Cactus Chords

The extent to which people, in Kerala with a Mother Tongue Influence (MTI), lose out on opportunities, is not a joke. Before you go ahead and rebut my post and try and prove me wrong, take a second to ponder on my point. Look around you. Isn’t it true? I will substantiate all my allegations, accusations or claims or whatever you want to term it.

Like Russell Peters (stand-up comedian) points out, “You can’t expect to go into a club and pick up a chic with an Indian accent”. The thing with stand-up comedians is that, they speak the truth, unbearable to some, but its the stark truth. If the American find our accent funny, a parallel can, as well, be drawn to how the Malayalee accent is considered hilarious compared to the rest in India. I am a Malayalee and I frankly don’t care about the rest. It ain’t that an Oriyan, Punjabi, Marwadi or Bihari or any other accent is the best (no offense meant guys, if you didn’t realize, am taking my own race’s @$$). But comparatively, the way we pronounce words are, in fact, chuckle-worthy.

No matter how much of a person of substance one is, the Malayalee accent will have an impact on their speech and people will take a moment before they start taking you seriously.

Mascot pronounced as Muscat, Twenty as Tondi, Thirty as Thyerti, Eleven as Elavan, Twelve as Tolve, Bomb as Baumb, Lab as Lhaub, Madam as Maudam, Centre as Cender, Drink as Dring, Girl as Gerl, Employ as Embloy, Aunty as Andi is just a fraction of the (Malayalam-English) Manglish dictionary. If you are a Malayalee, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Such trivial words need to be corrected in school.

Who is to blame? Up bringing or Educational Institutes? I would solely blame the latter. An educational institute’s sole aim is to educate, impart knowledge to distinguish right from wrong. A surprising number of the teachers themselves speak with an MTI. There remain, just a handful of schools and colleges that teach the right pronunciations in Kerala.

I have met scores of youngsters that are talented and skilled in their respective fields but lose out on an opportunity outside Kerala merely on the basis of their communication skills. It is disheartening and shameful. I am expecting the usual “If a person has the skill and talent, he is bound to make it despite his speaking skills” and the sorts…I can’t possibly help people living in denial. I ain’t a psychiatrist!

The only solution I see, for youngsters, a chain of English Coaching Institutes that have well educated teachers and not the usual blend of illiterate mongrels that ill-educate students. For kids, school authorities must ensure the teachers employed are well educated and up to the challenge.

Don’t let the children suffer for the illiteracy of the teachers and inconsideration of educational bodies.

Cheers!!!

image reference: www.truthtree.com, www.bizzia.com

Industry surveys have revealed that 9/10 start-ups fail within the first 3-5 years of operations. Why does this happen? Is there a common thread of failure mantras that people subconsciously follow?

Here are some of the reasons why, I feel, a start-up can tumble down the ladder to the pits. I often wonder what made my first venture a failure. Was I at fault or was it my partners? We had everything a start-up required, an office, a set off brilliant minds, each of us had our field of expertise, finance, marketing, international operations, sales. An esteemed clientele, promising ideas and products. Then what went wrong? We just couldn’t work together, just couldn’t.

We personally have no qualms, but professionally, it was 100% effort and very little output. It never matters how long you have known each other, even the presence of one entity that has a wrong intention can lead to an intermittent firing of the team. And when it is a team, one person is never accountable for the failure. It is the whole team. And despite several tries, if the matter can not be resolved, it has to culminate in failure. Individually, all will excel in life off these experiences. One of the greatest traits of a true entrepreneur is to rise from the ashes of failure like a phoenix. Some of the reasons that can lead to failure:

- Lack of focus
- Weak business model or no business model
- Individual goals that vary greatly from the rest of the team
- No or wrong mentors/advisers
- Wrong team
- Lack of trust
- Variation in character
- Immaturity
- No prior industry experience
- Lack of punctuality
- Over confidence
- Black sheep
- Loss of faith in business
- Mentality to quit

The points mentioned above could be in various combinations. If the combination involves all the above, you have close to a week before you wind up and my condolences in advance. If you haven’t kicked off yet, then take sometime off to work on these problems and then kick off. Also a few questions you should find answers to before you jump into a start-up;
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1) Where do you see yourself in 2 years whether this is a success or a failure?
2) What are you planning to take away from this venture?
3) What is your monetary share in the firm?
4) Is this specific business your cup of tea?
5) Are your partners trustworthy?
6) What is your role in the firm?

If you have justified answers to the above questions, you are well on the right path to success.

I have moved on and turned a new leaf and so far, a pretty successful one too. This time, keeping in mind the mistakes I made and avoiding the probable potholes when I sense one.

Cheers!!!

image reference: www.swsalestalk.com, www.press.princeton.edu, www.twitip.com, www.tolmol.com

Recently, I was surfing through a few write ups and stumbled upon the comment/question above? It was targeted towards entrepreneurs majorly. The reason why I decided to write about this is because;

1) I have my own blog
2) I, myself, am an entrepreneur
3) I have asked myself, this question a lot of times on facing certain challenges (will elaborate later in another post)
4) Its something, I feel, all should know about and comment on, if any

But the most important of all the reasons is because

5) It made me think
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My comments are strictly restricted to my personal experiences and from others, I have perceived.

Every event has majorities, minorities and exceptions. The very same way, this event also has a majority, a minority and an exception. The answer to the title question is YES. There is a direct co-relation between age and number of years of work experience. After a lot of thought, it occurred to me that, it is pretty simple.

On an average, a person decides to venture into entrepreneurship post 4-5 years of industry experience and a minority while in college or university. The success rate of those with industry experience, is around 80% as when compared to those right out of college. This is because as you work in the industry, you learn to wrap your head around the dos and donts of business. For instance, I have met a lot of youngsters who start a company and aspire to be successful. You know, media coverage, successful business plan, investors, fame yada yada. Of the whole lot of youngsters that have tried to be enterprising, 9 out of 10 start-ups, go to the dogs.

There are various reasons to the above, predominantly it is due to immaturity and lack of professional experience. When I say professional, I am referring to all the qualities one gains from an organization from, punctuality, character, capacity to filter projects, delegation, project de-risking, leadership and many more. Prove me wrong otherwise, which if you do, I would be more than glad for the knowledge and amend this post of mine. Please note that, I am not talking about the age, but referring to the years of work experience.

There are youngsters who have been into family business since they were young and by the time they pass out of high school, they have mastered and witnessed most of the scenarios in the business world.

It is imperative that, unless you are exceptional, you have at least a couple of years of professional experience before you set out to set-up a start-up. If you founded a start-up and failed, then either learn from your mistakes and work your way up again or get some professional experience and re-try. Either way it will help you.

I would be glad if this post helps you…

Cheers!!!

image reference : www.youngentrepreneur.com, www.sekpress.net, customersrock.files.wordpress.com