Grow your business with someone who has run the P&L himself.

“Entrepreneurship is not an easy, happy, money-making option. It is a painful, dream-chasing endeavour in which you may see success only after a lot of hardship. You need the staying power to face the reality of business life. From the outside it looks thrilling, exciting and inspiring. From the inside it is a completely different picture. Only someone who has gone through every phase of pain and gain knows the trials and triumphs of entrepreneurship. Not everyone is made for the long haul. Entrepreneurship is not for the hesitant. But don't be disheartened either. It is a chance to achieve your dreams and to pursue what you are passionate about. Try it, and taste this lovely fruit for yourself.”

That is what Dr. KK told a group of young people eager to try their hand at entrepreneurship. He was addressing would-be founders at a session on entrepreneurship and business improvement.

“So, dear friends,” he continued, “entrepreneurship is hard work. You need clarity about the business you want to start. Peter F. Drucker, one of the finest management thinkers of the 20th century, put it this way: ‘Most of what you hear about entrepreneurship is all wrong. It is not magic; it is not mysterious; and it has nothing to do with genes. It is a discipline and, like any discipline, it can be learned.’

So remember, understand and live the 6Ps of entrepreneurship:

• Pristine vision: a clear picture of the product or service you want to build.
• Passion: real love for the product or service you want to bring to market.
• Planning: a plan tells you where you are going and guides you along the journey.
• Persistence: keep working to make the dream come true. Obstacles will come. Follow through without giving up.
• Principled: be ethical. Follow governing principles that sustain the business, and never take shortcuts to show revenue.
• Purpose: a solid purpose behind your passion, shared with every employee. Purpose is the larger picture of why you started.

“I hope you all understood the 6Ps,” he said, and invited questions.

Why do so many new businesses fail?

Sheila stood up. “Why do so many MSMEs fail so early? And do women-led businesses fail more often than men's?”

“To your first question,” Dr. KK replied, “people often jump into entrepreneurship without a clear vision of what they want to achieve. They have a bright idea, believe it is right, and set off. They skip planning, and business planning is very important at the start. When obstacles come, they struggle to overcome them. Midway they lose interest or drift from the original plan under pressure from peers, family or their own lack of skills. I have seen many failures. But the thought of failure should not stop the journey. There are many experienced people who can coach and mentor you. Take their help, and build the 6Ps into your business life.

“To your second question, there is no clear data to say that women entrepreneurs fail more than men. There are fewer women entrepreneurs, and more should come forward. There are plenty of opportunities. Women are often more persistent, with greater perseverance and passion for their dreams, and may well succeed over the longer run.”

Types of entrepreneurship

“Dr. KK, can you tell us about the different types of entrepreneurship?” asked Rohan.

“Good question, Rohan. Entrepreneurship takes many forms, depending on the business, the founder's goals and the resources available. Here are the main types:”

• Small business entrepreneurship: running a small, often local business such as a restaurant, a shop, or a service like plumbing or hairdressing, aiming for steady, manageable growth.
• Scalable startup entrepreneurship: businesses designed to grow fast, often high-risk and high-reward, such as tech startups aiming to scale globally.
• Social entrepreneurship: businesses built mainly for social or environmental impact, tackling issues like poverty, education or sustainability.
• Corporate entrepreneurship (intrapreneurship): employees inside a large company who act like entrepreneurs, using its resources to build new products or ventures.
• Lifestyle entrepreneurship: businesses built to support a chosen way of life, such as freelance consultants, travel bloggers, homestay owners or niche shops.
• Franchise entrepreneurship: running a franchise of an established brand, with a proven model and brand recognition.
• E-commerce entrepreneurship: businesses that operate mainly online, from online stores to subscriptions and digital products.
• Tech entrepreneurship: founders building new software, hardware or technology, in fields like AI or robotics.
• Innovative entrepreneurship: new ideas that disrupt traditional industries or create entirely new markets.
• Family business entrepreneurship: businesses owned and run by family members, from small local firms to large groups, with their own family dynamics and challenges.
• Green entrepreneurship: businesses that put environmental sustainability first.

Dr's Coffee

With no more questions, Dr. KK walked back to his chambers and asked his associate, Muskan, to order a strong cup of coffee from Laxman's Café on the ground floor.

When he first moved in, Laxman's coffee was bland. Dr. KK explained how he liked it, and Laxman, a cheerful young owner, happily changed his method. He created three blends based on the mix of coffee and chicory. He wanted to call the strongest one Dr. KK's Coffee. Dr. KK suggested simply Dr's Coffee: a more useful name, and one the doctors at the nursing home next door would also enjoy. They did, and they ordered it regularly.

Dr. KK also suggested serving a butter or coconut biscuit from Laxman's own bakery with each cup. If customers liked the biscuit, they would buy more to take home. Instead of ₹10 a cup, Dr's Coffee with a biscuit sold at ₹15. It became popular, sales of both coffee and biscuits rose, and so did profits. Laxman always remembered Dr. KK's words: “Keep making small positive improvements, and you will reap large rewards.”

Entrepreneur or small business owner?

