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Using Stumbling Blocks as Stepping Stones:
By Brian Tracy
Everyone makes mistakes and the busier you are, the more mistakes you will make. The only question is "How well and how effectively do you deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life?"
Let the Light Shine In
This is achieved through the simple exercise of self-disclosure. For you to truly understand yourself, or to stop being troubled by things that may have happened in your past, you must be able to disclose yourself to at least one person. You have to be able to get those things off your chest. You must rid yourself of those thoughts and feelings by revealing them to someone who won't make you feel guilty or ashamed for what has happened.
Using Stumbling Blocks as Stepping Stones
There are two ways to look at the world: the benevolent way or the malevolent way. People with a malevolent or negative worldview take a victim stance, seeing life as a continuous succession of problems and a process of unfairness and oppression. They don't expect a lot and they don't get much. When things go wrong, they shrug their shoulders and passively accept that this is the way life is and there isn't anything they can do to make it better.
On the other hand, people with a benevolent or positive worldview see the world around them as filled with opportunities and possibilities. They believe that everything happens as part of a great process designed to make them successful and happy. They approach their lives, their work, and their relationships with optimism, cheerfulness, and a general attitude of positive expectations. They expect a lot and they are seldom disappointed.
Flex Your Mental Muscles
When you develop the skill of learning from your mistakes, you become the kind of person who welcomes obstacles and setbacks as opportunities to flex your mental muscles and move ahead. You look at problems as rungs on the ladder of success that you grab onto as you pull your way higher.
Two of the most common ways to deal with mistakes are invariably fatal to high achievement. The first common but misguided way to handle a mistake is the failure to accept it when it occurs. According to statistics, 70 percent of all decisions we make will be wrong. That's an average. This means that some people will fail more than 70 percent of the time, and some people will fail less. It is hard to believe that most of the decisions we make could turn out to be wrong in some way. In fact, if this is the case, how can our society continue to function at all?
Cut Your Losses
The fact is that our society, our families, our companies, and our relationships continue to survive and thrive because intelligent people tend to cut their losses and minimize their mistakes. It is only when people refuse to accept that they have made a bad choice or decision-and prolong the consequences by sticking to that bad choice or decision-that mistakes become extremely expensive and hurtful.
Learn From Your Mistakes
The second common approach that people take with regard to their mistakes, one that hurts innumerable lives and careers, is the failure to use your mistakes to better yourself and to improve the quality of your mind and your thinking.
Learning from your mistakes is an essential skill that enables you to develop the resilience to be a master of change rather than a victim of change. The person who recognizes that he has made a mistake and changes direction the fastest is the one who will win in an age of increasing information, technology and competition.
By remaining fast on your feet, you will be able to out-play and out-position your competition. You will become a creator of circumstances rather than a creature of circumstances.
Action Exercises: Now, here are three steps you can take immediately to put these ideas into action.
* First, imagine that your biggest problem or challenge in life has been sent to you at this moment to help you, to teach you something valuable. What could it be?
* Second, be willing to cut your losses and walk away if you have made a mistake or a bad choice. Accept that you are not perfect, you can't be right all the time, and then get on with your life.
*Third, learn from every mistake you make. Write down every lesson it contains. Use your mistakes in the present as stepping-stones to great success in the future.
Source: http://www.getmotivation.com/new.html
Eight steps to live the life you're meant to live.
By Jenna Forrest.
All of us can live a life of passion and purpose, but only a percentage of us choose to. Making the choice to discover and live our purpose takes a mixture of courage and curiosity to actually grasp it! You and millions of other deserving folks can look forward to waking up with wonder, anticipation, and excitement after practicing these 8 steps. Can you imagine what the world would be like if we were all fulfilling our life's passion, making the best use of the true talents and personal pleasures?
Now imagine starting with YOU. Here's how you begin...
1) Decide You Deserve. It is vital that you decide that you deserve to awaken your destiny. Repeating an "I deserve" mantra not only feels good, but also it flushes out any subconscious resistance to achieving your life's purpose.
2) Surround Yourself with Great Ideas and Positive People. People are funny. Some embrace you when you announce a desire for something "more," some tell you it's impossible, and some just don't show up at all. Be smart. Move toward the embracing. Stick with patient, positive people who know that progress is in the trying and (sometimes) temporarily falling short. Do you know that the biggest indicator that you are moving forward is failure? After all, it means you are trying, and that you can brave temporary disappointments and still persevere.
