A good 7 months done almost and I am revisiting the thought.

Today is Blog Action Day, a wonderful initiative that started last year and will come every year with a new issue and a new opportunity to get it done away with. This year the issue is poverty and like me thousands of other blogs will speak about it in the hope of making a difference.

So why I am I revisiting my definition of the spirit of enterprise if it is poverty that we have to speak of?

The reason being the strong connect that entrepreneurship and being enterprising has with getting rid of poverty. For to my mind there is no better tool or effort other than being entrepreneurial to eradicate poverty. And it is this that takes the scope of enterprise beyond the realms of what I described before.

The Spirit of Enterprise is to Uplift and Grow

Entrepreneurship is not a solo activity, it is pushed deep within the framework of team play and delegation. It is a social activity. Entrepreneurs do not create, that is the work of innovators and inventors. Entrepreneurs do not make money, they build wealth. Entrepreneurs do not just sell, they run a business. The list can go on, but the point will remain the same, entrepreneurs just get resources together and make things happen to meet an opportunity. They bring vision and foresight to the table, to see and then make the most of opportunities. They need others to work in tandem with them in perfect harmony to meet the opportunity.

And in the process entrepreneurs uplift and grow all those involved with them in terms of their individual value through wealth and value creation. The impact thus on the society is the employment created and the change in the standard of leaving. Poverty in essence is the absence of the above two. And in that regards, entrepreneurship or in this case the spirit of enterprise puts a punctuation on poverty.

If you ever wish to start a firm don’t brush away this huge responsibility that falls on you. It is in the spirit of enterprise to uplift and grow others. And history is replete with success stories of those who have.

Today is blog action day. Blog about poverty and join thousands of others in a drive to make things better and create awareness.

Advertisement: Finance Jargon Guide to Finance & Investment

So how do you get ‘good’ lucky with your business?

Now living in India comes with its traditional privileges. So we have tonnes of astrologers and Feng Shui guys who claim with a money back guarantee to get us entrepreneurs success beyond our imagination. In fact I searched on the web and found that there are quite a lot of business astrologers. I actually think they are good businessmen themselves to pull this one off with aplomb. Anyway, obviusly their solution is so much more on chance than luck itself that we can’t really bank on it. It really is far simpler than anything you would imagine if you ask me (even if you don’t ask me it remains just as simple really, but it doesn’t sound effective)

The simplest way to get lucky in business (or even life in general) is to turn up every time every where.

There is an oft molested phrase in English which many people who have got lucky use - Luck is where opportunity meets aptitude. Now I don’t quite want to debate on the phrase’s merits or sense. However, I do know and agree that talent can’t exist without opportunities. You need opportunities to showcase talent and in turn give luck a chance to do what it can do.

So essentially luck boils down to opportunities. And being everywhere every time helps you create more opportunities than just the ones that come your way. The more opportunities you create the more you give yourself the chance to get lucky.

• Go to charities
• Go to the park
• Go to a school and take a small lesson
• Go to every event in your industry and make your opinion known
• Go visit the gym and other activity clubs
• Go to events and conferences that are outside your industry but is still happening in your city
• Send emails to the authors or journos whose articles you read in the newspaper and liked, let them know that
• Comment on blogs that add value to you and help you learn
• Live in an apartment then go say hi to your floor mates and ask them how their work is going
• Go to the church or the temple if you are the kind and talk to those who you meet there

Wait isn’t this networking?

Yes it is and no it is not.

Yes it is because you are spreading your net for new opportunities, and it is not because your purpose here isn’t to make friends to add on Linkedin, rather to keep your eyes and ears open that can push your business. Now you don’t need to talk to people for that, you can simply listen to what they talk and there is so much you can learn thus.

So whether you do make connections or not, eventually luck is in turning up. And then leave it up to those who are there just to connect to take the efforts at that.

Be everywhere every time and turn the tide.

Advertisement: GMATprepare 4 week guide to GMAT

Ever since I read his autobiography I have been a huge believer in the power of the principles he stood for and became his big fan. Today while surfing through some TV channels I stumbled upon an interesting question.

Is the Mahatma relevant today?

