Rajiv Talreja is India’s leading business coach and a bestselling author as well. While on one hand, he has impacted 5,00,000 through his coaching and handles four successful businesses of his own, he has authored the Amazon bestseller Lead or Bleed. So how does he do it all and helps others to do it all as well? In a conversation, we try to understand his trade secrets and his view on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. Excerpts:
Being a serial entrepreneur, what would you say are some of the biggest and most personal takeaways from your entrepreneurial journey?
I’ve had much success as an entrepreneur, but I’ve also faced more than my fair share of failures. And in all honesty, my failures have taught me a lot more. The most profound lesson I’ve learnt is that entrepreneurship is not easy and requires much persistence before anything tangible can occur. The second lesson I’ve learnt is that focusing on money is not the right way to look at things. Focusing on being the best at what you do and providing your customers with a quality product which they are willing to pay for is the outlook you need. Thirdly, as an entrepreneur, there’s only so much you can do individually. The only way to build a business, as opposed to being your business, is to hire and train people who can focus on day-to-day operations, while you as an entrepreneur deal with the expansion of the company. And finally, success in business is not a matter of luck or chance, but a direct result of creating a scalable business model with the right marketing strategies, an effective sales system, clear operations processes and by designing a culture for your team.
How do you go about handling the grievances of several people and companies at a time?
My way of dealing with it is that I personally do not coach any of the 500 businesses we work with at a one-on-one basis. Instead, I train these businesses on strategies, systems and skills. I have a team of coaches who are experts and I coach these coaches, who in turn coach the business. So, I am more focused on the strategy and business side and play a macro role in my business, while my team focuses on the operational delivery of coaching at extremely high standards. Co-incidentally, delegating work to trusted and well-trained subordinates while you as the entrepreneur focus on strategic planning is one of the key lessons my programme teaches business owners.
What can we expect from you next? In terms of books, more sessions and so on...
I would definitely start working on my second book in 2020. For now, I am looking at giving as much knowledge and value as I can to entrepreneurs via Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram. I want to touch as many lives as possible and therefore, I am pretty much spending most of my time doing videos, podcasts and blogs to impact entrepreneurs and answer their questions around business challenges.
How do you think entrepreneurs are important to the economy as a whole?
I believe that small and medium businesses are the lifeline of the economy in any country. I am blessed to be able to serve the heroes who serve the nation. Think about it, small and medium entrepreneurs are the people who create the most jobs, solve problems through their innovative products or services for the society, pay taxes on time and fuel the local economy with their blood, sweat and tears. They truly deserve to be successful and therefore, it is my mission to inspire and impact the lives of as many entrepreneurs that I can.
There are several common complaints that Talreja receives from entrepreneurs, a few of them are:
- They are unable to hire the right people at the right time.
- The entrepreneur is too caught up in the day-to-day functioning of the business to focus on expansion.
- Most companies are unable to build a USP that differentiates them from their competitors
For more on him, click on rajivtalreja.com