3) Find Your Own Particular Talent. Make a "20 things I love to do" list. Think of what you were good at as a child. What do people say your gifts are today? Do you like to make people smile, give them hope, or help them find the resources they need? Do you like to play sports or invent games? Then think about how you can make a living at that.
Perhaps you could write a book, become a travel agent, be a photographer, an inventor, a Hollywood actor, a customer service agent, a minister...Remember, you must first truly identify your talents that bring you joy, then understand that this joy is a passion placed within you so you can use it to provide a service to others.
4) Be You. The nice thing about your destiny is that it allows you to see that you're perfect just the way you are. Now that you know your gifts, wear them like a badge.
5) See the Impossible. Each person meets his or her destiny by first seeing it...and feeling it. Therefore, it is essential to visualize the life or career that you want to create. Make tangible reminders like vision boards or journals to turn to when learned doubts of the past sneak up behind you.
Identify these doubts and replace them with new affirmations and grander ideas for the future. As a child, you naturally practiced experiencing your future dreams and success in your mind. Do that until it once again becomes second nature. It may seem like hard work at first, but it is a trick that works hard for you...and lasts.
6) Employ the Law of Attraction. Accept that you have everything within you to have the living you would like. And believe it. Never, ever doubt it, and as you pursue it, you will also naturally attract it.
7) Reprioritize Your Play. Would you have time to pursue your passion if you considered it play time? Pursuing your passion is hard work, but then again it's not. Many successful people will say that working toward their passion does not feel like work at all.
Try this. Replace some of your passive forms of relaxation and entertainment (like watching television) with a few hours a week of actively meeting and socializing with inspiring people and attending motivating shows, movies and workshops. You'll be amazed at how much more energy you have to keep moving toward your goal. And you might make some new friends, too.
8) Ask the Experts. Meet the people who've already done it. Read their books, go to conferences and workshops, shake their hands, invite them to lunch, ask questions like "what is your life like now that you are a _______" and imagine them offering tips to help you along your path.
While our destiny doesn't typically appear in front of us suddenly, it can arrive in a reasonably short span of time. All we need to do is practice some careful (and often prayerful) weeding of the things that have previously held us back (like the negative friends, limiting beliefs, misdirected focus referred to above.)
Life is designed to be happy, fulfilling, creative and inspiring. So let's just go ahead and choose, at least for the next sixty days, to create something entirely wonderful using the tips listed above.
Determination
In 1883, a creative engineer named John Roebling was inspired by an idea to build a spectacular bridge connecting New York with the Long Island. However bridge building experts throughout the world thought that this was an impossible feat and told Roebling to forget the idea. It just could not be done. It was not practical. It had never been done before.
Roebling could not ignore the vision he had in his mind of this bridge. He thought about it all the time and he knew deep in his heart that it could be done. He just had to share the dream with someone else. After much discussion and persuasion he managed to convince his son Washington, an up and coming engineer, that the bridge in fact could be built.
Working together for the first time, the father and son developed concepts of how it could be accomplished and how the obstacles could be overcome. With great excitement and inspiration, and the headiness of a wild challenge before them, they hired their crew and began to build their dream bridge.
The project started well, but when it was only a few months underway a tragic accident on the site took the life of John Roebling. Washington was injured and left with a certain amount of brain damage, which resulted in him not being able to walk or talk or even move.
"We told them so."
"Crazy men and their crazy dreams."
"It's foolish to chase wild visions."
Everyone had a negative comment to make and felt that the project should be scrapped since the Roeblings were the only ones who knew how the bridge could be built. In spite of his handicap Washington was never discouraged and still had a burning desire to complete the bridge and his mind was still as sharp as ever.
He tried to inspire and pass on his enthusiasm to some of his friends, but they were too daunted by the task. As he lay on his bed in his hospital room, with the sunlight streaming through the windows, a gentle breeze blew the flimsy white curtains apart and he was able to see the sky and the tops of the trees outside for just a moment.
It seemed that there was a message for him not to give up. Suddenly an idea hit him. All he could do was move one finger and he decided to make the best use of it. By moving this, he slowly developed a code of communication with his wife.
He touched his wife's arm with that finger, indicating to her that he wanted her to call the engineers again. Then he used the same method of tapping her arm to tell the engineers what to do. It seemed foolish but the project was under way again.
