Having decided to become an Entrepreneur, everyone, including myself, is committed to an idea whole-heartedly for life. What carries you forward through this interesting journey to success is the determination and persistence to bring your idea to life.

A few weeks back, when I am still laying the foundation to be an entrepreneur, a boy, who should be in his teens, at my locality taught me an interesting lesson in entrepreneurship – “Don’t give up and keep going no matter what, you would be much closer to your goal very soon, despite the failures and hardships”

The Court

The Covid-19 Pandemic has locked down people all over the world. But, the spirit of life and its challenges have never changed since the pandemic hit us.

The boys were practicing badminton across a tiny lane during these lock-down days. My brother, being a good player, started to coach them. Quite sooner than expected, the boys entered the game mode and formed 2 teams, namely Ruby and Diamond, who were pitched against each other. Ruby Team was dominant over Diamond and kept on winning the game every day. The Diamond team was determined to win a game any day and refused to change pair, even when offered a chance.

The Game

One fine day, I pulled the Diamond team players for a conversation and asked them if they had a strategy to win the game over Team Ruby. I have seen them practicing a lot more than Ruby, deploying different tactics to win the game but in vain. They neither wanted to give up nor change the pair.

I was curious to know what kept the Diamond players going without tasting success for long and how it really feels to be on a long losing streak. That is when one of the boys opened up, saying – “We know Ruby is stronger than us, but that doesn’t make us weak. It is just that we haven’t mastered the play. If either of us changes the pair, that will end up demotivating the other partner. However, we are sure that we will taste success one day. All along, we have been maturing ourselves with such failures and we have been rectifying the mistakes. The moment we taste success would mean our game is flawless. We will fight hard until one day we win over Team Ruby”.

The Winner

I was dumbstruck by the response and was in awe of the boy who gave me this reply. I couldn’t respond or react any more other than wishing them success and left the place without any doubt on their capabilities and determination to win the game one day.

Isn’t that too much of a matured thinking from a boy in his early teens, to have taught me such a hard lesson so easy? How I wish I had learned this lesson earlier at the beginning of my career! This episode created a great impact on me and has taught me one of the greatest lessons in entrepreneurship. For days together, I couldn’t get over this episode and my thoughts were completely wound around how to implement such a lesson in my career.

Perseverance and grit are key ingredients to success not only on the entrepreneurial journey. It is the key to achieving your goals in life. Most entrepreneurs would agree that there is no safety net during the initial days of business. Challenges are aplenty, but, these are tests to your commitment and success. The test of our commitment, risk-taking skills, ability to overcome difficulties and confidence, to stretch our comfort zones, and so on.

We all are capable of achieving success: it falls in place when you have the right commitment, your ability to overcome difficulties with zeal and confidence, the flexibility to expand your comfort zone, perseverance, grit, and determination.