‘In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow, wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence.’
~ Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus
First question of course is to ask if I am qualified to write about this issue. Let me tell you how I started and let you decide if you want to read beyond that account.
I have been an entrepreneur, formally (in the sense of owning my own business) since 1994. I started business however while I was still in a regular full-time job (in 1983), with the full knowledge and blessing of my employer and paid for it by working on my business during my vacation and unpaid leave.
I worked at learning and building a management consulting business for 12 years. I invested every available paisa (cent) on books and train fares (3rd class – a bare wooden plank for a seat) and every available day of vacation leave, interning with one trainer or another. I did not take a single day off in 12 years. Then in 1994 I started my own company (Yawar Baig & Associates www.yawarbaig.com ) in Bangalore with all of Rs. 3000 ($ 60) in my pocket and a dream in my heart, of becoming an internationally recognized leadership trainer with a global business. That in my view is typical of being an entrepreneur – to dream of things that never were and ask, “Why not?” This is 2013, 13 years after my first international assignment. Today I have a business with clients on three continents.
It is this innate aspiration for excellence that I believe is at the root of all successful entrepreneurial activity. It is the desire to differentiate. To be different in a positive way. To stand out from the crowd; not to blend in with it. To express your identity in a unique way such that it is recognized and honored. That is the meaning of ‘Branding’. Without that you are a grain of rice in a sack. Excellence is to take responsibility not only for your own well-being but that of others. To lead others on the road which will not only help you to make your dream come true but to weave the dreams of others into the fabric so intrinsically that when they look out on the achievement of your vision, they will also see their own visions becoming reality. To leave behind a legacy by which you are remembered with affection and your passing regretted. Entrepreneurship is to always act with this consciousness about the long-term effects of our actions. To be willing to give an account, because we know that we will be held accountable.
Entrepreneurship is all about spirit. It is recognizing that you did not come into this world either randomly by accident or by your own choice. Your parents did not choose for you to be born. I believe that we were sent and we were sent with a purpose. When we discover that purpose we enter a state of grace. A fish out of water is the most clumsy, awkward creature in the world. It can’t move, it flops desperately, it gasps for breath. But the same fish when you put it back into the lake disappears like a flash – the epitome of grace, speed and beauty. When we are in our appointed task we are like a fish in the water. The world conspires to help us to succeed. But first we must recognize our purpose and then we need to consciously accept it. That is the scary part. But that is the threshold that must be crossed to demonstrate that we are in and not out. Without crossing the threshold of owning responsibility for our own lives, we can’t expect anything to happen.
We are never compelled to make one choice or another. But the doors that open, the vista that unfolds before our eyes and the road that beckons ahead all depend on the choice that we make. Behind each door is a different destiny. We get to choose which one we want to open and walk through into the world that it opens for us.
Choices are not always easy. As a matter of fact, all the important ones are difficult. The most difficult thing is to choose between two apparently good alternatives. But the choice must be made. Everything else depends on that. We complain about difficulty. We forget that difficulties come to test us so that the prize can be given once we surmount the difficulty. Success goes to those who can overcome difficulties. Each difficulty resets the bar and creates a new definition of excellence without which we would have been lulled into a false sense of security which hides fatal flaws. Only winners get medals, remember? Those who fail are relegated to the garbage pile of the detritus of history.
It is from this background that I have tried to conceptualize and share with you, what I like to call my tools to success. They are:
1. Prayer
I discovered the power of prayer. Of asking the One who has the power for His help. Prayer gave me (and continues to do so) a chance to have a private conversation and to ask Allah for what I needed. He knows what that is better than I do, but being able to ask and knowing that He listens and helps gives me the strength that I need. There is an enormous sense of peace in standing in the night in prayer after having done all that is in one’s power, asking for those decisions to be sent down without which all one’s effort will bear no fruit. I am aware of the same sense of communion that the farmer feels when he has tilled the land, made the furrows, spread the fertilizer, sowed the seeds and then looks towards the heavens and raises his hands asking for rain, without which all his effort will be in vain. Yet when he raises his hands, there is no fear in his heart, only hope. And there is a smile on his face. For he is looking for the clouds to come once again, bearing rain as they have done again and again in his life. So also, as I stand, I remember all the times that I have been guided, gently away from what I wanted, to what was good for me though I had not realized it at that time. I was aware that Allah knows, He cares and He has the power to do what it takes. I am content in the fact that I have done my part and made all the effort that I could. Now I stand to ask for His help, confident that He will do what is good for me, even if it means that in a given situation I will not get what I want. My life’s experience shows me that every time that happened I was given something better. Prayer gives me strength in the dark silence of the night which otherwise is the home of fear and confusion.
