Failure are stepping stones to success

good evening everyone

um firstly i’d like to thank mount abu

school for giving me this opportunity to

come here

and listen to the fabulous speakers in

person

and i’m so inspired and i think it’s a

great opportunity for me to be here

so this red round circle it kind of

gives me

goosebumps but when i got to know that i

have to come here and give a talk

i kind of prepared 100 times maybe

but i failed because i excel in failing

so i made a pointer note which i’m going

to use which

none of you have because also because

i’m a chef i’m so used to

writing things and my recipes because

also i have so much to share with you

all

i’d like to begin with a question for

all you young kids

how many of you aspire to be a doctor

or an engineer

okay i have only three hands up how many

of you inspired to be a pilot

okay how many of you inspire

to be a hawaii frying jalebis

till the middle of your night so that

someone’s celebration

is going on point because of you

not a single hand that is where i come

into the picture

because we do a business of selling

mithai’s

just to ensure that each one of you are

celebrating

and we make your happiness as ours

that’s what we do for a living

so about me i come from a typically

punjabi

conservative family having two older

sisters

no work culture the girls have to get

married at a very very young age

you know and girls should cook

post-marriage and

typical indian family things however my

family’s been very supportive no two

doubts on that

i worked with my father for three years

he was a businessman

and i worked with him but i realized

that

you know a table job was not for me

while working in a professional kitchen

which is male dominated and having hours

like 6 a.m

12 p.m 1 p.m and going back home late

hours was not for them

so who do you think clearly won the

battle

that’s me i started my career when i was

24 as a home baker

i had to prove that i can actually cook

i had to break the traditional norms of

girls going out of the family and

cooking and doing something for a living

i started very late i started my

culinary education at 26 and that too

when i went to canada to study

and i came back and i took a first job

in a hotel bakery

and that was my real game changer

because until then i didn’t

have a sense of direction as to what i

want to do where i want to go

if i put myself on the other side of the

podium where you all are sitting

you guys must be thinking she is so

successful

she’s standing in front of us giving a

talk she must be so learned

i would think the same i i was thinking

the same all this while when i was there

when the other speakers were talking in

front of me

but i’ll give you the real facts i don’t

think i’m successful

firstly because success is a very very

big term

and honestly i’ve never seen anyone be

satisfied with it i’ve never seen anyone

be contended

saying i am successful for me

i am a bag full of failures with a heart

full of passion and a mind and a body

that hustles endlessly and fearlessly

i am chef nihalakhani also representing

shefashido parker

and our partnership and our journey

[Applause]

