The Entrepreneurship Scale

This is my invention. I believe that most people fall somewhere on an entrepreneurship scale of 0-10. At zero are people who are in the E quadrant (have a job) and are so thankful and so happy about it that they can’t thank their stars enough. They are so elated about it, they want to just enjoy the feeling and the money. They think they have arrived. 

At 10 are people who are “pure entrepreneurs” - the ones who have built enterprises and empires like Dhirubhai Ambanis and JRD Tatas and Jeff Bezos’s of the world and the countless others whose names we have not yet heard but they had the guts to believe in “all or none” - they are willing to go out on a limb and risk it all and don’t have fear of landing on the road if it doesn’t work. They have the guts to borrow money, wager on a new idea which might or might not work, quit their jobs and follow their heart. 

Both these people are very happy in their life - the zeros and the tens. They both are following their hearts and passionate about what they are doing. The problem is with the 4s and the 5s and 6s which is essentially people like me. Who are frustrated to no end with working for someone and not having a vision that they can pursue. Who cannot see themselves doing that for the rest of their lives, running the rat race, 9-9 for 40 years. At the same time who don’t have the guts to leave the security of their profession to pursue something different. Who don’t have an original idea that they can own and be passionate about or even stand up for and prove. They live a life of quiet desperation. Reading every article out there and watching every movie on entrepreneurship and every story about someone who is pursuing their dreams and wondering when they will be able to do something like that. When they will be able to break free from the rut of traffic and status reports and boredom and politics. That’s where I was. 

Mentorship : 270 degrees

The thing about mentorship is that it covers your blind spots. We can all see the 270 degrees behind us, but the rest is always a blind spot for us which we want someone to watch out for us. And that is what mentorship does. It’s like walking through a minefield. If you can just walk in the footsteps of someone who has walked before you, there’s a high chance you won’t blow yourself up. Most people have spiritual mentors, financial mentors, mentors at work and so on. But the problem is that most of the time their lives themselves are out of balance. They are so passionate about the one thing they are good at that you run a real risk of duplicating their life along with all of it’s imbalances. 

When choosing a mentor, it’s important to begin with the end in mind. Who is there around you whose package of life is something that you would like to have? Who is there who can think about your “well being” in all areas of life instead of just a one dimensional path? Unfortunately, most people treat life as separate boxes and try to make sure they don’t mix together. The work package is separate, the relationship package separate, the spiritual life package separate, the health package separate. They work on 1 or 2 of them but ignore the rest which doesn’t work since they affect each other greatly. Massive success in one at the cost of other almost always leads to pain and grief in the long run. 

I was very fortunate to find a mentor whose life was in balance on all fronts - wealthy on the money side, conscious of health and habits, solid marriage - basically they had the fruit on the tree, and were living a life I didn’t mind living in. That is an appropriate choice of mentor. Everyone else can only be a coach - they can coach us on certain skills or areas of life. A football coach will be worthy of following on the field but might not be worthy of following off the field. And that differentiation is very important. When we start confusing a coach with a mentor, we might unknowingly start picking up habits and attitudes which might be difficult to change in the long run. 

But what if a mentor is not in physical reach for whatever reasons? Chase them, become worthy of their mentorship and earn it. And if none of it works, keep following them and keep catching the nuggets from wherever they are. It’s a worthwhile chase for a great life. The joys of being mentored by someone and the feeling of security knowing that someone like that is looking out for you itself is worth it. 

Entrepreneurship for the “Common man”

Whenever we decide to mentor someone for entrepreneurship, the first thing we like to do is ask them to go our and research the options in the market first. The problem is most people we work with are trying to move from the E quadrant (employee quadrant) to the B quadrant (Business quadrant). Their worldview is that of the E world but their eyes are set for the B world. The two worlds are poles apart. We can see the shiny successes of the B world because we have a romanticised idea of business and entrepreneurship which comes from movies like “Guru” and “The Social Network” and most recently “Sui Dhaga”. The portrayals are a 100% accurate but the problem is that the story from nothing to everything gets done in less than 3 hours. And it’s difficult to expand each phase shown to 10 and 15 years which is how it actually pans out in real life. Like they say “overnight success usually takes 10 years”. 