I don’t find this interesting because it is thought provoking in any manner, rather I feel the question is far from it. The interesting bit though is how naive the channel was in asking such a question.

Mahatma Gandhi was Mahatma Gandhi for his beliefs and is defined by the principles he propagated. Asking if the Mahatma is relevant today is akin to questioning the relevance of Truth and Non Violence. And when have they ever not been relevant.

They are like Gandhi said as old as the hills. And men who stand for it will always be relevant, and hence I find the question amusing.

Anyway, that was perhaps more suited for my personal blog. This post is some leadership lessons I have learnt that are as relevant as their source- Gandhi.

The Leader is Responsible and Acts Like One

This is actually the fundamental thought behind going on fasts. Gandhi used to go on fasts or take such self measured ‘punishments’ whenever any of his men in the struggle made a mistake. It was an act of owning up. Gandhi figured that it was his mistake in not being up to task in passing his principles to others. The impact that this has on the other person is enormous and needs to be felt to understand.

Personally I think this is one of the most important lessons I have learnt for the depth that the thought has. When you own up someone else’s mistake and genuinely feel it was your responsibility you inculcate responsibility in others and in turn take their loyalty home.

Self Service- Getting Things Done, Yourself:

Doing your chores and work yourself encourages initiative and accountability within the team. Everyone takes cue from the leader and try to match him in work ethics. Self service is something we all lack at some level or the other and is something I try hard to put into practice. I guess the problem in implementation lies in my inherent laziness as well, so besides leadership self service also has its impact in being enterprising.

Start doing your own things, arrange the files on your desk, don’t call the office boy for small stuff like water and files that you can get yourself, don’t delegate mundane business processes just so that you don’t like to do it.

Getting Everyone Involved:

If you go through the chapters chronicling Gandhi’s time in South Africa you will be amazed at the organizational ability the shy lawyer from Porbandar had. Part of the reason to me was actually the inherent need that Gandhi displayed to do things in groups or with someone. When you involve people as equal with you, you suddenly get things done faster and also hold your own stead among others because you show a sense of security.

This is the hallmark of a powerful reader, one who is not insecure and hence gives the same scale and platform for others to perform as one does.

Sticking to One’s Guns

This phrase is perhaps the only place Gandhi would come together with a Gun.

As a leader it is important that you maintain uniformity in your approach and stick to what you say and what you do always. It leads to a sense of assurance among your followers or subordinates and hence take cue of your leadership better. You can’t shift gears and directions every now and then, it just leads to confusion and hence anarchy and you have a workforce that doesn’t know how to react to your decisions.

Gandhi always stuck by his principles. That was his way of keeping things simple, and therefore stress free. Keep things simple and don’t pursue an image, instead build a belief system that can guide you when others seek your guidance.

That about covers the lessons I have learned from Mahatma Gandhi. Of course, given the wide scope of work he did there can surely be more instances of leadership lessons that we can take from him. Add them to the comments if you have learnt something from someone, sharing it with others is the best payback you can give them trust me.

Here goes another attempt. Sorry to bother you folks with this.

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/tvyt9tsxqc” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

We can’t just eat deserts or that big fat burger all the time, even we grow sick of eating too much of them even though I admit it is very tempting. It ruins our system anyway if we stuff ourselves. That’s nature.

The same is the case with money. As entrepreneurs we need to love money, because that’s what runs our system. However, we can’t be obsessed by it, rather we should not be. It takes away the focus from business if we do. Being entrepreneurial is about adding value with what we do, that’s what makes entrepreneurs what they are.

Money is no more than a means or a fuel. When we become obsessed with money our attention begins to dwindle from the real task at hand and the business will suffer.

At the same time you can’t stop loving money. It drives our business and is the measure of our success. You can’t or like above shouldn’t be an entrepreneur if you don’t love money. You are not doing business if you don’t.. that’s philanthropy. So I would like to see guys who get into business because they see value in a new product they have to offer, at the same time let it not be so negligible a value that there is no pertinent money in it.

You saw what happened when people went behind money forgetting their core value. You will also see what will happen when people leave the accountant’s book aside and ‘run’ a business.

Nature always likes to keep things in balance and symmetry.