Earlier that day, a participant had asked where the word entrepreneur comes from, and whether small business owners are entrepreneurs. The word comes from the French entreprendre, to undertake: someone who undertakes a new venture. Its popular use is largely credited to the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say. Entrepreneurs take risks and start new ventures to change the status quo. They spot new opportunities and pursue them. A small business owner usually plays it safer, offering a product or service that already exists, perhaps with some changes, to earn a good living.

So is Laxman an entrepreneur? Compare him with Nitin Saluja, the founder of Chaayos, who saw a gap for customised tea, built the product, took the risks and grew it into a business across many Indian cities. Laxman made small, smart changes, serves a local market and is happy where he is. Laxman is a successful micro business owner. Nitin Saluja is an entrepreneur.

A business plan is a document in which you write down your business goals and how you plan to achieve them. For some it is simple, for others complex. Startups, running companies, large organisations and even non-profits all have plans. It matters whether you run a micro enterprise, a small company or a medium-sized industry. Medium and large businesses usually prepare annual plans. But in my experience, few MSME owners prepare one.

How a business plan helps

• It keeps you focused on growth and on maximising income.
• It sets out the strategies that keep the business going successfully.
• It sets goals and objectives, so you know your budgets, the partnerships you need, how to manage your supply chain and how to improve operations.
• It helps you anticipate risks and plan how to reduce them.
• It works as a measuring tool: you can track growth and correct course when things go off plan.
• It shows the finance you need to reach your goals, so you can build a financial plan.

Why you need a good plan

• To check whether your idea is feasible
• To raise funds
• To set milestones towards your goals
• To know whether you need more funds, and how much
• To understand market conditions and competitors
• To attract staff of the quality you want

If you have a plan, you know where you are going. Without one, you go nowhere.

What follows is an overview, not an exhaustive plan, to help you get started on a good basic plan for your own growth. When you approach investors, the plan needs to be more detailed, with a compelling story for why they should invest, showing enthusiasm, professionalism and completeness.

The contents of the plan

1. Executive summary
2. Company description
3. Products and services
4. Marketing plan
5. Operational plan
6. Management and organisation
7. Financial plan

1. Executive summary

Explain the fundamentals of the business briefly. What will your products or services be? Who will your customers be? What does the future hold for your business and your industry? Say a few words about the founders. If you are applying for funds, state the amount, how it will help the company grow, when operations will become profitable and when repayments will start.

2. Company description

• What the business is, and what it will do.
• A simple mission statement: the guiding principles and ethical beliefs that will run the organisation.
• Goals and objectives: where you want to take the company over a set period, including customer and stakeholder satisfaction.
• Your business philosophy: what you believe in most.
• Your target customers, briefly. The detail goes in the marketing plan.
• Your industry: is it growing, what changes do you foresee, and how will you benefit from them?
• Your strengths: the organisation's competencies, and the strengths you personally bring.

3. Products and services

Describe your products or services in detail, with technical specifications, drawings, photos or brochures where useful. Where will they give you a competitive advantage, or disadvantage? Quality, performance, unique features and benefits are what make customers buy.

4. Marketing plan

Start with market research. Success needs research that is systematic and specific; vague research leads to disastrous results. Begin with desk research on the data already available about your industry. Then do primary research: gather data on the ground yourself. It gives you current information about the business you plan to enter.

Be as detailed as possible, with data, numbers and sources, because the marketing plan is the basis of your sales projection. Gather these facts about your industry:

• The total size of your market, and the total addressable market
• The share of the market you expect to win
• Current demand in your target market
• Trends in growth, customer preferences and product development
• Growth potential for a business of your size
• Barriers to entering this market
• How changes in technology, government regulation, the economy or your industry could affect you

Describe your products and services from the customer's point of view. For each, list the most important features and what is special about them, and the benefits: how the customer gains from using it.

Take a mixer grinder. The features are its design, colours, extended warranty and after-sales support. The benefits are faster grinding that saves time, lower power consumption that cuts your electricity bill, and double bush, double bearings that keep it quiet so it doesn't disturb someone on a call or watching TV. Features are tangible. Benefits are what the customer actually feels.

Next, identify your target customers: their characteristics and locations. The description will be completely different depending on whether you sell to businesses or consumers. Will you be B2B, B2C or D2C? Each needs different customer groupings and a different way of selling.

Then describe the competition. Who are your immediate competitors? How important and how big are they? What niche will set your product or service apart? What is your unique selling proposition?

Now the marketing strategy, which deserves most of your attention. Once you have identified and segmented your customers, you must communicate with them and attract them to buy. Customers pay less attention to advertising today. It is no longer about catching eyeballs. It is about positioning: occupying a place in the customer's mind, as Al Ries and Jack Trout described in their famous book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.

Decide which media will reach your customers. Digital marketing is now the most widely used, and one of the most cost-effective, tools for SMEs.

Finally, prepare a sales forecast that is realistic, achievable and still stretching. Base it on past sales if you have them, your marketing strategy, your research and industry data.

5. Operational plan

Explain the daily operations of the business: where it will run, what equipment and tools it will use, the people, the processes and the operating environment. This varies even between similar businesses, because each may approach the market differently. The daily operations of an IT services startup are very different from a garment shop or a component manufacturer supplying a large company.

