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