When I was a child a teacher asked me, ‘Who inspired me?’ I said, ‘Mother Teresa’. I had no clue why I said that, and I did not really mean it. To be very true, I said Mother Teresa was my inspiration because every other child in my class said the same thing. No doubt Mother Teresa was one of the people who inspired me, because she worked on creating a social culture by serving society. This nature of hers motivated people to help each other and live together. But did I really mean it when I said this person inspired me and why?
The question ‘Who inspires you and why?’ is directly related to your life’s decision of what you want to be or achieve in life.
During my schooling, I was not involved in too many extracurricular activities like my fellow classmates. I didn’t realize how important it was.
Participating in extracurricular activities exposes children to find their real interests and brings confidence in them. It helps them in learning new skills such as being a team player by participating in sports, and a confident speaker while participating in plays, debates and so on. Extracurricular activities proceed further in helping children to choose their career paths.
After completing my school education in India, I was still unclear about what I wanted to do in life. So I moved to Scotland for higher studies. I decided to pursue International Hospitality Management from a reputed university in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Spoon-feeding is a culture in India where children are spoon-fed by teachers in educational institutes and by their parents or elders at home. This spoon-feeding culture of imparting education makes children so reliable on their teachers and parents that they stop to think themselves. This makes a child’s brain slow as the child is not able to use his/her brain for creativity, brainstorming or imagining. Spoon-feeding becomes a habit and enslaves children and adults alike. People wait for someone to give them answers to their questions or solutions to their problems without them having to think.
Shortly after enrolling in the university, I realised that I was also the victim of spoon-feeding and decided to break that old habit. This was the start of becoming independent, as there was no one to take care of me. I had to take care of myself, grow my skills and think about the future.
But when a person starts taking care of himself/herself, that is when he/she realizes, “WHO AM I? WHAT DO I WANT TO DO IN LIFE?” and “WHAT ARE MY INTERESTS THAT I WANT TO CARRY ALONG FOR FUTURE?”
During my tenure at the university, I became independent in taking care of myself, but I was still at the same stage where I was when I first came to study abroad. I was still figuring out what to do in life. What was that something I would love to do every day? Time was flying. During my first year, I wanted to leave the university, because I was not gaining much from the studies. It could be because I didn’t have anything worthwhile to do or an idea to work on. And with a blink of an eye, the duration of my course at the university came to an end.
To keep my search going, I took a job in Edinburgh and later moved to London for better work prospects, while still searching for ‘that’ something I would want to do in life. As I had a lot of time after work and fitness activities (I almost never missed workout as I was a fitness freak), I started reading business case studies to see if I could think some innovative ways that could help that business grow more.
I studied these businesses in detail and thought about how I would run them and what innovation I could bring in. I specifically started traveling on virgin trains, bought iPhone and began using different services of different businesses to know their business processes, so that I could find areas of innovation and improvement.
As I was searching for my calling, I thought let’s choose something that I loved doing and take it forward till I find something more interesting. I could see only two options — fitness and accounting. I decided to pursue Chartered Accountancy (I met one person through friends who guided me on the whole process here in the UK) while engaging in fitness activities.
I made myself more disciplined as now I had four main priorities:
- Successfully completing Chartered Accountancy (CA)
- Keeping myself fit and healthy
- Studying more business case studies, analyzing them and thinking about ways to improve the businesses using innovative ideas and strategies
- Gaining work experience in a tax advisory firm
During this time, I realized and learned the power of discipline, and how by being disciplined, you could make the most of your time.
Surprisingly, another activity became a part of my life that was ‘reading’. As Barack Obama said, ‘Reading is the gateway skill that makes all learning possible’. I never took reading seriously during schooling. I wish reading was my habit since childhood. During this time, my reading was limited to academic books, business case studies and sometimes news. When I got into reading these case studies, different topics began to interest me. So I made a few filters on what I would read and when I would read.