6. Management and organisation

• Who manages the business day to day?
• What experience does that person bring?
• Any special or distinguishing competency?
• If that person leaves, or something unexpected happens, is there a plan B?
• An organisation chart showing the hierarchy
• Brief bios of key people if you are seeking funds
• Professional advisors: legal advisors, board directors, mentors, consultants

7. Financial plan

Show a 12-month profit and loss projection; a four-year projection is even better. A cash-flow projection is essential, along with a projected balance sheet and a break-even calculation. Together these give a realistic estimate of your company's financial future. Thinking through the financial plan also sharpens your understanding of the business and shows whether your original idea is taking shape.

What if you don't have a product yet?

“I don't have a product or service yet. I'm only trying to start my entrepreneurial journey. Where do people like me fit in?” asked Usha.

“For you,” Dr. KK said, “the first step is a business identification plan. You need to find the product or service that suits you, and check whether it will take you towards the goal you set for yourself before starting this journey. Let us discuss that another day. It is an interesting and very necessary step for anyone new to business.”

AI has become a disruptive force across industries, changing operations, decision-making and how companies deal with customers. Businesses will keep adopting AI and other new technologies to stay competitive and meet changing customer demands. You cannot get better results with yesterday's tools. The old saying is still true. Staying in business is getting more complicated every day, and disruption is changing the way we do business.

Look around. Big-name, multibillion-dollar companies of yesteryear no longer exist. New billion-dollar companies have sprung up in the past two decades, and many don't follow the old school of thought. Old brands are fighting for space to stay relevant while newcomers with different business models run them over. Older companies need to get out of the muddied, bloodied red ocean, where competitors kill each other, and embrace a blue ocean strategy, with AI as the white knight. Blue Ocean Strategy was introduced in 2005 by two INSEAD professors, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.

Adopting AI is not a strategy. It is an essential tool you need to carry out a strategy. Strategy is the set of choices you make to stay relevant and grow. Where to use AI, and which AI to use, are choices that decide whether your strategy succeeds. The old strategy of simply being better than the competition no longer works. Of course you should be better. But where will you compete? Or will you make the competition irrelevant? The answer lies in your choices. Why not try the blue ocean strategy?

Technology disruption is now routine, and many jobs are predicted to be lost along the way. Add to this the changing behaviour and needs of customers. Does that mean traditional businesses should give up and shut shop? Not at all. The answer is a new path, or a new business model, and the blue ocean strategy is one such answer worth exploring.

Instead of dividing up existing, often shrinking demand and benchmarking against competitors, the blue ocean strategy is about growing demand and breaking away from the competition. It calls for management decisions that create new markets. E-commerce is threatening neighbourhood kirana shops. UPI payments are challenging credit and debit cards. Royal Enfield changed the dynamics of the motorcycle industry. Dell, when it launched, changed the delivery model. Many companies have succeeded this way.

Disruption or no disruption, get out of the old red ocean and into the blue one. Grab AI, build a new strategy, and build big businesses.

Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day is a book by Todd Henry, published in 2013. In this article I summarise some of its ideas.

Henry opens with the artist and designer Candy Chang, who painted a wall of an abandoned house with the words “Before I die, I want to ______” and waited to see what people would write. She did not have to wait long. Passers-by filled the blanks: sing to a million people, write a book, tell my mother I love her, understand. The project went viral, and people began creating similar walls in their own neighbourhoods.

Death is the only certainty. We cannot cheat it, and we don't know when it will come. Our days are finite. Yet we work our backs off, jumping from one project to the next, sometimes mindfully, mostly aimlessly. Are we achieving what we set out to do? Are we even sure that the goals we work towards are what we want? How often have you wished you had done something earlier, or regretted losing an opportunity while you still had the time, the energy and the right conditions? As Henry warns, it is easy to get lost and wake up years later asking who you are and how you got here.

His remedy is to build steady habits that keep you on course. In his words, an ounce of preventative discipline today is worth a pound of corrective action later.

The most valuable land in the world

Henry recounts a friend who once asked which land in the world is the most valuable. People guessed Manhattan, the Middle East oil fields, South Africa's gold mines. All wrong, he said. The most valuable land is the graveyard, because it holds all the unwritten novels, never-launched businesses and unreconciled relationships of people who planned to get to them tomorrow, until their tomorrows ran out.

It is a profound thought. In recent years we have lost many people too young: athletes, CEOs of promising companies, and actors such as Puneeth Rajkumar.

Dying empty does not mean working day and night towards something that matters little to you, while drifting away from the people you love. As you chase your passion and purpose, don't lose sight of the people who support you and care for you. There will be a constant tug of war in your mind about priorities: what to chase and what to let go. These are tough choices.

You are capable of more, and your best work is still ahead of you. But positive thinking amounts to nothing without decisive action. If you don't act, you rob yourself, your colleagues, your family, your organisation and the world of a contribution only you can make. Don't go to your grave with your best work still inside you. Choose to die empty.

Steve Jobs, in his 2005 Stanford commencement address, described asking himself every morning whether he would want to do what he was about to do if it were the last day of his life. Whenever the answer was no for too many days in a row, he knew something had to change.

