Lessons from boredom: What a typewriter taught me.

It was the summer of 1970 and I was back home from my boarding school in Pune.

Like all the others kids, I was thrilled to go back home for the summer holidays and had spent months visualizing and day dreaming of what I will do on the first day of my holiday. However after the first two weeks, I was bored with the sameness of my routine. I was craving something new, something different to do.

At about this time my father purchased at “Brother” typewriter for his hospital. Needless to say, getting access and learning to type became my full time occupation. Looking at my keen interest in the machine, my father enlisted me in a typewriting class, which he thought was a much better use of my time rather than lounging around the hospital the whole day and perhaps spoiling his brand new typewriter.

The classes were conducted every day during the morning hours. I was by far the youngest in my class. My classmates were mostly young men who were aspiring to be clerks in the govt. offices or young women typing away to be secretaries. Those days being a clerk was equivalent to getting an MBA degree these days. It was the shining star of your matrimonial advertisement. And being a secretary was a way to pass time until a suitable boy came along or their husbands came home.

I would sit amongst them typing away from a script till the late hours of the afternoon. While most struggled with their typing, I had managed to get a decent speed by the end of the third day. I guess this was mainly because of my proficiency in English, which enabled me to read the document and understand what I was typing. I was involved in what I was doing. I looked at myself and the work as an author would not with the mentality of a typist.  I was a mason not just laying a brick, but a mason who was building a building.

But then there is only that much typing a kid can do for days on end and soon enough I was bored out of this too. Having paid the fees in full I was however stuck here for the rest of the program duration. While the tutor lectured us from the front of the class and gave us plenty of typing work for practice I could not understand why all these people would ever want to be a clerk or a secretary. It seemed to me like such a boring job to me.

On one of those numerous long afternoon, after I had finished typing a particularly large document I looked upon my effort and something struck me. The neatly typed and bound document looked much better than in its original state. It suddenly dawned on me that the world does judge a cover by its book at least for the first time. Henceforth onwards, I made sure I perfected this art of presentation.

Years later, when I was working for my uncle as a postgraduate in 1981, whilst perusing my Law, I used the skills I had picked up when I had to make reports for him. My uncle was a CA and always had Bank loan applications to make for his clients, and he needed someone who understood the content and accordingly made the reports error free. Those days the concept of spell check or backspace didn’t exist. A word of ink on the paper was like a patthhar ki lakeer (a line on a stone). You had to retype the entire page again even for as small syntax, grammar or spelling error.

The pages would be typed by three different typing pools in three different locations. My job was to get the reports together and check them for errors and then retype the “bad page”. Once I had finished checking everything I would then place the papers in a proper order and make a contents page. Since the papers were typed in three different locations there were no page numbers, instead there used to be a circular stamp at the bottom of the page.

After putting the papers in order I would then have to painstakingly write the page number inside the circular stamp of each page and then send them forward for binding and wait with dread for my uncle to pass it. I used to hate it when I had to make copies of each report, since photocopying technology had not yet come in India, which meant that I then had to redo the entire exercise all over again.

Well, for those students out there who complain about writing long reports and projects, just stop cribbing and complaining!  You people have a less tedious job with Google and Microsoft word. Guys, always remember be do judge a book by its cover the first time.

I have used this lesson time and again whenever I went out to either sell my photo finishing services or my flat or the golf course!  And I’m sure there are many other areas apart from business where the art of presentation can do wonders.

Do you have any such experiences where the art of presentation has given you an edge? Do share in the comments.

Pehela Nasha, Pehela Khumar And My Pehela Akkal Khaata. (My first venture, My first high and My first lesson.)

“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.” -Rumi

They say that your first fall is always your best teacher.  And so was mine. My first attempt at Entrepreneurship was as a 11 year old boy who knew little of the world around him.  I had come home for my summer holidays, and like most boys my age found that I had an excess of time which God put in there for me to realize how much more fun school was!

Around the same time my father had just bought a small portable “Brother” typewriter that had just come out in the market. Being a loner and a dreamer, the type writer fascinated my imagination. In order to get to know this technology a little better I joined a type writing class, upon which I immediately found mundane as I had quickly understood it’s features.