The options that the “common man” who is a professional like me is considering are not practically infinite. Common man being defined as the person who does not get a radical, innovative or technically unique idea like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or Elon Musk and is not exceptionally gifted with a different worldview and the power to shape the world like Steve Jobs or Richard Branson. And that covers most of us out there who will perhaps ever read this article. And if you are one of us, then, before you explore a business option of opening a Restaurant/Cafe or source some product from China and do online sales or open a services based business like in health or beauty or grooming or housekeeping or cleaning or maintenance or open a boutique or buy a ice cream/pizza/bagels franchise or try one of the few legit Network Distribution models like through Amway, ask the following questions:

1. How much is the startup investment that it will take - for example for a food stall it could be anywhere from 3-5lacs or a restaurant could be 15-20lacs or franchise could be 40-50lacs or a services based business could take 2-5lacs or a network distribution model could be 10-15k and so on

2. How much will be the running cost monthly for the business - this the money you need every single month on the 1st of the month to pay for the salaries, rent, utilities, EMIs, royalties, taxes etc. This money is a fixed cost every month irrespective of how much revenue you do or don’t generate that month from your business. If your business doesn’t perform…well..you pay from your pocket for it.

3. What is the break even time for the business idea you are considering - for most businesses that means can you just cover the monthly expenses of your business? Most of the time it doesn’t mean recovering the initial investment. That is considered “cost” of business which might never be recovered most of the time. 

4. How much time commitment will be needed to set it up and then to run it on a day to day basis? Can it be run part time with your full time profession or will you have to move full time into it?

5. Can you identify a mentor in the domain who has successfully walked the path before - such guidance is invaluable because you can save yourself the pain of learning everything by yourself and stand on the shoulders of giants so to say.

6. It’s easy to start something but are you aware of the effort it will take to sustain and run the business in the long run? What are the risks and how do you close it down if you have to?

7. Is the business scalable? Most businesses can hardly make any profit from a single unit because most of the profit goes in creating the systems itself. Profit can only be made if the model can be duplicated and scaled up. Scaling up almost always means multiplied investment and risk but if a business is not scalable it can become really frustrating in the future. 

The Entrepreneurial Dilemma

My job is meeting people day in and day out. And most of these meetings are to discuss and talk about how to make the transition from the employee world into the business world. The software guy is almost always thinking about opening up a software company or an app development company. The artist is thinking about starting an art school or an art gallery or an art based website. The musician is thinking about opening up a music school and a teacher about starting their own coaching centre. These are obvious choices because the only things we are confident about are things we have done for many many years and accumulated experience and expertise in. Here is how the story typically starts for most ambitious professionals. 

A teacher hates being employed at a school or a college and feels being taken advantage of, what with being made to teach beyond the initial agreement and also participate in the marketing/administrative activities of the institution. The obvious option he thinks of is to start taking tuitions and ultimately convert it to a home based coaching class. Obviously the income jumps from anywhere around 30k a month to say around 1 lac a month but now he is busier than ever before. Now he has a job during the day and another job during the evenings and weekends as well - one he has created for himself and cannot run away from because it’s “his own job”. And most of the time this becomes the end of the entrepreneurial bug…so difficult to handle that he cannot think of expanding it further. 

