Reading Books

I read a LOT of books and I probably will read more of them the next year and lots more the year after that! Until I no space left to store them at my home.. Now that I think of it, maybe I can rent out a space and make my library!

"Books are the best friends you can have" - said someone intelligent, I'd rather say - sometimes books can be the best mentors you can have. Out of the 200 to 300 titles that I own(cmon, I know 300 is small - but am just starting), most of these are business and self-development titles.

The best and the worst part of being an entrepreneur is that you are alone - you have to make the decisions for your company yourself. Most of the times they will not be as simple as "should I wear the brown lisptick today or the pink" - but the choices you make will affect your company and the people who work for you. More often than not, what you don't do costs more that what you do!

And if you are a first time entrepreneur like me - the best way to grow up is to read books. All the advice, mentorship, fundas, failed experiments, success stories,and heck ways to get new ideas too - all these are documented - as books. You just have to open one.


I agree that having a real mentor is awesome, but dude, some point in life you need to grow up. You have to be the person people can look upto. Don't wait to learn from your mistakes - learn as much and as fast as you can from others who have been there before you.

And if you tell yourself that you are too busy to read books - really? Really? If it a yes after the two previous 'reallys' then hope the universe gets everything right and perfectly laid out for you!

Before I finish off the post with some of my all time fav, I wanted to give you guys a sneakpeak of how I read. There is another saying "Some books are to be read, some to be chewed and digested" - funny but in a way true.

When I read a book, I always have a pencil/pen and underline the parts I like. So that when I want to quickly give the book a second time glance, I know what to read. Don't be scared to spoil the book - its yours! I also keep a notebook handy to note down ideas that I get when am reading - and trust me there will be lot of "OMG, that's an awesome idea. I can do that" - note them down.

Before this post gets awfully long - here are the books I love:
1. The Art of Start
2. Lean Startup
3. Rich Dad Poor Dad
4. Chicken Soup Series
5. Enchantement
6. One Minute Series
7. How To Get From Where You Are To Where You Wana Be

Do you read too? Let me know which ones are your favorites in the comments below!

My first interview!

Had my first interview today!
Nop, not the job ones, this one was for a magazine about entrepreneurs that Brand5 is making. Yaay!

Thanks to Abhishek and Prabhu for coming down. These guys are into marketing, making awesome things for startups (such as logo, website, stationary) and other cool stuff. Oh Oh.. hold on, they even have discounts for women entrepreneurs. How sweet is that.
Give them a look here.

What I learnt by being a shop keeper!

Lets Create Crafts participated in 4 exhibitions so far. 
Two of them went amazing, made profit enough to run the whole place for a few months, and the other two - were outright disgusting. -4 digit profits!
Was I Surprised - yes. Angry - yes. Cursed my stars - yes :). Lost faith in humanity - yes (laugh again!). Doubted if anyone ever will want my product again - Yes. Remembered my mom saying that business is tough and is not for me - Yes. Wanted to scream and go back - Yes.

Will I do it again.. - Hell Yes.

Though I had made negative sales, what I learnt from those 2 'failed' exhibitions was very valuable. Here are a few of those learnings:

1. It is DEFINITELY not luck
I met an uncle during one of those exhibitions - he basically was into advertizing for exhibitions, he collected numbers of women having stalls and gave them info on where the next exhibitions were held. He said "Stall lagana hamara kaam hai, sales kitne honge hamari kismat hai (Our work is to put up stalls, the kind of sales happening is our luck)"

Sorry. I don't think so.

I've learnt that homework is more important than the stall itself. You know your product - who will want your product, who can shell money for it and who won't.

Let me give you an example. If you are selling earrings which college kids would love (and buy) and you put a stall in a place where Marwari aunties constitute 90% of the crowd - on a weekday, dude you are going to have -ve sales and are going to feel pathetic about yourself at the end of two days. [I've mentioned Marwari aunties on purpose - I feel they have an awesome taste of dressing up and wearing jewelry - more than any other aunties I know - but there is only a specific type of jewelry they like and buy - yep, the one with American diamonds and those beautiful ethnic designs.. aah I love those!]

Ahem*, back to the blog.. So the next time you setup a stall, please do pray to god( it is very important) but also do a little (a lot of) research on the crowd that is expected to come in, if it is a weekday or weekend, the location of the stall, what the organizers are doing to promote the event, the type of newspapers they are giving ads in, almost EVERYTHING!