I am not much of an investment banker, nor do I understand today’s financial markets all that much. I have a very primitive way of looking at investing and that is to invest in businesses and not shares.

Every company with its heart right starts off with an opportunity it grabs. It grows, and as it grows it needs more funds, it needs more love.. so it goes public. And after a certain while it doesn’t have its soul in the right place.

For after some while it hires people to put on some make up to the numbers it produces. Yes the annual report has to look good, that is the priority, we won’t get people buying our shares otherwise. Decisions are taken with shareholder’s interest in mind.

I don’t know why, but this doesn’t seem right to me. A company needs to have a vision and mission and the appetite to grow big, but does it need to shift focus from being what it is to being what it is supposed to be. Now it is fair to think that shareholder’s have the best interest of the company as well because their money is invested in it. But when their money is invested in it won’t they be scared to take risks.

And if they are, then they lose the spirit of enterprise that runs the company and there the company stops being a business. They are just numbers adding up then for the sake of being added.

I respect Jerry Yang for this reason, and I am sad Lehman had to go for this reason. Let’s keep business pure and just do business. That’s the best business strategy.

Now that that has been said, I want to talk about failing and failures.

Over the years I have made many mistakes.

The other day I wrote a really long mail to a friend of mine too about my latest misadventure. I spoke about how I failed in something I thought I won’t and how my belief in certain abilities of mine has taken a dent. I really want to say it out here too, but this perhaps is not the right time..travails of having a career on the web.

In any case what I failed in is irrelevant to the topic. It just did its job in giving direction to my thought about failure as a concept.

And the more I thought the more things cleared, failure only exists when you let it. No I don’t want this to sound like a melodramatic and impractical piece of sound byte from the movies. However, there is no other way to put it, you fail only when you give up. So the best way to get rid of failure is to never stop trying. Failure won’t exist.

The smart man is the one who will learn from the experience and not commit the same mistake again. While the best way to correct a mistake is to make it right than just leave it at that. Never give up and you will never fail, and to me success is in not failing, so no matter what you end up doing, by the time you hang up the gloves you would have been a success.

I hope to remember this one every time I think of quitting, and I hope you never quit too. Quitting is failing, and there is nothing smart about failure.

Initiative and follow up - these two words essentially sum up what I have learned from my days as an employee, which has helped me become a better man in terms of achieving things.

In my relatively short career, I have had two jobs and held four different positions in them. As a young man fresh out of college, I wasn’t someone who had a bunch of ideas to bring in. On the contrary, I was a lazy bum who was scared to try anything new other than what was told to me. To be honest I was blown by the immensity of being in a workplace where your actions were accountable.

Taking Initiative by its Horns

But this wasn’t me, and so I didn’t feel comfortable working thus. No I didn’t quit my job because of that, rather I just started looking at my seniors and began studying them. And pretty soon, with their help I figured the catchphrase that lasted my entire tenure there. “Take initiative”. It is something we have taught and spread to everyone who was hired thereafter. And it is the biggest lesson I took home ever.

Fortunately for me, taking initiative wasn’t something that I had to strain with. Once I realized the whole idea of participation and taking lead, I realized how I have been doing it since I was a kid. The key was moving from taking responsibility to taking initiative. The difference is instead of being told, you take the onus of telling. This helped me a lot in my career and opened quite a few doors for me at my workplace to newer opportunities and experience.

I think, that is when the seed of entrepreneurship was sown in my mind. I suddenly became enterprising and I always believe this sense of initiative to be my guiding light in my ventures.

The Idea of Following Up

Following up, or rather the importance of it is something I learned recently at my current job. It sort of fits with the cycle, because follow up is essentially the second step to initiative. Your initiatives make a lot more meaning when it makes things happen. But as many of you might know, things don’t just happen by speaking about it, especially when it requires changes. You need to push and prod for the stone to roll. And that is where follow up comes in.

Many business deals and customers go because of our inertia, because we don’t do the follow up. Funny part is, most of us do know this well, but hardly do anything about it. I am certainly one of them. Not following up is procrastination and procrastination kills an entrepreneur.