Soon he realises that his teaching is so good that everyone wants it but he has no more space left in his living room and dining room to expand. He also wants to cater to other subjects which he is not an expert in and ends up recruiting a few more teachers to cover the ground. Obviously now he will need to rent a room for doing this. Not an issue because the returns justify the additional investment. The problem is the lean periods where not enough students come in but the salary and rent stays the same. So he starts looking for a marketing person who can advertise his class and create a bigger funnel. The marketing guy does that but he can’t close all the inquiries coming in. So the next step is a team of sales guys who can negotiate and close every deal. All seems to be going good and the trickle has turned to a flood even in lean times. The only problem being the good times when they can’t handle the demand anymore and so they start recruiting more teachers and a bigger facility with 5-6 rooms in it, which is difficult to manage and so enters an admin guy who can handle the bills and the maintenance and the cleaning and fixing. But since this requires some sort of administration as well, the next logical step is to hire an HR and a Finance person to make sure all these employees stay happy and the money doesn’t get messed up as well. 

The brand is becoming a power player and the government departments always want a share of the pie - so here comes a special guy who will handle Govt Affairs. Obviously older players in the market don’t like the new kid coming on the block and spoiling the show and there are legal issues that start arising for which an in-house legal counsel is the only one to be trusted. The number of teachers are increasing fast and the turnover is high too and to maintain the standards there has to be a Training department which keeps the quality of teaching high. 

This is called a “Business”. Unfortunately the only problem is our teacher is actually a teacher and not a business owner. He actually loves to teach students hungry for knowledge but what he is dealing with 95% of the time now is not students but these various department heads of the “business” he has set up, trying to resolve their issues and giving them direction. It’s not long before he lies in the bed one night thinking about his purpose of life and his real passion and where it all started and where it ended up. The stress is not worth it; the work no longer enjoyable; the cause and the path lost somewhere in the din of the day to day management and expansion. 

The story is no different for the rest of the professionals either. The doctor’s hospital, the artist’s school, the engineer’s consultancy, the accountant’s practice, the player’s academy…and unfortunately when I meet these successful people, I hear two stories. I hear a story for the first 30 minutes which beams with pride and joy of success but then another story which opens up after 30 minutes which talks about stress induced lifestyle diseases and a quiet desperation. Where did it all go wrong? In my opinion, the biggest missing link in all these cases is mentorship. The guidance of someone who had walked the same path before them and who could have helped them preempt this dilemma because they would have seen it coming 10 years down the line. 

EI or AI...

Every single day at least one person comes and brings up the subject of AI in our conversations. AI or Artificial Intelligence was science fiction less than a decade ago but today it is something that is standing right on our doorsteps, threatening us with our jobs or luring us with it's vast potential to make our life easier - both in one fell swoop. It is making people jittery about their own futures , threatening to take away their livelihoods. And there seems to be no way around it except one...we start working on increasing our EI - our emotional intelligence.

We are entrepreneurs and want to make use of every new technology that comes up to our advantage. What used to take hundreds of man hours for us today is effortless and hidden somewhere in the background. The challenge for us is not AI, but EI. Because that's something that is not getting automated at all. As a matter of fact, it is becoming more and more difficult each passing day - to be emotionally stable and to be able to respond to situations, stimulations and people, instead of reacting to them. All the time we are going to save from AI doing the job for us, needs to go in us developing our Emotional Intelligence. Because that's the only inner technology that's going to help us to make use of every new outer technology like AI in the future.

Listening with the eyes...

I heard something interesting the other day. Only 17% of our communication is verbal - meaning what we speak or hear others speak in words. Around 35% is tonal - meaning the words are not as important as the tone of voice in which they were said - and the tone is twice as important as what we are saying. But around 58% of our communication is body language - meaning what our body language says is almost four times as obvious as the words we speak. 

Which brings us to the point of how we read people? Most of the time I see people paying 100% attention to what someone is saying without really paying any attention to how it was said. Then, when the words don't measure up, they get perturbed why it happened. They should have understood in the first place that the words are not going to get honoured. Thus, it is very important to learn to listen with our eyes as much as we need to listen through our ears. Sometimes that will speak so loud, you won't need to hear what they say. 

It's a new world...

