With the recipe of little bit introspection and regular meditation, I was enlightened with 5 moments of realization in my life. These realizations are those obvious things which always existed but it just took some time to precipitate in form of awareness.
Realization no.1 – Every journey begins with a single step
This proverb is one of the oldest and highly inflammable elements among ‘DOERs’. This adage has pushed so many people to take their first step towards their dream. These merely simple words have enabled so many dreamers and doers to belittle the toughest of the journeys in their life.
But one significant thing on which these words emphasize is ‘ACTION’. Every journey begins with a single step, implies that one has to take action in order to get closer to their dreams. Best of the ideas remains suppressed, best of the talents remain hidden and best of the opportunities remain unexplored just due to lack of ‘ACTION’.
Surprisingly, many times Best of the ideas, talents and opportunities come together yet nothing happens because often people count the no. of steps to walk, they measure the length of the road which always seems never ending, hence no step taken.
Most of the times brilliant of the ideas are caught into theoretical trap, wherein an idea first gets scribbled on piece of paper, then typed on a computer, then dressed in a business plan, then attached with a heavy cart of investment requirement and its finally taken to a meeting and killed. If you want to kill an idea take it to a meeting.
This theoretical trap is a never ending loop, people keep discussing same idea for years, they improvise it with time, they build target audience and they make the idea earn millions and billions for them but on paper and only theoretically. None of the idea ever saw the light of the day without breaking this trap and converting into pilot mode. (Pilot mode here means just trying out an idea with a small group or market with limited resources and target but practically.)
I had my first crush on an idea when I was 14 year old, but again I fell into theoretical trap and for years I discussed that idea but never implemented and hence the result is that even today that idea has not seen the light of the day.
But later, when I was 16, again my mind was completely occupied by an idea. The idea was to setup an online educational portal to help higher secondary and college students with their studies, specially the students who don’t opt for coaching classes and have few doubts in their studies at times.
This time I didn’t discuss it with everyone, all I did was I formed a team, blocked a domain, created an online portal, and visited our target audience.
Though the venture was not successful due to many reasons like lack of experience, family disapproval, lack of funds and age factor, still something changed inside me and that was the missing of the fear of taking the first step into unknown.
At age of 16 and with my conservative family, it was not an easy task then to setup that venture. Yet when I took my first step, things started rolling automatically, like minded people came around, fund got arranged and the venture took off.
This experience and confidence that even I can setup and run my own venture at very young age helped me a lot, later I went on to practically try a lot of my ideas, few worked, few didn’t but I am much satisfied with the fact that I tried and with every trial I became wiser and richer in experience.
Realization no.2 – Let Go
We human beings fear change like anything, first we don’t let anybody or anything enter into our zone and if it does then as time passes we adjust to those new changes and create our own comfort zone and later we don’t want to let go those people or things from our zone that we initially resisted.
And this is a normal human behavior. So when an entrepreneur exhibits the same normal human behavior while running his startup, he is bound to be irrational.
First he somehow gathers courage to stand up for his idea and go against the will of family, society and the pessimist self. He bets everything on that idea; works hard for it and then gets obsessed.
Obsessed with the idea that his venture must hit jackpot, there is no room for failure, he can’t fail, things can’t go wrong and people who initially supported him can’t turn their backs to him.
But when his nightmare does come true, he is unable to take rational and sound decisions because it involves being harsh on his idea, he would need to let go few people, let go few things. And this is the reason why an Entrepreneur often keeps fighting for a lost cause.
When I started my venture with a team of few people, my focus was to keep the team intact. Even when the venture flopped and I moved on to next venture, I tried my best to bring same team on board without analyzing who is unfit for the new venture. And it was always an added load.
When I started a pizza outlet, my idea was to have a huge space and sitting capacity, enough number of staff to take care of our customers. So I had sitting capacity of around 40 and approximately 1000 sq.ft area.
Now, I was obsessed with the idea. For me it couldn’t fail because I had bet everything on it, I was all in. I wanted to create a brand and then turn it into franchising business model. Had I analyzed everything being unbiased, I could have easily realized something somewhere went wrong and this idea is not gonna work.
