Finish the Damn MARATHON ..OR.. DON’T

Here’s my take, my story and the story of VenueLook with some DOs and DONTs for startups and businesses

Finish the Damn MARATHON ..OR.. DON’T — It is your race and it is entirely upon you to decide. Most situations in life are not black or white. They are, at best, grey. And no one can judge what is best for someone other than them.

Here are some personal stories and some professional ones about how our mind gets conditioned from what we learn as kids, and how it determines how we think and approach challenges, as professionals. There are some business dos and don’ts also from my experience at VenueLook.

About 10 years back, I was quite tired by the time I finished a dance performance at a cousin’s sangeet ceremony. When I stepped down and told my kind, appreciative hubby, “whew! I am quite out of breath”, he said quite simply, “you know, you could have stopped earlier”. Wait, what… I could have quit before the end?! This was an alien thought to me.

Why Finishing what I Start has been so Important for me?

As a kid athlete I used to run 400m, 800m and 1200m races. My sports teacher, Rajan Sir, had taught me to finish the races I ran, giving them my best in the last lap or half. I won gold in all 3 races when in 9th standard and also the best girl athlete trophy (school level only!). I never won any of the sprints where speed was critical. I won the longer ones because I had more stamina than other girls my age.

I learnt how to play to my strengths in 9th standard, thanks to my sports teacher. He never trained me for sprints, he pushed me towards building more stamina for longer races.

DOs from My Business Marathon at VenueLook

My brother and I were ardent fans of Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani and Mr. Ratan Tata as kids and dreamt of building businesses like them when we grew up. We were also inspired by the innovative, work-related stories of our father, a mechanical engineer, who thought and worked like an intra-preneur in reputed electric companies.

Building VenueLook.com, a journey of 6+ years has been quite exciting till now, nothing short of a thrilling movie that keeps you at the edge of your seat.

As a bootstrapped and later an angel-funded company, we kept listening very closely to what our customers had to say. We observed and drew inspiration from global companies when it came to designing our product workflows, sales model, strategies, customer communication, internal tools, etc. We read books, online articles and watched videos to overcome different challenges at different times. Our angel investors and mentors guided, challenged, supported and appreciated our successful endeavours. Each and every thing listed here helped us!

When we started, we considered ourselves as our biggest competitor. We kept improving all our business functions by frequent visits to white board with every team, every week. My team and I were in “our own” business school and we were learning fast, with each team setting new benchmarks every few months.

Biggest Business Mistake We Made (DON’T DO THIS)

At certain intervals, to be honest, we did become complacent and started enjoying the journey. Now, this was not a race we were running alone. (This reminds me of another sports competition at school when in TT finals, I started strong and then started enjoying the game with my opponent, who was my best friend. After losing a few silly points, I realised just-in-time that instead of enjoying the game, my focus should be on winning it. Finally, I won).

To not get complacent and keep a self-check on business, we then started tracking not just our numbers but our competitors too, at healthy intervals.

Business Risk We Never Accounted For

On our business race track, we crossed many milestones — moved from zero to one; one to hundreds of B2B subscribers and were hooked to scaling the business further. This is when we, like so many businesses, got hit by the unprecedented pandemic, big time! The events segment of hospitality sector saw its worst. Some of our competitors shut down, some paused operations indefinitely, some continued like us.

With very less oxygen left for our business to survive on, I had to take some of the toughest decisions of my life. We were always a business run on lean principles and with some sacrifices, we survived the 1st wave of virus.

Within a couple of months, our product and sales teams touched our pre-pandemic numbers and we took a deep breath of oxygen. A week later, we got hit by the 2nd wave. 🥊

Worst of Times Sometimes Teach us the Best Lessons

This time the hit was not just professional. I got caught by the virus and my family followed. I lost my energy to keep fighting at all fronts and was out of spirit and ideas; for almost a month.

After a spoonful of glucose (vitamins and zinc actually!) I regained my physical and mental strength. I accepted that this virus is perhaps never going away and revisited all the ideas my team and I had for the future of VenueLook.

Tough times push us completely out of our comfort zones and force us to figure out survival. Tough circumstances force us to take tough decisions, which in turn, make us stronger, forever.

We have now started working on the one idea, which if successful, could work not just in the short-term but also in the long-term for us.

Some people believe in “Fail fast, fail often and move on”. Others believe in “persevering and iterating until they succeed”. I don’t think these two mantras are exclusive of each other. You can -

• keep failing and often, doing the same work;
• iterate the approach every time you fail and
• persevere to see the final success.
• OR you can absolutely realise that there is no way the current idea will work and you can start on a new one.

Nothing is right or wrong, given the different circumstances people might be in. It is hence, always best to have some mentors in our life to discuss our dreams, ideas, plans and decisions with.

I want to leave you with one more thought today

Always be on the look out for the NEXT ONE BIG idea that could work for you. Until then, keep working with the small improvement ideas you have.

To find that one idea, the most impactful one, you might have to list multiple ideas and then think deeply about each one of them in terms of size of opportunity, feasibility, execution plan, risks and profitability. Choose the best, and then execute aggressively!

Whatever be the race you are running right now — for self-improvement, for business, for scholarship, for job, or for any other purpose — stay on your track, keep adjusting your gears, have a spoonful of glucose whenever you need one, and keep making progress.

No one knows what the future beholds for any of us but following is a quote that summarises what we practise at VenueLook -

“If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.” — James Clear.

Give your best efforts at winning the race(s) you choose in life. If you still don’t win, don’t get bogged down. Focus, practice and get better OR choose a different race.

Ciao!

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