Raj Shankar's Blog, page 27

Books and Me: The Valmiki Syndrome

Book Title: The Valmiki Syndrome

Author: Ashok K Banker

I picked the book up because of its title. I have been interested in knowing how sages like Valmiki transformed themselves into who they became. If you know the transformative story of ‘Bandit Ratnakaran’ becoming ‘Sage Valmiki’ and you want to know how this transformation happened, you will also pick the book up just like how I did. But to be true this story is only a fourth of the book. The book has three other stories that run in parallel – that of Suhasini, Sara and Ravi. No, they are not stories from the Puranas like that of Valmiki, but from today’s world and based on lives like ours (possibly).

While there are number of books written on the mythological and Puranic stories by the author Ashok Banker and so many others, writing a non-fiction book based on them is truly a challenge. The author has made a great attempt to present some solutions to living life more peacefully and happily. The stories (that of Suhasini, Sara and Ravi) provide us with enough variations of what most of us go through in life. Hence it is likely that you will relate to or extrapolate from these stories some situations that you have been through in life. This provides a connect to the reader and creates the hope that he or she will receive some answers as well. But somehow towards the end of the book, I felt let down. I am not sure if it has any reflection of the author’s ability because one must acknowledge the fact that writing non-fiction based on our historic literature is everybody’s dream – but difficult as well. Valmiki’s story in my humble understanding has nothing to do with balancing personal and professional priorities in life. While the other stories do bring out the importance of building work-life balance they stand starkly different from Valmiki’s story.

While there is a lot I learned about Valmiki through this book, it was not in line with my expectations. I kind of tried to speed through the remaining stories as they seemed to reflect more about balancing various aspects of life rather than finding what one needs to do in life. In my opinion Valmiki’s life and that of so many others from the Puranas has to do with how they found their principal vocation in life. How did they make that happen? What did they do that led them to their identification of their vocation? How did finding this lead them to self realization? All of these need deeper thinking and personal reflection. I am also beginning to realize that these are not to be sought in books and as tips from others – somehow that is not the way it seems to have been gained by others in history.

While there are brilliant works in our ancient historic literature that can point the way and serve as guideposts, it is up to each one of us to figure it out ourselves. So it is a long and tough journey which only the fearless and single pointed can take. Keep searching for you may land yourself on that path as well.

One thing that this book has also inspired me to do is put ‘Reading the Ramayana’ in detail on my reading list (or should I say study list?). If possible in Sanskrit with transliteration because many quotes and references in the book to the Ramayana gave me a glimpse of the breadth of the knowledge embedded in that story.

Thanks to Ashok Banker for providing a book that inspires us to bring balance to life’s priorities while also showing us the direction to the Ramayana – a treasure trove of wisdom from the realized sage Valmiki.

Two Lessons on Mentoring Entrepreneurs

Last week I was facilitating a session on mentoring skills. As always we had a few entrepreneurs in class who we use as cases over the two days to learn mentoring and apply the skills learned. Apart from these entrepreneurs we attempt to invite entrepreneurs who have used some form of coaching / mentoring in the past and who feel it has helped them to grow. We had one such entrepreneur speak to us about his enterprise and his experience with mentors in the past. Incidentally over tea he (the entrepreneur) told me that most of his experiences have been of poor quality. But the rare few have made the difference.

While the entrepreneur who we invited shared number of thoughts on how his mentor had helped him and how the many who called themselves mentors wasted his time and efforts, the big learning for all of us in the room was – choose your mentee (also the mentor) carefully.

We had also invited a mentor to share his experiences and he almost spoke as if it was the act of a Good Samaritan. Most of his mentoring efforts did not yield him any returns except satisfaction that he had done his bit on being sought. Apart from his other tips which were very good, the big learning for all of us in the room was – choose your mentee carefully and, let them seek you out!

So the big two lessons from the mentor-mentee experience sharing during the workshop were:

Choose your mentee (mentor in the case of the entrepreneur) carefully
Let the mentee seek the mentor

While they seem obvious to those who believe in common sense, the cliché ‘common sense is rarely common’ holds especially true in this case. There are many reasons for this, which we will discuss on a separate conversation later. But for now, for all those who want to take up mentoring of entrepreneurs, please use the two big lessons above wisely.

After all you wish to mentor because you want to share – isn’t it?

Why did you become an entrepreneur?

When people come to me for help regarding their enterprises, I always make it a point to ask their intention behind starting their business. Finding out their true intentions as soon as possible makes it easier for me to decide whether to take on the responsibility of enabling them and more importantly how I should do it.