2.  If you don't love it - do it anyway - atleast once.
Exhibitions are the best way to interact with LOTS of people. Imagine that. Where else can you get a continuous stream of people coming in, who want to give a couple of seconds of eyeballs to your stall? Unless you are holding a recruitment event - no! You get to meet a lot of people - customers, people who do same thing as you, your prospective evangelists, people who think what you do is silly!, people who get inspired by what you do and want to participate - lot of them. 

So the next time I put a stall, I'd have lot of research behind it. And then guage the results. 
 

Do you really need the money?

It is amazing to see little kids fresh out of college wanting to become entrepreneurs, met loads of them at a recent startup saturday that I had pitched at. 

After chatting with a few of them, a pattern I observed the most was:
1. I need money to startup.
2. I will put forth the best product(s) I can make, then people will come.

No and No.

Let me explain. You might have setout to make something really different, but this is what I learnt from my first service based startup - LetsCreateCrafts

1. You don't need money to startup - atleast not loads of it - not even the amount you have in mind right now. No.

Startups are all about value. 
There will always be someone who you can give value to (your initial customers) and someone who you can take value from (your initial sellers). These transactions need not be huge, start with smaller amounts of money. People are good. Period. There will always be someone who is willing to help you.
Plus, you don't need a plush office space, you don't need that Fast-track watch, you don't need that shopping trip. Rule - anything that you are not dying without(sorry for being so blunt)  or something that is not stopping your work - need not be purchased. 
Trust me when I say this. It can wait. Buy them from your 'assets'.
Good book to read - Rich Dad Poor Dad - by Robert Kiyosaki 


2. I will put forth the best product(s) I can make, then people will come.

Thanks to our academic colleges, young entrepreneurs want to put forth their 'best'. Remember the projects and thesis you were graded on? Yeah!?

Welcome to the real world. 

While you are spending your time making that 'awesome perfect product', here are things that could happen - someone else makes it - or you forget what you initially setout to make and create something else - or the best one, you give up - and after you have (luckily) launched your product - not many care. Sounds familiar right?

Stop what you are doing and read the book - The Lean Startup by Eric Rise - one of the best books I have read! He talks about something called as the M-V-P. In long - Minimum Viable Product - and this is what you must be building - first. 

For example, if I was building a platform where people can purchase craft supplies from, what is the first thing I should do? I know the programmers among you would rush to find the best ecommerce platform, amazon web services, links to etsy, pinterest api, wordpress themes, hire awesome photographer.. right.. ? Wrong. The first thing that you need to do is answer this question - who wants these products? and where are they located? Call up a few crafty lady friends and see where they get supplies from and what problems they face? Try selling your stuff to them. Once that works, good! you have market. Next, try taking some 'good-to-go' pics, put them up on a blog and give your number to call if someone needs it. Try and sell them now.. 
Build your product in steps. Make a step, test it, mend it after feedback, and build another one.

That is all I have for now! 
Have a happy day! Let me know if you have any questions.  


 
 

33 ways to stay creative

1. Make Lists
2. Carry a note book everywhere
3. Try free writing
4. Get away from the computer (oh! wait.. read the rest)
5. Be otherwordly
6. Quit beating yourself up
7. Take breaks
8. Sing in the shower
9. Drink coffee / tea
10. Know your roots
11. Listen to new music
12. Be open
13. Surround yourself with creative people
14. Get feedback
15. Collaborate
16. Don't give up
17. Practice, practice, practice
18. Allow yourself to make mistakes
19. Go somewhere new
20. Watch foreign films
21. Count your blessings
22. Get lots of rest
23. Take risks
24. Break the rules
25. Do more of what makes you happy
26. Don't force it
27. Read a page of the dictionary
28. Create a framework
29. Stop trying to be someone else's perfect
30. Got an idea? Write it down.
31. Clean your workspace
32. Have fun
33. Finish something


I found this list yesterday and wanted to share it. To all the creative folks out there.. Whats your list? What keeps you creative??

Free Writing??

Just read about free writing.
Here is what wiki has to say about it:
Free writing — also called stream-of-consciousness writing — is a prewriting technique in which a person writes continuously for a set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar, or topic. It produces raw, often unusable material, but helps writers overcome blocks of apathy and self-criticism.
Sounds interesting. Am gona try it today!