Three kinds of work

When you are gone, your work is what remains. Your body of work is the sum of where you choose to put your limited focus, time, energy and resources. When you go to bed each night, are you satisfied with the work you did that day? Henry divides work into three kinds:

• Mapping: planning, setting objectives and priorities. The work before the work.
• Making: doing the work itself and creating value, whether that is selling, designing, writing or leading your team.
• Meshing: the work between the work that makes you effective, such as learning new skills, deepening knowledge and staying curious.

How you balance the three puts you in one of four profiles. Developers do all three and keep creating value. Drivers plan and deliver but stop learning, so today's results come at the cost of tomorrow's. Drifters love making and learning but don't plan, so they bounce from project to project. Dreamers plan and learn but never act.

Whatever the profile, many of us slowly drift into complacency and mediocrity and lose track of what we set out to do. Henry lists seven traps of mediocrity: being aimless, boredom, comfort, delusion, ego, fear and guardedness.

The EMPTY review

A five-step process to scan your life for action points, so you do work you will be proud of later:

• E for Ethics: review your code of ethics, how you apply it, and where the pitfalls are.
• M for Mission: how will you know you have succeeded? What should you be doing that you are not, and what should go?
• P for People: look at the people you deal with, and how you will strengthen those relationships.
• T for Tasks: what absolutely must get done? Put it on the calendar.
• Y for You: how are you developing yourself? Ask: what did I fail at this week? That is what drives growth.

Find ways to add value to the market and to other people's lives. When you stop challenging yourself, you stop growing. In the end, your life will be measured by what you gave, not by what you received. Build a body of work you will be proud of, and plant seeds every day that will yield a harvest later.

Choose to die empty.

Entrepreneurship is not an easy, happy, money-making option. It is a painful, dream-chasing endeavour where success comes only after much hardship. From the outside it looks thrilling. From the inside it is a different picture. Only someone who has lived through the pains and gains knows the trials and triumphs. Many new businesses do not survive their first five years, and even fewer last ten. Entrepreneurship is not for the hesitant. But don't lose heart. It is a chance to chase your dreams, and worth trying for yourself.

Running a business is like a maze. There is no straight path, and you will meet many obstacles along the way.

How people get into business is revealing. Some start out of passion. Some inherit a business from parents or grandparents. Some become owners by accident. Others start because they had no other job or option. Given these different starting points, it is not surprising that few new businesses survive beyond ten years. Starting, surviving and succeeding is hard. Getting ideas is easy, but most ideas lack clarity, passion and motivation. Even in family businesses, the second or third generation often maintains the status quo and is afraid to grow aggressively.

The accidental business owner

The story of accidental owners is interesting. A runs a business, PQR, in a mediocre way, and is fine with that. He bumps into B, an old college friend from the same street and town, and they reconnect. A invites B to invest a small amount from his salary as a partner, then asks for a small collateral to get an extra bank overdraft. A introduces B to key clients as a business partner. B is excited and starts spending weekends at the business, but he doesn't want to run it. He is afraid of losing his steady salary.

Over the next few months A hands B more responsibility and an impressive business card: Executive Director, Operations. B feels great. Then A breaks the news: he has a job in Canada and is emigrating. He promises to support B from there, hands over the company and flies away. The next day B meets the auditor and the bank, and is shocked by the financial mess. He is now an accidental business owner, with no choice but to run the company to repay the debts and make a living. Not every accidental ownership is like this, but many are. Some succeed. Many fail.

Four challenges that keep MSMEs small

Business model. The way the business was set up may no longer be right. The model suited the market when the business started, but markets change and the model must change with them. On the old model, revenues stall, costs rise, profits fall and the owner is stressed, and many businesses close after a few years of struggle. The few that adapt reap the benefits of growth. Owners should stay open and look for solutions beyond their own business boundaries.

Marketing and sales. Many MSME owners are stuck with printed brochures and bulky slide decks emailed to customers. The basic job of marketing is to show customers how your product or service will help them. Is your communication right? Is it reaching the right customers? Do they understand it? Is your marketing plan right? Keep asking, and if the answers are uncomfortable, change your approach quickly. Owners should make full use of digital marketing.

The right people. Hiring the right quality and fit of staff is a major challenge. Owners often compromise on talent because of salary, and end up with less effective people. If you can't afford better talent, invest in training the people you have, yet training is often seen as an expense. Unclear job descriptions lead to wrong hires. Many owners don't attend training themselves, although the organisation's human capital includes the owner and the management team. Talent keeps moving to better opportunities, so retention matters too. Show your people growth, vision and social commitment. The old days of loyalty are gone. Attracting and retaining people, and reducing attrition, is a major challenge.

Financial management. Many MSMEs show profits on the balance sheet but have no money in the bank. Often the reason is that they don't prepare and work to a proper budget. Many still use old systems and haven't adopted simple ERP tools that give visibility of cash flows. A budget helps you:

• Set and achieve profit goals
• Track revenue, expenses and cash flow
• Cut unnecessary spending
• Allocate funds properly across the business
• Plan for purchases such as equipment and materials
• Secure funding from investors or financial institutions
• Keep colleagues informed about the financial health of the business
• Project monthly operating expenses, and the revenue needed to break even

The mantra for a successful budget is measure, monitor and control.