The world as we have read has moved through various ages over it’s history. There was the Stone Age with the caveman who used to hunt animals and gather food for survival - it was also the “Hunter-Gatherer Age”. It lasted for tens of thousands of years - perhaps millions. The pace of change in the world was extremely slow and things remained the same for generations upon generations of humans. 

But there was growth and man moved to the “Agriculture Age” where he started settling down and adopted tools and land for farming and subsequently trading and exchange of goods. Division of labor set in slowly and there was a time many centuries back when there other socially useful trades came up. The son learnt the trade from the father and it got handed down the generations. A farmer’s son was a farmer and a potter’s son a potter. Accumulated knowledge and an ecosystem which was already established helped in moving further from where the father left it. This lasted tens of thousands of years or more perhaps. 

Enter the “Industrial Age” and jobs were created for the first time - organised labor increased the productivity of the world and it seemed like the perfect way forward for the world. Factories, jobs, training, education has served us for over 300 years. But if you notice, the speed of change increased and the span of stability decreased. In our memories we saw the transition from the Industrial Age to the “Information Age”. A time when machines and factories and capital assets started being valued lesser than the Information that you owned and could distribute. This age is not older than 50 years at most. Millions of years to tens of thousands of years to hundreds of years to 50 years give and take…and we have started hearing of Artificial Intelligence which can start self organising the knowledge around us as well. Blockchain removes the need to verify and validate to a large extent. 

I am of the opinion that we are moving into a new age which I call the “Imagination Age”. An age where you are only limited by your Imagination and if you don’t have one, you are the cursed one. It’s an era where unlimited resources are at our disposal for doing anything that we can imagine. But imagine we must. That is something that cannot be delegated, nor automated, nor process driven. The only way to survive in this age is to believe. To believe that “whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”. You don’t need a factory to produce, you can prototype and try. You don’t need huge budgets to market, you can use the power of social. You don’t need to run from bank to bank for funds, you can simply crowdfund. You don’t need a conference room and a an expensive conferencing system, Skype and Zoom and FaceTime are accessible to every common man. You don’t need a store monopoly but can do with a web front that anyone can make. The only thing you need is Imagination…the power to imagine what is it you will use these free resources for. 

Junk

Junk is not just in food but in everything that we do. Junk food is that food which gives us calories from only carbs and fat and not the calories which come from Proteins, Vitamins and Minerals. Thus, though working energy comes from both types of foods, the second one gives the energy and nourishes the body in myriad ways as well. When eating just becomes a pastime, it starts hurting. 

Just like food can be junk or nutritious, so can be books and association and conversations....everything. Whenever I am sitting at an airport and I see a 45 year old reading Robert Ludlum, it saddens me because they seem totally unaware of the fact that though the book is fun and is a good pastime, the same things can be achieved along with experiencing personal growth and inspiration and lofty feelings at the same time.

The same goes with associations and conversations as well. Though we do need meaninglessness from time to time to break free from the mental rut, it cannot be the only thing we engage in all the time. We need to choose our association and our conversations which are not in the junk category all the time. We can still build the relationships and have a good laugh and build the bonds while nourishing the mind and the spirit all at the same time.

But the most interesting thing is that making money can also be junk or nutritious. When we pursue ways of making money which serve only ourselves, it is no less than junk food. But when our pursuit of material wealth necessitates personal growth and the benefit and growth of others around us, nothing can be more nutritious to the society and the world at large. 

The body will still run, time will still pass, money will still roll in...the question we always need to ask is how much is the junk component in each and that will increase the meaningfulness of our lives. 

The "Missing-out-the-obvious" Bias

In the course of evolution, we have developed some traits which ensure our well being and survival. But the same traits could be going against our becoming successful. 

One of them is what I call the missing-out-the-obvious bias. Whatever we keep seeing, smelling or feeling for a long enough period of time, our brain starts ignoring it. In a way it's good because that's how humans can remain happy in whatever state they may be. In pain, in poverty, in filth...their brain stops noticing things around them which remain the same. In other ways, it's not so good because our brain also stops acknowledging what's good and happening in our lives. Great kids, house, car, health or friendships. 

