Europe & Me

Work and responsibilities takes up so much of our time in life that we always stop to think what is that which covers most of our inner most thoughts.. l have realised mine is Europe.. I was destined to be there... I was destined to spend most of my best years there.. but other elements came in force. Others played a key role in keeping me away from where I was destined to be, not one but many years.. It took me lot of struggle, lot of fights, externally and internally to fight the demons and get the way cleared to where I belong. At this point of my life, I feel I have cleared those demons well enough for me to carve the path towards MY DESTINATION...

Why do we do that to ourselves? why do we make it a point to let other play our game? why do we feel its important, others take the decisions for us, even if it is going to be the worst for us? Why can't we be us? Why can't I be I?? Just I???

Saying that, I am sure that many have tried and succeeded, many have tried and failed.. which is okay?? but not trying at all.. is a sin.. Something which is unforgivable. You have been gifted with one life, if you don't dare.. who will?? Don't go down without a TRY...

Find your place... your destination.. a place on earth where you feel ur complete, does not matter with or without anyone... U r U.....

Europe... France.... more specific... South of France... is that special destination for me... How??? Why??? When???? just does not matter.. It is..

Every time I feel.. I have done enough and have had enough or just feel I have not connected with that ME, you will find me searching Lufthansa... Mariott.... Costs.. Budgets... Timelines.. I am doing it again and you will find me doing that many more times again.. If you try to find out why I do it, you will never come to know why, if you try to reason it out with me, you will never get me to give you any practical valid reason for it.. But you will find me there.. All very comfy.. coz it is for sure my DESTINATION..

Why do i love France??? Ohhhhhhhh its FRANCE.... Its me.... Love you 

DO STATISTICS SELL?

We have heard brands so many times pitch statistics to customers on how the industry is growing, how the product is performing in the markets they are in & etc, but lets give a thought.. does these statistics actually sell? I have always wondered that and I am sure we have direct, indirect marketers who have also thought of this. Ya, this is another topic of blog which I will cover in the next coming weeks, WHO IS NOT A MARKETER?

For now, lets run a reality check on the Q if Statistics Sell....

My Club, Startups Club is having its annual event in a month and I have been using every strategy in my book of strategies to ensure maximum participation. The pricing is to its lowest and the is totally sellable, an easy product to sell, its about entrepreneurship, its investors, its validation and BP pitch... you do not need a more sellable product. So, we have a winner in hand as a product. Finally the reach, ok, I am being humble when I say, I have a reach to around 40k souls across the world, all first connections. So we have the reach as well. So in this coming 1 week, all of us (meaning those who have read this Blog and are following it) will know if Statistics Sell.

I have just today checked out the exact number of tickets sold till this minute and have posted some exact statistics across my connects.. will be talking about it also in chats and blogs (such as this) for 1 week. Post the week, till the date of sales, that is 18th in Chennai, we will see, how many tickets gets sold in actual. I will conclude this blog on the 20th on the number of tickets sold through this presentation on Statistics. So, are we all in??? 

Here goes the Statistics for you as well...

Dear Members/ Friends/ Associates,

Very Soon, on the 18th of July, we will be in Marriott Courtyard, Chennai & 26th July in Hyderabad, for our Open House meetup, but most importantly, it is on that day, that you can come over and save your Rs.100/- and also lessen the chances of missing out on the availability of tickets for DemoDay coming up next month on the 9th. This a note to tell you that there are huge chances of you loosing on a great event, if you dont pick up the DemoDay tickets on the 18th itself. some fact;

1. The GRT Convention Center can accommodate only 150 people comfortably, and we have until now sold out exactly 27 tickets for the event, paid and confirmed.

2. We will have 10 Participants, so we will be mailing to the 10 participants that they can pick up the tickets for their family, friends and team members, last year the statistics show that each participant took around 2 Visitors pass, so that leaves us with 47 tickets sold.

3. Plus, it is also a tradition that the core committee team keeps around 50 tickets for last minute desperate requests and sudden walk-ins and their friends & associates. Last year DemoDay in Bangalore had 107 walk-ins apart from around 86 on line purchases. so that leaves us with a very small number of 53 tickets left.

4. We have a total of 78 RSVPs on Meetup from Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. We usually get an advance booking and on line purchase of tickets of around 20%, that means around 20 tickets could be purchased on line in the coming days by members. leaving us with just 33 tickets in hand for any pick-ups from all of you, who are sure that they will be apart of this event. 33 TICKETS MEMBERS...

So, if your having second thoughts or doubts about what this events going to be, it is not a regular monthly event by Startups Club, its our annual event for which we count down all our activities into this month. Its a whole day event. know more on www.scdemoday.com