Starting, surviving, succeeding and scaling up is like finding your way out of a bhool bhulaiyaa. There are many more challenges, and just as many opportunities. But which way do you turn in a maze? Often you hit a blind alley.

Work differently, amaze yourself, and get out of the MSME maze.

Every business needs steady growth in both its top line and bottom line. Rapid technological change, shifts in the business environment and changing customer choices mean a business must keep evolving to sustain growth. A business has only three choices: growth, growth again, and yet more growth. Over a century of management thinking, the gurus have offered many approaches: long-range planning, management by objectives, zero-based budgeting and many more. In recent years a new philosophy has emerged: design thinking.

Design is no longer just about looks. In business, it combines form and function, user experience and strategic thinking. Design thinking puts empathy and innovation at its core. It pushes a business to deeply understand its customers' needs, pain points and aspirations, and to create solutions to real problems.

Design becomes a driver of growth through innovation and differentiation. By putting the user at the centre, businesses can find untapped opportunities and create products and services customers love. Apple, for example, built its success on products that blend technology and design.

The five stages of design thinking

• Empathise: understand the needs, desires and challenges of your target customers through listening, observation and engagement.
• Define: pull together what you learned and define the problem clearly, so the effort stays focused.
• Ideate: brainstorm a wide range of ideas without judgement.
• Prototype: turn the best ideas into something tangible, from sketches to physical models, to test the concept.
• Test: try the prototypes with real users, gather feedback, and refine.

Nykaa is a good example. Women used to go from shop to shop to find the cosmetics they wanted. Falguni Nayar understood that frustration and built Nykaa, an online beauty business now worth billions. Look around and you will find many businesses that started or grew this way, such as Airbnb, or WeWork, which was revolutionary at launch even though it later stumbled.

How design thinking drives growth

• Innovation: an open-minded approach to problems uncovers new opportunities.
• Better customer experiences: understanding customers deeply leads to products they value, and to loyalty and referrals.
• Agility: the iterative process lets you adapt quickly as markets change.
• Collaboration: it brings together people with different skills and views.
• Lower risk: testing prototypes early exposes problems before you invest heavily.
• Differentiation: it helps you create offerings that stand out in a crowded market.

Bringing design thinking into your organisation

• Build a design mindset that values empathy, curiosity and experimentation at every level.
• Invest in training and workshops on design thinking methods.
• Put the customer at the centre: gather feedback regularly and use it to make decisions.
• Form cross-functional teams from different departments and backgrounds.
• Work iteratively: experiment, learn from failures and keep refining.

In a fast-changing business world, design thinking gives you a practical framework for innovation, better customer experiences and growth. By putting empathy, collaboration and creativity first, organisations can find new opportunities, stand out, and create lasting value for customers and shareholders.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is a 1989 Hollywood comedy in which a struggling inventor accidentally shrinks his children to a quarter of an inch. Made on a budget of about 18 million US dollars, it earned over 220 million worldwide. I borrowed its title for this article, because some owners with big dreams make a few ill-advised moves that shrink their business instead of growing it.

Vishesh runs an interior contracting business that grew from scratch to ₹50 crore in ten years. He studied architecture at a reputed Bengaluru college and was known for creative designs. After graduating he joined a well-known architecture firm, learned the business and project execution, and after five years started his own design-and-build business. Clients followed him from earlier projects. He built strong relationships, delivered on his promises and often exceeded expectations. He was selective about projects and protective of his reputation, and he made good profits.

As the business grew, so did his network and his taste for the good life. A healthy order book gave him confidence. But contacts and contracts are not a true measure of an organisation's health. He had no second in command, no right-hand person to run things in his absence. He was advised to build a team. He brushed it off: clients knew him, he knew the job, so why spend on systems and processes? He didn't see that systems, processes and controls are key to an organisation's health. He is not alone. A large share of MSMEs lack them.

He believed his ₹50 crore business would become ₹500 crore within ten years. 10X growth has become a fashionable formula, promoted by people who have recently put on the business coach's cloak and talk smartly on YouTube. 10X is a great vision. Achieving it is the real challenge.

At a networking meeting, a friend advised him to put his surplus into real estate, which was booming. Vishesh followed the advice and, by a quirk of fate, more than doubled his money. Sensing a killing, he spent more time on real estate and pulled money out of the interiors business. Banks, impressed by his balance sheet, offered big loans. Instead of investing them in interiors, he diverted them to real estate.

This time luck did not favour him. Working capital for interiors dried up. Projects slipped. Clients grew annoyed; some stopped placing orders, others asked him to stop work and leave the site. His cash flow took a heavy hit. Then the pandemic struck. Money became hard to find, real estate crashed, and the interiors business nearly closed. It survived on a handful of projects, without the cash that had earlier been diverted.

A ₹50 crore business shrank to ₹5 crore. Forget 10X: it became one-tenth of its size. Honey, I shrunk the business.