Here are some top reasons that I have come across for people to start-up:

I am bored with what I am doing
I want to make a lot of money
I want to become famous
I don’t want to have a boss
I want to make a dent in the world
I want to create something unique

And so on…

You come across very few truly entrepreneurial people in your life and if you do, you are lucky and blessed. Keep searching!

In the above list, except the one who wants to start making money doing business, all other entrepreneurs are people who typically have earned some money or inherited some money and are bored. They want some attention, and in today’s world, entrepreneurship can make one popular. Especially if you have something really unique! So many entrepreneurs don’t seem to worry too much about revenue streams or revenue models or business models as much as uniqueness of value proposition.

While both of them require support from advisers, it will be easy to have someone who wants to build revenue as your mentee / client. They will be focused on what makes money. You will also find it a lot easier to draw the boundaries of the engagement. Overall there will be more clarity on why you guys meet up. The other group needs someone who can help them think big. But since they come with prejudice (a lot of it) it is difficult to give them quality advice. They take a lot longer to seek help, very often too late. Becoming advisers to such people is also risk for an adviser since they are also the first to blame the adviser for anything that goes wrong. Since most of the conversations are around assumptions they also tend to be irrational.

As potential advisers / mentors / coaches, it is important to understand right up front who your entrepreneur is and his intention to start the business. This can create a lot of clarity in your life by making better choices of who to give advice to.

Think about it!

Interesting Links This Week: 02-February-2014

10 Charts from 2013 that may change the way you think. Which countries are getting more prosperous (assuming that we understand what it means)? Which areas do CEOs tend to seek coaching / mentoring in? Is it worth eating while negotiating? Is Africa getting more stable and will that encourage more of us to explore the largely unexplored continent? And so many more interesting insights based on data – read more here – Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/12/10-charts-from-2013-that-changed-the-way-we-think/

 

While the whole world is after ‘Big Data’ and its potential benefits on business, what do people who can’t buy or don’t have access to such large repositories of data do? ‘Small Data’ that is available to them is not being really tapped into. As the world is tending towards more data driven decision making, making use of such small pools of data can enhance business. Are we sitting on latent profits in the form of customer information right in our offices? Here is an interesting read on the topic – read more here – Link: http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Little-Data-Matters-Too

 

Why are e-cigarettes popular in France? Have Japanese firms successfully entered most Asian economies and what is the impact of this? What is the business implication of the changing eating habits of the Japanese? How is social impact being measured better? How entrepreneurship is taking shape across number of countries? These and many more interesting questions are answered in this report. Read more here – Link: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/special-report/rebalancing-global-economy/

Finance for Entrepreneurs: Understanding Profit

Whenever a business is able to generate revenue from the sale of its products or services, it indicates that the market perceives value. It is an indicator that the business is creating value for its customers. Profit on the other hand is an indicator that the business is also able to capture a portion of that value for itself. Profit is a very attractive term in entrepreneurship. Almost every entrepreneur keeps searching for it. Every investor keeps asking if the firm is making profits. But what are profits and what are the various terms that depict profits. This lesson focuses on understanding the various terms used related to profits.

Profits in general refer to the surplus that the business generates after all expenses are paid for from the revenue generated. There are many levels at which profit is calculated in a Profit / Loss Statement. Here are a few of them:

Gross Profit (GP) = Revenue – Cost of Goods Sold

GP is a reflection of the quality of the product or service of the business. We will look at the power of GP in the next lesson.

Profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (PBITDA) = Revenue – (All expenses except interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization)

PBITDA is also called popularly as EBITDA. The word profits is replaced with the word earnings. This refers to all operational profits of the business. If a business makes a fair EBITDA then it shows the ability of the business to keep its overheads and operational costs under control. In many businesses this forms the core of their competence, which is keeping the EBITDA large by running a lean and controlled enterprise.

Profit before interest and taxes (PBIT) = Revenue – (All expenses except interest and taxes)

PBIT is also referred to as EBIT or Earnings Before Interest and Taxes. It is calculated after removing any amortized and / or depreciation items brought from the Balance Sheet as expenses.

Profit before Taxes (PBT) = Revenue – (All expenses except taxes)

PBT is also referred to as EBT or Earnings Before Taxes. It refers to the Net Profit that the business generates. It is also the earnings on which taxes are paid by the business.

Profit After Taxes (PAT) = Revenue – (All expenses and taxes)

This is the profit figure that is left with the enterprise after paying taxes due based on the tax laws in the country of operations. This is the money that the business has created for its owners. It can either pay this money to the shareholders or owners as dividend or it can keep it in the business for further investments.

Retained Profits = Profit After Taxes – Dividends Payable

If the business decides to pay dividends then that amount is deducted from the PAT and whatever remains is moved to the Balance Sheet under ‘Retained Earnings’. It is the money that the business keeps with itself which is actually due to the owners.