The Startups Club FB group story - 1 to 1001

It had been 2 months since the core team of Startups Club had started the group in meetup and had around 200 members and core committee meetings were considered very important by the core team.. We had no idea what we had started off, was it just another run of the mill thing, just another meetup group, just another reaction which will die with time or something good.. Nothing great for sure.  After all, we were all a set of 5 strangers who knew each other just from 60 days.. We met at 6 pm.. Raining cats and dogs and we still did meet at Barista, Koramangala and we laughed and chatted for something.. Every one had just one thing at the back of our heads.. We are all fools.. We are making a hill out of a mole, instead of going back home and hitting the sack, here we were at a coffee shop in a rainy dreadful evening, traffic jams when we hit the road back home was a bigger problem for us than anything else.. Niladri.. Always the person other than me to start business talk in these meetings starts off.. All try to pay attention.. He says we are doing good.. Startups Club has had one successful meeting at Mr. Beans with 38 attendees and 200 members and counting and we had to now at least have some presence other than meetup.. I as usual, the attention seeker in meetings barges in and says "we do have a FB page and we have some 40 likes" very proud of myself.. He and the others are really happy and suddenly we all very interested to know things and our very own technically more qualified core team member Najmul comes up by saying we need to go on LinkedIn as it has serious business people and our marketing expert.. All fun guy Arnab jumps in saying it must be Twitter as it enables a lot of fellowship and within minutes we had all 5 of us talking together and loudly, trying to make our own point.. Just not aware or not caring about people around us, the rain, the time or our own urge to head back home.. Finally, the coffee shop boy cuts in to ask if we would order something (maybe that was his sweet way to let us know how noisy and chaotic we all were) that put all of us to silence, we brushed him off by lying to him and saying we were waiting for few other.. He was even more shocked to know that there were few more like us coming. We all sat silent and Vivek, our most intelligent and person with a knack for numbers, spoke " this Club is for members so that they could promote and reach out other members and a FB close group would be the best" immediately every one started speaking.. How many things can we handle.. Having is not the problem, managing is the thing, leaving it dead will even more demotivated our members blah blah blah.. Finally.. I do not know who spoke this but a line went like "WE CANNOT MANAGE A GROUP, AFTER HAVING A PAGE, LINKEDIN & TWITTER" that was it.. I looked so shocked that all thought I would faint.. The CAN'T word was used and I could not take it.. I proposed to the core team that we would try the FB group out if it does not catch momentum and it does not grow, we leave it and for some reason - no one opposed, maybe all wanted to go back home.. We parted off from Barista and headed home, long, wet and traffic clogged drive.. Vivek driving the car and I acted as if I was asleep but all I wanted to do was reach home and make that group of Startups Club.. How can anyone say we can't.. That was like sin, like the end of the world.. I kept playing a plan.. Reached home, did not even remove my foot ware, pulled out my system and there I was.. Created the Group.. Put a googled picture on networking as my group picture and then there is was.. 1 member.. ME.. Must I send an invite to the core team?? Would they be pissed off.. Would they feel I challenged them, I loved them all and my intention was not to hurt them but I had heard the CAN'T word.. I was helpless.. Anyway.. I decided that I was happy that I had created the group and would just share the link on my timeline and not invite any body and would talk to my core team and then do the rest.. I went to my room to change and freshen up and I heard 4 notifications came by on my phone.. My dearest core team.. All of them had sent a request to join.. I knew even more today why I loved them all so very much.. We stood beside each other for everything that is good for the club.. In 5 minutes we grew from 1 to 5. We had no plans, no SEO, no keywords.. All we, the core team did was just communicated to all our 200 members on meetup, our friends and contacts on FB and slowly it kept growing in numbers.. Every meetings we would tell our members, "please join our group & the page, and the Twitter & the LinkedIn".. We at times would feel so bad to make so many announcements..  Promote ur offerings there... Every day and every meeting.. Most importantly, even today.. What the group does to you is let's you talk about yourself, your idea, your offerings to a set of people who at times read it and at times just brush through but also at times who end up being your co-founders, ur customers and your trusted associations. 

So, this is the story of your Startups Club.. Your platform for your selling.. Your voice to the 1001  & counting pairs or eyes who could be one and all to you.. Love you all people for giving me this opportunity to share this little story of that rainy evening, the loud talks between trusted associations and the result got today and the great future for all of us.... 

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?

Brave

Sat down to write after watching the movie BRAVE. Trying to recollect all the incidents, characters, names, incidents and people who have been brave after all. Let me see....

- I put myself first, after all I am an Indian.. its in my blood, it will always be me first... I think I am BRAVE to start a week with a Movie at 10 am on Monday, a week filled with workloads, pending bills, loaded expectations and a never ending process of BD at work.

- BRAVE is Mahi - the 4 year old who fell the bore well some 80 hours back and came to fame with media taking a good bite of the news to raise their TRPs. I think she was really BRAVE for her age to be alive for 6 hours post her fall, if me in her place, I'm out the very next minute, not by physical hurt but just the thought that I fell into that hole. Add to it all, the parents are all out blaming the authorities and politicians, army, workers, neighbors, media and all who tried getting their child out for not doing a good job. I just have one question for them, why had they not called all this help when they saw that hole open and they knew they had a 4 year old moving around. i remember when we have kids who start crawling around for the first time, the first thing we do is close the plug points and take away sharp items, now, was that hole dug just when Mahi went down to play... mmmmmm.. anyway, to this great effort taken by the parents TOI wants the authorities to give 10 lacs INR to the parents... good good.... so parents be ready to be irresponsible and get paid for it too... anyway, Mahi is my BRAVE for now.

- BRAVE is my son, Faraz, who has diarrhea for a week now and is ensuring he went out with friends every single day and ate junk food for every meal in the day. What can I say, if I have to go according to the parents of Mahi, I need to sue all the brands which advertise their products on the TV for making my son eat their junk food and fall sick. Actually I can earn more this way than working my self off through projects. Imagine if I can sue Mac Donalds, KFC, Pepsi, Coca cola and ITC for bingo etc... wow.. I see myself as a millionaire already...

I'm tired now and am satisfied that I have passed off half of my Monday morning with a movie and blog writing and so, I now try to go get some work done..