Why it happens

This is not just a story. Many owners have faced this hard truth. We blame the gods, fate and the stars, but rarely our own wrong decisions. Why did Vishesh move away from his core business? Many owners do the same when things are going well. Grow the core business stronger, and add businesses close to it. Don't diversify into unrelated activities or divert funds to them. Hoping a new business will bring new growth is a myth. Hope keeps you motivated, but in business you need proper risk analysis alongside hope. Otherwise hope ends in a hopeless situation. No machine can zap your business and make it grow back 10X. That only happens in the movies.

Get your act right. Put the right people at the helm. Listen to the right advice. Yes, 10X growth is possible, but you need the right people, processes, systems and controls.

Businesses shrinking, or closing altogether, is not uncommon, especially among today's startups. An Indian edtech company once valued at 25 billion dollars was later valued at a fraction of that, and a global office-sharing business suffered a similar fall. The responsibility lies with founders and owners: work smarter, hire the right talent and the right advisors, stick to the business plan, and don't throw money at imaginary profitable ideas. The aim is to grow the business, not shrink it.

Have the will, the vision and the wisdom. Otherwise, you may have to say: Honey, I shrunk the business!

An interesting title, isn't it? It is also an important matter for your business. Amid all the noise, many organisations have forgotten how to listen. When management cannot listen, problems follow: stalled growth, cash-flow trouble, unhappy employees and customers walking away.

Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages. It is a core communication skill and part of every soft-skills programme. Without it, messages are easily misunderstood. Many successful leaders credit their success to listening; Richard Branson often cites it as one of the reasons behind Virgin's success. Wise people have long said that to be a good leader, you must be a great listener.

Listening is no longer just a soft skill. It affects the whole business. Some multinationals have started what they call listening strategy programmes, often focused on employee satisfaction and exit interviews. But listening means much more than that.

The king who learned to listen

A learned monk was passing through a kingdom. The king, who had heard of him, sent his chief advisor to invite the monk to court. The king asked him one question: what should he do to be a truly good leader for his people? “Learn the art of listening,” said the monk. “Listen and learn before you take any decision.” When the king asked how, the monk told him to spend a week in the nearby forest, sit quietly, meditate, and then return.

After a week the king returned. “What did you listen to?” asked the monk. The king described birds chirping and animals growling. “You have not succeeded,” said the monk, and sent him back. This happened again and again, and the king grew frustrated. The monk explained that listening is not the same as hearing. Hearing is the physical process of sound entering your ears. Listening needs focus and concentrated effort. He urged the king to become an active listener, listening with all his senses. It is a skill that takes time and patience to master.

The king went back determined. After seven days he told the monk that he had listened to flowers blooming, seeds germinating, the footsteps of ants and the wind, things he had never heard before. The monk was delighted. The king had understood the philosophy of listening: hearing the unheard. “You will be a noble ruler and a great king,” said the monk, blessed him, and walked away.

The moral: can management hear the unheard?

What management fails to hear

Why does management sometimes get overwhelmed by problems it never saw coming, whether a union dispute, a business development crisis or something else? They falter, and the organisation suffers. They did not listen to:

• Changes in the business environment
• Changes in their customers' businesses
• Changes in customer behaviour
• Changes in employee behaviour
• Changes in government policy

There are many more signals management misses. Yes, stay focused on the numbers; business is a numbers game. But also train yourself to listen to what is happening inside the organisation and outside it.

The author and communication teacher John Stoker describes seven kinds of ineffective listening: evaluative, assumptive, self-protective, judgemental, affirmative, defensive and authoritative. All of them come from the listener's attitude, whether a problem with the speaker or a mental block about the subject. That is a topic for another article.

Some organisations now hire listening strategy executives. One job advertisement I came across described the role as running employee engagement, onboarding and exit surveys. That is a very narrow use of listening. Listening should run through the whole organisation.

I urge management to think deeply about this. There is noise all around. Are you listening?

Norval A. Hawkins was Henry Ford's first sales director, one of the first corporate sales directors of his era, and author of an early book on the selling process. It influenced Edward Strong's work on the psychology of selling. Over the last century, hundreds of authors have written thousands of books on selling. So where have all the great salesmen gone? Is selling dead?

As Shiv Khera says, “Winners don't do different things. They do things differently.” Successful companies today do things differently to win business. B2B selling is tough, and selling has changed a great deal with digital technology. But selling remains at the core of every business.

Michael Porter's idea of competitive advantage rests on differentiation: being better than the competition. Organisations and management gurus have tinkered endlessly with sales processes and techniques: consultative selling, team selling, solution selling. As competitors caught up, a few organisations still pulled ahead on revenue and profit. What set them apart was a behavioural advantage. Terry Bacon and David Pugh wrote about this in Winning Behavior and The Behavioral Advantage.

B2B selling is getting more complex. Buyers have moved from transactions to relationships, and staying there is hard: you must deliver what you show and what you say. Expectations have risen from customer satisfaction to customer delight, and now to customer wow. We often ask: the products and prices were much the same, so why did firm X win the order and not firm Y? Customers are influenced by how suppliers behave. They look for passion and demonstrated commitment. We often hear, “We are looking for partners, not just suppliers.” Becoming a partner means building positive behaviour and attitude across everyone in the organisation, not just sales, from the doorman to the chairman.