But this is specially harmful for our becoming successful. We draw our organisations (calling it BIB or Board in the Bedroom) to be able to plan our course of action, but when we keep seeing the org chart drawn from before, very quickly our brain stops really "seeing" it. Same with our action item list. When we make a master list and just keep watching it, we simply start ignoring it. Or with our self talks too - though when we play it repeatedly, it goes to the subconscious; on the other hand, the moment it starts playing, our minds start wandering to other places very quickly.

And that is why these things have to be converted into living models rather than dead. Every time you draw the org chart afresh, it triggers new areas in the brain; every time the to do list is made anew, new things come to the fore of the mind; and every time the self talk is spoken instead of just heard, new dreams and goals come forth and come alive again...

Why is it so difficult to become a business owner?

One of the biggest difference between doing a job for an entrepreneur vs being an entrepreneur is the way work is created. An entrepreneur is proactive and is constantly thinking about expanding the frontiers of his kingdom and his thinking. Creativity is natural in anything which you love and are passionate about. And this creativity gives rise to new ideas for expansion. These ideas come as hunches or intuition at the most improbable of times. A good entrepreneur does not ignore these hunches but gives them due respect and treats them like bright ideas which need pondering over. And then he converts them into actions to be tried and implemented. If he has employees, he makes them work on these ideas and bring them to fruition. And that is why, when we go to work every day, the boss has a list of things to be done for the short term, medium term and the long term. We get to work on them and fulfil the dreams of the entrepreneur who actually dreamt them. 

On the other hand, for the entrepreneur himself, which is people like us in this case, one of the biggest responsibilities is to create work. It will not be assigned to us. Nobody will come and tell us things to do. We need to stoke our creativity, capture the ideas when they arise, and try them with our heart and soul. And that creates success which differentiates us from the rest of the crowd. If we keep waiting for work to come to us, we can sit idle forever and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. We need to become good at just sitting with a pen and paper and make lists of things to do - just put down every single idea that comes to the mind. There is magic in making lists. It's that they end up getting done sooner than later only to create more ideas which come on more lists and in turn create a positive cycle of accomplishment and achievement.

Trust vs Information

Isn't it strange that some people speak so less but are so convincing with people whereas others have to do so much work and tell so many stories and examples for the same result? Conviction in a person is nothing but trust in that person. And the more we trust someone, the lesser the information we need from them to believe what they are telling. One the other hand, the lesser the trust we build with someone, the more the information and facts and figures and proofs we need to provide to convince them of our point of view. 

One needs to decide the approach they want to take. Work on collecting data and facts or work on building themselves, their personalities and their non-verbal and verbal communication in a way that trust becomes implicit. The latter is an easier, more long term approach. Here are some things I have found are needed to build trust:

1. Positive pure vibrations that we send out to people  - when we meet people we are very friendly on the outside but what are we thinking on the inside. When we don't genuinely see the good in people, whether we show it or not, it goes across to them through a sixth sense that we all have.

2. Common bonds - human relationships are very much like the covalent bonds we study about in chemistry. A single bond is weaker than 2 bonds which are weaker than 3 or 4 and so on. These covalent bonds in the case of people are common things we have between each other. You and I could both love cars or we could both love travelling to the beach or we could both have a son and a daughter or we could be both from the same state or city or went to the same school or got married in the same year or were in the same city at the same time or whatever common can be among a zillion things possible. The more then common things we find between us, the more we have the "me too" experiences, the more the trust between us. And how does that happen? When we are focussed on making the other person talk more than we talk.