2. Discipline and Routine
Anxiety creates disorder and disorder enhances fear. A vicious circle that debilitates energy and invites despair. So, the first thing to ensure is that you have a routine and to stick to it with dogged discipline. I had (and continue to have) fixed times to wake up, sleep, eat and for all major activities including reading, writing and the gym. A timetable creates order and predictability in a life that for the new entrepreneur, is suddenly devoid of the usual office routine. Working from home can create lack of discipline that masquerades as freedom. This is very dangerous. I used to dress for work, even though I was going into the next room to do it. Structure is the most powerful aid to fight anxiety.
3. Physical Fitness
Adrenalin is the best natural energizer. And you get a lot of it on the treadmill provided you sweat enough. The gym is an absolutely fixed part of my day. I would go to the gym at mid-day because I was relatively free then. But on the days when I was teaching, I would go to the gym after work, which sometimes meant at 10 in the night. Nowadays, I spend an hour walking briskly and alone in the KBR Park in Hyderabad, which is a national forest. One thing for sure; I do not go to bed unless I had my daily adrenaline fix. Exercise is both a physical and psychological booster and I benefited hugely. Another thing, at least in my case, I think better when I am walking. So, when I have some complex problem to work on, I go for a walk. By the time I have walked a few miles, I would have worked it out and it becomes clear. Whatever be the physiological reasons for this, I know it works for me. Try it out. Walking out in the open in a forest, if you can manage it, is the best for the fresh oxygen you get and for the lovely variety of flowers, birds, insects and trees you get to see. Gym in comparison is boring, so I prefer the forest.
4. Financial Discipline
The best thing about being poor is that you learn to prioritize. Prioritizing is not always painless. Sometimes it is very painful when you must choose against something you really would have loved to have. But you learn to choose based on what is important and what gives a return. You also learn to be very careful with what you have and to see how you can make your rupee/dollar do the most it can in more than one way. Waste becomes a synonym for death and re-cycling the norm. You learn to depend on other things than the brand of shirt or watch you wear as indicators of your status or worth. You learn to make all your resources count – sometimes several times before they are used up. You learn the importance of planning and information because it helps you to save. The mountain men of the American frontier were crack shots with the long rifle because they were very poor and had to learn how to make every bullet count. They simply could not afford a wasted shot. For my wife and I, when we lived in Bangalore from 1994-97, there were some months in the first year when I did not know if we would have enough money to pay the rent. But the Grace of God ensured that we never defaulted. My wife is a phenomenal manager of home finances and I have always had the good sense to stay out of it. Tight financial control, prioritizing and planning are all learnings; the benefits of hard times.
5. Self Development
This is a very tough one but in my view, it is the single most powerful differentiator – what do you invest in your own professional development? Talking of investing in learning without any guarantee that it will ever yield a return, when there isn’t enough money to put food on the table, sounds ridiculous. That is the reason many people subscribe to this thought in principle but do nothing about it in practice. That is a very expensive bargain. I would identify a training course that I wanted to take and then save up for it month by month. Then I would take the time off (which for the entrepreneur has a cost value) to take the course. I set myself a target that I would do at least one course every year, preferably a certification course. After some years, I ran out of certifications that I wanted to take but the annual course routine continues. The benefit of all this was that this strategy gave me a clear edge over my competitors which I never lost. My clients got used to seeing my resume change every year with additional certifications, papers, articles, books. Not that they necessarily gave me business in the new areas but the thought that they were hiring someone who was focused on his own development was a big differentiator in my favor when they were comparing consultants.
Another thing which I did in this line of self development was to write and publish. Every year on an average I write more than 15 papers, 40-50 articles and every two years I publish a book. Writing is the single most powerful tool to develop thinking ability, which in my line is the soul of business. The ability to think clearly and strategically is always helpful no matter what business you are in, yet it is something that most people only do accidentally. Writing helps to structure thought, it forces you to express it in the clearest way and it helps you to put yourself in your reader’s mind. Writing also gives you credibility like nothing else. We have a respect for the written word and those who write and if you can write well (anyone can write well if they try) then you will find that you add value to yourself as well as to your image while clarifying issues in your own mind. Writing also gives you exposure in the best possible way and your name becomes known widely. Writing gives you both visibility and credibility; a big advantage. These are my tools. I hope they will help you as they helped me. If they do, pass them on.
