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?
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?
