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Your grades in college are not going to define your life.

The first company you work for is not going to define your life.

Your first pay package is not going to define your life.

Your life is going to be defined by the meaning you give to every phase of your life. Which may also mean – to look for the best even in the worst, or vice versa. Who you are is your life. What happens to you, isn’t.

Do you often feel that everyone is winning in their lives and you are the biggest loser out there?

Here is something that might help:

At 29, I was jobless and with no money.
I had just left my last startup, with no money and no direction.  

I remember watching “The Social Network”, Mark Zuckerberg setting up FaceBook, witnessing his success, and feeling shi**y about myself.

However, if there is ONE thing that I have learnt about life, it is: 

Everyone is running a different race.
In fact, we’re not even in a race.
We’re on our own paths.

Once you know this truth about life, you will hate your journey a little less. And win in unexpected ways you hadn’t seemed possible.

Find the colleague who saw you at your worst and still helped you perform better. 

Find the manager who saw you faltering and still chose to listen instead of scolding. 

Find the friend who saw your lowest points and still chose to support.

Find the partner who saw you through all this and still chose to love.

Find someone who saw you when you were not “successful” and still chose their presence with you as their success.

Sometimes, the only way to realize how far you have come, is to look back into the past. 

It often reminds you of the fact that while the days felt long, the years that followed were short.
The past, no matter how confusing, didn’t mean the future couldn’t be clearer. 

These were the exact emotions I went through, when I went back to Michigan State University in 2015, after dropping out of my PhD program in 2004. 

There was so much that had changed in those 11 years.
I went from being confused about my career to graduating from ISB, to working as a consultant to starting up.
Went from disappointing my parents to hopefully making them feel proud.
Went from being a kid, to being a parent to a kid. 

In 2004, life felt like a huge mountain to scale.
In 2015, it felt like a wonderfully long journey to travel. 

It is not about the year already gone by.
It is about the years still left.
You still have time. 

“Ankur, I am appearing for job interviews these days. And most of the time I falter because of my communication skills even though I know everything. 

How can I prepare myself better for interviews?”

I get asked this question a lot often from students appearing for interviews for internships, jobs, and even post-grad interviews.

If you are someone who also goes through the same, this is what would help:

1. Make a list of top 5 questions, you want to be really good at answering
These are usually the same questions that get asked in almost every interview. 

2. Video record the responses to these questions, EVERY DAY.
While recording, do not look at yourself on the screen. Look at the camera pinhole. Focus all your attention there. 

3. Play it back, in 2 separate modes
– Listen to the audio of the recording (do not watch the video). Make a note of all the things you want to improve upon. Pick them up the next day.
– Watch the video without the audio (mute the video). This is how the interviewer views you – your body language. Make a note of all the things you want to improve upon. Pick them up the next day. 

In just 30 days, you will not be able to recognize yourself!

It was my first ever job in life.
I had just come back from the US after dropping out of my PhD. And the first thing I did was look for a job, because I really needed to earn money.
Thankfully, a dear friend referred me to a job at her current company. After a series of interviews, I made it to the final round, where I was asked (much to my surprise) what my salary expectations were.
I had never worked before. I didn’t even know if this was an allowed question.
How does it matter what my expectations are? You must have a budget, no? So just give me that! Because I am starting from zero!

Anyway, the role did come to me. And I was now earning 15K per month, which was frankly more money than I ever thought I would make.
I was to join the R&D team for a corporate training company. We were to get a mandate from a client around a training need (say, sales training for on-ground sales team), research about it extensively, and then develop the training curriculum that would be imparted via our trainers.

It was a lot of fun.
First job.
Lots of research and writing.
Smart people.
Money.

Life was really good for the first 2-3 months.
And then came the big one!
One of India’s biggest FMCG companies wanted us to design a sales training program for their field staff. These were individuals who most likely did not even have a college degree and their job was to go to every possible shop in their area and make sure they were ordering the products of the company.
And we had to train them how to do it best.

I was given the project.
And I had NO IDEA where to even begin!
Forget everything else, I was surprised that the team of the largest FMCG company required training. Shouldn’t they be training the others? I mean, what do they not know that we can tell them? What can I tell them?

So I spent the next one week, trying to get the answer. I went on “beats” – which are sales trips during the day, for these sales folks. I just observed them. Their mannerisms, their conduct, their selling skills, their morale, what they tracked, how they recorded.
I did this in Delhi, in Meerut, in Agra, in Ahmedabad.
And boy, was I surprised?

Some of them were SO GOOD.
And some of them were visibly bad!
And that is when I understood the need for this sales training – it was to elevate the average. To make the not-so-good learn from the good and even a small difference per person will add up to a big difference for the company.

The training programs we used to design until then were PPTs with exercises. The usual training program that you would have experienced as well.
And I was sure that this crowd would hate that.
Imagine, not even going to college, spending your day moving from shop to shop, selling purely on relationships and now made to sit through boring PPTs with font 14 text on it!

I love movies.
Have I told you all this before?
I LOVE movies.
Not every movie.
The good ones. But I love the idea of a movie. Of stories, summarized in 1-3 hours.

