Best Time to Start a Company

Don't wait. Here are six  reasons to launch a venture today.

Now that you know my belief that starting a company is your best hope.....

1. You're young

The best time to start a company is when you are young. The younger, the better. Youth is a beautiful thing. It's the perfect combination of ignorance and innocence. Stupid decisions are excused as learning experiences and the worst outcome of most youthful transgressions is a few days in worse, going broke.

I believe  that it's easier to pour your life into a company when you're young, creative, fresh, and fired up.

I've never met an entrepreneur who said, "Wow, I wish I hadn't started so young." The world is full of regrets and one of the main ones is from entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs lamenting that they didn't start off earlier.

2. You're miserable at work

Life is too short to sit behind a desk and be miserable. Show me someone who makes a million dollars a year but hates his job and I'll show you an unhappy guy. Show me someone who makes a tenth of that and I'll show you someone who is 10 times as unhappy.

I've always believed that misery loves company for a reason. Look inside any company and you'll find a boatload of misery, the best fuel to start your own company. We grow up rebelling against our parents. Many grow companies to rebel against former bosses.

Use your nights, weekends, and lunch breaks to form your ideas and network and start laying the groundwork for your eventual prison break. And when you're confident you're on to something, jump. I assure you that you'll never look back, even if all you have at the end is less money in the bank and a learning experience.

3. You're out of work

There's nothing like a good ol' fashion layoff to turn you from a worker into an owner. It shocks and beats the comfort out of you. It's a mini death forcing the least introspective to examine all aspects of their lives.

Let's be clear, everyone who is laid off should not start a business. But a layoff is a great catalyst if you're already thinking about making the move.

When you're fired or let go, many fall into the trap of focusing energy on the people who "wronged" you. Just the opposite. Look at the firing as a blessing in disguise and motivation to reevaluate your life. Put everything on the table—new opportunities you have been ignoring, industries you're interested, and starting your own gig. 

4. You have no responsibilities

Start-ups and life responsibilities are often inversely related, if not mutually exclusive. The more responsibilities you have, the less likely it is that you will start a business.

While age and responsibilities are often related, they aren't always.  So start a company when you have the time and the energy and the freedom to do so. Don't wait until it's too late and you're trapped by a mortgage, private school tuition bills, and annual family vacations that you need to fund.

Providing for others and keeping up with a lifestyle you've grown accustomed to makes it hard to start companies, especially for the first-time entrepreneur. If you are single, married without kids, or thinking about getting married and starting a family—and considering jumping on the entrepreneurial train, do it now before you decide that it's just too late.

5. You have an incurable obsession

Our great country was founded on the idea that anyone with an idea can strike it big

Starting a company is the hardest thing you will ever do professionally. It's you versus the world. And the world wins 90% of the time.

Start a company after you sit on your idea for a while—and you can't get it out of your head. You're obsessed. You're incurable. No matter how much you try not to think about the business, it keeps coming back. You start working on the idea during all your free time. You can't stop talking to friends and family about it. And you feel like you will never forgive yourself if you don't take a chance.

This incurable obsession must be consistent over an extended period of at least three months. Let it sit. Let it settle. And don't confuse it with the entrepreneurial seizure, a more temporary excitement that will wane if you give yourself time to really think about the idea.

6. Do it today

You can try to pick the best time to start a business. When you are old, young, rich, poor, fat, thin, with hair or balding. But any attempt to do so won't make you more or less likely to succeed. Entrepreneurs come in all sizes, shapes, ages and colors. And, believe it or not, our country doesn't have a monopoly on business creation.

Great businesses have been created in times of prosperity. Great businesses have been started when we the country was facing its darkest hours and the entrepreneur was at her lowest low.

If you're reading this story, you're interested in starting your own business. And if you are reading to the end (yes, you! I'm talking about you!), you're about to jump and seriously consider it. Why else would you read 1,500 words about a topic you weren't passionate about?

So let me make it simple for you—the best time to start a business is TODAY. Not tomorrow. Not in two weeks. Not after you get promoted, pregnant, married, or your MBA. TODAY! You're not getting any younger. Your life is not getting any simpler. 

See that cliff in front of you that you're scared to go over? Run up to it once again. But this time, actually jump. What you will find below is the life you wanted to live and all you need to do is get over the fear that's keeping you back.

To see more about how I decided to start my first company rather than take a job, and how fear is getting in your way, check out my talk from late last year.

Rakesh Navaneethakrishnan

Steve Jobs on Changing the World

Steve Jobs with Beard.

How to Create the Thoughts You Want

All of us have started accepting the fact that ‘thoughts create our world.’ While it is an exciting revelation for some, this awareness is making life miserable for some others, as they are unable to control negative or destructive thoughts and create positive and creative thoughts.

• Be conscious. You should be conscious of your thoughts. Every moment one thought or other will pass through your brain. Don’t try to control them in this phase as that may lead to stress. Just be conscious

• Pause. Whenever you become conscious of a negative thought passing through your brain, just pause that thought. You can even visualize as if there is a ‘pause’ button some where near to your right ear and just press that button and pause the thought!

• Replay. Replay that thought in your mind. Suppose the thought was ‘I don’t think I will win this contract,’ just replay that thought again in your brain. Here also you can visualize a ‘Play ‘ button next to the ‘pause’ button!

• Ask. While the thought is ‘paused,’ ask yourself, ‘Is this what I want?’ You will get an answer from your brain ‘NO.’

• Explore. Ask yourself, ‘what is that I want?’ Then the brain will say, ‘In fact I want the contract to be won.’

