Does passion pay starting up vs taking a job

[Music]

a very good morning to all of you

i am very very excited to be here today

to talk about a topic that’s personally

very very close to me does passion pay

should you take up a job or start your

own company

this is a question most of us have

grappled with at some point

in our lifetimes but what really is

passion

passion is defined as a strong

enthusiasm or a desire towards something

specifically when it comes to our

careers it’s opposed to changing your

dreams

doing what you love following your heart

but does passion really pay

growing up we’ve all had a certain

notion of what life is supposed to be

we’re expected to study hard in school

so that we get into a good college

you’re expected to work hard in college

that you land a good job you then get

married you get set inside

it’s almost like our entire journey is

charted out for us before we even have a

chance to decide

whether or not that’s the life we want

for ourselves

but what if you’re not meant for that

kind of life what if we are meant for a

different path

no one really prepares you for a plan b

it almost as if there isn’t supposed to

be one

well here’s something that would cheer

you up even adults don’t have it all

figured out

growing up i was personally unsure

myself on what i wanted to do i took up

science in the 11th and the 12th because

i was a good kid

and a good student throughout my school

years i then switched to law

as my undergrad degree i did that for

five years

i then ended up doing journalism for

some time i switched to

advertising i learned tattooing for six

months went back to law for a year

and then successfully started my own

company eight years ago

there’s a lot of things that i have done

over the years as well

and throughout each and every one of

those things i was trying to figure out

what it is that i truly love doing

let’s start off with the first half of

the question right to job

or not to job i think that is a question

that a lot of you guys

listening in today would probably be

thinking of a lot of you have probably

sat for your first rounds of interviews

apply to all your dream companies hoping

to land that perfect job

some of you may have in fact even

applied to a couple of other safe

companies

just to make sure that you have

something at the end of the day after

you graduate

now before you actually decide whether

or not to take up that first job offer

and yes i know it is tempting to to make

sure that you do take up that first job

offer

um i think one of the mistakes that a

lot of people make

is that we end up choosing a job or we

end up taking an offer more from a

former feeling

right what if i don’t get another job

what if i reject this company today and

i want to apply to them tomorrow but i’m

not able to get it

so let me just take what i have in my

hand right now

i would urge each and every one of you

listening in today to actually take some

more time

before you actually finalize your job

there’s a lot of things that are very

very important for us to actually

consider

yes your pay or your compensation is

very important

you are putting in your time you’re

putting your effort you’re putting your

resources and your bandwidth

and you want to make sure that you are

adequately compensated for it

yes it is important to work for a good

company that has brand value to your cd

because that will help you in your

career

but there’s a couple of other things

that we often don’t pay enough attention

to

it’s very important for us to actually

research on a company before we decide

to go ahead

and apply or go ahead and decide to take

up their job

research on your team these are people

you’re going to be spending a lot of

time with over the next couple of months

or years depending on how long you

actually stick with a job

research on your boss i cannot tell you

how important it is

for you to know exactly who you’re going

to be working with who you’re going to

report to

a great boss is someone who will

actually teach you a lot if someone will

actually help your career progress

unfortunately if you’re stuck with the

boss that you don’t get in love with or

things don’t work out it could be the

most

it could be the most it could be the

least fun part of your life

most importantly research on the work

culture different organizations have

very very different working styles

life in a startup is very very different

from life in an organized

larger organization when you are working

at a startup it’s extremely fast-paced

there are new things there are new

challenges

every single day there’s a lot of

decisions that will come directly on to

you

and it’s an ever-changing and

viral organization you have more systems

more processes more structures

in place and it’s a very very different

sort of work lifestyle

i would also recommend reaching out to

people on linkedin

people who are working at their

organization people who have been with

their organization previously and

understand from them

how their company works what the

expectations are

this is something that i tell every

single person i interview right there

are too many mondays that you’re going

to have

in your life don’t do something where

you wake up every

single monday hating what you’re doing

and hoping for something else

make sure that whatever you do you’re

happy doing you’re sure of what you are

doing

and it will make sure that you actually

enjoy every single aspect

of your job coming back to my journey

as i mentioned that i have done a bunch

of things i studied law i studied

science i’ve also done a whole host of

internships and jobs now although i

didn’t realize it

at that time all the various things that

i was doing have actually helped

me get to where i am today and they’ve

actually had a much much bigger impact

on my life today than i probably even

gave it credit for

earlier the one thing that remained

constant whether i did law or science or

journalism or advertising

or any other thing was that i gave my

200

to every single thing i made sure that

no matter what i was learning something

new every single day

and even if i did not continue with this

specific field or this internship or

this job for a very very long time

