Build Assets that create long-term value.
One of the great responsibilities I have is to manage my assets wisely so that they create value. — Alice Walton
Every week, I write an article to share my learning or discovery during my startup journey. Here is the link to my reasons for penning these articles for myself and for many others like me.
Last Sunday, I attended a toastmasters club meeting. It was its 9th birthday anniversary. I was one of the founder members of that club, which was started in 2013. The members created a beautiful video representing the 9-year long journey where they made a collage of pics for each year.
It was a nostalgic moment for me to live back those nine years through that video. It seems hard to believe that nine long years have passed. We sowed a seed, and it has grown into a healthy plant that is giving fruits to so many other people. Now I am not an active member of this club, but still, everyone looks at me with respect and acknowledges my contribution to starting this club.
I feel this is like an asset you create once in your lifetime but reap its benefit for a longer period in your life. In this case, it is an act of goodwill in starting a new toastmasters club. All the new club members are now giving me back the credit in the form of their love and respect.
I can relate it to another asset that I created the last year, 2021. I gave a webinar on “Project Management” to a PMI (Project Management Institute) community. It is a group of Project managers registered with PMI to sharpen their PM skills and network with their peers. This webinar was recorded and uploaded on the PMI site. Any paid member of PMI can access this webinar and watch it on demand. I delivered this webinar in Dec 2021. After four months of that live webinar, people still watch it online and leave their comments. I get about 3–4 comments every week. By the way, not everyone leaves feedback, so there might be more people watching this webinar.
This asset was created once and is now living its life without any further contribution from its creator. So now I am just responding to people leaving their feedback on this webinar.
Most of us entrepreneurs also want to build something with similar long-lasting benefits. As I am reflecting on these two incidents, I found some teachings for my startup journey too:
- Create products that have a continuous demand. Like public speaking in toastmasters and Project management training in my webinar. As long as there is human life, public speaking skills will be a sought-after skill. Also, if there are projects or any work that involves either people or complex technology, it will always need a project manager to manage it. Hence these two skills will never go out of demand.
- Perseverance and patience to tide the difficult times. No journey is smooth. There will always be some bumps with external situations or your internal self-doubts. There were times when this toastmasters club was on the verge of closure as there were not enough members. Similarly, as I was preparing for the PM webinar, I had a lot of doubts. Once I thought of dumping this topic, as it did not look like a valuable and exciting topic for other project managers. I thought I would teach fundamental things that everyone would already know.
If you can muster the courage and strength to sail over the turbulence of situations or your mind, you can see a calmer and more prosperous side of your work in the future. - Keep building your network, do not just always rely on your friends and family for your needs. Be open and receptive to meeting and befriending strangers. We started The toastmaster’s club with 20 people. At the 9th-anniversary celebration meeting, I did not see any of those 19 people around me. Indeed, I miss those familiar faces, but now I have become friends with many new people in the club.
For my webinar, I needed feedback. So I sent the webinar’s recording link to 4–5 of my friends working as project managers. Unfortunately, none of them gave me feedback. I can understand they have a busy life and could not get time to watch my video. But in the last four months, I got more than 100 comments from strangers across the globe on my webinar.
We should get comfortable being uncomfortable. Don’t just rely solely on your friends and family. Reach out to strangers and make yourself comfortable in the new environment. You never know when you will find your best supporters in the form of strangers. You also don’t know when your best friends will become strangers or disappear altogether from your life.
Wishing everyone a great week and hope you get to build something which you can look back after a few years with a sense of pride and accomplishment.
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