Last Saturday afternoon I attended my first Rodinhoods Open House. I have come back inspired and loved the positiveness in the room full of entrepreneurs and business owners. Here are my key takeaways from the sessions.
Ask Questions.
Alok (@rodinhood) was so right when he said – Don’t Be Naive. Ask questions, dig deeper. Don’t think it’s too silly. Most often you will create an impression when you ask the right questions, rather than take everything at face value.
Beg.
When I started off as an account executive with an ad agency, I had to beg my creative team to do my work or help me meet the deadlines. Not much has changed when I started my business. I yet beg if I need to be part of a big show/exhibition. I beg if I want the material delivered earlier. Sometimes you beg and sometimes you form relationships which do the magic.
Be Crazy.
Some of us are shy, we fear the idea is silly or sometimes just too crazy. Senior creative people I worked with always encouraged crazy ideas at Brainstorming Sessions. You never know what’s going to spark. So being crazy is good, helps the brain cells work at the maximum limits and gives you access to ideas nobody has ever thought of doing before.
Fear No Failure.
One of the strongest quality of being an entrepreneur is to have the ability to work endlessly on something which you have no idea is going to work and help pay the bills. So if the fear of failure keeps you awake at night, this isn’t the right thing for you to do. Put your heart & soul into your dream. Accept the failure, but don’t fear it. Don’t let it break you.
Ship it.
This is a lesson which reminded me of Seth Godin. If you keep working on making it perfect you ain’t doing anything. So Ship It. Get Feedback. Improvise and Ship it AGAIN. Don’t spend half your life trying to perfect your idea only to realise it wasn’t the right one to start with.
Measure. Analyse.
The CEO of Mirraw.com gave an interesting pointer. When you are bootstrapped, you can’t get yourself to spend money on anything which cannot be measured or have the results analysed. So that large of hoarding on Chowpatty for BRANDING – doesn’t get an entrepreneur’s Thumbs Up!
Funding is not everything.
Company X gets $200M. Company Y gets $45M. If these headlines are making you wonder if your business is successful or not, then you are thinking wrong. Getting your business funded just because it’s cool and trendy isn’t the right way. Instead focus on your business, grow your actual numbers, make the business a success and then seek funding when you need it for expansion.
This has been a wonderful experience and I really do hope to attend the next sessions. And one more thing I hope to do is re-start reading my unfinished Autobiography of a Yogi.
If you would like to share some thoughts, do connect with me @kapilb and you can also track my blog – www.kapilb.com
asha chaudhry
hey kapil,
thanks for sharing your takeaways! i’m so so happy you loved the positiveness!
on branding (not measuring) i have a slightly different perspective from shailesh – while i’m absolutely against startups splurging on branding/advertising (housing’s 120 crores is a shocker for an ex-advtg person like me! guess i’m more startup now 🙂 even hike’s tvcs get me wondering…. at an event they admitted they got into tv advtg only after they raised money!)
i strongly believe every startup needs to spend some time, energy and money on its branding. you’re building a business. and an identity. if it doesn’t connect with your audience, you’re in trouble.