me that we must get into hospitality marketing as we were associated with few boutique resorts being set up and the next thing I do is, register a website and put a count down for 20 days down the line for it to go live.. check out www.exoticexplorers.com it did happen, we also made sales, in 20 days, we had the strategic tie-ups, we had the website, the operations and processes going but what we did not have is the TIME.. Business Mentoring is our core services and we just let that idea be, and moved ahead with our core interests. 

So, as we move ahead with our journey, we the startups need to remember that the first steps are the most crucial and you need to take them slowly, carefully and understand each and every thing you get your hands into.. Not stop completely but move ahead.. Structure your plans, put the first things first and also get down to doing it. If you plan to put the complete end to end plan perfectly, it would never happen, so put a plan which looks more feasible and practical and proceed with it.

HURDLES... Now, is that word familiar or what? Have we not come across that in everything we did ever. Going back to the teacher who hated you, to your parents who never allowed to take up what you wanted to do in life, to your girl/boy friend who would always seem to need something different to your needs. So, now why are the hurdles in the journey of making your idea into a practical business considered a huge issue. Hurdles are meant to happen, to sharpen your views, to strengthen your visions, to make you a better entrepreneur, so welcome it with open arms, take it as it comes, face it with a smile and come over it with confidence. See, how much you will learn from each of the experiences of overcoming your hurdles. 

Another example is one of my client again, who just launched his healthcare product on the 16th November, Anshil, not to forget, he is also a good friend of mine (the question I always ask is, do I make my client, my friends intentionally or it just seems to happen all the time), has had so many hurdles he has to over come, that I cannot imagine that an 8 month old startup and also an 8 month old entrepreneur could have ever overcome that. He has had to handle his financial crises, his father's expectations, his best friends and their tantrums, his mentor's anger :), his girl friends fights for not giving her time, his desire to booze in the night with friends and sleep late on weekends, you name it and he has got it all and he has faced all of it and he moves ahead. Clear in his mind and sure about his vision. Even as I write this, I get a call from him to update me on the progress and tell me that he has a another small war to win, I am confident he will and plus, he is confident he will see me beside him if he needs our services as his mentors. So, my dearest entrepreneurs, hurdles are a gift to all entrepreneurs to make them into the best ones the industry every produced.

Finally, HIGHS & LOWS of your life and mine.. It is we who make the high points and the low points of our entrepreneurial journey. Is it hard to believe? It is always the case when the world decides that we have had it very easy, it gifts us with all the low points in life and when we make up our mind; "Fuck the World" and move ahead, we gift our selves with High Moments.. So, are you ready to create your high moments as you move ahead?

I am, I was very low today morning when I read the news about Paul Walker, someone I adored and drooled upon. It just took him a drive to end it all and I suddenly felt, "Y am I working so hard to build something when it takes just that much?" and then, it happened, I said exactly the same, Fuck the world and logged into my Club's website (www.startupsclub.org) and there it was my HIGH MOMENT.. we had crossed 1500 members just in all most 10 months... I won.. again...

Journey from a 10th grade to ISB in 25 years

It takes you just that one minute to sign in and still it took me more than two decades to do that. As I sit just 10 days away from the first day when I walk into the gates of the University for my course on Business Management, I look back to see an endless chain of events and circumstances which became the road blocks to stop me from doing this many many years ago.

At this point, many such big and small events come to my mind, which makes me think why it was so impossible for me to do it then and how it is this possible to do it now. The timing could just not be worse. Having a huge family property deal closed, Prudence Advisors (means for my bread n butter, literally) at its best with 3 kids, all eager to grow into successful individuals and my own early 40s mindset of traveling to every place the dart strikes on the map but still here I am preparing for my course and reading up materials at 5 am in the morning. All this sets me to think, why we do not take that moment out and just do what we want to do?

If this means I have some sleepless nights studding, I have some embarrassing moments at the University, have some tough moments at work with clients or have some emotionally tiring moments with kids when I temporary loose focus on them, it must be fine with me and I must be good to go, anyway, in these past years, I have had sleepless night, embarrassing moments, tough moments and emotionally tiring moments and had it zillion number of times and most of it was for someone else, someone close or not, but surely for someone else but I am proud today that I am ready to face these moments for myself.

