Simply Maverick! – Hungry & Foolish

below goes for all the self claimed startup guru bloggers who have no clue on what it takes to startup and live in a world of dreams – sorry buddy execution is a different ballgame – your shit matters to no1 in the real world

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

- Theodre Roosevelt.

Followup to my recent post on my fav startup speech here goes this amazing song from talented Farhan’s movie Lucky By Chance

If you do understand Hindi youd be able to co-relate this to a startup experience – its all dreams of creating a better tommorow, of creating the next value  generating business model and we slog on that dream for years. The faint smell of success keeps us walking

Truly startups live the dream – with open eyes!

I have always been in awe of highly successful people in any field of life and have always wondered what is that differentiates these people from the others who remain average throughout their life.

Is it just about being at the right place at the right time?is it all inborn?what is it that makes such people turn every adversity into an opportunity. i have been lucky to have closely observe my own brother who is a grad from FMS and i have tried to observe what is that the 2 years have taught him.I was amazed as to much changes there were in him. well i haven’t read the 7 habits of highly effective people book as i don’t believe in them.But i am sure life teaches us more than books and if we can consciously inculcate even a fraction of its learnings into our day-day life-we can never fail.

I would start with what i have observed:

Passion which drives u to achieve heights in your field and hence is absolutely most most most necessary

A very clear Vision-know what u wanna do in life-the bigger picture

Very strong common sense and understanding of people and situations-and when to react how.

Core beliefs,principles and Values – u live by

Smart Hard work-nothing comes without it-there is no shortcut

A Lender and not a borrower-never give ur problems to others – do something for others if u can rather.

Commitment to excellence-whatever u do-do it like there is no tomorrow

Humility – A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and denominator is what he thinks he is-the higher the denominator the lower the fraction

Positive attitude-down but never out – impossible is nothing Face problems head on— if one faces problems and address them-it will be easier in the long run.

Self Honesty and Respect for each and every thing in life.

Balanced life-health money spirit mind

Some of the most important people in my life would be shocked to learn that they were role models. They weren’t celebrities, or even particularly accomplished. But they had some quality that I admired, that made me want to be like them.”

As Deap from Burrp writes in his blog , every entrepreneur needs a “Wall” to be able to sustain this cruelest journey of their lifetime.What is a wall? simply put, our wall is that one pillar of strength in our lives. a lot of what entrepreneurs need during the course of a startup is a strong stomach and a lot of positive motivation. during these usually incredibly trying and testing times, nothing is more important than having the support and full understanding of your wall.

I had no role model as such till i was a teenager…i was too occupied with myself. but as i grew up i started admiring people around me and tried to imbibe their qualities. i was on search of excellence

My biggest role model is no celebrity – its my own elder brother. He has been such an inspiration , and even if i can be 10% of what he is , id be a satisfied man.

My latest crush are the entrepreneurs i have worked with – Mr Manish Vijj & Aditya Khanna. i can relate to them , i am a maverick by nature like them and i dream big with open eyes too.

However i believe its circumstances which make/break a man, and i am certainly waiting for my day ! and yes i will make it happen soon !

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step”

So here i am, after spending years in the “Digital” marketing industry – am perhaps a late mover to the pro blogging space – perhaps am outdated by now with all the twitter, FB and social media guru bloggers around . All these years people used to ping me – hey do you blog? – and the answer was “not really” and what followed was a look of disbelief and sometimes a tone filled with sarcasm – oh so you dont even blog!

Well i was never attracted to the concept of blogging for two reasons – 1) i didn’t have a strong opinion or thought process to blog about – i am a people’s guy – im okie with most things in life and there was never a black/white for me. 2) i never got the time!

The last few years spent in the industry with startups have given me considerable exposure to what entrepreneurship is all about specifically the “Dotcom Heroes”. I have worked with most industry startups as a vendor/client and seen them bootstrap to blowing away millions of marketing dollars to getting funded to going broke – and now that i am on the path of entrepreneurship myself – i think im ready to share my thoughts and blog it!

Cheers to the “Entrepreneur”!