Lessons from Entrepreneurship: 3. CARPE DIEM, Strike the Iron!

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.

I think all my friends know that while I am a movie buff, I am a big time Sholay fan. This epic movie from ‘70s seems to have a dialogue written for all situations. There are just so many small anecdotes and simple dialogues delivered with so much style and passion that their messages become that much more hard-hitting. One such moment is when Thakur, Jai and Veeru are making their strategy to catch Gabbar. They get to know that an arms supplier to Gabbar has just arrived and is meeting him at a certain place to do the deal. Thakur, in his inimitable style says, “loha garam hai, maar do hathoda!”  (translated: Iron is hot, strike it).

Timing is everything. You cannot be too early or too late with your idea. You have to be ready with the answer when the question is raised. You have to grab the deal when it is on table. You have to put your body in, when you have got the foot in the door.

Sale Closure, learning from the job!

Ask any star sales man and he will tell you that the most important thing in a deal is the quick closure. These star sales men are always looking for that small window of opportunity to close the deal.

 One of the first things that I learnt as a sales person was to communicate really well but never in a hurry. Take your time in a meeting, in fact, take a lot of time. Tire the buyer and close the deal.

In my original business I used to go for meetings with customers setting up a big hotel, needing multiple F&B facilities. All bidders were mostly called on the same day for a series of meetings with a team of 4-5 people.

Having done a few of these meetings and their analysis I figured that the person who got the order was usually the one who spent most time in the meeting.  So my prerogative became to talk more in a meeting. I talked about my company, myself, my history, our history, about the hotel, the market, the project, the city, the food and while doing that I would find connections. My stories and connections built trust.

 In the mean time I would figure out the decision maker, influencer and nuisance makers. Having done that, I would wait for their issues, their problems and their fears.  By this time, they would be mostly convinced about my knowledge, our company’s capabilities and would have all the trust in me to do the job.  I had already fitted into the jig saw puzzle with the last bit of discount remainig. That would normally close the deal.

I heated up the iron and struck at the right time. Well the timing was not always right but then, lets say mostly!

Sachin Tendulkar’s debut

Here is a little story of the little master. This is from his debut series in Pakistan when another great Waqar Younis also made his debut. This incident was on the 4^th day of the 4^th match of this series being played on a green top Sialkot wicket.

India were 38/4 when the young boy named Sachin walked in to join Navjot Singh Siddhu. Shortly after, Sachin was hit on his nose by a Waqar bouncer. He was bleeding when even Imran Khan offered him to go to the dressing room and return later, “chhote chot lag gayi hai, chalo baad mein aa jana”. However, even at that raw age Sachin knew this is where he makes his mark, this is where he has to rise and this is where he seizes the opportunity. He told Siddhu, “mein khelega!” (I will play). Sachin made 57 in that innings and helped India draw the match on juicy green wicket.

A Star was born. Imagine had he opted to go back and nurse his nose.

Opportunity of a lifetime

There will be times when you will feel dejected and frustrated in your work life. You might even start to put pressure on your personal relations because of that. You will be clueless, looking for answers. Some of us turn to God, some to Godmen. Some to palmists and others even to past life analysers!

They may find some answers and be satisfied with it. However, the game is not about finding the answers or hoping for favourable circumstances but about actually making them.

This life itself is the big opportunity. Seize it. Set your goals. Stay Focused. If circumstances do not allow, change them. Look for circumstances you want, if you can’t find them. Make them!

Carpe Diem stands for “seize the day”. I first heard this term in another one of my all-time favourite movies called “Dead Poets’ Society”. There is this scene where Robin Williams, the professor, tells his students that they have age and opportunity on their side to change the world. He encouraged them to seize the day and make their lives extra ordinary. If they don’t then, once buried, all that would become of them would be a fertiliser!

The Lesson 3:

Life will give you opportunities. Life itself is a big opportunity. Seize it. Make something big about it. Opportunities will come to you in the form of a big problem or crisis. They will come when you want to win a sales order or close a funding deal. Opportunities will keep coming in your life, many times over. You have to be ready for them and seize them. If circumstances stop you, change them. Make the iron hot. Strike it!

Momentous or Momentary? Resolutions for next year

There goes another year!

If I consider the sample of a few dozen people I have met in
the last 10 days or so to be a representative sample of most of us and also
consider that the winter chill had not allowed their brain to be fuzzy despite
their attempts to intoxicate themselves with all kinds of mixes of drinks etc.,
the general consensus is that the year 2011 has gone past really fast!

Most of my friends completed their fourth decade of life and
some of them, like me, are staring at the most deserved mid-life crisis. We all
have been told so many times that just before we die, our brain replays our
whole life in a very quick flash. However, no one told us that this happens in
the middle of your life as well, albeit, in a much slower cue mode.

It has happened to me. My brain has taken last one year to
replay my last 40 years.

This great video was full of many events like hitting a six
while playing hand cricket at the school bus stop, learning counting in Hindi
as I played marbles, the last set of the final of my first tennis tournament,
the last lap of my first swimming race that I won, greetings of my friends as I
came back from IITD getting the JEE results, the imaginary chair that I had to
sit on while I sang during the ragging, reaching late for an exam in 4th
year, hosting of the party for my 40 friends, teaching my sister to drive,
driving to the top of the world, smiling at countless people who came for our
wedding reception even though I did not know them, driving around Lucknow to
get medicines and glucose drips for half of my batch struggling with severe
food poisoning, carrying my new born babies out of the labour room, the first
kiss & few more after that and so on.

There were too many scenes and a host of characters. It was
really difficult to remember each and every event or even the reason for them.
Forget about the names, even the faces were not recognisable. What I was shown
by my brain video player were the moments that I remembered. The excitement of
achievement, the ecstasy of the heart, the spike of happiness, the pain of heartbreak,
the height of embarrassment, the feeling of emotion – that’s what I was shown,
that’s what I remembered, the moment of the extreme feeling.

This is, I now believe, what life is made of. I do not
remember the sweat, the heat, the cold, the pain in the ankle but I remember
the ecstasy of jumping from a cliff in Ganga.
I remember all those momentary feelings but not so much the momentous occasion.
I believe that it is these moments that have carved out my personality and
created my destiny.

Recently my wife, Sujatha, told me about the first song she
sang on the stage. She remembered it when we played Christmas Carols for our
kids last week. Now, the momentary feeling to be noted is that when people
clapped after her first performance, she had this ecstatic feeling which made
sure that she is going to sing more on stage. Now, if people did not clap or
she did not feel encouraged she may not have ever sang publicly again thus
reducing our chances of ever meeting to almost zilch. It was this moment that
framed our destiny.

I do believe that life is like a string made of these
momentous moments. One should strive to create more and more of them. They are
created when you are doing something new, something you love, and something
extra curricular & creative. They just spring into your life when you are
following your passions and your dreams. They hit you when you are ready to
surprise yourself, when you are looking for some thing extra ordinary. They
abstain when you are checking emails or taking con calls.

So I promise myself to strive to create more moments like
these and make the string of my life more momentous, more memorable.

I also understood that it is these moments slow down the
time. These momentous moments have the habit of playing again and again, taking
you back into the past and hence making present slower. On the corollary, if
you do not have these moments, present just rushes into the future. So this is
what has happened to most of us. We have been too busy doing the basics and
have not let ourselves feel the moments that flew past us.

Next year, I am going to let my life bring out these moments
more often than not. I will slow it down. I will drive with friends, I will
dive in the deep sea, I will dive from the sky, I will write with my son, I
will play harder! These are my resolutions. I will share my momentary feeling
at the end of the momentous year. Will you?