Running is for Entrepreneurs – by Ajit Panicker

I have been playing sports from school, always a below average sportsman with no serious commitment, the purpose of continuing sports was always from the spirit of fitness. Over the years I played Football, Squash, Badminton and regular morning walks. However I have never stuck to one sport and would loose interest, primarily because I did not excel in the game. This changed when I took to running, its been over two years and I look forward to my training and the upcoming marathons. This got me wondering, whats in running that got my commitment. My thoughts lead to this conclusion that there are lots of common areas between my running and my business. Since entrepreneurship was so well ingrained in my thoughts, that could have been the only reason that I took to running with so much commitment.

Setting the Vision and Mission

At work my Vision is to build the largest air conditioning services technology platform in the world and in the process our mission is to transform the lives of small businesses in this space, generate jobs for technicians. At Running my vision is to run every big marathon in the world and the mission is to stay healthy and age gracefully.

Getting Started

A business to get started beyond an idea needs two important components, a good team and good co founders. My business scaled and grew because of a super team that we built in Nova, this team takes care of over 25000 customers in our portfolio managing over 250 calls a day. An elaborate process of providing consistent and reliable air conditioning solutions. My Startup Pureblu was born out of this domain experience and all I needed was to bring on board a like minded co-founder Manish Jain. Running was no different for me to get started, a community of runners – CCI –Striders, which I was part of made all the difference. These are people who are there with you all through your training and in the journey of you achieving your Vision and Mission . All through this, I found my core group in the running community in Vikram and Nikhil who shared my plan of consistently improving and going around the world doing various Marathons.

Benchmarking against your personal best

In business and in any sport there is enough enterprises and people to compete with, but nothing replaces the fun of competing against yourself. In business every year after year its all about evaluating your performance with the previous year, you want to keep an eye on the top line and the bottom line, its no different in running, its all about the distance you have covered and the pace you have maintained. You are constantly trying to improve on your personal bests.

Discipline and the price you pay

While in business or in running the most common factor is discipline. You have to stay put on your plans and make it happen. Your commitment to achieve this will always come at a price. Most often though its your family and friends who will be most affected, You will miss time being around your family and friends, they will end up making lots of changes to accommodate you. Every time you will be challenged in taking these calls as it comes along , one day at a time . Its a delicate balance about managing your time between your passion and spending time with family and friends.

Pureblu Technologies Pvt Ltd , Nova HVAC Systems India Pvt Ltd , Mumbai Mirror Article