- Dr S Chakraborty

Entrepreneurs or self employed persons are slowly but surely getting the respect that they deserve for choosing the path less travelled and I am sure just like  rest of India, islanders will also see young people with audacious ideas capturing the attention and imagination  of the society. Yes it sounds glamorous and fun but the journey that every entrepreneur embarks on, is far from that. As an entrepreneur myself, I must confess the road to fame and success is tough with lots of insecurity and criticism thrown in, one has to to brave the storm and move on.  Here I would like to present some qualities that I feel, a entrepreneur must have to achieve, what he is set out for;

1) You must be emotionally invested in your project completely.  You should have the passion and must feel stongly about it or else its very difficult to withstand the ups and down of any project.

You will realize soon that money just like a drug, fails to give the kick that you always need to have sustained enthusiasm. Only innate interest and total emotional involvement will give you the endless supply of energy to carry on and on. 

2) Don’t chase somebody else dream.  Instead of having a herd mentality and just doing what everybody else are doing, have your own unique project and give it all you have got. Do you want to be a stinking rich but unhappy and unsatisfied person or a relatively well off person with a great sense of fulfilment because of a unique product?

3) Constraints inspire creativity. All success stories started from constraints right from facebook, twitter, apple etc. So don’t give up your million dollar idea just because you don’t have much money. Persevere with it and things will happen.

4) Your first idea need not be always the best idea. So never mind about your previous failed ventures. Harness your experiences from that and start afresh. And yes you can always call yourself a serial entrepreneur rather than a person with past failures.

5) Get yourself a high altitude view of your project. Review it periodically so that mid course correction if needed, could be done and desired outcome could be manufactured. Never leave your project on auto pilot mode once it took off or else it will derail.

6) Completely immerse yourself in the project to the point of no return. Don’t have a escape plan or else 100% commitment and absolute creativity won’t come. On seeing a mightier and bigger enemy, a king once ordered to burn all its boat so that nobody including him can think of backtracking. Needless to say, he conquered.

7) To succeed spectacularly, you must be prepared to fail spectacularly as well. So practice DWAVANDWA, a Sanskrit word which means alike in success and failure. Can you conclude from Dhoni’s expression, whether he has lost or won? If you are very much pleased with success then failure will also hurt you more.

8) Every success story is backed up by a good team of committed workers with shared values and principles. Cultivate a culture of leadership in your organization so that you have more heads to get ideas from. Henry Ford of Ford motors once famously said; take away all my factories and wealth but just give me my team. I can make all the factories again.

9) Get yourself a rhino skin. Criticism will come thick and fast more often than applause. So don’t lose sight of your end product, shrug off the flies and march on.

10) Past performance does not guarantee future results; never mind your past success or reputation, every day you have got to crush your ego and start with a zero.

It must be a win win deal for you and for yor service user or else it won’t stand the test of time. Never try to make a quick buck at somebody’s expense. You will face the same music, its just a matter of time.