I have formulated 6 rules which I call David’s rules. These are for anyone facing the big one – the big apparently insurmountable challenge which the whole world tells you to run away from. But you are among those who are uniquely deaf to the advice of those who are too frightened to think straight. You are among those to whom personal safety is not Goal # 1 in life. You are among those who recognize that everything has a price and that if you want to achieve great things, you have to be prepared to pay the price they demand. It’s not that you don’t recognize the danger. To recognize danger is a sign of intelligence and you are no fool. It is that you are willing to take the risk for the reward. So you ignore the advice and step forward.

David’s Rules

Rule # 1 – Take the first step forward

 Unless you take the first step forward, nothing will happen.
 Once you take the first step, the universe conspires to make you succeed.
 It is safer to stay in the ranks and do nothing but it is only the General who gets to call the shots. And Generals don’t stand in the ranks.
 The choice is yours and every choice has a price. You pay, you get.

Rule # 2 – Confound Goliath

• Goliath does not make the rules so that you can win.
• If you play by Goliath’s rules, Goliath will win every time.
• Understand the rules – then break them.
• Make your own rules & play by them.

Rule # 3 – Only effort produces results

 Talent is what you are given; what you are born with.
 Effort is what you make. Effort supports talent. The best talent is nothing without effort.
 In the end it is the effort that brings the results, not the talent if there is no effort.
 So don’t ask, “What talent do I have?” Ask, “What effort am I making?
 David made effort using his unique talent. The rest is history.

Rule # 4 – Strength always overcomes weakness

 Play to your strength because you can do that best.
 David was a shepherd so he used a slingshot.
 Don’t be overawed by competition, because the winning post is only at the end of the race.
 In the end, it is not the weapon but whether it scored, that counts.

Rule # 5 – Never compromise your legacy

 Stay focused no matter what the distractions.
 Remember, winning is all that counts…..and how you win is a part of that.
 Winning without honor is to lose in the worst way.
 Nobility is a factor of ‘How’ not of ‘What’. Glory is only for the noble.

Rule # 6 – Thank People

 Be thankful to all those who helped you.
 It is true that you owe your success to your own effort but some of it was made standing on the shoulders of others. And even if you forgot that, they won’t.
 Thanks builds bridges; for you never know when you will need one to cross.
 Thank people because every ending is a new beginning.

I believe very passionately and firmly in the fact that in the end, it is quality that scores over everything else. I know that every entrepreneur worth the name shares this belief with me. I have met many along the way who cut corners, pretended to be what they were not and compromised quality for short term gain. Most of them no longer exist. Those who do, live with a reputation that constantly sabotages their effort.

I believe that all that we do or choose not to do defines our brand and reflects our character. Therefore all initiatives and effort must be measured against this standard to see if it stands up to the mark. Compromising standards and values for gains is a very expensive bargain and adds no value at all. Indeed the most profitable way to run a business is to work to the highest standards and become the standard bearer in the industry against which others measure themselves.

Then you can claim a premium where your competitors are busy competing on price.

‘Buy from me because I am cheap’, is a slogan I never liked.

Entrepreneur’s Tools for Survival and Sustenance

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 knew what that was better than I did, but being able to ask and knowing that He listens and helps gave me the strength that I needed. 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 stood, I remembered all the times that I had 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 was content in the fact that I had done my part and made all the effort that I could. Now I stood to ask for His help, confident that He would do what was good for me, even if it meant that in a given situation I would not get what I wanted. My life’s experience told me that every time that happened I was given something better. Prayer gave 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 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 became 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. One thing for sure; I would not go to bed unless I had gone to the gym for 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.

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 have to 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 us in Bangalore, 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. 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.

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 have to 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 done. 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 onwards 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 the car radio or your 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 which in the US is called ‘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, I wonder. 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 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 focus that gives ordinary light the cutting power of the laser. Without dedication and focus nothing worthwhile can be achieved especially in a world that constantly raises the bar of success all the time.

It is impossible to think seriously and consider things in a structured framework seeking beneficial conclusions, if you have some noisemaking 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, 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.

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, self-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.

Extract from ‘An Entrepreneur’s Diary’: https://www.createspace.com/3412381