‘Startup’ was the topics that came into the picture —build something from scratch, which could help people in changing their life. I started reading about startups that had grown into billion-dollar companies, such as Apple, Tesla, Amazon and others. People talked about Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and others, and I loved to learn more about them. I began reading about these entrepreneurs and their business ventures. I never got bored of reading and more I read, more I learned. How they did it, what innovations did they do, why did they fail, why did they succeed and what learning’s we could take from their entrepreneur journey. I got so engrossed in learning about the whole startup culture that I felt like meeting the founders to know how they were running their startups and how they planned to grow the startups.
I had never been so much interested in anything in life as much I got interested in exploring startups. But I still didn’t have any idea on how to implement my learnings. I thought to push myself on improving my daily productivity as now I had five main activities to do. The fifth was reading about startups and authors, such as Peter Thiel, Paul Graham and many more. Until this time, I was thinking from a business point of view on improving the businesses, and not about becoming an entrepreneur.
An entrepreneur is someone who not just thinks about improvements and innovations in the business processes, but also tries his/her best to bring a revolutionary change in the industry and society.
After completing Chartered Accountancy, I was more excited about running my own startup than becoming a Chartered Accountant. It made me think about why I didn’t have a reading habit since a young age. If I had a reading habit during my university days, then I would have started working on an idea and executed that.
I read about Steve Jobs and I was like this guy is a real dude. Look at this how he made other people think about the future, created a team of hustlers and designed products that brought a change in this society. Once, I was in a conference where a person asked me, ‘Anuj, who inspires you the most?’ I suddenly answered, ‘Steve Jobs’ and in my heart I knew why.
After the conference that was just before the Christmas holidays, I went home and thought for hours about the times when I did not have a true answer to who or what inspired me. At that time, I couldn’t find anything that I loved. In fact, till I completed my Chartered Accountancy, I had no real idea about what interested me, something on which I could confidently speak for hours.
It is like when you realize your true interest or passion, you begin to take inspiration from the people who have done great work in the areas of your interest, and how they have changed the industry you want to work in and create an impact on the society.
I had met a couple of people who appreciate Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Jeff Bezos for the insane amount of money they have and not because they created something valuable for people and society, which changed how people live today.
I am not saying that money should not be a motivation, money helps you pay for the food, housing, bills and other basic needs. But if you prioritize money over passion, values and life’s purpose, you would be moving towards short term benefits rather than creating valuable products for the long term. Simply, having a goal to earn money via following your passion will prevent you from building something valuable that can improve people’s lives and solve real-life problems.
To build my knowledge in the startup field, I started meeting many startup founders and one of them I luckily met was Gurbaksh Chahal (This guy was a kid when he made a million $ company). I attended relevant conferences and startup meetups to meet entrepreneurs. I also became a regular visitor of Google and Facebook offices in London to meet their in-house startup founders and learn from them. To make learning fun and effective, I engaged in the barter system with the startups. The startup founders would trade their knowledge related to building a team, running business operations and technological growth strategies in exchange of my accounting and tax services for their firms. After learning to climb the ropes of running a startup, I came back to India to bring my new-found passion into reality by founding my own startup.
I think a culture can be created where children are given freedom in terms of thinking and following the heart. One way, it can be done is by instilling the habit of reading to educate children from a young age. This way, they will be able to find what they feel passionate about and what deeply interests them. So, when children are asked what they want to be when they grow up, they can say what appeals to them, rather than saying a doctor or engineer because their parents, relatives, classmates or friends say so.
I think I was late in realizing what I wanted to do in life. Finally, I found my passion of becoming an entrepreneur and building a startup. However, if I could have realized that when I was sixteen or eighteen, then it would have been better. Life is short. Either you run behind money, store it and when you die, it loses its value, or you try your best to make a dent in the universe and create a legacy. I choose the latter. If I fail, at least, I would not regret that I didn’t try. In fact, I would have already failed if I didn’t start and try.
That is my story of how I found my inspiration and took entrepreneurship as a journey.
