Start on Your Own Successfully

Think of what you do every day at work. Do you give your 100% to it? Do you enjoy your work? Does it bring out the best in you? Is it aligned with your core purpose in life?

For your long term satisfaction, it is essential that your work meets all the above criteria. However, in reality, many people do not like their work. A happier employee is more productive, hence good companies try their best to increase employee engagement by finding alignment between the work and the employee’s capabilities and interest. While this has helped a lot, it still does not address the case when there is a major mismatch of aptitude.

Why would someone land in a job that does not suit his aptitude or interest? Partly our education system is responsible as it encourages students to take well defined routes. Study science, do engineering and management degree, take up a lucrative job and work your way up in the career. At a young age, the student’s choice is guided solely by the prospects that the career offers. As a result, she takes up a career that looks promising even if it is not in line with her interest.

Stuck in such a situation, people make different trade-offs as a compromise. Some choose to give 100% to their career with single minded focus, while others find a balance and pursue their dreams on the side. Some people are bold enough to take a plunge, quit the job to follow their dreams – like starting a business or consultancy, becoming a singer, actor, dancer, etc. This results in an immediate hit on their earnings and a long period of struggle is mandatory with a thin chance of success.

So, while a job offers financial security and predictable chances of ‘making it’, starting out on your own looks attractive but a risky proposition. Is there a third choice by which we can follow our dreams without getting broke?   

In his book “The Education of Millionaires”, Michael Ellsberg offers great insights on this topic from his own experience. He places greater emphasis on real-life education as compared to formal college education. To stress the point, Michael gives example of many successful people who are college dropouts. He gives a simple four point formula to safely start out on your own without crashing:

1. The first step is to get financial stability through any job that you may get into and become independent. Use your earnings to ensure you are free of debts, and build up some savings for a rainy day.
2. The second step is to create room for experimentation while on the job. Figure out a job schedule which frees up some time for you for experimentation. e.g. you may find free time in the evenings or on weekends.
3. Use the money from your savings to start exploring your interest in your free time. Make sure to keep the regular source of income intact at this stage.
4. Once you gain confidence that you are ready to sustain yourself without a job, strike out on your own.

Remember, there is no guarantee of success in your venture. Failures are unavoidable in entrepreneurship and are an integral part of learning. However this gradual approach provides you adequate resilience to withstand the failure without getting broke.

Michael lists the following essential skills that one has to learn to be successful in his own venture. These skills should together form the essential curriculum of education for success, but are rarely taught formally in college:

Change the Mindset
Transition from employee mindset to entrepreneurial mindset, where you carve out your own path as opposed to working on path carved out by someone else. This is a vital shift, which can make you add more value even as an employee. Some of the differences between the two mindsets are as follows:

Entrepreneurial mind-set	Employee mind-set
Focus on contribution	Focus on entitlement
Focus on outcome	Focus on output
Sort for what’s needed	Sort for what’s requested
Go towards big decisions even without authority	Turn away from even the small decisions you have authority to make

Find Great Mentors and Build Network
Connect with powerful and influential people and build a world class network. Key point to remember is that great networking is not about taking advantage of your connections, but giving with no expectation of anything in return. Find people with great future potential and help them reach their goal. Add value to life of someone who is already established. 

Learn about Marketing
A lot of businesses fail because they are not able to reach out to right customers. The general perception of marketing is that its sleazy and manipulative, on the contrary, good marketing is making your potential customers know about you or your company.

Learn about Sales
Look at successful people in any field and they are not always the best individuals of that craft. You can be the very best in your craft but being able to sell is equally important for you. Again sales is often perceived in a negative manner. Sales is about knowing what customer needs and if you have a good solution/product, offering it.

Invest for Success
Reinvest your earnings for learning new skills to help take your endeavor to new heights.

Build a brand for Yourself
Your brand is what people think about when they hear your name.

This is indeed very valuable advice to everyone who wants to be successful in his own venture. This book has a promise of such a powerful paradigm shift that I strongly recommend that you should read it.

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About This Post
I do not agree with Michael's view that college education is not useful at all. However, even after college education there is a need to learn real-life skills discussed in this book to be successful.

Feeling Nostalgic with a Bag Full of Memories

Memory is such a wonderful thing. I wonder how I carry the memories of a lifetime with me. I Just need to sit alone in a quiet corner for a few moments and a medley of memories start playing in my  mind like a television show. It is indeed remarkable that even if the incidence may have taken place many years ago, I have it in my memory with its minutest details.