3. Becoming a genuine fan of the other person - most people in the world are poor in one area of life - having enough people to listen to their story of life. Everybody is so busy talking about their problems and their points of view that there is no time to listen to the other person. True undisturbed listening is almost cathartic. Whenever I am with somebody I am just looking to know more about them and how they happened to reach here in their life. Regardless of where one is in life, they have created some massive victories in their life to reach where they are. Walked to school on feet, took a loan to study, overcame a broken household, went through the trauma of failing multiple times or losing a loved one and so on. And when I get them to tell me about their story, one thing almost always happens - I become a true fan of theirs for what they did in their life. I really believe that in similar circumstances I could not have done better. 

And once trust is established, it's a matter of a few sentences to get your point across to the other person.

Trust builds over the years...like with our mentors Manipal & Renuka who have stayed by our side through thick and thin...

Heartwarming.....not housewarming!

We just finished another superb day in our lives yesterday….and what a day it was indeed. We witnessed what love does to a non living thing….it blows life into it. Which is what happened to the brick-mortar-wood-stone house we are just finishing. By itself, it could just vanish from the face of earth and nobody gives two hoots about it. But the way love overflowed through it’s veins yesterday, and with such vigor, it suddenly woke up and took a life of its own. When it received a scrubbing and brooming and dusting and vacuuming and mopping the previous night, it was cold to the touch and hard to feel. But as they kept at it with their hearts, there was that little bit of a semblance of life. As it started seeing the texts and pictures of how it was conceived and how people put their sweat and heart to bring it about, the semblance turned into a flicker. But as the day passed and hundreds of people started coming and pouring their love and their energy and consciousness and the magic of their faith, nothing dead could have remained so anymore, anywhere….and it was a joy to behold. It seems it has suddenly come to life!! We are fortunate in two ways….one in that we will get to live in a house buzzing with the supernatural energy of billions of watts for a few years but the bigger and more amazing second reason that makes us incredibly fortunate is that we personally know every magician who came and did this magical feat which has never been accomplished. Thank you God for this incredible fortune!!!

Are you Fired Up?

We have the privilege of being able to talk to a marvellous human being like Shivaram Kumar because Manipal sponsored him. Some time back, when we were in the middle of a seemingly bad situation (there are actually no emergencies in our business), Manipal connected a couple of us to Kumar. Happy go lucky that Kumar is, he is astoundingly sharp with an intuition which is unbelievably strong. With just our tones of saying hello he guessed our state of mind. Before we could explain the situation to him, he said "...hold on...hold on...I have a question for you guys....are you fired up?". We couldn't understand where this question came in the middle of a very serious topic. We said a muted "yes, we are" and wanted to continue but he just wouldn't listen. The only question he kept repeating is "Are you really fired up?". Finally after 3-4 times we got it a little bit and then he said "....guys...the situation is not important....what is important is your attitude...with the attitude that you guys have right now, there is no way you can anyways find a solution...". We needed no more answers and solutions from him. He answered a question with a question and finished all our questions. Brilliant!!!

Mentoring relationship

I remember the question Kanti asks in his talk - you can see the 270 degrees but who is covering the 90 degrees you can’t see? 

Relationships are like a car service. Even if you don’t regularly service your car, it keeps running fine for most of the time. It feels like stupidity to do the service and spend the time and money in the first place. The only time we realise the mistake is when it breaks down in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere and with the family in the car. 

It’s the same with building a mentoring relationship. It’s not much use when things are going fine. Most of the time it seems like nothing much is coming out of the time we are spending with our mentor. But once in a blue moon, once in a few years, we get stuck. In a financial mess, in a decision paralysis, in a relationship mess. We feel alone and lost and so deep into the problem that it seems futile to tell anybody the story from the beginning about how we got there in the first place. And that is when the investment of time and energy into the mentoring relationship comes handy. Just like a savings account. You make the deposits and it doesn’t seem to go anywhere. But in time of real need, it seems like the best thing we ever did. 

We have got a chance to see both kinds of people. The ones who kept investing into it and the ones who didn’t. Both landed into life situations because that’s life. For the ones who were invested, the recovery period was maybe a few weeks or a month. But for the ones who didn’t build that trust and that relationship it was all uphill and gone. Few lucky ones survived their business, their jobs and their marriages. Most didn’t.