All the above terms are used to refer to profits of a business. Try to understand them. Go back to your Profit / Loss Statement and your Balance Sheet and locate these terms in them.

We will look at ‘Gross Profits’ alone in the next lesson as it is more important than the others in the case of an entrepreneur.

Three Qualities of a ‘Mentor for Entrepreneurs’

Earlier this week I spent a day working along with a bunch of seasoned entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs educators in trying to design a program to mentor several women entrepreneurs. The day was intellectually stimulating and exhilarating. It was equally a day of unlearning as much as it was a day of learning. I learned a lot of things.

Among the many questions that were deliberated the question of ‘Who should mentor entrepreneurs?’ had the usual heated debate. There were many views to this and many schools of thoughts were also shared. But in the end I found that most of the members in the committee agreed on a very narrow set of qualities for a potential mentor. This was one big reiteration of my understanding. A mentor who wishes to help entrepreneurs grow must have at least these three basic qualities:

They must have done some sales and marketing in their life
They must have been responsible for a P/L Statement however small or big
They must not answer any questions for the entrepreneur but only ask questions that entrepreneurs can answer by themselves

So if you don’t have these three qualities attempt to gain it. Do it directly by becoming an entrepreneur or by working in a small business. There were many other qualities that were discussed but these three seemed to gain approval from everyone in the room.

As I prepare myself to conduct a two day workshop for educators / professionals who want to become mentors I plan to keep these fundamental qualities and share it with them. Please do share your thoughts, learning and experiences of who makes a good mentor so that we may all learn about this role and play it better.

Vedantic Wednesday: What should I do in Life?

Today I had lunch with a bunch of young minds from across the country and we were joined by a few from other nations as well. Among the many conversations, we had one short conversation on whether one should try to find what they should do in life and then go into it or figure it out along the way. This is always a debatable topic and so we did have numerous opinions. While I work a lot in entrepreneurship and encourage a whole lot of experimentation in business, I still belong to the school that one needs to find the direction in life before embarking in life. The earlier we learn this lesson in life the easier it is to make changes to direction in life. But how does one actually go about doing it? Even before that why should one even attempt this route?

In Vedanta there is a repeated mention across scriptural texts on the concept of ‘svadharma’ or one’s own nature. Every human being has an innate tendency. Every individual has an inherent interest towards certain activities or domains. However due to various expectations and attachments in life we are coerced into following what most of the world thinks is the right thing. Hence we find almost every student becoming an engineer and joining similar jobs. While all this seems like the best thing, most of the pleasures are short lived. Life becomes very stressful and strained due to not choosing the right vocation based on our inherent interests.

Why do we not choose to do what comes to us naturally? It is simply because we cannot make do with what our natural interests provide as returns. When we are born to be an artist we must understand that we cannot define timeline based outputs. If this is the case we cannot afford a lifestyle that is like the many who go to work or who go into business. As a result we give up on our interest or close to heart activity and go behind what provides the lifestyle that we want to match.

If we want to lead a happy life then we need to do what comes to us naturally, we need to practice what is our natural strengths and be contended with what that action provides as the result. To make this happen we need to align our lifestyle to enable us practice our natural vocation. Attempting to match what others have in the world is the beginning of giving up our deeply held talents. Over the long term this leads to discontentment and disillusionment. Sorrow, agitations and anger follows. Not recognizing the root cause of the problem we keep trying to solve the symptoms.

So why should one try this approach – for the simple reason that we can gain peace and stay in harmony.

Think about it!

Launch of MGR Alumni Association (MAA) at Dr MGR University

This weekend I had the honor of being one of the dignitaries at the launch function of the Alumni club of a young university. The alumni club of the Dr MGR University met for the first time on the 26th of January 2014 and set into motion a formal alumni club. Apart from the various guests the committee that convened the event provided me the great opportunity to share the stage as one of the guests and share my thoughts on the occasion. Being one amongst them I felt it was a great chance to speak on behalf of my fellow alumni. When we were students it was an engineering college affiliated to the University of Madras and the same has now grown on to become a Deemed University.

After listening to a host of talks from various guests and taking away a lot of useful inputs for how alumni can associate with the alma mater, I spoke on the importance of living up to the mission of the institution through which we all passed out – ‘To encourage our students to be Job Creators rather than Job Seekers” To my surprise a lot of us had turned entrepreneurial. It was inspiring to see classmates, seniors and juniors gather in large numbers and acknowledge the happiness of being part of the same community. I enjoyed sharing my ideas and opinions on how the alumni club itself can act entrepreneurially and create a network that will not only enhance the value of the University but also provide a strong leverage to all the alumni.

