Want to Succeed in Business? Here’s my Advice!

I recently gave a talk to a wonderful group of future leaders. Young people who are full of energy and enthusiasm for the path that lies before them. I was asked to offer some advice, and so I shared my core beliefs about the challenges they must face, the attitude they must take and the skills they must embrace to ‘make it’ in business.

Here are just a few of the things I shared with them. If you prefer, you can watch the full speech (complete with some impromptu Bollywood dancing!) here.

Think of your career as a journey not a destination

Don’t look at life and think, “This is the job I want to get to, this is the role I want to do.” Instead of thinking about specific roles, think of the impact you want to make. Because if you focus on what you can do to make a difference, you’ll also be making the most impact as you do it.

One day you might very well become the CEO, and you can bet you’ll be the best CEO you can possibly be because you made a difference every step of the way.

Find a purpose

After I graduated with an engineering degree, I worked for precisely three months as an engineer. I was so bored out of my mind, I can’t tell you! I was working in a big laboratory, soldering circuits and putting them into Picture-in-picture televisions. It was a big deal! Picture-in-picture televisions were so exciting. But imagine doing it eight hours a day. I wouldn’t see another human being all day, apart from maybe at lunch. I said to myself, “This is not what I want to do.”

And that’s when my college professor sat me down and said, “You know what, you’re going to make a pretty lousy engineer. But I think you have a flair for management. You like being with people.” So I went away and did my MBA in HR and then I joined Hindustan Unilever’s management training. I found my purpose. Find your purpose, find what excites you, what you feel passionate about, and go for it.

Don’t complain: get out there and find the solution!

I have no patience with those who are always in the victim mindset: the world is against me, my father isn’t great, my mother has done this to me, I’m too junior. I give people 20 minutes in my room to complain about things and then I’m done: after that they’re not allowed to moan and tell me how hard life is.

Because it doesn’t matter how hard the world is, how difficult, how junior or senior you are: everyone can have an influence and an impact. So get on with it, get out there and find the solution! 

Failure makes you leapfrog.

Let me tell you something: you are going to fail more than you succeed in your life. So embrace failure.

My generation has gotten away with failing less and succeeding more, but your generation? Not a chance. Why? Because the world is moving so fast, you’ve got to experiment, you’ve got to try things, dump things, try different jobs. 

Embrace failure, don’t dread it. Make it a way of life.

(To find out more about how I embraced failure in my own career, click here)

Be your own emotional fitness trainer

Your generation will almost certainly live beyond 100. And you don’t want to be lying on your deathbed, regretting all the things you didn’t do that you feel passionately about.

But to make sure that doesn’t happen, you’ve got to know what makes you tick. You’ve got to know what makes you passionate, what makes you happy, what you want to change in the world.

You’ve got to be spiritually fit as well as physically fit. It’s not good enough to say you don’t have time to exercise or time to spend on your spiritual wellbeing. You’ve got to be your own emotional fitness trainer. Take responsibility for yourself. Make it a part of your every day life, integrate it all. Take care of your mind, your heart, your body – all of it.

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