With mentors and then mentors of mentors...everyone needs someone watching their back!!

Knowledge Bias

I spent time with a downline today and he was not getting results in his plan. After asking different things, I asked him to show me the plan as if I was the prospect. I was a little surprised at the way he showed the plan. What he showed was what he learned 3 years back in his first stint in the business. Ever since he came back a month back, he has been attending all home meetings and seeing my plan which has almost 100% changed. When I told him where he was making mistakes he was really embarrassed and ashamed of himself. He was wondering how he could continue showing what he was showing despite seeing something totally different in the weeks past. 

This is called knowledge bias and is one of the biggest reasons we fail to learn new things and grow. The moment our brain hears information about a topic it has heard many times before, it simply shuts down. The eyes keep watching, the ears are open but there is no seeing or listening. It just assumes that this information is known and no energy needs to be spent in absorbing more information. The same applies to a training, a product session and a seminar or conference. No doubt we stay where we are and don’t grow. It’s the same with reading and listening to a talk on CD as well. Only 1% of the people who read a book or listen to a talk, really change something from it. Because they go through every book/CD with a programming that this one will give them the key to the next growth wave, the next big idea, the next big inspiration.

What is needed is an instruction to the brain every single time to be open, alert and see/hear everything with a fresh outlook as if it’s the first day of the rest of our life.

Relax...

One of the biggest uses of our body is to focus our mind on it. When the mind is focused on the feeling inside the body and the sensations of our body, the body starts relaxing and surprisingly so does the mind. As the mind starts relaxing, it stops creating thoughts. Our mind is not fully duplex meaning either it can receive or it can transmit. When it is creating thought, it is in the transmission mode. Only when the creation stops does it start receiving and then the thoughts which are floating in the universe can be caught by it...and only in these moments come the best ideas for business....and for life....

It's not about hocus-pocus, it's all about focus...

We being the kind of smart people that we are, the one thing that constantly keeps tugging on us are new ideas for new businesses. A restaurant, a training institute, a new app, a new product development company, a new E-commerce venture and what not. The idea comes, makes home into our being, grows, becomes an obsession in a few days and then slowly dies down. The cycle continues every few days. The only thing that comes out of it is wastage of precious time and focus from what we already have in our hands. One in hand they say, is worth 2 in the bush. 

They say, the more things change around us, the more they remain the same. Having built a successful venture myself, having gone through the cycle of ups and downs many times over and having seen so many people try different things in front of my eyes, I feel I have some authority to talk on this. 

The most important thing required to be understood is what is our goal in a business. In the language of our business itself, the goal is at least, minimum, Founder Platinum (not even Diamond) - which means a sustainable 60-70k a month on an ongoing basis, month after month after month. A cash-flow which is sustainable. 

Just like in our business, in every venture one undertakes, it’s easy to go till 9% because YOU are the only one needed to do 9%. But the moment you start thinking of going 12% and 15% and then Platinum, all hell breaks loose. Because suddenly, it’s not just your commitment that counts. You have to take care of recruitment, attrition, sales, finances, marketing and human resource management as well. Just like in our business. People go 9% quickly and think they will go Platinum in 6 months now but that’s not what happens. They not just need to create a team by “recruiting” the right kind of people, work towards making sure they are able to retain people by working at their need level and personality, handle products/stocks/returns/credit cards, increase sales and build relationships all at the same time. 

The problem is, when one thinks about setting up a 3rd venture (apart from the full time job and our business), it’s very tempting, but one is only thinking as far as building it to 9%. The scaling up to Founder Platinum level in that venture is nowhere in the picture. Nor do we have any idea what it will take. Except our business, in most other business, scaling up takes fixed costs - rentals, salaries, bribes and government fees. And they have to be paid irrespective of whether you are turning a profit or not. 