Obsession of creating a brand blinded me and I started serving best of the quality in the wrong market. Instead of analyzing the market needs, I tried to impose my thoughts on the market, which obviously backfired.
Six months down the line, I had understood it’s a lost cause but I couldn’t let go the idea, I kept fighting and pumping valuable resources into it which could be very well used for next venture.
By the ninth month, I was compelled by my pockets to compromise with my idea. I shifted my focus from creating a brand to creating a cash cow. We relocated ourselves and got a smaller space and lesser sitting capacity for us.
As within a month things started improving, I could realize how much resources could have been saved had I allowed myself to learn ‘Let Go’ earlier. But obsession with the success of the idea still persisted.
Though things improved a bit, we were still in short of operating capital, every month it would be nothing less than a battle to arrange the oxygen for next month.
I had the option to kill the venture with cyanide without inflicting any pain but my incapability to let go forced me to kill the venture slowly with lots of pain.
Our situation was like the captain of Titanic ship, who knew no one can save it from drowning and still he waited on the ship hoping either for a miracle or to die with it.
As we had everything on stake, with every passing day our heart would sink seeing our venture die bit by bit. Soon, differences started erupting between me and my partner.
At times he wanted to close down the venture and at times I wanted to do the same. We started blaming each other for the cruiser of failure rolling over us.
Soon we both realized, it’s time to part, we can’t work together, but we both couldn’t let go the obsession for our venture. We kept hanging for few more months but eventually the idea died. The knot between me and my business partner was also broken with the closure of our business.
Had I learned to let go earlier, I could have saved up lots of resources and I could have saved my friendship too.
After, this experience my suggestion to all new upcoming entrepreneurs is
“Startup only if you have the courage to declare at the right time, that the idea is not working anymore, it’s a lost cause, so let’s close it down”
For my next venture I didn’t try to keep my old team intact but only those who were required. I prepared myself to declare the venture closed if it didn’t satisfy my criteria after certain period of time. Hence my next venture made me financially stable and gave me growth opportunities and it happened with the learning to let go.
Realization no. 3 – Secret is not striving for happiness but striving happily
Now relevance of this realization is completely personal, it might not be the same for others. This is something I realized down the way and it’s my way of looking at things.
Whatever we do, ultimately we do it for happiness. You strive for good grades, high paying jobs, success, etc, but ultimately you want those things because your understanding is achievement of those things will make you happy.
You may argue that you fight for your self-respect, for your family, for your friends, etc. You might have numerous reasons to strive but eventually what you seek is happiness as a result.
Here we need to introspect, how can we gain happiness as a result for an effort made half heartedly or sadly? Man is a greedy creature and a proverb in hindi very well describes his nature, “Jo mil gaya wo zameen aur jo na mila wo aasman”.
We find ourselves sad pertaining to many reasons like people around us, our pay scale, our life style, our family, etc. So now we start finding out how can we become happy and then we zero down on something and start striving to achieve it but while striving for it we are still sad.
We can’t be happy while striving for happiness because we seek happiness as result else why would we strive for happiness when we already are happy. (I know its bit confusing but read it twice and interpret your version.)
According to my understanding and enlightenment during meditations, ‘you can’t achieve happiness through performing any activity but you can perform any activity happily’.
An Entrepreneur might spend a major portion of his life worrying about the future of his venture and thus loosing focus and at times also getting depressed. But if he learns to ‘Let Go’ and start performing same activities happily, he might succeed very soon.
No amount of elaborated speech on this topic can explain the essence of the secret of ‘Striving happily rather than striving for happiness’. Only by introspection and by its application, one has to realize it.
Realization no.4 – Divine Intervention
Throughout my journey there was something beyond the capability of my senses to spot, and that element has helped me numerous times to take a leap of faith.
At times the confidence to accomplish something without having the required resources in hand is due to that unknown element and yes we all have achieved something which seemed impossible to others.