Seven ideas on behavioural differentiation

Drawing on Bacon and Pugh's The Behavioral Advantage:

• Differentiating behaviour goes beyond what people normally experience. Customers meet your people in meetings, emails, calls and online. In each, they feel something. Is it pleasant, helpful and professional? You choose what kind of experience to give.
• Behaviour can differentiate positively or negatively. Positive experiences bring customers back again and again. Negative ones drive them away, and they tell ten others.
• It starts from within. Organisations that delight customers treat their own employees exceptionally well, and motivated employees give extraordinary service.
• It is a 24/7 affair. There is no holiday for good behaviour, and people remember bad experiences longer than good ones.
• Your behaviour reflects your true attitudes and beliefs. If you say the customer comes first, define what that means and live it fully, without riders or conditions.
• Every customer-facing person is your ambassador. Make sure no one's negative attitude damages a valued relationship. We often lose orders without realising the cause was behaviour.
• Customers remember you for your behaviour. If you lose an order but the customer valued how you treated her, she will call you back the moment your competitor slips.

How can an organisation build this? Make it part of your vision, mission and strategy. Start with the management team. Find ways to measure it. Put it at the top of every meeting agenda, before anything else.

Building a positive behavioural advantage is not rocket science. It needs commitment. You may falter at first. Don't despair, and don't worry about the cost: customers pay a premium for great service. Haven't you paid an extra tip for exceptional service yourself?

Build your behavioural advantage today. Win business from your competitors, and become better at what you do.

MSME owners are among the nation's key builders and contributors to economic growth. Yet many create wealth on one side and destroy their own health on the other, and by the time they have built wealth, they no longer have the health to enjoy it. Is stress to blame? Stress is everywhere. The question is how we deal with it.

Stress starts the day you start the business, whether you founded it out of passion, joined through a partnership or took over someone else's. You arrange finance, win customers, deliver what you promised, and chase payments. Owning a small business can be deeply rewarding, but it can also bring stress and anxiety, from financial instability, uncertainty about the future and the pressure to succeed.

We treat successful entrepreneurs like heroes. Before they made it, many went through moments of crippling anxiety and hopelessness, when it seemed everything might fall apart. We only see the success, not the struggle. It is like a man riding a tiger. People think, “How brave.” He is thinking, “How did I get on this tiger, and how do I avoid being eaten?”

Many of us remember V G Siddhartha, who created the Café Coffee Day outlets where so many of us met friends, and where many business ideas were born. His death in 2019 shook the business community. No one fully knows what he was carrying. Many owners go through dark moments under pressure. If you ever feel that way, please talk to someone you trust, or to a professional, without delay. In India, the Tele-MANAS mental health helpline is available on 14416.

Where the stress comes from

Financial instability is one of the biggest causes. Small businesses often run on tight budgets and margins. Unexpected expenses, slow sales or large unpaid dues can quickly create a crisis, and owners worry about paying salaries and bills and keeping the business afloat.

Uncertainty about the future is another. Small businesses are at the mercy of market conditions and changing customer behaviour, and it is hard to predict how the business will do.

Then there is the pressure to succeed. Owners are their own bosses and feel personally responsible for success or failure. They juggle many roles and face constant setbacks: lost customers, disputes with partners, new competition, staff problems, and the struggle to meet payroll.

Warning signs

Many of us don't realise we are under stress. Watch for the signs, and listen to the people close to you, because they often notice first. There is no shame in asking for help. Good mental health is also good for the health of your business. Signs that stress may be building up include:

• Finding it hard to concentrate or make decisions
• Feeling overwhelmed and unable to solve problems
• Often feeling irritable, tense or close to tears
• Thinking about work constantly, even in personal time
• Finding reasons not to get out of bed or go to work
• Avoiding essential day-to-day tasks
• Spending less time with family and friends, and avoiding social gatherings
• Drinking or smoking more

How it builds up

• Long hours, regularly, to meet demand or get a product to market
• Doing everything yourself, answering emails and calls after hours, until the line between work and home disappears
• Feeling isolated, with no one who understands the demands of running a business
• Constant cash-flow worries, and wondering where the next job will come from
• Many roles at once, plus administration and government compliance on top
• Feeling responsible to yourself, your family and your employees for making it work

What helps

You cannot remove stress from life, including the particular stress of owning a business. But you can learn to manage it so it doesn't damage your work, your success or your health. The longer stress lasts, the more harm it does, including to your physical health.

• Seek professional counselling. A counsellor can help you find the sources of stress and build ways to cope.
• Practise mindfulness and relaxation. Deep breathing, meditation, yoga and exercise all help.
• Find support among other owners. A business association or networking group gives you peers who understand, and good advice.
• Take breaks and set boundaries. Disconnect from work outside working hours to avoid burnout.
• Exercise. Even short, gentle sessions lift your mood and outlook.
• Sleep. Owners often cut back on sleep, and the deficit builds up and wears you down. Rest more, stress less.

Owning a business can be stressful, but by taking these steps you can improve your wellbeing and your chances of success. Have a mentor, the way families once had a family doctor. Be bold, become strong, and keep stress in its place.

