Limitations are Accelerators

[Music]

[Applause]

richard buck

modern day mystic and writer says argue

for your limitations

and charlie enough they’re yours and i

couldn’t agree more

in my formative views my father always

used to tell me about the importance of

planning

and how planning is a very very powerful

tool

to achieve your objectives and he used

to plan for everything

be it planning for our vacations

planning for

his daily work and this really got into

me

so i started planning for everything

that i wanted to achieve

i made a five-year plan to impress my

crush i made a two-year plan to become

the most popular guy in school

and none of them worked so in 2015 when

i finally realized that i wanted to be

an entrepreneur

i sat down with my parents and made a

10-year plan

this 10-year plan looked something like

this i’d first do my graduation

then do my mba then work for five years

uh incorporate earn some money save save

some money and then finally

start my own company right and this plan

made a lot of logical sense for someone

coming from a middle class background uh

however in 2016 everything flipped

everything changed i was in 12th

standard at that point of time when my

mother was diagnosed with t-cell

lymphoma

it’s a form of cancer and we were

advised that she had

20 survival chance this

shook me up entirely i was unable to

motivate myself

towards the plan that i had set up for

myself

my grades stopped people around me

started to question me

and i really did not know what to do at

this point of time

but every now and then there was one

thing that was still motivating me

that was taking out some time to read

about entrepreneurship

so i asked myself a very quick crucial

question

do i really have to you know follow this

10-year plan

to become an entrepreneur and

i decided and promised myself that as

soon as i get into college which at that

point of time

looking very very difficult i’d focus to

become an entrepreneur

and so here i am having you know

becoming entrepreneur two years post

dance

incident instead of 10.

but 2016 as a new year made me realize

two very important things

one life is unpredictable it’s

really really difficult to create

long-term

plans that have a very high rate of

success

in fact i recently read somewhere that

strategic

plans are 67 percent likely to fail

that’s a big number

this further made me realize that

instead of trying to plan everything

the focus needs to be on the real

objective we often get so con

consumed by the plan and the plan often

ends up becoming the center of tension

wherein it’s only supposed to be a tool

and

not the main objective right

the second thing that i realized is that

limitations

can become stepping stones only and only

if

you are driven by that one thing that

you really want to achieve

right because that one thing will help

you

fight whatever is holding you back

and that’s exactly what entrepreneurship

did for me

that year so i devised a four-step plan

to counter any limitation that i i i’ll

face

now this four-step plan looks something

like this

and you guys can of course use it to

handle

and turn your limitations into

accelerators

step number one try and understand your

limitation

dig deep and see what it really is often

we are so

consumed by the circumstances that

we are not really able to see what the

limitation is about

and hence we are not able to adapt to

that limitation

step number two focus on that one thing

that you want to be

or that you want to achieve in the next

few years of your life

and let all the other distractions fade

away

when you do this that one thing will

become such a powerful motivator

that you won’t have to look at five

different things to motivate yourself

step number three try to put yourself in

a situation where you are

continuously forcing yourself to evolve

to improve try to become an infinite

learner

and this would only happen if you are

creating uh an

infinite learning loop right where

you are constantly and you know

very very frequently or in a situation

where if you don’t

learn you would be paying a big cost for

it

and step number four ensure that you are

not planning to ahead in the timeline

because planning long term is pretty

much like predicting the future

it’s very difficult to predict all the

uncertainties and externalities

that might come in so it’s very very

important to keep short plans

say between three to six months

now i’ll be sharing two instances or two

incidents where

i was able to use this this

process to turn my limitations into

accelerators

in 2018 when i started off met with my

first entrepreneurial venture

i faced all the problems that you know

first time entrepreneurs do

but one problem that really really you

know hit me hard

was the process of fundraising after

successfully launching the product and

getting a great response

you know i thought that fundraising is

going to be an easy exercise

however i face rejection after rejection

after rejection

uh i spoke to a lot of experts a lot of

people who suggested that it was my lack

of experience

that was really becoming an obstacle

that was really becoming a limitation

and i believed so at that point of time

but after introspecting a little bit

i realized that investors are not really

bothered that much about experience what

they are really looking for

is investing in you know people who

know their business who understand

entrepreneurship as a process

and if i’m able to do that i would be

able to take the next step forward

so i took up a challenge for myself that

i’m going to learn

something more about entrepreneurship on

a daily basis

but i knew that i had to create a loop

to keep myself

engaged in this activity on a continuous

basis

so i promised my team that on a daily

basis i would be sharing

some knowledge some experience

about entrepreneurship this made me go

back to on

go back to those books go back to this

podcast and learn something new on a

daily basis

furthermore i decided to take a lot of

free workshops

across colleges from delhi university

now each time i wanted to improve the

quality of my workshop

i had to go back read more increase my

knowledge

come back so i was stuck in a loop where

i was

compared to learn more and more and more

and more

and interestingly it was one of these

workshops

where you know someone who attended got

so impressed that

they eventually introduced us to our

first investors

so i think it’s all about understanding

that uh

when you look at this process it wasn’t

really

the lack of experience that was my

limitation

it was the lack of understanding lack of

knowledge about what entrepreneurship

really is that i had to work on

looking at the second step again it was

that drive

that i had to be an entrepreneur who

really adds value

that kept me going when things were not

working out for me

step three i was able to create a

successful learning

infinite learning loop which kept me

engaged

and i didn’t have to depend on

motivation all the time

to move forward and step four i

only had to had three to six months to

make this work anyway

because otherwise we wouldn’t have had

enough capital to continue

so this is how i was able to use

the limitations that were presented to

me and

use them as a launch pad to achieve what

i eventually wanted to

now talking about the second incident

this goes up to 2020

we were at a position where we were

planning to launch our

new product and uh we were in talks with

a lot of investors

and you know nobody expected with the

pandemic happened

and it really struck us hard

the investors that we were in talks with

either gave us very harsh terms

or completely backed off uh we

were also informed that delhi government

had ceased our second

fund release that was promised during

our first investment

suddenly we were in a position where we

had just a few months

to do something to pull out a rabbit

somehow

to ensure that we are able to survive

and sustain our business

again the problem here was not really

the pandemic or the circumstances

the problem here was lack of cash flow

it’s lack of capital

and i knew that if i was able to solve

for this

this problem this limitation we would be

able to sustain ourselves

so i observed that a lot of people at

that point of time during the pandemic

were facing difficulties in learning

skills

and getting the right opportunities for

which we admit we curated

a customized uh ex learning experience

for them where through

curated mentorship to help them

understand

uh you know how to learn things and how

to

connect with the right people from the

industry

so that that they are able to get the

relevant opportunities

now this uh initiative not only helped

us

increase our cash flows but also helped

us eventually launch our product

and then further raise a second round of

funding

again in this situation i followed the

same process the same model

out of all of these incidents what i’ve

really realized

is that life is really unpredictable

anything can happen to you

and there is no way whatsoever to be

always prepared

for a unique situation so i think it’s

very important to look at

small tiny crisp plants and try and

ensuring

that you are focused on the objective

and not the plants

and secondly change the way you look at

your limitations

don’t try to to focus too much on the

circumstances

find out what the real problem is and it

will really help you

look at how you can turn these

limitations

into your accelerators although i still

miss

the goa trip that never happened which

my father had planned for

on that note thank you so much for

giving me your time