While you were fighting for the survival of your venture and rational calculations concluded your doom and yet something unexpected happened which gave you some more oxygen to breathe and survive, I assume most of you must have had such experiences.
Since last 7 years, I have launched and busted lot of ventures and had this experience of divine intervention a lot of times. I belong to a middle class family, so I never had a luxury of available ready capital to launch a venture. I always had to work my way out arranging for minimal amount as capital for my idea and then spend it very wisely.
I was pursuing engineering but my heart was in Entrepreneurship. I realized slowly that I can’t startup until I complete my engineering but it was a long time and I was not ready to wait until then.
After lot of struggle and fight within myself, I took a decision of quitting engineering with a confidence to startup as soon as I quit. Practically it seemed impossible, because then I didn’t had any savings, my parents won’t fund my dreams as I was just about to ruin their dream of having an engineer son. Banks of course won’t even give me a penny, no one would bet on me.
Still going against all kind of rational thoughts, I left engineering and opted for plain graduation course which only consumed 3 hrs of my time every day.
Just 3 months after quitting engineering I found an opportunity, a coaching class was about to close due to losses and I along with my friend Abhishek Pal made him an offer.
We offered to run the coaching class taking all the responsibilities and agreeing to part away with good percent of earnings before deducting any kind of expenditure.
Things went well, we made good amount of money and we could also launch our own startup later which was a pizza outlet.
When I look back, I don’t know how could I take that leap of faith and quit engineering and how I got opportunities through divine intervention.
Later also when we were struggling with our pizza outlet to arrange operating capital every month, always somewhere out of the blue we would get help or funds, or suddenly the sales would pick-up at the end of the month earning us the exact amount required to fulfill our current requirements.
Best of the people, ideas and things, I have found for my business through co-incidences which I call divine intervention.
If you take a leap of faith then remember you are not alone, something, somewhere will work into your favor giving you a fair chance to survive.
Realization no.5 – From Lies to Truth
This is a bit funny realization that I came across while introspection. I used to lie so much out of need and fear that it became a habit.
Few days back, I was sitting in front of a shop and discussing my upcoming venture with my friend Sumeet Gujaran, meanwhile my mom called up and I said ‘I would be late as I am discussing some important aspects of my upcoming venture with sumeet’.
Now the funny part here is, exactly seven years ago in 2007, I was sitting inside the same shop with the same friend and we were registering domain and discussing the web design for our very first startup ‘apexsolution.in’ and my mom called to which I replied ‘I am in class, will reach home late due to extra classes’.
Even when I was in engineering I was working on two projects and I used to keep running here and there and keep telling lies to my mom. I used to wonder whether am doing right or wrong.
Even after quitting engineering, I was running a coaching class without knowledge of my parents, I used to tell them that I am a part time employee in a coaching class while I was the ‘karta dharta’, for two years only my close friends knew that I was running a coaching class.
Later when I launched pizza outlet my parents were still unaware of my activities and this time I told them that I am doing an internship at a pizza outlet. Two months later they found out everything and were shocked…. ‘Zor ka jhatka bade zor se laga’.
Finally, I confronted to them. No matter what happens, I will not change my path, I will run my own business, I may study further, earn lots of degrees but I will keep chasing my dreams.
I was expecting huge resistance from my family and I did face resistance from them but gradually their hearts melted seeing my dedication and even they started contributing to my dreams.
Today, while I am about to launch my next venture, I wonder how my journey transformed from Lies to Truth. Now, I need not hide anything from anybody, now I don’t live in fear that my family would find out about my venture.
I just confronted them understanding their plight as well and my family too slowly adjusted with my dreams and started supporting me instead of objecting!
It was important for me to share this realization because this family situation is common in lot of houses in India. A lot of aspiring entrepreneurs lie to their family or to themselves and quit. I hope this piece of my writing will give them some hope and courage to confront and win this battle.
Aman A Jha
Business consultant
9892621090
info@s4startups.com
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Other reads by the same author:
How I doomed my first venture?
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