Never Be Conservative With What You Can Achieve With Your Business

Andrew Carnegie was the founder of the legendary Carnegie Steel Company, who made a vast fortune only to give it all away, becoming the first great entrepreneur turned philanthropist in history, a tradition that was followed by his contemporary, John D. Rockefeller and much later by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

Carnegie always believed in running his business top capacity and not bothering about the margin. He was always clear to his managers that he wanted his steel factories to operate at full steam, regardless of highs and lows of the economy or other factors. His goal was to be the biggest and the most dominant steel producer in the country, regardless of any external challenges.

What can you learn from this? Greatness can never be achieved if you are too moderate with your ambitions or too conservative. To achieve greatness, you must stretch you capacity to the maximum. 

Don’t worry about temporary pitfalls; always focus on a larger goal.

(taken from http://www.liverix.com/4-business-lessons-you-can-learn-from-andrew-carnegie)

Identify Where You Want to Reach

This may sound very easy but I feel this is the most important and unsolved questions in our lives and work. Once we figure out where we eventually want to reach, the path to reach it can only then be worked out.

In life, we often reach points where we have multiple choices. Selecting one becomes very difficult and gives us sleepless nights. We feel scared that we may make a wrong choice and we may end up wasting time and resources.

When Beveragewala closed down, I went through along and mentally exasperating period of life. I did not what to do. I thought I can study more, startup again, get a job, freelance and so on. Everyday I used to think positively about one option in the morning and by the end of the day, I used to turn quite negative about it not because the options were not suitable for me, but because I was unsure whether it would turn out to be the best for me. This went on for a quite long.

One day I decided to make a word document about where I wish to reach in the long term. Once I was able to identify that, the path seemed much more clear for me. From the eventual goal I Had in mind, I started working backward and was able to identify what I needed to do in the shorter term to reach my long term.

This is a strategy which works in your work, family life and also in life in general. Always start with the longer term goal (vision) and the path to it becomes much easier to identify.

The Importance of Challenges in our Lives

"Ups and downs in life are very important to keep us going, because a straight line even in an ECG means we are not alive"... Ratan Tata

The downs are the periods where we learn and grow as people. We can relish the ups only because we have experience the downs. So take up challenges as they come, learn from them, overcome them and keep moving!

What failure teaches you...

I've failed in my startup ventures till date.. I've tried more than a couple of times and have had to close down the ventures within 1-3 years from inception. I've lost money, confidence and respect towards me from my friends & family. I stand here today reflecting on what I've done. All looked bleak initially. But then, on analyzing further, I feel now that I have taken a lot from each of my ventures (which I will individually detail in other posts).

Failure has taught me things right from the importance of a business plan, team building, building a robust business model, having concrete estimates and expectations, having good mentors & advisers in your journey and so on. Probably, if I had to succeed in my first venture, a lot of this learning would not have come to me in as detail as it has.

So, failure is not bad at all. It's important to try and if you fail, just make sure you take back as much learning as possible. Repeating a mistake and failing a second time because of it is stupidity and a complete waste of time.

Hello!

Hey guys, welcome to this blog.

I am Manish Hada. I have done a B.Sc, MBA & M.S and have founded 2 startups till date. I have also worked on a host of ideas which never saw the light of the day.

I have been trying to start and sustain a business for the last 10 odd years now. I've started a few, scaled up in some and have had to exit all :( I may not have the bank balance to show what I've done, but through this blog, I want to share what I actually have gained in this journey and also in the times ahead.

Hope this helps :)))))))))))))