Disclaimer: I do not
claim to know it all but I do hope to share it all. This is a series of 11
lessons that I have learnt dealing with Entrepreneurs and being one myself.
If ever anyone told you how easy it was, smile and tell
yourself, it’s not. It’ll never be.
In my life I have been a very keen sports lover and player.
Sports have taught a lot of things to me. I draw a lot of inspiration from
Sportsmen and their achievements. In this post and the next few I will share
many such analogies and learnings.
The biggest learning for me has been the ability to lose.
In every match you play, someone has to lose. If you lose today, do you get
bogged down? Do you lose track of your vision or your goals? Or do you come
back with a bang and launch yourself again? Hitting back with even more
determination to win?
I am a big fan of MS Dhoni and what has made him a great
leader is that for him winning is important but losing is not that important.
He makes it a point to never lose moral or track with a loss in a match. He
sets his goals and continues to work hard on them with plans that he totally
believes in. He knows it takes time and that there will be hiccups.
It takes time! Stay focussed.
Rome was not built in a day nor was any business. Don’t lose
your Focus. Break your long journey into smaller segments and win the marathon
by achieving better results in each segment. Focus on a segment at a time. Make
sure that each segment or shorter term goal is taking you to your vision and
then Focus on a shorter term goal at a time.
I think that every business must be built in style of a
Cricket Test Match. 5 days of determination and concentration on the field can
be tiring and seem impossible for any great player but then the better teams
win it by playing session by session. In business, once the long haul vision is
in place, work on it by setting smaller goals. Write them down! Monitor them,
measure yourself every week. Week after week. Get organised. Stay Focussed. Each
week sow a seed, each day water it. One day it will become a big fruit bearing
tree.
ACTIVEKARMA
EXPERIENCE: What not to do!
In the beginning of this century I had set up a venture
called ACTIVEKARMA in partnership with a very close friend of mine. It was
about bringing concept of Active and Healthy Lifestyles. We started off with an
idea of making a software that will have some kind of AI and will build a
unique diet plan for all our users. We were going to set up offline centers of
our own as well. Activekarma was set up
in year 2000, the year of first internet boom.
We got funded! We lost track. This was the time when the
number of “eyeballs” was the measure of success for any business. We built a
website and focussed on registrations online. Our website had a lot of content.
Through the website, we were giving gyaan on stress management, diet plans,
fitness, sports coaching and even fitness travel. We had tie ups with experts
on meditation, yoga, nutrition, fitness. We had celebrated sports gurus on
board along with dieticians and travel experts. We had an online diet
management software called MYDIETMATE and we were selling holiday packages
even!
We had a great team of seemingly very intelligent people. But
we failed! The single biggest reason was lack of focus on our real Goals. We
were trying to do too much and we were in a hurry. We did not build an
ACTIVEKARMA center. We ran after eyeballs, way too fast.
Obviously nothing worked! Desperation grew.
One day I woke up to realise that we had become a company
providing services on website & software development, ticketing, event
management all rolled into one! We were not doing anything actively about
ACTIVEKARMA. We had lost track. We had lost!
We set out with the correct Vision. We had found the right
gap in the market and we had right ideas. We had to stay focussed on them and
should have gone slower.
PIVOT, What? Why?
Staying Focussed on initial goal does not mean to follow it
even if you know that you are heading for doom. Change track. Its ok. However,
don’t do it for reasons such has fashion!
Few hours of the month, I spend learning from the new age
entrepreneurs. Reading about them, listening to them and investing money with
them, hoping to grow with them.
Once I met Pintoo. He used the word PIVOT 3 times in his
presentation and with a lot of pride. He had changed his business idea 4 times
already and I wasn’t sure when the next pivot was going to come! He was obviously in some kind of hurry to
catch the bus and was majorly suffering from FOMO.
Okay, so I do not have a problem with pivot or with changing
directions. For me it really means that you started off to do something but
soon realized that you had made some wrong assumptions and judgments about the
model or market. You were headed in the wrong direction so you changed your
track. So you Pivoted! Nothing wrong with that.
If you lose, lose
fast. Go back, change path, change direction, do the pivot, if you have to.
However, find answers for the “why” , “what” and the “how”.
If you started your venture to solve logistics problem but pivoted
to become a “HyperLocal” grocery company then it better be for reasons of it
being a bigger opportunity. Then make sure that you have the skill and passion
to do it. Make sure that you have got your business model right this time.
However, if you are going to Pivot because that word is
fashionable or that business plan will fetch you money or that is the new flavour
of the month then you have lost Focus and you are heading the Activekarma way.
Don’t!
So the Lesson 2 for me is my biggest lesson. STAY FOCUSSED. It will take
time. Just keep going. Keep moving. Slowly, yet steadily. It has taken time for
each one of them. Even for the great Messi.
After all, it took him 17 years of hardwork to become an over night
success.
In other words. Lage raho Pintoo!
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