Recently, read this book: "Why I stopped wearing my sock" by Alok Kejriwal.
Wonderful read, about his business story. Autobiographical with nuggets of business wisdom.
Some takeways:
1. Ability to sell - higly important
You have to sell your product/service to your customers (for money or for making them just consumer your product)
You have to sell yourself and your company to attract talent/recruit
You have to sell yourself/company to your investors, creditors
You have to sell your product/service to crack deals with your partners, vendors and suppliers
Salesmanship is one critical thing in business
2. Recruitment
Keep a note of the people you interact with while doing business. Be it your vendors, suppliers, customers etc. Your next star employee might very well come from them.
3. Get started. Get going and start implementing. Too much time gets wasted in ideation and discussion and many brilliant ideas never get started or someone else will.
4. Enterpreneurship includes a good dosage of solving new things, being creative and innovative. It could be small business processes that you tweak. Could be connecting the dots. Innovatively setting up meetings with or pitching to potential clients. Solving a problem that everyone is facing with a different perspective. Doesn't just involve hard core research. Even simple things are waiting to be solved which can be a great value add for all.
5. While selling you got be shameless in a way. You can't be meek and reserved as an entrepreneur.
6. Always have an open mind and be on the lookout for opportunities. Multiple meetings with the same person might lead you to doing some new business/opportunities with that person.
7. Attend meetings, conferences etc. These are places where people network and chance upon interesting things. It is easy and convenient to brush it off saying the meeting/conference isn't of use to me, but you never know who you might meet rather than just sitting in the room and doing your routine job.
8. Public Speaking and Story Telling - Useful skills in live. Invest your time in honing these skills. Accept invitations when you get a chance to present to people. Story telling keeps your audience engaged.
9. Cultivate hobbies and have other interests in life. People like to interact with interesting people. Could help in business too.
10. Alok started in Water Transport / Socks business empire of his family. But then ventured out indepdendently into Tech business. He comes from a commerce background with no technology business background or educational qualifications whatsoever. Everything is possible withsteadfast focus, passion and commonsense.
11. Good VCs can not only bring capital but also their superior insights, strengh of network etc to help business. Some VCs can cause mini coups in companies to take over companies. There is good, bad and ugly here.
12. Listening is an art. Also a good way to sell is by observing the people you are intereacting with. Be very aware. Once, while discussing and trying to arrive at a value for Alok's company, the VC asked Alok about what number he had in mind. Alok just kept quiet. Even the VC kept quiet. The waiting game continued for a while. Finally the VC blurted out a number, which was much higer than Alok's valuation. So just by being quiet and not in a hurry to interrupt, he cracked a much better deal. Listen, observe and be aware.
Wonderful read, about his business story. Autobiographical with nuggets of business wisdom.
Some takeways:
1. Ability to sell - higly important
You have to sell your product/service to your customers (for money or for making them just consumer your product)
You have to sell yourself and your company to attract talent/recruit
You have to sell yourself/company to your investors, creditors
You have to sell your product/service to crack deals with your partners, vendors and suppliers
Salesmanship is one critical thing in business
2. Recruitment
Keep a note of the people you interact with while doing business. Be it your vendors, suppliers, customers etc. Your next star employee might very well come from them.
3. Get started. Get going and start implementing. Too much time gets wasted in ideation and discussion and many brilliant ideas never get started or someone else will.
4. Enterpreneurship includes a good dosage of solving new things, being creative and innovative. It could be small business processes that you tweak. Could be connecting the dots. Innovatively setting up meetings with or pitching to potential clients. Solving a problem that everyone is facing with a different perspective. Doesn't just involve hard core research. Even simple things are waiting to be solved which can be a great value add for all.
5. While selling you got be shameless in a way. You can't be meek and reserved as an entrepreneur.
6. Always have an open mind and be on the lookout for opportunities. Multiple meetings with the same person might lead you to doing some new business/opportunities with that person.
7. Attend meetings, conferences etc. These are places where people network and chance upon interesting things. It is easy and convenient to brush it off saying the meeting/conference isn't of use to me, but you never know who you might meet rather than just sitting in the room and doing your routine job.
8. Public Speaking and Story Telling - Useful skills in live. Invest your time in honing these skills. Accept invitations when you get a chance to present to people. Story telling keeps your audience engaged.
9. Cultivate hobbies and have other interests in life. People like to interact with interesting people. Could help in business too.
10. Alok started in Water Transport / Socks business empire of his family. But then ventured out indepdendently into Tech business. He comes from a commerce background with no technology business background or educational qualifications whatsoever. Everything is possible withsteadfast focus, passion and commonsense.
11. Good VCs can not only bring capital but also their superior insights, strengh of network etc to help business. Some VCs can cause mini coups in companies to take over companies. There is good, bad and ugly here.
12. Listening is an art. Also a good way to sell is by observing the people you are intereacting with. Be very aware. Once, while discussing and trying to arrive at a value for Alok's company, the VC asked Alok about what number he had in mind. Alok just kept quiet. Even the VC kept quiet. The waiting game continued for a while. Finally the VC blurted out a number, which was much higer than Alok's valuation. So just by being quiet and not in a hurry to interrupt, he cracked a much better deal. Listen, observe and be aware.
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