i took out something valuable from this

so that i felt like

my time was actually utilized well i’ll

give you a couple of examples from my

journey

journalism definitely helped me improve

my writing skills

when you’re working with tv and radio as

i was for bbc

every single word you write every single

word you speak

is a paramount importance everything

that you do

say eventually is worth its weight in

gold these writing skills have helped me

tremendously even today

whether is writing an email is reaching

out to someone on linkedin

or even preparing a pitch at my

advertising job

i actually started off because i was i

loved copywriting i found it to be a lot

of fun

and i was actually pushed into client

servicing and negotiation

now to be very honest when that happened

to me it wasn’t something that i was too

keen on doing it’s something i

personally didn’t enjoy

but it’s probably the single most

important skill that i use today on a

day-to-day basis

no matter what job you’re in no matter

what company you’re working for

client negotiations and client servicing

are two skills that you’re going to use

directly or indirectly almost on a

day-to-day basis

the third and probably my most favorite

example is tattooing

now i’m guessing you guys are wondering

what i probably learned

in those six months tattooing that i use

at my

startup today right let me tell you this

when you are tattooing you have zero

room for error

zero room the amount of attention to

detail that goes

into tattooing is probably incomparable

or second to none with any other thing

that i have done

i used to actually spend six days a week

at the tattoo parlor that i did work

with

learning and improving out of those six

days we had to spend

one entire day every week that’s about

10 or 11 hours

continuously at the stretch every week

just cleaning the equipment

honestly it’s probably one of the most

boring

the mind numbing things that you can do

at that time i actually found it very

very

boring it’s something that i did not

enjoy doing at all

but when you are forced to do the same

thing again and again

for 10 or 11 hours at a stretch and you

have to make sure that every piece of

equipment that you are working on

is 100 sanitized and clean and ready to

use

you actually understand the importance

of hard work of attention to detail

and being completely thorough with

everything you do no matter how small no

matter how big

this is probably one of the most

important lessons that i have learned

in my journey which i use every single

day at work

and it’s something that i try to

inculcate in every single team member

so i know that’s a lot of yeah there’s a

lot of life advice a lot of do’s and

don’ts for each of you guys so let’s

discuss something a little more fun

something a little more light-hearted

let’s talk about unicorns

unicorns are the internet’s favorite

animal probably the most discussed

animal on social media and probably the

most celebrated world in the startup

space

here’s a fun fact about unicorns in

india we have more than 50

000 startups as on today and by the end

of 2021 we expect to have about 50

unicorns

that’s less than one unicorn for every

thousand startups

in the country here’s one more fun fact

about startups

over 90 percent of startups failed

90 i was actually a good kid and a good

student throughout school and college

but 90

is a lot more than i actually got in my

board exam

what we often see when it comes to

startups is the glamorous site the

billion dollar evaluations the founder

exits the ipos

the success stories but there’s a whole

lot more that actually goes

into starting and selling off your own

organization

there’s a lot of hard work there’s a lot

of struggles there’s a lot of setbacks a

lot of failures

and unfortunately this is not something

we give enough importance to and it’s

not something that we discuss

often enough i think it’s important for

us to all realize that starting your own

organization is not a 100 meter sprint

starting your own organization is more

like a marathon

it takes dedication it takes persistence

it takes stubbornness

day in and day out non-stop 24 hours

it’s not something that’s easy it’s

probably not something that everyone’s

cup of tea

i’m not here to discourage you i’m just

here to tell you what the actual

truth is however there are two things

that can actually help you succeed

when you are planning to start your own

organization and will give you a greater

chance of success

firstly your partners your co-founders

these are people you have to choose very

very wisely

think of it like you’re getting into a

marriage with these people you’re going

to be spending

almost your entire day almost your

entire time

or entire waking time with your

co-founders these are people you need to

trust

these are people who have to have your

back you’re going to have a lot of bad

days

at your organization you’re going to

have times when you’re feeling low

you’re going to have times when you’re

doubting yourself when you are doubting

your own opinions and your own

perspective

it’s very very important to have people

on board who you can trust blindly

people who you know are there for you

people who will basically help pull you

up

during those staff days and people who

can collectively take your vision and

your idea and as she grows into

something much

much bigger the second most important

thing

that will determine or that will

determine to a large extent

where

every startup every organization every

company

is only as good as its team i know this

sounds cliche but let me give you an

example

when we started our organization about

seven or eight years ago

the first five or six people that

actually joined our organization as the

first five or six team members

are with us even today each of these

people put their faith in an

organization that was just starting off

they weren’t really sure on whether they

would actually make it this far

to be honest even we weren’t sure

whether we would make it this far

when we hired those people even we took

a bit of a gamble because none of them

had any previous experience

this was the first job that all of them

were doing some of them did not have