Ever noticed what happens when a memory reruns in our mind? I can view the images, hear the sounds, smell the fragrances, feel the touch, and even experience the thoughts and emotions I had at that time. In other words, I am transported back to that period, and experience it in a such a complete way that a TV show can not even come anywhere close to it. 

There are so many happy memories of childhood that I carry with me, when I lived a carefree existence, with abundant hope for future, and an infinite source of enthusiasm and curiosity. The childhood memories make me feel so nostalgic at times that I yearn to return to childhood again:

ये दौलत भी ले लो, ये शोहरत भी ले लो,
भले छीन लो मुझसे मेरी जवानी,
मगर मुझको लौटा दो बचपन का सावन,
वो काग़ज़ कि कश्ती, वो बारिश का पानी

The thoughts of the days of youth are equally alluring. What a heady mix of young innocence, new found independence, and the mischievous adolescence it was. It was an age when the whole world was a playground and nothing could go wrong. The pranks, the friends, the bunking of class, hanging around in college canteen, late night movie shows, the list may go on and on. The happy memories of youth haunt me and take me back to those memorable days:

जाड़ों की नर्म धूप और आँगन में लेट कर,
आँखों पे खींचकर आँचल के साये को,
औंधे पड़े रहें कभी करवट लिये हुए
दिल ढूँढता है फिर वही फ़ुरसत के रात दिन
बैठे रहे तसव्वुर-ए-जानाँ किये हुए

Not all memories are pleasant though. On the flip side there are also some painful memories of the times when I got hurt or betrayed by a close one. And such sad memories also come back with equal regularity and make me feel the emotions of hurt, anger, and hatred again with equal intensity.

I have observed that when I let my mind drift on its own, the thoughts and memories that show up are picked up in a completely random order. An old happy memory may play for a few second giving way to a more recent sad memory, going on to another stressful memory and so on. I do not understand the pattern behind it and not even sure if there is one. I looked at some memories that play most often and it seems that all of them have very strong emotions attached to them. So, looks like that emotions make a memory deeply entrenched in your brain.        

Can I forget everything about my past? It seems I can not even if I try my best to do it. Well, what would I like to change about my memories in that case? Nothing at all. I like my memories as they are. Even if they make me feel nostalgic at times, my bag full of memories is my most cherished treasure because that's all I am left with:

बस यादें यादें यादें रह जाती हैं
कुछ छोटी छोटी बातें रह जाती हैं

Do I want to get rid of the sad memories? Maybe not. These are as much a part of my life as pleasant memories. Even the painful memory of someone causing hurt is a reminder that the person is so close to me that what he does really matters. After all, you don't get hurt by strangers. So, when a painful emotional memory plays back, its time for me to thank God that I have people who are close to me.

To end this post, I am leaving you with this beautiful thought about memories - If you try to remember, everything will come back: 

करोगे याद तो हर बात याद आएगी
गुज़रते वक़्त की हर मौज़ ठहर जायेगी

The Dilemma of a Lonely Star

Imagine you are the brightest member in a team. Your knowledge and skills are above everyone, and you are able to solve even the most difficult problems and have a good reputation of achieving outstanding results. With such a strong show, can anything trouble you at work? However, it seems you are not really happy as you see mediocrity all around you - a bunch of average people struggling to do their job. You regret that no one displays the drive for excellence. It does not work out whenever you entrust someone with any task. They make mistakes every now and then, and have to be corrected very often to ensure the outcome. With such people, it is a big effort to have a useful meeting. They do not talk sense during the discussions and there is no focus on the outcome in their approach.

You feel overburdened with work as you end up doing everyone else’s work besides your own tasks. Work piles up on you as you take on more and more.  Your only wish is that if only other people can be made to contribute more productively, it will be a big relief to you. 

Another problem you face is that most people at work try to keep a safe distance from you. You find it impossible to get close to people even when you try hard.

One fine day, you get to overhear a water cooler gossip at office about a person affectionately nicknamed ‘The Bully’

People are describing him as a dominating personality who does not show respect to others. He is constantly interrupting others and does not allow people to talk in meetings. He is intelligent, but full of himself. Don’t know why he is so critical of everyone and everything. He wants to have things done in his own way (my way or highway syndrome).

This discussion makes you wonder, “This person is really unpopular in the team.  Who can be such a bully? You try to match with everyone you know in the office, but do not succeed. It perplexes you. Whom are they talking about?

What if I tell you that they are talking about you?

Shocked? You may find it hard to believe. What a bunch of ungrateful people. After all you have done for them; they have the guts to gossip about you in this manner? You don’t enjoy correcting them. Why do you have to correct them if they do not make so many mistakes? These people have got it all wrong. You wish someone can make them see the reality.