For a business owner, few things are more frustrating than losing a customer. You built the relationship, served them well and kept your promises. So when they suddenly disappear, you feel confused, angry and helpless. The reason is often unclear. Common causes include poor service, poor communication and unmet expectations. Today, technology has also become a major reason for losing customers. Competitors are not always the thieves. Before blaming them, examine your own house.

Remember: the customer has many choices. For you, the customer is the only choice.

Poor customer service

One of the most common reasons customers leave. If they don't get the attention and support they need, they look elsewhere. It shows up as unresponsive staff, slow replies or unprofessional conduct. Prioritise customer support, train your staff to handle enquiries and complaints, and build a culture of excellent service.

Poor communication

Customers want to feel valued and heard. If they feel ignored, they leave. Set up clear channels of communication and be responsive. Check in regularly, send updates and give personal attention.

Unmet expectations

Customers expect you to keep your promises. Delayed deliveries, poor quality or broken promises lead to dissatisfaction and lost customers. Set clear expectations from the start and follow through. Be open about problems and delays. It builds trust.

A better offer from a competitor

Sometimes a competitor offers better value: a lower price, better features or more personal support. Keep watching the market and your competitors, keep improving your offering, and give the personal attention that sets you apart.

Technology: the new and important reason

Technology has transformed how we live and do business, and opened huge opportunities to reach customers. It has also created a new risk: losing customers because you haven't kept up.

Data. Traditional companies must urgently build their business data. When senior people leave, they take a huge amount of knowledge and experience with them that the organisation never captured. Bring your team together, put all the information about past wins and losses on the table, and build a system to capture it, so you can make informed decisions when a customer has a new requirement. Data helps in everything from choosing a vendor or material to union talks, pricing and marketing. Combine it with AI and you gain a big advantage in making faster, better decisions.

Digital presence. Today you need a digital presence, and a good one: your website, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and more, whether you are B2B, B2C, D2C or selling to government. Customers now check suppliers' digital footprints before deciding whether they are genuine and worth working with. So do rating agencies, banks and suppliers. If your competitor's digital presence is better and the customer chooses them, whose loss is it?

Staying digitally connected. Technology lets customers place and track orders, learn about your company and your references, and get quick answers. It lets you reach and serve more customers. But customers still want to feel valued and understood, not like just another number. They expect a smooth, easy and great experience.

Losing a customer is never easy. Understand why it happened and act to prevent it: prioritise support, communicate clearly, keep your promises and keep improving. Customer behaviour has changed, and so has the way customers see and judge their suppliers.

So who stole your customer? Technology, or your lack of preparation for it?

Fallacies are false or deceptive arguments. They prove nothing but create false beliefs, and they can be surprisingly persuasive even when they are superficial. We should learn to recognise and unmask them, because they can lead us into costly mistakes. Let us look at a few, and how they affect business.

The either-or fallacy

We sometimes aren't clear what our business should stand for, and declare that it must be either a best-in-class manufacturer or a best-in-class marketing company. Following this false choice, we neglect the development of the whole organisation and settle onto a slow road to nowhere.

Hasty generalisation

We make decisions or form opinions on too little data, then act on them, and get poor results and embarrassing situations. A huge crowd at a political rally does not mean all those people like the leader or will vote for him. In the same way, we sometimes assume people from government schools are less capable, until they surprise us with innovative ideas.

Circular reasoning

We believe that quality costs more, and that because something costs more, it must be high quality, and we push this reasoning onto customers. It no longer holds. A competitor arrives with high quality at a competitive price and suddenly your business is in trouble. And if you cut your price, customers may assume you have cut quality too, and buy less.

The bandwagon fallacy

Also called social proof thinking: we follow what others are doing for no real reason. She is doing it, he is doing it, so why not me? When tomato and onion farmers made good money one season, many more farmers rushed in, and the next season prices crashed and they suffered heavy losses. Many people jumped into real estate; a few succeeded and many lost. Hundreds of engineering colleges opened because existing ones were making money, and we know how that ended. Before jumping into a new business, be careful. Don't follow the bandwagon.

Ad hominem

Instead of arguing about the subject, we attack the person. We dismiss an idea because of who said it: their background, where they come from, where they studied or their position. In meetings, when someone raises a point, we sometimes shut them down by talking about them instead of the point. How often have we fallen for this?

The sunk cost fallacy

This one is everywhere. We invest in something that turns out to be a drain with no results, then invest more in the hope that results will come. We pour good money after bad. Smart owners cut their losses quickly and move on to something more viable. Why do we persist? We believe quitters never win, and bosses fear that admitting a mistake will make people think less of them. Better to get out early, when you sense something isn't working, than lose more money, time and effort. Don't deceive yourself.

False thinking: social loafing

We assume teams always deliver more. They do deliver more than one person, but a team's output is not the individual's output multiplied by the number of members. Some work hard while others hide behind them. Responsibility gets diluted and risk gets shifted. In a tug of war, does everyone pull with equal strength? What has your experience been?

Many professors and psychologists have researched fallacies and false thinking. There is no single reason why business people fall into these traps, but they do, and businesses fail as a result. You may recognise a few of these from your own experience, and see where you might have avoided the trap.