very strong academic background either

i am very proud to say today that each

of these five or six people

is still with us each of them is

managing their own team of 20 20 40 50

people

and from all the successes that we’ve

had as an organization from all the

milestones that we’ve achieved

this is probably one of the stats and

one of the highlights that gives me more

satisfaction personally

as a founder if i have to sum up my

entire startup journey and i know it’s

been a long journey

but if i can somehow sum it up into

three learnings or three pieces of

advice

it would probably be this the first most

important thing

is that every starter founder’s job

every starter founder’s role

can be defined in three simple words get

it done as a starter founder you’re

going to face a lot of issues on a daily

basis

it’s very easy to blame other people

it’s very easy to point fingers

it’s very easy to make excuses for why

something didn’t happen

it doesn’t matter as a startup founder

you are expected to lead the way

as a startup founder you are expected to

get the job done

we firstly packed orders we want your

customer calls we’ve delivered products

we’ve set up our warehouse on our own

because we wanted to save some money on

gabe of course

we pretty much done everything from

start to finish when it came to starting

our own organization

because we did not have the luxury of

giving it to someone else

and as a startup you will realize very

very early on that in your early days

you are your sales person you are your

marketing person you are your customer

care person you are your hr

you are every single thing and more

because you do not have the privilege or

the luxury of having a larger team to

actually take care of these things

secondly everything is figure out

let me repeat that everything is figure

out

except for rocket science nothing is

rocket science

yes you will face new challenges and new

problems every single day

some of these you will be prepared for

most of these you will not be prepared

for

more often than not you will have

failures more often than not

things will not go as per plan what will

actually help determine whether or not

you’re able to pull through is the

mindset with which you approach work

every single day if you are in that

frame of mind that no matter what

challenges i face today no matter what

issues i face today

i am going to work hard i’m going to

make sure that i find the situation and

i take my company forward

as long as you have that mindset there’s

a much greater chance of you succeeding

than not the third piece of advice that

i’d like to give when it comes to

starting your own organization

and this is probably something that’s

firstly closest to me is that 99

right is 100 wrong

99 right is 100 wrong

good enough is not good enough as a

startup founder

every single shortcut that you take not

only directly impacts you

but also impacts your co-founders your

team and the organization

as a whole as a co-founder you are

responsible for

each and every one of the people in your

organization and

indirectly even their families it is

very very important for every sata

founder to understand the responsibility

that comes

with starting their own organization the

responsibility that comes with being

responsible for the entire team and make

sure that you do not settle for less

you have to inculcate that culture in

yourself and in your entire team from

day one that unless you are 200

satisfied with the quality of work with

the output of work it is not okay

you do it again you do it again you do

it again no matter what

but you make sure that every piece of

work that you put out there is 100

exactly how you want it to be especially

as

starter founders it is very very

important to make sure that that work

culture and that work ethics absence

from the beginning

itself now we’ve spoken about jobs we’ve

spoken

please i’m sorry so we’ve spoken about

getting a job

we’ve spoken about starting your own

organization let’s go back to our

question

what makes sense right does passions

really pay

a handful of people probably graduate

from college

and start their own organization almost

immediately and they succeed

these people are the exception not the

rule

what i would personally recommend to

every single person listening

in today is the job first take your time

learn someone else’s experience this

will use the time

and the bandwidth to actually work on

your idea to talk to people

to understand the viability and the

feasibility what this will also help you

with is to understand how companies

actually function

how do people build teams how do people

manage teams how do people lead teams

it’s also very very important to

understand that while your startup will

be based on whatever product or service

or idea it is that you are selling

there’s a lot of other things that you

will also need to learn on the go as

a co-founder spending time at someone

else’s expense developing your idea

gives you that flexibility

it gives you that question is also very

very important for people to spend that

time earning some money

and having a backup in testing this new

account

so my personal advice to all of you will

be do not rush into starting your own

organization

yes you may have a great idea yes you

would be very very confident that this

idea could potentially solve problems

for a lot of people

but your idea is only one percent of

your challenge

execution is 99 so make sure that when

you are

when you are planning to start your own

organization you are a lot more prepared

to end this this talk it’s been eight

years since

i started my own organization and i’ve

just gotten my first ted talk

the moral of the story is work hard get

some experience

make sure that you’re putting your 200

into every single thing

that you do most importantly make sure

that you are giving

yourself every chance of success when

you actually decide to start your own

company

if you can actually manage to do these

things i am very very confident that

each of you

at some point in the future will be

giving your first debt off

to a new set of college students who are

embarking on their career

and who are taking their first step into

the big bad conflict

thank you