What has gone wrong here? Why is everyone against you despite such herculean efforts from your side?

I believe that the single factor responsible for this situation is your own attitude and behavior. Read what people are saying about you again and think carefully – are you not doing some of these things? I can say it from experience that the best way to alter the way people perceive you is by changing your own behavior.

You may be asking, “Why should I change? What do I lose if I continue like this?” You know that if you continue to be a lonely star, it will seriously limit your overall effectiveness. You can achieve much more if you can manage to take others along. Work situations are more like a relay race, not a solo sprint. You cannot win if you rely on your brightness alone. You have to pass on the baton to other players and let them run forward with it. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs are some finest examples of super smart people who achieved outstanding success. Did they do it all alone? In fact each of them took the help of hundreds and thousands of people to turn their dream into reality. What makes you believe that you can do it alone? In fact if you do not change now, you run a risk of reaching a burnout stage soon.

You may have an objection, “But when I try to get others to work, it causes loss of my own productivity. It is far better to do it myself rather than trying to explain it to someone else.” This is your dilemma. Should you try teamwork and lose your productivity or should you take on everything yourself, and get overloaded in the process?

The answer to your dilemma is simple - go for teamwork. I agree that you may lose some time in teamwork; still this is the only way you can multiply your output. Let me use some simple mathematics here. Even if you lose half your productivity in teamwork and get a team of four going at half the efficiency, you still multiply your output 2.5 times.  And if you work on developing more leaders in the team, it can have an exponential effect on the productivity. With one more leader who can guide four more members, the output goes up with a factor of five.

And with the team pitching in, you can take yourself out of the critical path. So, things continue to be in motion even when you are away. When you work well with other people, you become people’s hero, and they enjoy working with you. Who does not want to have a heavy lifter in the team?


However, you may need to alter your approach towards others if you want teamwork to succeed. Here are some ideas on how to make these changes. Apply these ideas one at a time and you will find that gradually you will start liking working in a team.

1. You are smarter than others, but do maintain a healthy respect for all. Everyone has his own unique capabilities. Be sensitive to others. Do not insult people with your words, gestures, or actions.
2. When people talk, listen to them carefully, do not keep your mind busy in forming your response and do not interrupt.
3. When you talk, watch you language. How often do you use ‘I’, ‘me’, or ‘my’? Consciously change it and try to use more ‘we’ and ‘you’ than ‘I’.
4. Do not assume that people understand you. Take time to explain yourself and your purpose behind what you are trying to accomplish.
5. Let people try their own ways of doing the job. Do not force your way on them.
6. When you give feedback to someone, criticize the action and not the person.
7. Take time to develop soft skills. Do not see it as an unnecessary frill for the job you have to do.

I have painted the extreme picture with some exaggeration to illustrate the point clearly; in reality the situation is never so black or white, but a shade of gray. So if you are a lonely star you may find a partial match in the description above. You may be effective working with people at certain times, while may find it impossible to take them along at other times.

Most of us have experienced being a lonely star and working with one at different times.  I hope that with this post I could manage to highlight its downside and stress the benefits of correcting your approach towards others. A small step in this direction can go a long way to help you multiply your effectiveness.

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More about this Post

The thought discussed in this post was echoed when the board of Housing.com, a real estate listing site, sacked its CEO and co-founder Rahul Yadav in July 2015. Rahul is such a brilliant person that he is a perfect example of the star mentioned in this post. He took the company from 0 to 1500 crores in a short span a time and gave his shares worth 200 crores to the employees; yet he had to face ouster from the company, possibly since he forgot the basic principle that you need to take people along to sustain a brilliant idea.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/With-good-coach-he-can-come-back/articleshow/47903141.cms

Here is another view of the episode from Haresh Chawla of India Value Fund, who gave the following advice to Rahul:
 
"If you are a lone-player with great talent - like a sportsperson or an artist or painter - you are then free to work alone, without regard to what the world thinks of you...
But if you’ve chosen to be a manager, you’ve then got to be among people, collaborate with them, lead them or be led by them, be able to handle their frustrations, to handle their competence and their incompetence. It's an ego-crushing journey where you need to learn to allow people their space to work. It has very little to do with intelligence - it is more about developing sensitivity - finding a way to motivate people, to pull them in one direction. A journey of frustration, but equally one of triumph when you see the team working together and winning."

http://www.foundingfuel.com/article/the-rahul-yadav-story-youve-never-heard-before/