okay so what do you think is definition

of success

having 10 cars having a rolls-royce

having five factories having fame

what do you think success is for any one

of you

what makes you successful

please happiness

success is having a good night’s sleep

success is mental peace and growth

success is having time for dinner with

your family

every day success is having a great

team success is having one hour for your

body

every day and success is also

celebrating with friends

and family you know we sometimes get

so devoted in chasing our goals and

running and running and running we

forget

that how important little things are we

forget

what we should be actually spending time

for

we forget and we just keep running a

race and by the time you actually

realize

that what is success it’s very late

you’ll

realize you’ve lost age you’ve lost time

you’ve lost friends you’ve lost family

you’ve lost relationships you’ve lost

love

you’ve lost everything

but there must be something that you

will gain

while you were losing all of this side

by side

and while i was losing all of this side

by side

what was i gaining anyone

wisdom but in real facts i was gaining a

stronger me

a positive me i was making a team

i was building my brand i was learning

i was growing and most importantly i was

living my dream

but at the same time i was paying the

price of it

side by side side by side

you know a lot of us have dreams

everyone today evening has been talking

about dreams and achieving them

and setting your goals some of us have

goals

some of us don’t have goals but the

first step to success

is you have to start you have to start

because you cannot

bring a dream to life in your head

today why i feel i’m not successful

but i’m on the road to success because i

have started

i’ve dreamt of something i have bought

it to life

i’m working on it and that is my first

step to success not successful but first

step

and i feel when you start it’s half the

battle already won

so life gave me my first golden rule

that you have to start which i pass on

to you guys

that you also have to start start today

start writing things down because

when you write down you will realize

you’re changing as you write down one

thing you change you move to another

thing

so that is very important if you don’t

have a plan

you make one today and you start okay

so being a chef me and ashby both

we had one basic basic dream like if you

dream of

movies you want to be an actor if you

dream of playing football you want to be

a football player

if you dream of cricket you want to be a

cricketer being a chef we had a very

common

basic dream of having our own restaurant

how

big or how bad do you feel that is a

very generic generic dream i’d say

but we had no money we approached

investors

thinking we have a good skill someone

will invest in us

and someone will have the faith that we

will do it for them

first investor second investor third

investor

fourth investor we were failed by 28

investors we had no money we were

disappointed

we were broken we were depressed

we cried we howled we wasted two years

of our life finding that investor

i gained weight i gained 25 kilos of

weight to what you see me now

i lost a tv show a tv series because i

was fat

and because i was in the hustle of

chasing that restaurant saying that

thinking that’s the only thing i can do

in life because i can only cook

life gave me my rule number two you

are your own investor you don’t have to

wait for anyone to come put money on you

and let you build your dream

you have to do it yourself the day i

realize that

[Applause]