Brother Tyewriter

Bored and nothing to do, I used to walk over to the cricket ground in the evenings where I would sometimes play cricket with my few friends in the village. Now I could tell you that I played brilliantly and that’s how I was inspired to be an entrepreneur but then that would be a lie. I was never really good at it because I had poor hand eye coordination and although I loved this game with all my heart, I always knew that I would never be a good cricketer. I was a dreamer, so I persuaded my father to buy me a Cricket Set and an expensive one at that. But once at the nets I realized that the prospect of facing a cricket ball (helmets didn’t exist those days!) was frightening!  I just would step away from every ball that came at me and soon realized that I’d rather do something else than look like a fool!

I was however aware of my strengths and my weaknesses, and this is where I decided to turn the tables to my benefit. Having learnt the art of presentation from my typewriting classes, I decided I would organize a cricket tournament. When I told my friends about it, they looked dumbfounded and seemed least interested in anything other than just playing cricket.

Not to be beaten down so easily, I decided I would be a sole proprietor and would single handedly organize the first cricket tournament in Daund.  Back then Daund was a small town with a bare population of 25,000 people, but it was however a major transit center, catering to a lot of floating population.

I announced a date and then worked backwards. Painstakingly, I made handmade posters using my father’s typewriter and then pasted them on any wall I could find. This was my first carpet bombing exercise.  I decided to charge a fee of Rs 50 per team to accept a form and I sold them at Rs 2/- per form, because there were no photocopying machines so every form had to be typed using 3 carbon papers. Within days I had enquiries and by the end of the second week I had about 21 teams participating.

Elated, I was on cloud nine. And this was my first lesson-when things are going good always be on your guard. In the joy of my initial success of registration I had forgotten to look at the minute details of my enterprise. Even a tiny chink in the armor can bring a kids world crashing down to its knees.

Although people had registered for the event, nobody had yet paid me a single paisa for the registration. I still had to get a ground to play the matches on, get the equipment and most importantly get people to come see the game! I was building castles in the air, like a lot of startups do. I should have built my foundations first.

I was two days away from the event and I still didn’t have anything that even remotely resembled a ground and no one would lend me their farm lands to play a game in! In the end out of sheer desperation I had to persuade the local Railways Assistant Engineer, to rent out their cricket ground “free” of cost. Not that it was much of a cricket ground, it could barely even qualify to be a playing ground. No grass, lots of pointed stones, ant hills and nothing that could even remotely resemble a pitch.

With just two days away, I had to buy, beg or borrow equipment to stop myself from becoming the town’s clown. I therefore approached my first investor, the Assistant Engineer to persuade him to lend me the railways mat. He gave me a hard time and called me fool hardy but relented after all.  The next day I announced that all the teams would have to get their own balls and bats and stumps would be provided by the organizer i.e. me.

By the end of the day I had finished all my pocket money and had to borrow Rs 150 from my father. I felt ashamed when I had to explain to him how I had managed to finish my month’s  pocket money in one day. This was my second most valuable lesson. I hadn’t planned the execution and had gone about the entire organizing in an ad hoc manner which caused me to lose all my valuable resource. A very important lesson for any startup- always plans ahead and plan for a B and C as well.

Being low on every possible resources, the umpires had to be volunteered free of cost. This meant that they were unreliable and would sometimes not turn up. By the second match I had to create a “stand by” team of umpires that consisted of just me. There were other things which I had not looked into at all and which at a further stage created quite a challenge. I had not bothered to frame the rules thinking that people would play fair.  I was dumbfounded when the tournament started and I noticed one player was playing for 2 teams at a time!

I don’t exactly remember what logic or explanation the boy gave at that time for this but until then I had not anticipated such an event to occur. I quickly took the help of a series of retired uncles who were the self-proclaimed arm chair cricket experts of this game in the town, called it an “expert committee” and literally passed the buck to them to take the tough decisions.