• Reframe. Reframe the need statement in the present tense as mind operates in the present. You can reframe this as “I am winning the contract, come what may,”

• Play. Now you press the ‘Play’ button and hear the sound “I am winning the contract, come what may.” Replay this statement again and again and again. While you are driving to the client’s office to sign that contract, let this statement be played continuously in your brain.

The Entrepreneurial Lessons

RAMAYANA

10. Make sure you have a clear vision and cause

Ravana’s brother Vibhishan, who had come to Rama’s side questioned him, “How will you defeat this huge army with your limited resources?” The reply which Rama gave is the greatest lesson ever for a leader. He said, “You have to make sure you have a clear vision, and a cause worth fighting for.” In the case of Ramayana, Rama’s cause was to rescue his beloved Sita and the vision was to defeat the evil forces.

9. 4 foremost ingredients of Entrepreneurship: Character, Courage, Ethics, Valor

Rama told to Vibhishan that the four wheels of the chariot are character, courage, ethics, and valor. Character is the most essential thing for a leader. As an entrepreneur, you must know who you are and what you stand for and communicate the same to your people through actions rather than words. Leadership and respect doesn’t come from a business card. It is the ethics, the value system you embody that does the needful. Courage is the ability to take unpopular decisions, while valor is the courage to defend those very decisions.

8. Be a storehouse of strength, energy, and passion

Rama said that the horses of the chariot are strength, energy, and passion. In a battle and so in your entrepreneurial venture, you must have the strength to discriminate between the right and wrong, and the zeal and perseverance to keep working towards your goal.

7. Brand is bigger than the "owner" of the brand

A big challenge on the way to Lanka was to cross the southern sea. People suggested inscribing the name “Rama” on the stone and then throwing it. Surprisingly it worked and a construction of the bridge started by monkeys ‘Nal’ and ‘Neel’. After sometime Rama decided to help and he threw a stone in the ocean. To everyone’s amazement, it sank. Everyone realized that it happened because the stone was not inscribed with “Rama”

Lord Rama was confident that he does not need to use his "brand" as he was THE "brand" and tried to repeat the magic. But it did not work. It was not "branded" with "Rama".

This explains that a brand is always bigger than the owner of the brand. An entrepreneur should feel good when people recognize him by the name his company.  He should feel happy that his brand is becoming bigger than him.

6. Be armed with knowledge, strategy, intelligence, skills, commitment

These are the weapons that helped Rama win the mammoth battle and would help you in this exciting and demanding journey. Rama said to his army before entering into the battle, “Arm yourself with these and no war will be lost.” After the battle, his army—the group of men and monkeys defeated the heavily equipped Ravana and his forces.

5. Consult subordinates on important matters and allow them to give their opinions freely

When Vibhishan defected, Rama took him under his protection. He then had a talk with the various army chiefs some of whom disagreed with Rama. Instead of punishing them, Rama got them to accept his decision. Everybody felt that their opinions had been heard and that their objections had been clarified. Empowerment of subordinates to question his decisions was a key and unique quality of Rama which contrasted with Ravana who never allowed anybody to contradict him.

4. Treat everyone equally

Rama was a prince who interacted freely with the people. Rama did not have any biases regarding developing relationships with people of a lower social status. Thus he accepted the hospitality of the chief of the fisher folk and allied with the forest tribes who were out of the light of normal society. In fact, Rama gave them positions of equality. This was not only due to the war conditions since he maintained the same relationship when he won the war. Not surprisingly, he received great loyalty from all.

3. Stand courageously in the face of great adversity

Following Sita's kidnap, Rama wandered poor and ruined in the forests searching for Sita. The Ramayana is full of touching details of Rama's sadness and his memory of Sita. Yet this grief did not prevent him from searching for partners even when the enemy was unknown. Rama maintained his courage even at the darkest hours and in doing so inspired his army to not only continue the unequal fight, but also win it.

2. Have a future oriented plan

The objective of Rama was future oriented. He was ordered to stay away from Ayodhya for 14 years in a forest. This long term actions gave Rama enough time to plan, organize resource and strike against Ravana at an apt time so that mission could be completed without failure.

1. Follow a code of ethics and be ready to sacrifice to follow it

Rama brought ethical decision making in all areas of his life. There are many leaders who make a sacrifice once in order to build credibility and then use it to make unethical decisions later relying on the knowledge that their initial sacrifice would make them immune to attacks. When Ravana paraded to battle on the first day without sufficient preparations and was rendered weaponless by Rama, he was allowed to return to his fort because Rama followed the code of loyalty that an unarmed enemy should not be attacked.

Courtesy Siliconi magazine

Questions That Create Success

Ask yourself these on a daily basis.

Think that success means making lots of money?  Think again.

Pictures of dead presidents have never made anybody happy. And how can you be successful if you're not happy? And buying things with that all money isn't much better. A new car, for instance, might tickle your fancy for a day or two–but pride of ownership is temporary.

Real success comes from the quality of your relationships and the emotions that you experience each day. 

That's where these questions come in.

Ask them at the end of each day and I absolutely guarantee that you'll become more successful. 

Here they are:

1. Have I made certain that those I love feel loved?

2. Have I done something today that improved the world?

3. Have I conditioned my body to be more strong flexible and resilient?

4. Have I reviewed and honed my plans for the future?

5. Have I acted in private with the same integrity I exhibit in public?

6. Have I avoided unkind words and deeds?

7. Have I accomplished something worthwhile?

8. Have I helped someone less fortunate?

9. Have I collected some wonderful memories?

10. Have I felt grateful for the incredible gift of being alive?

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