For 13 years Washington tapped out his instructions with his finger on his wife's arm, until the bridge was finally completed. Today the spectacular Brooklyn Bridge stands in all its glory as a tribute to the triumph of one man's indomitable spirit and his determination not to be defeated by circumstances. It is also a tribute to the engineers and their teamwork, and to their faith in a man who was considered mad by half the world. It stands too as a tangible monument to the love and devotion of his wife who for 13 long years patiently decoded the messages of her husband and told the engineers what to do.
Perhaps this is one of the best examples of a never-say-die attitude that overcomes a terrible physical handicap and achieves an impossible goal.
Often when we face obstacles in our day-to-day life, our hurdles seem very small in comparison to what many others have to face. The Brooklyn Bridge shows us that dreams that seem impossible can be realized with determination and persistence, no matter what the odds are.
Even the most distant dream can be realized with determination and persistence.
Positive Thinking
The Window:
Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour a day to drain the fluids from his lungs. His bed was next to the room's only window. The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.
The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation. And every afternoon when the man in the bed next to the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.
The man in the other bed would live for those one-hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the outside world. The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake, the man had said. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Lovers walked arm in arm amid flowers of every color of the rainbow. Grand old trees graced the landscape, and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance. As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine the picturesque scene.
One warm afternoon the man by the window described a parade passing by. Although the other man could not hear the band, he could see it in his mind's eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words. Unexpectedly, an alien thought entered his head: Why should he have all the pleasure of seeing everything while I never get to see anything? It didn't seem fair. As the thought fermented, the man felt ashamed at first. But as the days passed and he missed seeing more sights, his envy eroded into resentment and soon turned him sour. He began to brood and found himself unable to sleep. He should be by that window - and that thought now controlled his life.
Late one night, as he lay staring at the ceiling, the man by the window began to cough. He was choking on the fluid in his lungs. The other man watched in the dimly lit room as the struggling man by the window groped for the button to call for help. Listening from across the room, he never moved, never pushed his own button, which would have brought the nurse running. In less than five minutes, the coughing and choking stopped, along with the sound of breathing. Now, there was only silence--deathly silence.
The following morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths. When she found the lifeless body of the man by the window, she was saddened and called the hospital attendant to take it away--no words, no fuss. As soon as it seemed appropriate, the man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.
Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look. Finally, he would have the joy of seeing it all himself. He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed. It faced a blank wall.
Moral of the story:
The pursuit of happiness is a matter of choice...it is a positive attitude we consciously choose to express. It is not a gift that gets delivered to our doorstep each morning, nor does it come through the window. And I am certain that our circumstances are just a small part of what makes us joyful. If we wait for them to get just right, we will never find lasting joy.
The pursuit of happiness is an inward journey. Our minds are like programs, awaiting the code that will determine behaviors; like bank vaults awaiting our deposits. If we regularly deposit positive, encouraging, and uplifting thoughts, if we continue to bite our lips just before we begin to grumble and complain, if we shoot down that seemingly harmless negative thought as it germinates, we will find that there is much to rejoice about.
A Motivating Story
A story is told about a soldier who was finally coming home after having fought in Vietnam. He called his parents from San Francisco.
"Mom and Dad, I'm coming home, but I've a favor to ask. I have a friend I'd like to bring home with me."
"Sure," they replied, "we'd love to meet him. "There's something you should know", the son continued, "he was hurt pretty badly in the fighting. He stepped on a land mind and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere else to go, and I want him to come live with us."
"I'm sorry to hear that, son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere to live."
"No, Mom and Dad, I want him to live with us."
"Son," said the father, "you don't know what you're asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden on us. We have our own lives to live, and we can't let something like this interfere with our lives. I think you should just come home and forget about this guy. He'll find a way to live on his own."
At that point, the son hung up the phone. The parents heard nothing more from him. A few days later, however, they received a call from the San Francisco police. Their son had died after falling from a building, they were told. The police believed it was suicide. The grief-stricken parents flew to San Francisco and were taken to the city morgue to identify the body of their son. They recognized him, but to their horror they also discovered something they didn't know, their son had only one arm and one leg.
