Not giving up when things get tough, is a skill that can be learned by anyone. Here are some of the ways:
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1. Focus on daily efforts rather than the outcomes: many times we pick up large audacious goals which take a long time to achieve. In such situation, thinking of the outcome might make you feel intimidated because the outcome is far into the future.
So, instead of focusing on the outcome, focus on the daily efforts that you need to put in, to reach a step closer. A great book on this topic is 'Atomic Habits' by James Clear.
2. Believe in the process: if you know that working hard will help you succeed, keep working hard.
If you know that not eating unhealthy food will help you lose weight, stay away from unhealthy food. You may not get immediate results and that's fine. Believe in the process and keep executing.
3. Make the journey enjoyable: this is especially important for goals where the outcome is far into the future. Find ways to make every day enjoyable. For instance, when I started Cogno AI, I had big professional and personal goals and I knew that it's going to be a long journey.
To make every day enjoyable, I ensured that I myself focused on things that I enjoyed and hired/outsourced for the rest.
4. Surround yourself with the best people: the best people will never give up and so, they can't see others giving up.
They'll help you stay motivated so that you don't give up too.
5. Read about the journey of others who were in the similar path: this could be books, videos, podcasts, etc. I personally watch a lot of YouTube videos of other founders who have made it big.
In many of these videos, they talk about their lowest points in business and how they handled it and are successful today. Learning about their journey gives me motivation and mental strength to not give up.
What do you do to keep yourself motivated and not give up on your goals?
Strategy is one of the most abused words in Entrepreneurship. Founders keep glorifying it, having no idea what it is and how to build the right strategy for their Business.
Having built a multi-million dollar revenue Business, here are my learnings on strategy (thread ๐งต๐)
1. Strategy is not the 100 things that you can potentially do. Strategy is the 98 things that you decide not to do, and the 2 things that you eventually decide to focus on.
2. Most entrepreneurs try their hands on 10 different things in parallel and they end up being mediocre at all of these 10 things. That's bad strategy.
3. When someone suffers from headache or a minor bruise, who do you take them to? A General Physician.
He told that with their current product line, they'd be able to reach a revenue of roughly Rs. 350 crores per year.
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But from there, if they have to go to Rs. 1,000 crores of annual revenues, they'd have to expand to service business lines, like opening Salons, etc.
I found it very interesting and I thought 'which other startups have expanded to service business beyond a certain scale?'
And I came up with several names
1. Nykaa started with e-commerce and D2C but later opened Nykaa stores 2. Unacademy and PW (PhysicsWallah) started with online platform but is now getting into coaching centers 3. Pepperfry started with e-commerce but later opened shopping stores
Someone asked me on Quora - What are the things that wealthy people know that ordinary people do not know?
Here is my answer:
A friend of my mentor was a multi-millionaire. Let's call him JT.
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JT had an extremely successful career as the Chief Investment Officer of a leading Asset Management Firm. I got a chance to meet JT once. JT told me an interesting story.
JT had a childhood friend called Uday.
JT told that Uday, JT, and others used to play cricket on a nearby field. Because Uday was the youngest member of that group, he always used to lose the match because others were more experienced. So Uday figured out a strategy. He played until everyone used to get exhausted.