the day i realized that we changed our

plan we wrote our plan once again we

kept writing we kept writing we changed

it

we changed our plan from working in a

restaurant with an investor

to starting something of our own which

was the indian sweet

business as a chef we understand the

potential that our country has

the resources our country has so many

cultures so many cuisines

so many spices the beauty of ingredients

in our country i feel is infinite

we wanted to go back to the roots start

something

with indian mithai in a very

international format

and being creative people we did that

with a mind-breaking norm

we started our own business with very

little knowledge

like i said we wrote our plans again and

again and we started our business

okay we are very happy we started our

business what next

we didn’t have the money now how do we

get the money because we failed in an

investor already 28 times

coming out of depression saying feeling

because you know when you don’t achieve

something when you fail you feel you’re

not

capable of doing it however that’s not

the case you can’t

give up on yourself you can’t give up on

your own faith and your own dream

because if you do

how are you expecting someone else to

believe in that firstly

so that ideology never worked with us we

failed we got depressed

but we never gave up we stood more than

28 times to come back and do something

for ourselves

we didn’t have the money so now where do

we get the money from we approach the

banks the first person anybody thinks of

the bank said you don’t have collateral

like we can’t give you loans

okay we took some money from the family

we sold some assets

we took some unsecured loans at a very

high percentages for which we are still

paying the emis for

but we started we took that money little

that we have we started the business

now when we start the business we have

no knowledge and

while you’re running the business you

realize that

you’ve started it but you didn’t factor

in the operational expenses

you borrowed the x money you invested

the x money now how are you how are you

going to

function for your business so life gave

us our rule number three

you have to save you have to save

every penny that you earn i went back in

time and i realized i possess

more dresses than more balance in my

bank account

i possess more shoes than having and

money in my bank account which could

have

today given me what i wanted rather than

going to the bank

so for you all you need to start saving

today

out of your pocket money you save 100

bucks every month but you save today

because the day you will realize that

it’s a rainy day

that’s where you will have no money so

life’s lesson you have to save

now when i didn’t save and i started my

own business

how do i sustain it because i have no

savings i’ve exhausted the bank loans

already and i have emis to pay

rule number four always have multiple

sources of income

we started yet another company because

we realize we’ve now opened a business

but we are failing again because we

don’t have the money

so we started an alternative line of

business where we as chefs would consult

restaurants

so we would earn money from one place we

would feed our baby

that’s what we kept doing for two years

three years and

on and in the middle of all this

the pandemic happened so now when the

pandemic happened

you’re anyways struggling you’re in

crisis

every night you have a different plan

you have you have conversations what

should we shut down what should we do

should we close and you know

it’s very easy to close something it’s

very easy to break something you know

when you have a fight with a friend

it’s very easy to just say i’m never

going to speak to you again

when you get into a problem you say i’m

never going to look back at it

but what is the real real deal is you

have to stay at it

make that effort towards your friend to

talk to them so that’s what we were

trying to do

all this while make that effort to

sustain make that effort to pay the emis

make that effort

to last and thankfully we did

now the main thing that i feel

2020 taught us was the rule number five

that jack of all traits but master of

one a single-handed skill that any one

of you possesses is going to be your

life savior

for us it has been cooking to do them

but then came the most

important rule can anyone guess

embrace failure was the rule number six

you have to welcome failure with an open

arm because you’re going to fail

every day it might sound you like a gyan

but

you will realize in life failure becomes

your best friend

why don’t you ever leave your restaurant

even if she bothers you

because you love her because she’s a

part of you

slowly and slowly as you grow in life

you will realize failure and problems

are going to become your best friends

you have to embrace them you have to let

them

teach you you have to let them give you

what they have to give you

but at the same time you don’t have to

get scared of them you have to let them

be a part of your journey

and learn to live with them so many

times you have a fight with your mom

you don’t like it but do you leave her

no it’s the same thing with failure

failure is not going to leave you you’re

not going to leave failure you have to

learn how to step above it

and how to move forward

in fact you know why i was saying about

this red circle

every time we failed we made mental

notes

we would console each other me and asha

say you know

just then when i’m going to give write

my biography know when i’m going to give

a talk to someone

i’ll tell them everything someday

somebody will listen

to me that what happened i wanted

someone to hear my top story i wanted

someone to

listen that oh my god so much has

happened with me not realizing

so much is happening with everyone in

their lives but

you only think of yourself so i said you

know one fine day i will tell the world

one fine day i will tell the world

and today at this podium when i’m in

front of the world where i have the

opportunity to say anything that i want

to say

i don’t have those incidences in my head

and that

is what life does to you it makes you

positive that is what failure does to

you it take

it doesn’t give you the time to build on

negativity it brings you

out of it it brings you ahead of it so

i feel this for me is success that today

when i stand here i’m

a positive person i’m a stronger person

i may not have the money

but i have the strength and the

positivity to say that one fine day i

will make it and i won’t fail

so this for me is success this for me is

my journey to success

well until now i give you six rules

so for the rule number seven eight nine

ten and so on

i don’t have them because my learning is

only till this point

but i am going to wait for two decades

when i am sitting there

and one of you is on this podium giving

your tedx talk

and explaining all of us the rule number

seven eight nine

ten and eleven and that would be success

so for your journey i want to leave with

you guys

that you need to start you need to start

writing pointers

you need to buy that one little dress

less

you need to save money you need to spend

a little less on your girlfriend and you

need to save that money

so that one fine day when she is your

wife you have that money for the rainy

days

you need to remember that everyone has

problems and you you’re not

the only one you need to make use of

your opportunities today

because if you realize them late it’s no

point

you need to make a vision you need to

write your plan

you need to set an example for a lot of

other people who one day are going to

listen

to you and your tedx talk

but like i said i will wait for you 20

years down the line over there

but before i leave and as a last wish

list that i’ve always had

to share my earlier negativity but now

the positivity with you all

i will take two seconds and say that

what i want to say

i want to thank everything and every

person in our lives

who have led us to this point and made

us what we are

i would like to thank life for giving me

a blessed day

every day i would like to thank failure

for making us what we are today i would

like to thank time

for giving us wisdom patience and

positivity

i want to thank my family friends and

teachers for the utmost support

that they’ve given us and i want to

thank all those people who

failed us who failed us time and again

and who

now want to invest back with us we thank

you for discouraging us to bring us here

and last but not the least i want to

thank my partner ashay who’s not here

who couldn’t make it today for having my

back

and bringing our goals to life because

nobody

ever has achieved anything alone thank

you