The parents in this story are like many of us. We find it easy to love those who are good-looking or fun to have around, but we don't like people who inconvenience us or make us feel uncomfortable. We would rather stay away from people who aren't as healthy, beautiful, or smart as we are. Thankfully, there's someone who won't treat us that way. Someone who loves us with an unconditional love that welcomes us into the forever family, regardless of how messed up we are.
Tonight, before you tuck yourself in for the night, say a little prayer that God will give you the strength you need to accept people as they are, and to help us all be more understanding of those who are different from us!!!
Source: www.indianchild.com
Achieving Goals
- START WITH THE END IN MIND: The best way to set your goal is to visualize the end result you will achieve with your goal.
- BE SPECIFIC: The more specific you are in setting your goals, the better success you will have in achieving them.
- WRITE IT DOWN: Put your goals in writing. Don't leave them floating in the air or in your mind. By writing your goals down, in a goal log, you make them tangible. They become real.
- CREATE A PICTURE OF YOUR GOAL: If you want to write a book, then create a representation of your book, or just clip a picture of a book and paste your title on it and post it someplace where you can see it every day. The key here is that you want to be reminded of your goal every day so that you will constantly strive towards that goal.
- RESEARCH THE STEPS YOU NEED TO TAKE: This part is critical. You must learn what the steps are to achieving your goal, otherwise, you will never achieve it.
- BREAK THE STEPS DOWN: Once you understand the steps you must take to achieve your goal, it's time to break them down into simple, easy to accomplish segments.
- SET DEADLINES: A dream is a goal with a deadline. Set an overall deadline for the completed goal, and also set interim deadlines for each piece that needs to be accomplished.
- REWARD YOURSELF: Always associate rewards with accomplishing steps to your goals and goal achieving will become a fun experience that you look forward to.
- DON'T GIVE UP: Winston Churchill is credited with the shortest speech on record. It was presented to a college graduating class. He approached the podium, looked out over the audience and said slowly . . .
'Never, never, never, give up.'
Time to change your point of view?
You've probably heard of Stephen Covey, author of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." He uses the word paradigm a lot, which simply means a belief, or a point of view.
Dr. Covey believes that you need to have a paradigm shift before you can make dramatic breakthroughs in your business success -- or your life.
Here's a situation that illustrates the point perfectly:
Imagine you're in London's Heathrow Airport. While you're waiting for your flight, you notice a kiosk selling shortbread cookies. You buy a box, put them in your traveling bag and then you patiently search for an available seat so you can sit down and enjoy your cookies.
Finally you find a seat next to a gentleman. You reach down into your traveling bag and pull out your box of shortbread cookies. As you do so, you notice that the gentleman starts watching you intensely. He stares as you open the box and his eyes follow your hand as you pick up the cookie and bring it to your mouth.
Just then he reaches over and takes one of your cookies from the box, and eats it! You're more than a little surprised at this. Actually, you're at a loss for words.
Not only does he take one cookie, but also he alternates with you. For every one cookie you take, he takes one.
Now, what's your immediate impression of this guy? Crazy? Greedy? He's got some nerve? Can you imagine the words you might use to describe this man to your associates back at the office?
Meanwhile, you both continue eating the cookies until there's just one left. To your surprise, the man reaches over and takes it. But then he does something unexpected. He breaks it in half, and gives half to you.
After he's finished with his half he gets up, and without a word, he leaves.
You think to yourself, "Did this really happen?" You're left sitting there dumbfounded and still hungry. So you go back to the kiosk and buy another box of cookies.
You then return to your seat and begin opening your new box of cookies when you glance down into your traveling bag. Sitting there in your bag is your original box of cookies -- still unopened.
Only then do you realize that when you reached down earlier, you had reached into the other man's bag, and grabbed his box of cookies by mistake.
Now what do you think of the man? Generous? Tolerant?
You've just experienced a profound paradigm shift. You're seeing things from a new point of view.
Now, think as it relates to your business. Perhaps you've been doing something the same way for years, but never stopped to think about how it could be done better. A little bit of research and brainstorming may make you see what you're currently doing in a whole new light.
Maybe, you've only been using newspaper advertising to market your business, and haven't been open to other methods of marketing.
Seeing things from a new point of view can be very enlightening.
Possibly, you've been annoyed at one particular client who may have complained about some aspect of your service, but when you actually take the time to understand his frustration and his point of view, you may suddenly experience an entirely different perspective.
After all, he may have just helped you to avoid problems with future customers.
