It’s been more than two and a half years that I have been writing for DARE, sharing my learnings, experiences, challenges and my conversations with entrepreneurs, my dilemmas and I can say my soul when it comes to the entreprenurial thought process. Anything and everything I come across in life as a person, as an Entrepreneur and as someone who constantly aspires to learn and my thought process and my encounters while being an entrepreneur have found way into my DARE columns. I have always believed that writing is cathartic, it helps you reflect, it helps you share, it in some ways makes life more fulfilling. My experience with DARE columns has been the same.
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| Anurag Batra |
Last week I conducted a webinar in association with DARE, a first ever in my life, educating entrepreneurs on preparing effective business plans. I was in my office and there were more than 100 people across the globe tuned into the webinar. I was amazed, delighted and taken aback by the whole process. Simple and so effective!
Learning never stops and it indeed was a great learning experience for me. However, the whole episode raised a question in my mind...“Do we practice what we preach?”
I am in the information,communication and technology enabled business and we play with technology everyday but I never experimented with this very simple yet great tool for disseminating information and connecting with others. Not that I was not aware of it, but I somehow did not get down to use it and explore the unending opportunities it can offer to my business. I accept that while I taught others I missed on adopting things myself. But if I see around, I’m not the only one, this is the case with many entrepreneurs and innovators today.
It’s been a personal experience many times. I have met many technology entrepreneurs who have technology issues inside their own firms, many website solution providers whose own websites don’t really look the best, many social media marketers who themselves don’t use these mediums effectively, many green entrepreneurs who haven’t really adopted the green way of life and many social entrepreneurs who often tend to forget the social lessons imparted to their clients! Have we become lazy? Or maybe we do not have the time to look at our own activities.
Learning the nuances of business is essential for any entrepreneur to succeed and innovation is the key to success. The pace of life has become so fast that there is no time to pause and think about doing the right things at the right time within the right framework.
“Experimenting with different sounds is great, but when it comes down to it, you’re still playing a guitar” – Daisy Berkowitz
I guess we are all so occupied with our daily routines that though we give bundles of advices to others we often tend to forget the latest learning we have added to our kitty. We have kept on playing the same tunes over and over again.
Networking is a buzz word today but how many people have you connected with after meeting them once? When was the last time you really sat down and thought which training or what tools can really add to the efficiency and output of your employees? Do you remember the last time you sat down with your team to ideate on the goals of the organization? Is your own LinkedIn profile updated? These are very simple questions that you might have asked someone else in a gathering or while mentoring a budding entrepreneur but the point is if you have implemented them all yourself?
An article I read recently stated that people will usually depend on third parties to manage their lives and will start Outsourcing Self Control in the new world. One main reason I find for the same is the dearth of time with everyone to sit back and ponder over their own actions. If you are reading this, it would be my request to think back for 5 minutes the things you have been thinking of experimenting in your own organizations. Give yourself a return on investing your time in this article and take an action you have been thinking for very long. Practice today what you have always preached and haven’t done it yourself.
As the saying goes—A leader leads by example.
If you think you can’t practice all you preach, maybe you can preach only what you practice, it will probably make you strive to practice more! I am ceratinly trying to practice what I have preached in my DARE columns. I have to live according to and upto my deepest convictions.
I am reminded of the famous Thomas Carlyle saying—Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.
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Anurag Batra is real life, first-generation entrepreneur who is Much Below Average (MBA) from the prestigious Management Development Institute, MDI. Anurag is the founder and editor-in-chief of exchange4media group which includes exchange4media.com. To write to the author, please send an email to dare@cybermedia.co.in with the subject line 'Anurag Batra'. The views expressed here are that of the author and do not represent the magazine's.
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