We as ladies must never give up on ourselves, its never too late for us, its never over for us. We created life, I created life and you created life but then, lets not loose ourselves living this life.

I will write soon and very soon, one of my Blogs will be written by a GRADUATE FROM INDIAN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS..     

Rich people network others look for work...

After 17 years of setting up several companies from the scratch, running few of them and running few down I have come to realise that the biggest lesson of my life. All my years as an entrepreneur, I have had every kind of day on my calendar. Days I am excited of getting business to my firm, days I am down about no projects; gloomy days and bright sunny days but today is an enlightening day for me.

I have had some really tough lessons to learn from the past few years and the reason has been me all the way. In situations of distress, we tend to forget that one important fact, its when we are down that we need to pick ourself up as there is no stopping to hitting the bottom we are about to reach. We just go deeper and deeper down and I was all fuelled up to ensure that my speed down was at its maximum. Its then that I realised that my most closest to heart company, a company in which I had put many years, loads of efforts and even more finances was just about to go down under. This was sure to be the rock bottom and I assured myself that I will bounce back but bounce back on what was lost.

In my final attempt to condense all my experience, my strengths and weaknesses that it hit me on my face. My strengths; something which can over run every weakness, every trouble, every hurdle which stood ahead of me. There were not many to be listed as well, just this one, which kept dancing in front my eyes, as if to yell out for my attention. MY NETWORKING SKILLS.

I could network and network good, I could build relationships and maintain them as well within minutes. I can still remember, I could just wait in a line in a bank ( remember in 1980's, we had a line of 20 people always waiting to deposit cash in banks and many more waiting with tokens to receive the cash) and create friendships which would go down many years. Then, there was this fact which always surprised all my friends, associates and family and that was, that I would never market my company services and we would always get my clients through local helpline leads or word of mouth. But until this moment when I was desperately looking for a string to hold on too, just before we go down under that I realised that in all this, it was very clear that one thing I was good at was Networking and yet, I did nothing to reach people or connect with them.

Surprisingly, few months back I was elected the Secretary of my School's Former Students Association and I was doing a great job; knew this because there were few who were delighted with the work and then there were these very old members who hated my guts, so it was clear, I was doing super great and even then, it never struck me that I need to connect to people for them to know me, my company and my services. But then again, everything has its right time and this was my time and I had to wait. Every individual has to wait for their time to come and I did too but with a lot of pain, restlessness and everything negative which can exist in this world.

Its now, 1 week since I have started my networking and a whole new world has been revealed to me. I now know, its so true when Cafe Coffee Day said - A LOT CAN HAPPEN WITH COFFEE. It did to me. I suddenly am making friends by the minute, I do not have business lined up for me and I actually do not care about it now that it happens because I get to meet with so many people and I get to know that I am not the only one with problems with bottom lines and its fine to have these problems and its only when we have these problems that we work towards getting a solution.

I have been investing in my firm earlier too and I am doing it now but the difference is that there are so many people out here every day that I know with time, my name, my company and my services will be recognised and then business will come looking for us.

It is with this that I have realised why the rich do not speak about their networking efforts and talk about their company's success. They keep this secret to themselves. After all they want to be the very few who are the HNIs and they would not want those numbers to increase. So, they earn money through all the networking for years, all those hours on flight, all those empty beer glasses, all those moments of walking aimlessly trying to put a ball in a hole; a game called GOLF, all those reasonless parties and here we thought that they have worked so hard to earn the money and now they are spending it. But the fact is that they were all working when they were doing everything under the name of networking and getting their businesses through this and then they hire dozens of really well qualified, intelligent, smart,  young and experienced individuals and let them to do their dirty jobs of slogging all the hours at office and yahhhhhh!!!! money is earned. What do they say for others to learn, they worked hard for what they created, BULLSHIT!

Its now that I am clear and I know where the money lies and I am on my way to get it all right and trust me, when I get there, I will not be alone. I will take many of those individuals who worked for these actors called HNIs and make sure that the same HNIs are one of the many and not one of the few.

Are you in?