How I leveraged my Ai!

When I started my career,  I made an agreement with money- Till the age of 40, I will work for you; after 40, you will work for me. Even today I work; the difference is that today, unless an assignment excites me and I feel that I can make an “impact”, I don’t accept the assignment. I charge for my work; but I don’t work for money. There is a big difference.

Being from a business family, “naukri” (employment) was just not in my system. I wanted to be my own boss. For me ‘naukri, sounded like ‘no curry’! When I started, I was self-employed. I was spending a major portion (my prime time) coaching CA students for their exams. That gave me a lot of satisfaction and improved my understanding of the subject immensely. However, I soon realized that this was an extreme form of Ai. The only reason I should continue doing this was if I wanted to start my own coaching class (I dream of this even today). However, I realized that the entire coaching class “business” was star driven. Certain professors have the magnetism of pulling in the students. So either you become the star (Ai model) or depend on other stars, who can be lured away by others and bring your business crashing down. Most importantly, in those days, the top professors in the stream did not have an inspiring story. They were slaves working from 6 am to 10 pm. The top 3 stars in the coaching industry had gone through a divorce. I love my wife (even today!) and did not want this life. So within 2 years, I stopped coaching.

I was engaged in a retainership assignment with a large CA firm. One day I bumped into my first mentor, who believed that if we could do it for others, we could do it for ourselves too. He had the belief that we will attract good clients because we do good work. I always credit him for having such high self-belief.

We started our practise by employing over 30 people. So now we would be earning on our own time as well as on the time spent by others. Great idea! However, the only problem was that 99% of the capital was borrowed capital that we had to service by way of interest and repayment of principle. Secondly, we also had to find work for feeding this team of 30. In the initial days, we were actually borrowing to even fund our withdrawals for home expenses! We soon realized that we needed some ground speed before we can take off. So we shed some excess load by downsizing the team and then we were able to take off.

We also realized that most of the clients were coming for our advice. We were becoming the “stars” in our practice. We wanted some activity that did not depend purely on the “star” power. We needed some service activity that was process driven, rather than star driven. Fortunately, we found an opportunity in selling and servicing financial accounting software which was a sunrise sector. We were adventurous and took a path that was off-beat. The risks paid off. I realized the power off Human Resource development that was the foundation of making others work for me – using other people’s time.

Do you have such stories of leveraging your Ai? Write them to me at aipichai@gmail.com