Once again my obnoxious, holier-than-thou attitude goes haywire, vacillating from one extreme to another, swinging through a plethora of issues, right from demonetization to plastic money to cashless transactions. All with a smug smile ! Reminding my visual imagery dynamics of a Cheshire cat that has slurped up a tub full of cream ! My 'practical' and 'smart' friends appear to be biting dust ( Or is it my imagination running riot ? ) And once more I laud (for whatever reasons, at this juncture) my three-odd-decade-back decision to etch out my professional space on my own. Back then, the rationale was an upstart 'Not too dotty about waiting for someone's condescension of dropping salary checks on to my spread palms' . Needless to say, I had to lend my natural auditory appendages to a host of hush-hush comments. From " Does it make sense throwing a cushy prospective job in a top refinancing institution ?" to "Why take the risk ?" via "None in the family has ever ventured into anything but being part of the service class ", I had had it all, heard it all . And I must admit, there were times when I did allow myself to sway . If nobody caught me during those moments, I have nothing to thank but my congenital 'gift' - a natural poker face !!
A few years later, the pride ( at times superficial ) of issuing salary checks and employing skilled and qualified personnel kept me going for a long time. Candidly speaking, this exercise turned out to be quite a killer at times . What with all these getting wedded to overheads like obscene electricity bills, a host of new commercial taxes (those were the days post the initiation of the New Economic Policy ) and stationery bills. Added to these woes were the pressures of following market norms and gimmicks. Thankfully , I didn't succumb to them.The rationale this time was..... Well, there was no rationale this time apart from the heart and head taking turns at ruling over each other ! To cut a long story short, I often felt the need to accept that I had bitten more than what I could chew. If not a single issued check from my side has bounced, to date, I have to thanks Dame Serendipity, and none else !
Then came the stage of investments in immovable assets - office space, residence - which brought with it a host of challenges, including the Damocles' sword of paying my EMIs which got ameliorated through solutions like, what is called crowdfunding today. The adjective traumatic would be an euphemism, to describe those days. But the perks came along too ! I learnt the usage of one new term - back-burner ! The dynamic nature of shifting priorities was another lesson that came as an additional benefit. People might like to call me a warped masochist, but I hungrily slurped up this hugely interesting learning phase too. And yes, they gifted me with tiers and tyres of adipose around my once-trim waistline too !!
Rising from these ashes was no mean task. The how's , why's et al are things I don't need to articulate anymore. But yes, it was a state of mind which had to be squeezed, pushed and goaded ; but all by myself. And all these travails and roller-coaster rides patently honed and sharpened my ideas of entrepreneurship, Or, I would choose to believe so ! Talking about the state of mind, my cerebrum helps my mapping process and I recall the words of Adora Cheung , CEO of Homejoy. She defines start-up as ' A state of mind of a group of people who collaborate to make the explicit decision to forgo stability in exchange for the promise of tremendous growth and excitement of making immediate impact " Why would I choose to introduce this at this point ? Simply because I connect a start-up with a highly-focussed and adventurous form of entrepreneurship . If you take the 'forgo stability', I can almost proudly compete for the title of Start-up King. For, rocking the boat is a much cherished and revered activity of mine. And, of course,it rattles me from the ennui of a boring, smooth sail . 'Excitement' ? Oh yes ! That's something that is a very important requisite that makes me decide to the take the plunge and keep swimming !
Neil Blummenthal's definition goes this way : An entrepreneurship working to solve a problem whose solution is not obvious and success is definitely not guaranteed. Hmmm.... Adventurous, I am . But foolhardy ? Maybe, if I could get a strong 'influencer' !! To sum up this entire didactic outpour, I would articulate it as a hypothetical informal interview, which would go as
Question : What exactly do you do for a living ?
Me : Well, I am a trainer. But I'd choose to believe that I am
20% trainer, 30% mentor and 50% entrepreneur
Question : Must be making quite a lolly !
Moi : Hmm....I suppose. But yes ! I remit an amount of X as
service tax, Y as income tax. And of course, there are
salary checks worth Z. With my lowest paid employee
grabbing and amount of A.
Question : Cool. So, those are your expenses . But...
Myself : No, dude. These are my investments which pay me rich
dividends. In short, I am totally blissed out, thanks to
these.
I would choose to believe that many of my fellow entrepreneurs will be in consonance !
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