How I Decided to Add Zing to My Business Travels and Make Them Interesting.
One of the better decisions that I have taken is to make my business trips to other cities be worth it. Usually, I fly in the morning, finish my meeting or my talk and fly out that night. It’s very….err..umm…businesslike and banal. So, I made two resolutions that added the much needed mojo into my travel.
1) I decided that I will meet up with interesting people in each city I visit. This is where my Podcasts, Kiruba.TV (Podcast with Achievers) , Digital PowWow (Social Media Podcast) and First Book (Podcast with Authors) comes in handy. I always have someone interesting people to reach out to.
2) I decided to add at-least an extra day to my itinerary to visit interesting and offbeat places in the city.
Here’s to more travel, visiting more interesting people and places!
The Inspiring Story of Abhay Deshpande: How a CEO Made a Successful Exit Inspite of Every VC Turning Him Down!
As part of the continuing series of ‘StartUp Summits’ that I’m privileged to host across multiple cities in association with IAMAI & Google, I came across one speaker that caught my attention. At the Hyderabad edition, Abhay Deshpande, the founder CEO of MartJack, spoke about his entrepreneurial journey.
Quite honestly, until then I hadn’t heard either of the company or its founder. Few things that immediately caught my attention even before Abhay stepped on the stage. He had successfully sold his company and in his own words for “a significantly sizeable amount”. Now, that’s an important credential. An entrepreneur who has made good money. People were now ready to hear his story.
Abhay spoke less about his successful exit but more about his struggles as an entpreneur and his leader. He has this amazing down-to-the-ground attitude that makes him very endearing to the audience. The one story that still stays fresh in my mind is that huge dissappointment he faced when a large Ecommerce company (am guessing Amazon) pulled out of a US$50 Million buyout at the last minute. He was saying that many of the staff were eagerly awaiting the bounty and even started to scout for fancy apartments and cars to buy. But went the deal failed, there was huge dissappointment and the morale was low. He spoke about how as a leader one should shirk aside the loss and put on a brave face because everybody else looks upto the leader.
Abhay was also very candid in telling how he miserably failed raisng money from the VCs but raised US$7 Million seed capital from over 85 small investors. He proudly said that every single one of them made good money in the end.
Over lunch, I asked him about his future plans. His reply was to soak in the victory. The last 12 years was only about struggle and hardwork and he said he was particularly guilty of not taking his family out on a vacation. That’s on top of his priority.
Thank you, Abhay, for inspiring a whole new generation of entrepreneurs.
Interview with Sue Knight on the Relevance of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming)
Sue Knight is an International NLP Trainer, Business Consultant, speaker and a author. Her best-selling book ‘NLP at Work’ sold over 100,00 copies worldwide. She runs open programmes leading to certification in NLP in the UK, France, India and Australia. In this podcast, I ask her questions on why and how NLP is relevant to us.
CEO of AirBnB Talks About the Beauty of Hosting
An excellent keynote by Brian Chesky, CEO of AirBnB on the benefits of hosting people at your home. He explains lucidly…
Posted by Kiruba Shankar on Thursday, 10 December 2015