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