We all went around the campus that had changed over the last decade. It was great meeting our faculty members who sacrificed their weekend to be with us on a Sunday evening. One more round of inspiration from the community (teachers) who are why we are where we are. Every successful person always quotes a teacher in his / her life who had shaped their careers. This shaping also seems to have happened in subtle ways.

An interesting part of the event was to recognize successful endeavors of alumni in a variety of domains including academic excellence, research excellence as well as business excellence apart from corporate excellence.

I enjoyed the event and came back with a lot of thoughts and questions on how entrepreneurship can be applied to areas beyond business enterprise creation. I hope to reflect and write on them in the coming days.

Thanks to the Dr MGR University Management and the MGR Alumni Association (MAA) for giving me this wonderful opportunity. It was truly an honor and experience that I will remember for a long time.

Look forward to meeting more friends and alumni in the next meet up on 26th of January 2015. Hope more people can make it!

Interesting Links This Week: 26-January-2014

Small Business is an important part of the economy of any nation. Here is a short write up from Inc Magazine based on the survey of their fastest growing small businesses in the US. But I think some of their challenges are similar to what our Indian SME’s face too. How they see 2014 may be an indicator of how our SME’s see too!

Read more here – Link: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201312/kimberly-weisul/the-outlook-for-small-business-2014.html?cid=em01017week49a&nav=su

 

The devastating earthquake of 2001 sparked a new idea in the entrepreneurial mind of Mansukhbhai Prajapati. His novel solution “Mitticool” has become a sensation. After creating an earthen, natural water filter, he has gone on to find numerous down to earth innovations. These need to be studied in the classrooms during courses on entrepreneurship. Get inspired by reading more here – Link: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/mitticool-son-of-the-soil-keeps-things-cool-with-his-desi-gadget/article1-1172621.aspx

 

13 titles, reading which your life can change! That is what reading of good philosophy does to the reader. But how do we find good reads on philosophy – here is the answer to the solution. The detailed write-up on why you should read and what you will get by reading each selection itself is a worthy learning. I loved the selection and I truly hope each of you will find something worthwhile to take away from it too. Read more here – Link: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/12/02/best-psychology-philosophy-books-2013/

Books and Me: The Laptop Millionaire

Book Title: The Laptop Millionaire

Author: Mark Anastasi

I love reading about entrepreneurs. Since entrepreneurs constantly find new ways to create value for their potential audience and for themselves, I learn so much from their activities. I picked this book up as part of my reading especially to know more about entrepreneurs who make a living in the virtual world. While my idea of a laptop entrepreneur was someone who sits at a cafe and builds a cloud based product or service, Mark, the author of this book proposes a totally different model. While it seems like plausible, I would also like to lean more on the school of micro entrepreneurs who create enterprises without too many resources. Why am I then writing about this book? For more than one reason – read on!

I am not too sure if I belong to the school of thought proposed in this book. But, I must accept the fact that I was bowled over by the writing style of the author. His storytelling ability keeps you gripped to the book. The better part of the writing is the strong push it gives the reader to get off the chair or cot and try something online. A well written book needs to be read and especially one that drives you into action. While I don’t intend to apply a lot of the principles in the book as they are suggested, I did learn more about how the online world works. I am sure some entrepreneurial minds who see the world as a global village will find some business ideas.

The tone of the writing and the numerous examples provided make the book an interesting read as well. The author provides short cases of people who have used his methods and made considerable sums of money. In fact more than once while reading the book, I thought I should go down the suggested route, but the principles of my school of thought remain too strong to allow me to use them. But nevertheless I am sure it would work for some who believe in them. So the best way to know about them is to read the book.

The other reason I liked the book is because the author bares all the tools he has used to make money online. He not only provides the secret sauce of how it has worked for him, but also the tools that he has used along the way. In fact he applies some of the suggestions as he writes the book because he asks you to subscribe / buy some of the tools for better results. I am sure he or his affiliates will make some money out of it. But isn’t that you also want when you trade your products and services – that people pay for the value that they receive! After all don’t we all know that there is no free lunch in the world?

I also learned a lot about the number of tools, services and approaches that people have used online to generate wealth for themselves. I was simply amazed at the way simple and freely available tools such as Facebook and YouTube can be leveraged for wealth generation. But behind all of these tools and techniques was the constant reiteration to find and solve a problem or challenge that someone in the world faces. Additionally the author also strives to focus on making profits through collaborations.

“Collaborating to create value for others is the way to make value for oneself.” This is my strong message from the book. I still will continue to work along my way based on the principles of my school of thinking. But the book will remain an interesting read and will also encourage some of its readers to make money as well.

Happy Reading!