So what I decided to do was to create a movie.
A day in the life of Ramesh.
Ramesh was my hero. My Shah Rukh Khan.
He was the best performing sales guy in the company.
And I decided to chronicle his day, from start to finish.
How he got up and made a plan for the day.
How he kept a record of his sales.
How he approached the shopkeepers.
How he formed a connect.
How he handled objections.
Everything that I had learnt observing the best folks in my sales trip, was part of Ramesh’s world.
And I used PPT to make that movie. Because I knew nothing else.
For a week, I worked 16+ hours, creating a movie on PPT, using animations.
It was exhausting. BUT SO MUCH FUN!

I was convinced it would work.
And it did.
It was loved by the client.
And by the sales teams I was trying to help.
I was suddenly a hero.
I was Ramesh :))

But then, something weird began to happen.
I began to get a LOT of such work.
And a LOT of other work as well.
And back then, I did not know how to say no.
So I said yes, and was instantly burdened.
I was working crazy hours, clearly not doing a great job of my work either and was still getting a lot of work.
And I could see my peers chilling. I mean, relatively chilling.
It felt that some people’s work had been taken from them and given to me.
I just couldn’t understand this!
Was I not supposed to be the one who does quality work? Why am I being made to do quantity work now?

Frustrated, I set up a meeting with my manager.
I was livid.
I couldn’t quit because I needed the money.
But I wanted to make sure she heard my anger and frustration.

The meeting started and I vented. And vented. Blaming everybody, including the Prime Minister of India!
She listened patiently.
When I was done, she took off her glasses and said:
“Good people pay a far higher price for being good than bad people pay for being bad.”

Sorry what?
Did you just dump some motivational garbage on me?

She continued:
“Ankur. The world is selfish. It just wants what it wants. So when it finds people who are good with what they do, the world decides not to risk it any further. And begins to give ALL the work to those good people, while taking it away from the bad ones. So, if you find yourself overworked, it is because people know you can do it. They wouldn’t trust anybody else, except you.”

“So, you have 2 choices in life. Be good with your work and thus get a lot of work. Or suck at your work and not get any work. What do you want to choose?”

That day and this.
I have never forgotten her words.

So, the next time someone comes up to you and says “I have a new project for you” realize that they are giving it to you because they believe you can do it.
Else they would have given to someone else who could have done it!

Only responsible people are given more responsibilities.

?

Don’t get comfortable!

Don’t stop working hard once you have gotten that big break.
Don’t stop reading because you have had multiple good days.

Don’t stop working out because you have lost those extra 10 kgs.

The world is designed to make our lives comfortable. Avoiding the comfort trap is the difference between who you are and who you could have been.

Because it is only in pursuit of discomfort, that you truly become comfortable.

Here is a fun fact about success:
Success is made of 99% small things done on a daily basis.

You do not have to be immensely talented and gifted, in order to be successful at work and in life.
All you have to optimise for, is to show up and do the work every single day.
Even when it seems boring. Even when you don’t feel like it. 

The most successful people are basically successful at staying consistent. 

Consistency beats talent, natural gifts, and heck, it even beats luck. 

“Ankur, I am appearing for job interviews these days. And most of the time I falter because of my communication skills even though I know everything. 

How can I prepare myself better for interviews?”

I get asked this question a lot often from students appearing for interviews for internships, jobs, and even post-grad interviews.

If you are someone who also goes through the same, this is what would help:

1. Make a list of top 5 questions, you want to be really good at answering
These are usually the same questions that get asked in almost every interview. 

2. Video record the responses to these questions, EVERY DAY.
While recording, do not look at yourself on the screen. Look at the camera pinhole. Focus all your attention there. 

3. Play it back, in 2 separate modes
– Listen to the audio of the recording (do not watch the video). Make a note of all the things you want to improve upon. Pick them up the next day.
– Watch the video without the audio (mute the video). This is how the interviewer views you – your body language. Make a note of all the things you want to improve upon. Pick them up the next day. 

In just 30 days, you will not be able to recognize yourself! 

Interviews are hardly about selling yourself. If prepared well, they are about knowing yourself.

“There are times I feel I don’t want to live.”

“My mother’s dying. And I cannot do anything to help her.”

“Every morning I get up, I feel I would never be as good as my elder brother, whom my parents completely adore.”

As the founder of nearbuy, I started an initiative called “Lunch with warikoo” where I had lunch with a new colleague everyday. 

What I had expected was plain, simple feedback.
What I got instead was something I wasn’t ready for.

During almost every lunch, I felt I was not the CEO anymore. I was instead someone who they were openly sharing with, in the hope I was listening. Without judgement. Without any mockery. Without any bias. 

Here is what I learnt from 252 such lunches over 3 years:

1. When people told me their stories about what they have been through to get to that point that they were at, it left me humbled. Because I took those points for granted.
I recognized my privilege that I was blind to, so often. 

2. Leadership should not scale.
It should get HARDER for you to lead a bigger team and not easier.
Because people are people.
Not data points on an excel sheet. 

3. The best gift you can give someone is to listen without judgement.
We all have something to share.
But we may not have someone to share it with.
Become that someone, for someone. 

It is important for people to be heard.
To be seen.
To know that they matter, without offering solutions to their problems.