6. People
Lastly but by no means the least important is the skill of dealing with people. No matter how talented, powerful, resourceful, energetic, knowledgeable, sexy or beautiful you may be, you can’t and will never succeed without help. Help from people who see the fulfilment of their dreams in helping you. That in one line is your task as an entrepreneur or leader. How can you make them dream your dream as their own? It is not about explaining. But about helping them to link with your heart and see themselves in your dream. Only then will they own it, work for it, invest in it and help you to succeed. This is what every great leader in history did. As Nelson Mandela said, “Speak to their hearts, not to their minds.” As I say, “Show them what’s in it for them.”
Many entrepreneurs, especially technology experts believe that their technology supercedes everything. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In the end, the success of technology depends on the success with which it is marketed. Stories abound about good technologies that never saw the light of day because their promoters didn’t have the people skills to take them to market. Entrepreneurs need people skills like fish need water. They need the skill to relate to different constituents of their environment in different ways. The way to relate to venture capitalists is not the same, as the way to relate to the techy team that is working on the project. The way to relate to your own business partners is not the same, as the way to relate to customers, especially for a product or service which is still untried. But all these are necessary and necessary simultaneously. Too often entrepreneurs forget this and think that their technical knowledge will see them through. It won’t. This is not to decry or discount the importance of technical knowledge and skill. But it is like imagining that to win the Indy 500 all you need is a fast car and driving skill doesn’t matter. You need a fast car alright. No amount of driving skill will enable a Maruti to beat a Ferrari. But without driving skill, you will never beat your competitor’s Ferrari because he is not driving a Maruti.
There are four main skills the entrepreneur needs to learn. Inspiration or motivation, presentation or communication, networking and conflict resolution. It is not in the scope of this article to go into them in detail. But in all of them there is an underlying theme which is to enable the other to see what is in it for them. All these skills need a high degree of engagement with others, be it the people who work for you, customers, potential funders, government officials (often the most difficult and non-productive engagement but must be done) and your own family and social circle. The fine line to walk is to help them to help you. To show them how working with you and for you will help them to achieve their own goals. This means that you must have a very good knowledge of what motivates them, what their issues are and have a genuine desire to help them. I say genuine because acting can’t be sustained. This is most visible in networking which many people believe is a way to use other people. It isn’t. It is an opportunity to build genuine bridges of mutual benefit which work for both parties. Only these last. The best networking people I know are genuinely helpful and look for opportunities to help others who they don’t need and in many cases, will never need. But their work gets noticed and gratitude is contagious. So, when they need someone, people come out of the woodwork for them. There is no substitute for sincerity and sincerity wins hearts.
One final word:I want to underline the importance of conceptualization. The reality of life is that raw experience teaches us nothing. What we do with it, is what matters. What we don’t conceptualize we don’t learn. Just being alive is not a condition for the acquisition of wisdom. It is how we live, what we do with what life presents to us, how we change ourselves and how we teach; these are what make us wise. But to do anything at all with raw experience we must take time out and go off into a quiet place physically and in our minds and reflect on what happened.
We need to do that reflection objectively even mercilessly and ask the question, ‘So what did I learn?’ Sometimes the learning may be painful but it is the only way to avoid further pain. It is the only way to make amends and control any damage that our action or the lack of it may have caused. Sometimes in the process of conceptualizing one needs outside help; an objective listener who can give feedback and help to draw the lessons that we need to learn. It is only such learning which is useful and which can be related onward to others. But for all this we need to allocate time and as I said, develop the ability to go off into the quiet place in our mind. I have always been very conscious of the need for this and build this ‘time-out’ into my annual routine. I consider it an investment in myself and benefit from it hugely so I take it very seriously and don’t grudge the cost that is often involved.
Now hold on a minute; reflection time does not always have to mean climbing mountains or secluding yourself in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere. It can be done very adequately and at no cost on your daily commute, provided of course that you are not enslaved to your phone or iPod or whatever. Whatever else you do, you need to eliminate noise and invite silence if you want to achieve anything in this line.
I am one of the most ‘connected’ people in the world and have always been keenly aware of the edge that connectivity gives you. Yet when I am away on these retreats, I shut down totally except for emergencies. I’ve worked very hard to be in touch with myself and to listen to my inner voice; to be at peace with myself without the need for some noise or the other constantly intruding into my mind. This ‘stillness’ is not to be confused with lethargy or boredom.
This is the stillness of the hunting leopard which is crouched in the grass just before the final assault. She appears to be carved in stone. Not a muscle twitches; you can’t even see the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. Her every sinew is taut to its maximum torque, waiting to be released in the explosion of speed that will catapult her onto her prey before it can properly register what’s happening. She is totally still, totally focused, totally aware of everything around her and everything inside her. This is the moment of highest awareness that one can get, the moment before the leap. That is stillness.
