Richard Branson -- Business Stripped Bare

This was the second book I read after after I recognised an entrepreneurial instinct in me.
I never knew who is Richard until I heard about Virgin mobile entering India.

       Richard Branson started his entrepreneurial journey at 16 with a student magazine and grew into two hundred companies in thirty countries.He is the only person in the world who built eight billion dollar companies in eight different sectors from scratch.

    In this book  he said about his life with business his lessons in life with risky and brilliant deals and truth. I can say it can be a perfect guide for entrepreneur.
He says find your people and set them free. The more you free your people to think for themselves, the more they can help you. yeah freedom brings out innovation right?
He talked about brand. His vision to create a brand. He explained how his first deal to sell his student magazine broke when he told about his vision.Don't promise what you can’t deliver and deliver what you promised. he believes this is the only way to control your brand.
He feels INDIA is a ideal territory and it takes time to leverage their brand here though they spared much time with aviation industry and mobile.

He truly wrote about biggest mistake and jailed for a day. Coming from a lawyer family his parents bailed him out putting their home as security. 
Innovation is driver for business. Making changes and adapting.He saw himself going into bankrupt and also in billionaire list in Forbes magazine. For him success is not making money or profits. “success for me is what ever you created something that can be really proud of”.

He is man who started with selling records in the 70′s become one of the world’s most influential social entrepreneurs with friends to count on such as Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama to name just a few. He carries a note book where ever he goes.

If you believe we can learn something from every one here is most influential person, entreprenuer,record breaker and a man with experiences.

Adventure!

Many of us wish to make some adventure trips....like climbing The Everest , Trekking,  Isn’t?
Likewise I too have a dream to travel and experience the climate,know about the place well ..etc etc many more come in the list.

This is my unexpected adventure happened in 2009  September. I was in Chennai living in T Nagar I say near Erst&Young. I use to have a long evening walks through anna salai, chamiers road, cenotaph road, bharatidasan road. I was there for almost 6 months in T Nagar. As I am being very new to chennai google maps was my guru at that time to identify places and of course my kind brother would accompany me always. I remember times when i bihearted the names, turnings etc to return back safely.

One fine day , oops no one fine weekend I got totally bored of the same old roads to have a walk and requested my so called kind bro for a very long distance walk to a different place. I remember many of my friends saying saravana stores a place to visit and shop in chennai mainly for girls as there will be a looong big racks of handbags and chappals to shop. I said the big saravana stores and googled the way and littrelly forced my bro as he is hardly interested as it is a week end and that place will be like a some jatara etc etc. but i had a strong reason I need hand bag as my older one  was worn out due to heavy rains. It also drenched in rains along with me.

so my adventure started, we ended up entering main road and some turns and finally landed up in south Usman road and realised that we took the longest way but still felt happy as the weather is awesome that day. Now the true part of adventure started. The point I entered on to usman road .

I experienced a new form of transport-- I am automatically heading towards saravana stores by the crowd. I hardly walked in my way. I use to think beseant road was the only place with crowds as I experience often in my hometown. But that day I felt happy about my corporation that they took significant steps.

The crucial part of the adventure was inside the sarvana stores. I didnt have a place to stand and breathe even. I am constantly moving along with the crowd. After 20 mins of my hectic adventurous journey inside the stores I became a super women and pulled my bro along with me outside and ran home. some how I manged well while heading back home.

so my adventure started at 4 in the evening and ended at 7 with headache , legs pain and some decisions like 

never go for shopping on weekends . 

never plan a long walk to unknown place.

I called it an adventure because  
I felt like I may not return home that night.
Drizzling in between made people more mad and they started of shouting freaking and those enthusiastic entrepreneurs on road side with lot of girly and children stuff suddenly started moving and shouting.
Even in that environment I felt I am hungry and had a cup of sweet corn and a fruit juice while walking experiencing new way of transport itself.


I am most admired at is sweetcorn walla, having a moving cart with corn , cooking stuff, heat coming out, people buying corn cups and he is able to manage all the stuff n returning the change to customers and standing and moving standing and moving in the middle of the road inspite of blowing vehicle horns.

Problems knocking the DOOR... early morning.

I think it was in my 4th standard Dussara vacation. There is a big discussion happening between my mom and me. To make the story short -- mom is insisting me to make a habit of reading newspaper daily rather than just some weekly children edition paper like young world.
I was bombarding her with questions Why should I know how many have injured or died in some accidents? Why should I break my head early morning with these dirty politics? Why should I know what is happening in NASA or am I going to deal with some business deals stock exchange ...etc when I am completely happy with my subjects, sports, holidays ,other activities.? Amma I am not interested to know all the sad news in the paper. I cant look at the pictures with blood.? please don’t say me I ll improve my vocabulary ..etc If this is the only point I will substitute newspaper with some other books and gain the vocabulary.

Mom was staring at me with a broad smile... I understood through her smile that she has strong reason to convince me and is ready to answer all my questions. hmm.. i was thinking to escape from that room...but could’nt..

I am reading aloud some headlines and also some brief story line... and HiFi discussions going on from who should be in the prime minister’s cabinet members to what to try out new in the kitchen today. From the latest happening movie/event in the city to what the reasons behind Indira Gandhi declaring emergency. From Kargil wars, SAARC meetings, UNO, WHO  to latest cricket matches.

This all happens even today. This wouldn't happen, if she didn’t force me to make a deal to read the newspaper for that 10 days vacation period and then take the decision myself. and she will never force me again.

Thank you MOM … I wouldn’t have been like this without YOU.

A childhood DREAM — Bird Watcher…

I remember some of my childhood incidents very clearly as all of us DO. It was in my 3rd standard we had a fiction story in English about a man’s life in a country side. I dint actually remember the name of the story but I can very well recall the narrator describing man’s living style .

I was completely mesmerized while the teacher was explaining and love for the nature, lake and birds started from that point. He(man in the story) use to travel to the town near by at 8 in the morning and return by 4 in the evening. The whole story is about how he enjoyed every moment just by observing the clear sky some scattered clouds ripples in the lake n mainly birds flying out of their nests and collecting food. Everything was narrated so well that from that day I dreamt of becoming a bird watcher.

later, we moved to a new home. It was newly built home . there were hardly any houses located on one side of my home. we use to head directly to the main road through the vacant land. this vacant land was full of trees, plants and there are what all can be seen in an vacant land. we use to go arround the land in the evenings after my school hours and found many things there… First discovery a bird nest on the ground. we immediatley took it inside and its an empty one.  grand pa started describing about how firm and tight it was.

we also discovered sparrow nest hanging, my brother took those two nests n placed in biology lab. A small bird unnamed kept its children in between the stones of a rock wall. one fine morning when the mother bird flew out  we took the baby bird from inside the wall. It is soo small, very sensitive has a black body and a whitish beak and making a little noise. we got frightened that it may get hurt and placed it back.

we use to wakeup with quer sounds made by sparrows which use to be most of the time on our sunshades and in ventilation of my living room.

Another unnamed( i dont know if it had a name. ) colorful bird use to vist every morning from sept to oct. i saw it for 3 years. it has copper sulphate blue shades of feathers and some peakock blue color feathers…

Gradually vacant land was occupied with huge buildings and there is hardly no trees seen as before in my locality. I hardly found sparrows or those black small birds.

Still i  had a fascination to become a bird watcher. atleast a bird photographer… :)