Make that call again, talk to your colleagues about what happened of your suggestion, send mails to the new people you meet (note to self), send another mail to that top dog you want to connect with badly. Let them know you mean business and you are here for it (another note to self). Follow up.

Today is Teacher’s Day in my country, and I thought it appropriate to share what I have learned over the past couple of years with you today. If you ever find yourself in a situation where things seem stagnant, take a step back and look for these words, perhaps you were missing them.

And yeah, if there is something more we need to teach each other I think it should be world peace. So spread the word and love and perhaps this post as well.

Advertisement: GMATprepare 4 week guide to GMAT

He is running Blog Traffic Jump Start Project for the second time. Considering I am sort of renewing my relationship with most of you guys here, I added my name to and I think you should as well. Forget the traffic, or the readership you will get. It is the perfect place to find more people who are on the same page as you, and it would be wonderful to grow with them. I know what it feels like to grow with someone else, have done it before.

Go to this post. Comment. Subscribe. Can’t get easier than this. Oh yes wait, care a moment to visit the other blogs too, karma will catch up otherwise.

And to my friend’s who are coming through Michael’s blog, I am very pleased to see you guys here, I will come visiting yours over the weekend if you let me know who you are. Considering all of you are bloggers, you might like these posts here. Have fun.

Advertisement: Finance Jargon Guide to Finance & Investment

Now it is sort of stuff, if you have to juggle between responsibilities and usually results in absent minded mistakes and higher than usual levels of stress. A couple of such mistakes proved costly for me and I had to find a way to avoid this.

I guess the first and deal step would have been to flip a coin and make a choice between the two jobs. However, I wasn’t in a position to stop working at my job and that being a startup called for a little extra application in terms of hours as well. This obviously resulted in a little bit of neglect towards my business and I lost two possible client deals.

Time For Some Action

Needless to say, I had to correct the trend. So a little bit of reading and advice from some key guys and I set about with a plan. It has helped me till now, and hopefully might come in handy for you too if you find yourself in a similar position.

• Find a Partner

I have already spoken a bit about business in partnership and how you need someone who shares your vision. I think when you have a resource crunch of some sort and can’t give your 100% always, partnership is a healthier option to pursue. It also takes you out of an echo chamber when you have someone to share responsibilities with. It can also improve your performance in your day job when your mind is free of questions to worry about.

• Batch Process your Work

The biggest hassle about shuffling between jobs is the toll it takes on your productivity. And when you have multiple tasks to take care of it naturally calls for you to multi task (that was a corny line I know.. ). Off late I have been trying batching work into time phases and to be honest I find it extremely boring yet phenomenally effective. I particularly like Jonathan Field’s post on batching, read it and say hello to productivity.

• Sacrifice One of From Your Pleasure List

I am a big TV buff (My buffness is big not the television), and it resonates in my weekly list as perhaps the most time spent on an activity. I also like the good life with friends so a couple of movies every week and eat outs all form part of my very unhealthy lifestyle these days. Well I can say one thing for sure, none of these were going to make me a better entrepreneur, at least not for the amount of time I spent on them.

Success is not difficult to achieve really, from what I see, but you just need to find time for it. And when you have your days full of other stuff, it isn’t going to fit in. So what do we do? We chuck one of the ‘other stuff’ out of the window and fit in success. Voila!

Develop New Strengths

We often un-notice the hidden benefit a business can offer us. I mean, it has such a huge potential to be your backup for a mess. So make the most of it and begin experimenting with your job, (None like the Roflin way of working at your workplace). Try and develop new strengths at your current workplace which might come handy in your business, get out of your comfort zone and do things you hate doing.. I mean if you are doing something you rather not do, might as well do everything bad about it and give it its due.

• Connect the business

I don’t know if this is obvious from its title, but the point is to co-relate your business with what you are doing now. Your current job can very well be a marketplace for future business leads. Of course be smart and talk to your boss about it before you take any step. I am sure if he is an earnest businessman he will help you out, it is coded in our genes to help a fellow mate out.

That’s pretty much what I have learned handling my dual professional roles, it is anyway like I a wake up to a new challenge everyday, so maybe in another few months time I will have something different to add here.

I would like to know if you have any such experience yourself, and how you tackled it?