Aditya Kothadiya’s Blog

Their temperament for stress craving

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneur

I recently talked to one of my friends who is a co-founder of a web startup. He is one of the most passionate persons that I know. He has taken bold steps and high risks in his life to dive into his dream activity – starting his own startup. When I tried to understand how he took so much risk, all I could see is – his craving to work on exciting stuff in challenging and stressful environment. He is one of those rare kinds of species, who hates the slow routine at the job life. Yes, it sounds weird, but he loves crisis and stress, and he performs his best during such situations. For such human kinds, excitement is the key thing.

The tales they tell – of climbing crumbling rock faces, of steering kayaks swamped in rapids, of starting businesses that nearly collapsed – might make you wonder if the prospect of failure thrills them even more than the promise of success.

It seems that for such kind of people, the risk taking process is far more rewarding than achieving success in the end. Though it sounds irrational, I think such people enjoy tragedy situations more than the victory moments.

Entrepreneurs are also very known for such excitement-craving temperaments. They prefer challenging and crisis situations than smooth businesses days. I recently read this in a book called – The Innovation Paradox –

Research on entrepreneurial attitudes suggests that orderly settings cause these risk takers more pain than the chaotic ones. “We’ve days when it’s kind of smooth,” the owner of food manufacturing company told Inc. magazine, “but those are not my greatest days.” The founder of a restaurant chain concurred. “My eyes light up when I hear of a crisis,” he said.

I think there are such people who thrive in the midst of chaos and loose focus when things are going smoothly. Such risk taking entrepreneurs don’t just cope up well with tremendous stress of starting their own startup, but they crave for it.

Note: To read more articles from this series, please visit: What Makes Them Entrepreneurial?

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Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, Students, Recent Graduates.

When Sunil Bharti Mittal started in business more than 30 years ago in Ludhiana in Northern India, he borrowed $1,500 to make bicycle crankshafts. Today, he heads the $5 billion Bharti Group, whose flagship company, Bharti Airtel, is India’s largest mobile phone operator. Forbes magazine, which estimates Mittal’s net worth at some $11 billion, ranks him among Asia’s self-made billionaires.

Mittal spoke with India Knowledge@Wharton about the leadership and entrepreneurial lessons he has learned during his career.

Here are some key inspiring points that I would like to take away from this article –

Importance of partnerships

I realized very early on that you need to tie up with some large entities — much, much larger than yourself. From there on, we set up a string of partnerships, and they were all with very large companies, multi-billion dollar corporations.

Innovation is the real differentiator

And one of the theories that I’d built around my entrepreneurship was to do things that have not been done before. Because if you are competing with the big boys in areas where they are strong, there’s no chance for you to succeed.

Benefits of entrepreneurship

Tough, but as an entrepreneur you get trained on everything. You understand import policy, you know how customs work, you know excise laws. You practically learn to do everything yourself. You hit roadblocks, you have difficulties. I had to open my own LLC, take my own consignment, taking the material on trucks myself to the market. An entrepreneur gets a huge amount of experience.

It’s the speed stupid, not the perfection

I think, very clearly, we could have never claimed that we had more capital or better technologies, because everybody was buying the same technologies; GSM is a set standard. We couldn’t claim that we had massive brand or distinguishing strength in the market. The only thing that we needed on our side was speed, and we used that to great effect.

We were in the market ahead of competition. We brought new products on the market ahead of competition. We rolled out our networks. We begged, borrowed, stole, put things out. And while they were never near perfect, they were first. And that gave us, to my mind, a lot of advantage.

Our theory was: If you’re caught between speed and perfection, always choose speed, and perfection will follow. You never wait for perfect positioning, because in business you don’t have the time; especially if you’re small, you can’t do it.

Read the complete article here – Bharti Group’s Sunil Bharti Mittal on Lessons of Entrepreneurship and Leadership

Related articles about Startup and Entrepreneurship:
How to Start your Company and Keep Your Day Job
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36 Startup Tips

I am still doing some interesting stuff on Twitter
that I mentioned a few weeks ago – post random, but quite meaningful
thoughts in less than 140 characters. Here are my latest ones -

I think I should fail as much as possible so that I can learn as quickly as possible.

In the long run, who we truly are will be more important than who we appear to be.

Expressing what’s in my heart isn’t always easy for me, but sometimes I do take risks.

Sometimes I don’t care if I win or loose. But I care if I’m engaged & absorbed in my activity & there is intensity in my act.

Why those people who _appear_ to be successful usually don’t _feel_ the same way?

I’m tired of free and ugly stuff. Beautiful offering is better than free offering.

“Someone in Test is also doing something that is somewhat similar to whatever you are doing” – Yeah, Thanks for being so specific.

If you want to shoot the duck, then you have to shoot where the duck is going to be, not where the duck is.

Yeah, theoretically I should get everything right as planned. But hey, didn’t I say “theoretically”?

I think I’m smart enough to understand if you are “smart” or “over-smart”. Thank you!

Yeah right, you give me THREE BANANAS and I just give you a mango. I got it.

I get nervous when I don’t have any one of these – Passion, Strength, and Focus.

I hope you liked them. If you want to follow me on Twitter – here I am (http://twitter.com/adeologue).

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Random one-liner thoughts

Thoughts from Twitter

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, Students, Recent Graduates.
 
Background: Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in his book Winning With People.
 
I plan to cover each of his principle in this series.  Please read more principles here: Winning With People. 

John Maxwell’s “The Bedrock Principle“

Developing trust is like constructing a building. It takes time, and it must be done one piece at a time. As in construction, it’s much quicker and easier to tear something down than it is to build it up. But if the foundation is strong, there is a good chance that what is built upon it will stand. If you desire to build your trustworthiness — and as a result, your relationships — remember:

Trust begins with yourself. If you are not honest with yourself, you will not be capable of honesty with others. Self-deception is the enemy of relationships.

Trust cannot be compartmentalized. Many people today try to compartmentalize their lives. They believe that they can cut corners or compromise their values in one area of life and it won’t affect another area. But character doesn’t work that way. And neither does trust.

Trust works like a bank account. Mike Abrashoff, author of It’s Your Ship, states, “Trust is like a bank account — you have got to keep making deposits if you want it to grow. On occasion, things will go wrong, and you will have to make a withdrawal. Meanwhile, it is sitting in the bank earning interest.”

This is a solid advice for all young entrepreneurs and students who want to lead people and achieve something big in their career. In his book, On Becoming a Leader, Warren Bennis says,

Integrity is the basis of trust, which is not so much an ingredient of leadership as it is a product. It is the one quality that cannot be  acquired, but must be earned. It is given by co-workers and followers, and without it, the leader can’t function.

That can be said not only of leaders and followers, but also of all relationships. Think any successful relationship between husband & wife, between startup co-founders, or simply between friends – trust is the ultimate driver of all these successful relationships.

Philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not
the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual
inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else
believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.

Why
do many personal and business relationships fall apart? The reasons for
such breakdowns are many, but the cause that outweighs all others is broken trust.

I wish you have a trustful week ahead!

Related Articles:
Winning With People #11 – The Confrontation Principle
Winning With People #10 – The Number 10 Principle

Winning With People #9 – The Charisma Principle 

To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People.