Think outside the box. Don't settle for the status quo. Be open to suggestions. Be open to changing your point of view.
Things may not be what they seem.
The Fortune in The Farms
This is a rags-to-riches story with a twist. Narendra Murkumbi became a billionaire all right. But he also created wealth for thousands of cane farmers.
Shindogi, in the Belgaum district of Karnataka, is like any other Indian village. Most of the inhabitants are farmers. Here they grow sugarcane and their incomes rise and fall with crop prices. It is the last place one would expect people to track stock prices. But they do. Through the pages of Kannada daily Usha Kiran, they keep a close watch on the fortunes of Shree Renuka Sugars (SRS). After all, 9,900 farmers in the region own the stock and their combined shareholding is worth around Rs. 350 crore. "When we see the share price, we are happy because this is more than we expected even in our dreams," says Gurappa Sidappa Kanapanaure, one of the farmer investors.
The farmers had bought the stock at face value. A Rs. 5,000 investment in the late 1990s was worth Rs. 7.61 lakh on 31 March 2006. Each investor holds at least 500 shares, with some, like Raiappa Mallapa Shetty, holding as many as 2,500. His holding was worth Rs. 3.8 lakh on 31 March 2006.
When SRS listed on the BSE in October 2005, one of the farmers rang the customary bell to kick off trading in the stock. On that day, the combined wealth of these farmers was Rs. 129 crore. By April 2006, that number had grown to Rs. 811 crore. That growth of wealth (the farmers had invested less than Rs. 5 crore) is now very much a part of the Shindogi folklore.
The tale would not have been told, but for Narendra Murkumbi, the managing director of Shree Renuka Sugars. He was born in Belgaum, not too far from Shindogi. His father was a distributor for Tata Tea and Tata Chemicals. With him, Murkumbi travelled a lot. He saw the tea gardens of Assam and the wheat fields of Punjab. In 1994, when he graduated from IIM, Ahmedabad, he wanted to start his own agri-business. He dabbled in bio-pesticides, but soon his interest shifted to sugar.
Having lived in Belgaum for most of his life, Murkumbi was familiar with the business. But he did not have the Rs. 100 crore needed to set up a mill. At that time, the Andhra Pradesh (AP) government was selling a sugar unit for Rs. 55 crore. He wanted to buy it and bring it to Belgaum, which grew lots of high-yield cane. But he did not have the cash to do even that.
With great difficulty, he convinced IDBI to lend up to 60 per cent of that cost. He also got the Sugar Development Fund to contribute another 15 per cent of the project cost as equity. He then went about raising the remaining 25 per cent. But, after exhausting his options, he was still about Rs. 5 crore short. He recalls: "Then, the stockmarket was indifferent to the sugar industry. So an IPO was ruled out." That's when he turned to the farmers.
Says Murkumbi: "They were used to a culture of investing because of the co-operative mills. Though our model was different, we figured it could work." His mother, Vidya Murkumbi, chairperson of SRS, visited 80 villages to talk to the farmers. Her pitch was simple. There was oversupply of sugarcane in the district. Farmers were travelling 60-70 km to sell their produce in Raibaga. There were payment delays and defaults. By setting up a plant in Belgaum, SRS would step up cane offtake and make prompt payments. In return, each farmer would have to buy at least 500 SRS shares at Rs. 10 each. Not everyone was convinced. Most invested only after they saw the mill coming up. In the end, 9,900 farmers bought the story and the stock - the latter, in many cases, with borrowed money. That was SRS' defining moment.
Since then, Murkumbi has turned the company into a fully integrated sugar maker with power generation and refining capacities. It has also become a major merchant exporter of sugar and is setting up a 2,000 tonnes per day sugar refinery in Haldia - the largest in India - primarily for exports.
SRS' growth (in the last three years, sales have grown from Rs. 152.34 crore to Rs. 673 crore, and net profit from Rs. 2.36 crore to Rs. 40.73 crore) has attracted investors. Foreign investors, like Carlson Fund, have bought 12 per cent of SRS and the company's market cap is among the highest in the sector.