I still vividly remember the final match. As the match came towards its end the trophy had to be given, I had a motley crowd of about 1,000 people watching, jeering and cheering the winners and the losers. The Mayor of the town was the chief guest for the award ceremony. The man backed out at the last moment. I was crestfallen. I went to my father and pleaded with him to be the chief guest. Although he was a very busy doctor, looking at my earnestness he left all his work and accompanied me to the Mayors house and literally bullied him into coming for the function.

All in all that summer was one of my best class in the subject of entrepreneurship. It taught me lessons which have till date stuck with me. The following summer, I recounted my hard earned lessons and applied every one of them. I became choosy in the teams that I let participate, hired a treasurer who would make sure that the money was paid first and then the team names were registered and announced. That summer I had surplus of Rs 650/- and I returned my father his loan of the previous year. I also gave a cricket kit from the remaining Rs 500/- to the man of the match called Raju Ugale, who was as a talented boy.

My summer holidays had now become my learning grounds. I learnt that to be an entrepreneur one needs lots of enthusiasm, an ability to be blind to some of the obvious risks and that if you get too focused on the risks, you will be paralyzed into in action.

My biggest lesson I learnt was the lesson of leadership. From making the posters, to drawing the teams , from framing the laws to the appointment of neutral umpires, all became my head ache. Every twist and turn was unexpected. We had accidents, people breaking bones and getting hurt.   It was all about “ambiguity”. It was the first time in my life, I had handled ambiguity and I loved every minute of it.

On hindsight if I were to sum up all the lesson that I’ve learnt from that childhood experience and the ones which I still apply even to this day would be:

• There is boundless joy in working on your dreams and not just waiting for them to come true.
• Reward people who help. They want something, usually recognition in return. I should have called the Assistant Engineer of the Railways as the Chief Guest for his generosity.
• There is no joy like the joy of creation.
• There is no fear like the fear of failure yet there is no high like the high of having done something successfully.
• There is nothing more certain than uncertainty.
• The art of questioning and anticipating problems are skill sets every entrepreneur requires.
• The “game” is more important than the leader or the people who run it.
• People will always criticize you no matter how fair you are.
• The power of an idea is so great that it can move thousands of people to either join the dream or the dreamer. This I think is a lesson every entrepreneur must learn. He must have the ability to articulate his idea in a surreal dream, reachable yet challenging, satisfying yet full of ambiguity, the credit of success is every ones, the responsibility of failure is squarely on the shoulders of the Leader.
• People eventually respect you for your ability to convert ideas into reality.
• Be restless. Constantly. If there is too much certainty, you are heading for big time trouble!

How did I end up becoming an Entrepreneur?

I grew up in a small town near Pune called Daund. My father was the only Doctor of the town and had become a larger than life figure in the town because of his philanthropy. As a child I was extremely shy with low self-worth and had great fear of authority. I was a loner and hardly had any friends I could connect with.

I had one hobby that occupied all my waking hours as a child-reading fairy tales. I loved those vividly coloured books and would get lost in the world of justly Kings and beautiful Princesses and the poor boy who would in the end win the hand of a beautiful princess. It was always the victory of good over evil.

I had a world of my own, which I could create and change and modify, and make it colorful, make it smell beautifully, and imagine the princess as the most ethereal creature on earth. This is where my journey in entrepreneurship began-as a dreamer. To dream is so beautiful and limitless.

I do think all entrepreneurs have the power to dream and have vivid pictures of what they dream about. How many of you out there who have started their own ventures have started out like me? Or was it the opportunity that propelled you?

Do share.

Welcome to my blog!

 

Welcome to my blog and thank you for spending time here.

If you don’t know me or what I do and haven’t yet read my about me page then here is a brief on where I come from and what I do.

I’m a serial entrepreneur turned teacher/coach/mentor. Over my career spanning 3 decades, I have started three successful ventures and one not-for-profit Educational Institute-FLAME.

While at FLAME I taught Entrepreneurship and actively mentored the start-ups and students there.

This blog is an extension of the classroom learning and a platform for meaningful interaction and  exchange of knowledge and wisdom.

Hope you enjoy my coming posts and do contribute so that we both can benefit from this opportunity.