Yes, if you are building our business as full time venture 1, you can think of venture 2 because that’s how you built the business in the first place. But bring it to that level first - which is at least Emerald and beyond. My upline always taught me….become awesome in one thing first. Make that pillar so strong that it can support every ladder of your life. Success is not about hocus pocus….it’s all about focus!!!

English Vinglish...

I liked watching the movie “English Vinglish”. But the best part of the movie is towards the end when the lead character says two things that are so true to our life

1. “You will be very busy but make sure you create  family. Because it will be your own world within this world. Family is never judgemental. Family is the only one who will never laugh at your weaknesses. Family is the only place where you will always get love and respect....”

2. “ When we don’t like ourselves, we don’t like anything that is connected with our life either. But when we start liking ourselves, the same old world of ours starts looking totally new and we start liking everything about it. Thank you for teaching me to like myself....”

I thought they were so true to our lives and there was so much to learn from it......and how would it be if we could call our teams our family....

Health Blessings...

One of the blessings that we got from our family was the blessing of Biochemic medicine. 

From as far back as I can remember, people used to come to my grandfather every day in the morning at his home and shop both, asking for medicines for various problems. And I remember him making small paper packets and giving to them. 

From forever, for almost every conceivable ailment we had, I remember my mother mixing some of those magical salts and giving them to us and with magical relief.

Biochemic stream of medicine was founded by the same guy who invented Homeopathic medicine. In the quest to find something that everybody can use, he figured that majorly there are 12 inorganic salt compounds that are needed by our cells. In the event of a deficiency of any of them, there is disease. The biochemic salts are so diluted that they can work at the cellular level and when administered, they kind of kickstart the cells to start absorbing the missing salts from the bloodstream. The magic of this therapy lies in its simplicity, ease and harmless nature in case of mistake unlike other streams of therapy. 

Though it started with just helping ourselves, over the years as more and more people got to know about the efficacy of these medicines they started using it as well. And what a blessing it is for everybody who has been touched with it. Nutrilite and Biochemic medicine have been the biggest health blessing in our lives. Together they have saved us countless visits to the hospital and doctors and immense money and pain saved. Whether it be getting burnt or a corn on the feet or the pain of sciatica nerve or the demon of common cold or bleeding or injury or conjunctivitis...the list is almost endless...

Our dream is to spread the joy around the world. And the thing with blessings is that the more you share them, the more they multiply and that is one of the goals of our life. One dream on the dream list is to be able to effect a million cures through biochemic salts and to one day do a TED talk on how something so inexpensive and simple can solve so many irritating pains of life...

Discovering Genius...

There is brilliance and genius all around us and even though it might be right in front of our eyes we might just altogether miss it. People have spent their lifetimes pursuing a field of thought and through infinite patience and meditation arrived at the true essence of knowledge in that particular field. 

In a world of heavenly abundance, we might, for all we know, still be living in complete lack because of our ignorance. We are trying to reinvent the wheel instead of building upon those lives spent already. I believe it is only one’s fortune that they might stumble upon or I might say be led to the work of such geniuses.  And when one does, you feel the same “aha” feeling; the feeling of genius shining through and it feels like you made the biggest discovery of your lifetime. This business has provided us the time, the resources and the flexibility to be able to indulge and discover more and more of these pearls in the ocean of life. 

The following are the works and minds which have given infinite pleasure to me:

Finance:

Harry brown : Fail Safe Investing

Benjamin Graham : The Intelligent Investor

Cycles and Economics:

Martin Armstrong : www.armstrongeconomics.com

Architecture:

Christopher Alexander : The Pattern Language

Child development and growth:

Glen Doman : How to Teach your child to Read

Spiritual insights and ultimate truths:

Rajneesh

Sister Shivani of Brahmakumaris

My mother who is a friend, philosopher and guide

and the biggest of all

Bill Britt, without whose genius our life would have been but running from pillar to post...