Now, the Murkumbis' 46.87 per cent stake in SRS is worth about Rs. 1,698 crore. But that hasn't changed their lifestyle much. Vidya still lives in Belgaum, Narendra in rented quarters in Worli Seaface, Mumbai. He was trying to buy a flat in south Mumbai, but settled for one in Prabhadevi instead. "Prices are much too high," he says. He is distinctly uncomfortable talking about his wealth. "I look at my stock prices every day, but I am not the kind who will sit with a spreadsheet trying to figure out my wealth," he says. In fact, it took a lot of persuasion to get Murkumbi to meet for this story on billionaires. He relented on the condition that the interview would largely revolve around the wealth of the farmers, not his. "SRS now buys over Rs. 2 crore worth of cane every day from 50,000 farmers," he says, proud of his contribution.
That has changed Shindogi. Now, the crop is sugarcane all the way. Hardly anything else is grown any more. Take Raiappa Mallappa Kalti. In 2000, he used to ride a bicycle, grow maize on his 40 acres and make about Rs. 1 lakh a year, which barely covered his farm and family expenses. After the SRS plant came up, he switched to sugarcane. He sells his crop to SRS and is paid within 15 days. Says Kalti: "I drive a Tata Indica now, have increased my holdings to 100 acres and make Rs. 20 lakh-30 lakh an acre."
To farmers in these parts, Vidya is "more than the mother who gave birth to us". SRS has helped them with better seeds, fertilisers and loans at the initial stages. It has also bettered their farming methods and monitored cane quality. Says Shetty: "We were taken to training programmes in Coimbatore, where we learned how to increase the yield. Five years back, we used to get 30-40 tonnes per acre. Now we get 50-60 tonnes per acre, sometimes even 70."
The farmers, however, have been careful with their new found wealth. No flashy cars or clothes for them. Most have used the money to increase their land holdings, build bigger houses, educate their children (even send them abroad) and buy better irrigation systems. They say that if they knew that the shares would be worth this much today, they would have bought more of them. Now they joke about what they could buy if they sell their stock. Says Shetty: "Four of us have cars, now we are thinking of buying an aeroplane."
Courtesy: Business world dated Sep 2 2006
It's Not all About Money, Honey!
More than the money, it is the risks involved in his business that drives Nirmal Jain.
Nirmal Jain comes from a family of risk takers. His forefathers, who were commodity traders in Rajasthan, made huge profits at one time and went nearly bankrupt at another. When silver prices shot up and then crashed in 1978, his family, which had speculated in silver, suffered huge losses. So, it was no surprise when he decided to strike out on his own, rather than take up a job. The IIM-Ahmedabad graduate made the biggest gamble of his life in 1999, when he was running Probity Research, a stockmarket research firm with revenues of nearly Rs. 1 crore. But Jain was dissatisfied. A steady but small business was no fun. So, he took the huge volumes of research data, their chief source of revenue, and put it on the Internet. Convinced that it was a foolish move, many of his core team members quit. But Jain had just discovered the power of the Internet. It offered him a bigger scale than his firm could ever reach otherwise. Thus, India infoline was born in May 1999.
"It was like playing for double or quits. Either we would make it really big, or shut down," he says. For a while, his gamble paid off. Within months, India Infoline was getting millions of dollars in funds. Jain wanted the company to move from research into e-broking, something no one else in India was offering then. "We were thinking of media convergence, and even considered having a TV channel."
Then came the dotcom bust. Suddenly, all the funding disappeared, the dotcom business was stigmatised and, worse still, the stockmarket also took a downturn. His business was struggling to survive, and it was the darkest time of his life. But Jain was not ready to give up just yet.
He drastically scaled down operations and stripped the profile of all frills, focusing on financial services and e-broking. He went without a salary for nearly a year-and-a-half, trying to keep his company afloat. Things finally began to look up in 2003, when the market went positive. India infoline's e-broking platform found many takers, and the company began doing well. It is making consolidated profits of Rs. 49 crore today. Nirmal's equity holding of 26.82% is now worth Rs. 200 crores (Rs. 2 billion).
Having seen both extremes, Jain is now stoic about his changing fortunes. "Earlier, he would fret when the markets fell. But when it crashed in May this year, he was hardly worried because of his confidence in the systems that we have developed," says Harshad Apte, associate vice-president, India Infoline.
What does wealth mean to Jain? "It is a quantified measure of performance, if legitimately earned," he says. The one big luxury he allows himself is travelling with his wife and two daughters. It is a hard-won (and richly deserved) luxury, for he went without a break for nearly four years, until his business was back on its feet. "It has been quite a rollercoaster ride," he quips. |
