One question that people always ask me - How to find your Passion?
This question comes from students, youngsters, people who are entrepreneurs and even professionals.
Passion is one thing everybody wants to figure out in their life.
But they don't know how to do that.
So one fool-proof method of finding your passion is to experiment.
Be shameless and experiment!
That has been my mantra from the beginning and I have always told people to go out there
and get out of your comfort zone to try out different things.
I want to give my example of how I went about to find my passion.
The experiment I tried was basically with starting a business.
My business model was very simple.
My college RV College of Engineering which is outside Bangalore and on the Mysore road
and when people come to the second year of college, they want to buy a laptop.
Those days it was all about buying computers and they had to go all the way to the city
to buy the computers and I figured out that why not I start a computer business back in
my college.
In this way, people don't have to go out there and buy the computers and also servicing was
a major concern.
So if I set up something here in my college, kids dont have to go anywhere to buy the computers
and I have a captive audience.
Every year we have about 1000s of students who want to buy computers and I feel that
even till date, this is a brilliant idea!
Just think about it - for a business you always look at what is your target audience, what
is your chances of conversion.
So when I look back on this kind of a model, I still feel its a brilliant idea.
So I started this computer business back then.
And you will not believe the results I got!
Do you have any idea how many computers I sold?
Take a guess...
You know whenever I ask this question when I go to colleges and give my talks, and every
time I ask this question people say 500... or 1000 or 2000.
Some people say 10,000 or even 50,000 and stuff.
But when I tell them the real answer, they are really laughing and they understand what
I must have gone through.
So you will not believe but I ended up selling just 3 computers.
So, I know you must be thinking why am I telling these stories to you.
Why am I making a fool out of myself by talking about the failures that I have gone through
in my life.
So, when I look back at it, I always think that these were experiments that helped me
understand that Entrepreneurship is ingrained in me and Entrepreneurship is something that
I will continue for the rest of my life.
Similarly, I did many more experiments.
I tried different businesses.. some succeeded while some did not.
The first thumb rule of finding your passion is to experiment.
You have to be Shameless!
Because when you are following your passion, one thing that you will be sure of is that
you are going to meet some friction.
So you are going to have some failures, you are going to have some success stories and
when you will have your failures, if you give up it means that you are not in that position
to follow your passion.
You give up on an idea very soon.
That means may be you aren't cut out for it.
In spite of you failing, in spite of you going through a lot of hardship, if you still want
to do it, you still have that love towards it, that means that is the passion which is
worth pursuing.
So take my suggestion and just don't care about the world.
Do not care what they talk about.
Do not care what they say about you.
Because the world always talks about you and the world is trying to put you down in some
way or the other.
But it is your duty to convert that as an opportunity for yourself.
Because the Universe is always conspiring to make you successful.
It just wants you to work harder and that is why it gives you these adversities in the
form of many people - it can be your parents, it can be your wife or husband or your company
or your investors.
They are always trying to become like these hurdles that you need to overcome.
That is exactly how you follow your passion!
In spite of all these hurdles, you still come over it.
You get over it and you achieve something.