Success is a proportion of Failure(experience)

In April my team had planned an event in which we were to get about 20 odd people, into a conference room, showcase some of our products/services and have dinner and cocktails. Suddenly about an hour before the start of the event we started having rain. Typically when it starts raining in Delhi, the traffic almost comes to a standstill. Soon we realised, where we were expecting 20 odd people only 3 came. The event was a big flop show.

Now we could look at this as a failure of my team and the marketing agency we had engaged, for doing the event, because they were supposed to ensure the attendance of people in the event. We were dejected but that is the way life is – you never know when it will “rain on your parade”.

Similarly one of my sales team members had all his sales numbers structured with one customer primarily. Now unfortunately, last year, this customer did not have a very good year for closing of deals for themselves and hence they were not able to outsource business to us. But this year, after all the losses this person had last year, he seems to be on “boom time”

Life is a long game and you have to play it in such a manner. In most cases, in this long game, you will lose more often that you will win. That’s what makes winning pleasurable. The key is to play enough games. Lose them, learn from them – gain experience and move on to the Next game. If you keep brooding on your failures, you will never be able to succeed. Once you learn from the failure, you will keep eliminating all those points which could cause something to fail. That is what experience is all about. Being prepared to ensure that the same points don’t cause a failure again.

Success in my view is a proportion of the total games played and the number of failures (experiences) had. I do feel bad on losing a deal , but I also immediately get ready to look at the next deal to close. If you are leading a sales team, the biggest worry you need to have is the number of deals that you are fighting for – not the deals you have lost.

If the number is large, then there is absolutely no way that you can’t win in the long term. However if you don’t have enough (enough is a subjective term but you should at least have 4 proposals to crack one deal on average) proposals going out on a regular basis (especially if you are in B2B) then you can rest assured there is no magic that will take place to get you to achieve your numbers.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t need to learn and get better, the more you learn from your experiences and the more you take coaching the better you can get so that you can raise the amount (revenue realisation by being able to sale either more quantity or higher value items) of business you get for the same number of proposals given.

So go out, meet prospects, give enough proposals, if things don’t work out, learn from them and. then move on to the Next.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Choosing your investment based on your aspirations

Financial Independence, Goals, investment, money

I have written earlier in most of my posts on your financial freedom that you should choose to use the investment to get life experiences.

Today I was watching ETNow Swadesh. Its a business channel in India. I am always looking out for pieces of wisdom from people who are much smarter than me. So there was an interview going on with Sunil Subramaniam. He is the CEO of one the Sundaram Asset Management (Mutual Fund)company which runs mutual funds.

While everyone talks about creating buckets for different life goals while making the investments and choosing the type of investments. He came up with a unique logic which is more attributable to people who live in developing countries like India. Our currency on an average depreciates by about 5% every year with respect to the US dollar.

So in case your aspiration list is about visiting multiple countries, like mine is, his logic is, to invest in global funds where the depreciation of your local currency will not have an impact. Otherwise your buying power falls by that amount compared to the USD.

If you are in the US/Canada/Eurozone/UK then this logic will not be of too much benefit to you because your currencies are typically pegged to the USD. But if you are from a developing nation and if its legal in your country, then you should look at this logic.

Since I practice what I preach, most of my investments happen as SIPs (Systematic Investment Plan) I need to figure out how this logic would work because as the currency depreciates, my ability to buy US stocks becomes weaker, so how are my returns going to be protected.

Till I figure that out.

Carpe Diem!!!

Financial Freedom – gain the experiences

charity, experiences, Financial Independence, investment, Karma, travel

I have written multiple times in different posts about how my father had an agenda to make us get different experiences to make us better human beings. Today is his birth anniversary and I thought of visiting his philosophy again.

My father wanted to ensure that both my brother and I had a more than our share of areas to excel. He was a self made man. Our grandfather had lost his job during India’s fight for freedom from the British rule. Being the eldest in the family he had the responsibility to ensure that the family stayed afloat and prospered. Eventually all the brothers and sisters actually turned out to be very good in their individual professions and retired and eventually left behind a great legacy.

My father always had this idea of “giving” in whatever form to help others. His view was that when you give, the world conspires to give you back multiple times over. If you have been following my blog then, my thoughts on the Karmic cycle come from there. Always do good in whatever way you can.

The other one, which I didn’t understand till much later in life was taking us to different parts of the world after he had finished showing us most of India. Each time you go to a new place and you see the historical sites, the way people move, the marvels of different cultures your mind tends to expand. All these experiences helped me get a much wider appreciation of different cultures in the world, which I found missing in most of my peers. That was one of the reasons, I could relate and do business with people in countries across all continents except maybe Latin America ( Visiting places especially to see the ruins of the Mayan and Aztec and other ancient civilisations in that continent is on my bucket list incidentally)

I have written a lot of times why you need to get financial freedom, so that you are no longer a slave of money. Money starts to work for you. This does not mean that you need to become a miser and only try to scrimp every piece to save. What is life if you don’t get the experiences that money can buy. You have to enjoy the journey, otherwise you will end up living an unfulfilled life.

Learn to put some money into investments that can periodically help you get to enjoy your life. For my father and me it has been travel to different places. If you like to go hiking, do that. If you like to go surfing, do that.

The money that works for you, should help you get experiences, which will make you happier, live longer with less disease.

Till next time then….target the experiences, not the outcomes.

Carpe Diem!!!

Financial freedom – expand your mind

Abundance, experiences, Financial Independence, Happiness

I have always had this opinion that you need to get new experiences and expand your mind. Once your mind expands, it does not go back to its old state.

Do you even remember that you used to crawl once upon a time. Today you will actually find it very difficult to crawl. But there was a time when walking was a dream, but when you learnt how to balance on your two feet, you quickly forgot what it was to be on your knees and hands crawling. That was because once your brain gets new experiences it expands its ability and tends to forget the old ones.

I got this ability to think for getting new experiences from my father. He was of the view that saving money for itself had no significance if you didn’t get new experiences. New experiences also make you happier and give you a feeling of abundance.

While some experiences you can get without spending too much money, for most of them you need to have the financial backing. That’s where investing helps. After a certain period of time, when the magic of compounding starts to come into play, you need to take out money to sponsor these experiences.

Once the mind starts expanding it also gets the ability to think better. Then you are also in a position to think how you can increase your income further and invest more to earn even more and expand your mind even further. This becomes a virtuous cycle.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!