One of the reasons why many people today can’t get past first base when it comes to conceptualizing is because they are unable to focus onto something long enough. It is supposed to be a characteristic of the present generation, ‘The Millennials’. I say, ‘Most welcome’, because it will be so easy to compete against people who can only give partial attention to anything. But for the world that is dangerous as it is distracting. Imagine being led into the new world by people who are only partially tuned in. I think people today are afraid to think and reflect and therefore seek refuge in endless activity. Without depth or breath of knowledge how can anything of value emerge? Strangely even the protests that we see today have no depth, no ideological underpinnings. They are like adolescents throwing tantrums because someone did not give them their toy. That is why they are easily satisfied with the immediate, even when it is abundantly clear that it is coming at the expense of their own future.
Most young people read nothing or very little, other than their course syllabus. Almost nobody reads the classics. Almost nobody reads, writes or quotes poetry. Conversation is a badly linked chain of monosyllabic grunts, words which say something but are supposed to mean the opposite (very bad means very good, believe it or not) and an endless repetition of non-words to describe every conceivable situation and experience. Words reflect thought and depth of intellect. But for this generation a vocabulary of 50 words seems to do very well, thank you very much. It is as if all the enormous effort of human thought and civilization has been suspended in limbo perhaps to be read by those who come to pick up the pieces and then wonder how people who knew so much could have done this to themselves. Nothing that I know which is worth achieving can be achieved with partial attention. Excellence demands total attention and focus.
It is impossible to think seriously and consider things in a structured framework seeking beneficial conclusions, if you have some noise-making instrument plugged into your ear all the time. This is the downside of technology today which is the trap that some of us fall into and are unable to control. So, our minds are taken over by the disc jockey, talk show host, news reader, social media updates and alerts, propaganda artist or advertiser to be molded at will and steered into channels of their choice, to think the thoughts they want us to think and come to the conclusions they want us to come to, irrespective of whether or not such conclusions benefit or harm us.
As I mentioned, I think best in the open, in the middle of nature and when I am engaged in some physical activity, so I go trekking or to a wildlife sanctuary or mountain climbing where I spend part of the day in the activity and the rest in reflecting on my life, sitting beside a free standing, solar powered, self-propagating, shade giving, oxygen generator which we so easily chop down to make still more toilet paper. If you still did not recognize the description, try the word, ‘Tree’. In the nights, I read books that I take with me after careful consideration. I have always read two or three books simultaneously and enjoy holding their various themes in my head simultaneously. The mind, like the body, improves with exercise and considering different concepts, sometimes divergent ones is an excellent way to challenge yourself. Reading has always been and continues to be a significant and hugely beneficial activity in my life on which I spend substantial time, energy and money.
This reflection is not a random activity leading to sleep. It is a structured pre-planned activity that I do as follows. Before I go off on these retreats, I ask myself some questions:
1. In the last period (since the last retreat) what were my best & worst experiences?
2. What are the lessons that I am hoping to learn from them?
3. What are the most difficult potential blocks to this learning that I can foresee?
Then when I have finished my climb to the top of the hill, I pour myself a hot cup of tea and reflect on each incident/situation and jot down my thoughts as they occur. Once the thoughts have dried up I then read what I wrote and analyze to see what I can learn. All this needs discipline and practice but can be easily learnt and is a huge benefit. Especially to top it all is the fact that sitting on a hilltop watching the sun setting on the horizon, with a forest and all its sounds at your feet is just about the most enjoyable way that I know, of spending an afternoon.
Two things that stand out like guiding beacons throughout this thought-provoking, inspirational, essay are time-management and structured discipline – it being difficult, of course, to say which begets which. In any case, and for my part, I enjoyed the whole not so much for the inherent, time-tested, wisdom of this text (which, of course, runs throughout) as for my having just recently completed reading Jules Verne's "Around the World in Eighty Days." Your sparkling anecdote on how you used to dress up in full working attire even when working-from-home somehow connected with Mr. Phileas Fogg's almost impossibly-attained goal of keeping… Read more »
Hard hitting and fabulous piece of advice Yawar, i am traveling to HYD next week, will touch base with you for a brief meet up in case you will be available…Regards, Supriya
Read this first in your book "Entrepreneur's Diary" and enjoyed reading it here again.
Lovely piece of advice!
One of the best advise , Jazak Allah Qair for sharing this.