Reado Interviews - Ashutosh Garg - The Buck Stops Here

A retailer’s life is literally 24 X 7 X 365

A retailer’s life is literally 24 X 7 X 365 It is therefore important to stay fit and healthy and to ensure that you and your family are protected in the unlikely event something goes wrong either in the business or in your health. One decision I took when I started Guardian was that I have to remain fit and healthy. I could not afford to fall sick and therefore I would have to “will” myself into staying healthy. I had started my entrepreneurial journey at a very late age in life and I definitely could not afford to fall sick or do anything that would jeopardise my health. I was betting my career, my family’s future and my entire credibility on this venture and there was no way that I could fall sick and stall my journey before I had achieved what I had set out to do. Manage personal health well Work pressure while building any new business will be very intense and an entrepreneur has very few choices except to stay well and stay fit. He needs to build the stamina to keep going, in the face of all possible adversity. Falling sick is not an option that can be considered. There will be many moments when every entrepreneur wants to throw in the towel simply because the stress becomes unbearable yet unlike any other individual, it is important for an entrepreneur to keep going because the light at the end of the tunnel is the achievement of his dream. No matter how much stress you may carry inside you, it is very important to “appear” absolutely calm from the outside. With a regular exercise regime and reasonable diet control, along with appropriate medication, I have managed to control both my blood pressure and my diabetes levels within acceptable levels. Ensure you follow a daily routine When I started off on my journey, I knew that I was overweight and I also recognised that excess weight was the cause for a number of illnesses. My body, like the bodies of so many obese and overweight people, was not designed to handle so many extra kilos of weight. As the weather in Delhi cooled down in November every year, I would find that my eosinophilia count increase because of the increased pollen grains in the atmosphere which would lead to wheezing and asthma. My inhaler was my constant companion throughout the winter months of Delhi. This was always very debilitating and would invariably make me take forced rest at home for a few days every winter. I knew I had to stop this I started on a strict regimen of exercise, diet. Till today, I take at least five vitamin supplements every day – one tablet each of vitamin C, multi vitamin, fish body oil, glucosamine and co enzyme Q 10. In addition, I am always the first person to experiment with the various vitamins that we have been launching under the Guardian brand name. Lose weight if you know that you need to I knew I had to lose at least 10 kilos. I had never been an “exercise person” or a sports person. However, I willed myself into walking at least six kilometers in one hour at least six days a week. I have now got into a habit of exercising every day and the day I do not work out is terrible since I miss my exercise. What worked for me was when I started cutting down on my food intake combined with regular exercise. It was only through diet control that I managed to lose almost fourteen kilos of weight in about three. My exercise helped my body to stay fit and the cardio vascular exercises helped in controlling my blood pressure. I am not sure if it was the exercise, the weight loss, the vitamins or simply the adrenalin rush from building a new company or a combination of one or more of these that has helped me to stay healthy and fit. What that I do know and see is that over the last seven years, I have not fallen sick for a single day, not even with the common flu. I was mildly asthmatic especially in November each year when the atmosphere was full of pollen grains but I have thrown away my inhaler and my wheezing is a thing of the past. My blood pressure is under control, my cholesterol levels are at an enviable 150 and my blood sugar is marginally high! Don’t let your Mind give up So many battles are won or lost if the mind accepts defeat or gives up too easily. When I chat with entrepreneurs who started and stopped or professionals who gave up the “joys” of a corporate battle for supremacy, I know that they gave up the fight because they had not built the internal resilience in their own minds to stay the course. Like a game of golf where one plays much better golf when one’s mind is at rest, success and failure is also all in one’s mind. I have found that giving up is very easy and several times in my own journey both as a professional as well as an entrepreneur, I have had the temptation to give up and call it a day because all choices seemed to be tough and insurmountable. As I look back at my life, I wonder what kind of a person I would have been had I given up each time my body told me to stop and my mind forced me to carry on. Every entrepreneur must develop mental strength take on tough tasks and select from equally tough choices. Yet the joy of achieving a task that seemed impossible also gives it own high. Don’t lose sight of your personal life As a professional manager, I always encouraged my colleagues to take leave every year. Whenever someone told me that he was working over twelve hours per day on a regular basis, my response to him was simply “If you cannot finish your allotted work in office timings, you are either over worked and need an assistant or very inefficient” Similarly, when someone told me that he had not taken any leave for so many years, my response to such people was “You have not done the company a favour. I would like you to take your leave and come back to work rejuvenated”. I have never refused any manager his leave whenever he has asked for leave. I have often spoken to entrepreneurs who tell me that they don’t have the time to take a vacation and I have never believed any of them. My response to them would be no different from my response to professional managers. I have also followed a practice of not working long hours at work. If a person cannot take time off for himself and give his mind and body a rest, then there is a problem brewing in the long run for such an individual. It is important for every individual to take time off and spend time with one’s family. Build internal resilience and stay calm It is very important for anyone embarking on any journey to build strong internal resilience. A number of times people fail to complete their journey because they give up too early. For me giving up has never been an option. I have believed in leaning into the storm rather than running away from it. Every entrepreneur has to develop a “thick skin” and learn to accept all kinds of comments about himself and his company. Developing the ability to stay calm in the face of adversity is an important quality I learned to develop very early in my working life and this has served me well. The author is the Chairman of Guardian Pharmacies and the author of the bestselling books, The Buck Stops Here and The Corner Office. Twitter: @gargashutosh http://retail.economictimes.indiatimes.com/re-tales/A-retailer-s-life-is-literally-24-X-7-X-365/385

Franchising Basics: Everything That Prospective Indian Franchisees Should Know

For most retail businesses, franchising offers an excellent opportunity to grow the brand across a large geographical territory very quickly. Opening up a company’s systems and its heart to an individual who wants to come on board primarily because he senses a financial return on his investment takes an organisation time to understand and digest. It is essential to make sure that a company embarks on franchising only when the organisation and its people are ready to welcome a franchisee into its fold. Benefits of franchising From the perspective of a franchisee, it is important to understand what benefits he can expect and from the perspective of a franchisor, they must understand that they must be able to provide value to any potential franchisee. 1. Consumers buy from brands they trust – Brands are what convey credibility to a consumer and brands outlive any promoter or manager. A strong brand ensures long term profits and an association with a strong and credible franchisor helps to build a long term and sustainable business for an investor. The franchisor must support his brand and the franchisee must assure the brand owner that the brand will be respected and that no steps would ever be taken that will tarnish the image or diminish the value of the brand. 2. Efficient business practices as systems are proven – Strong companies are able to bring strong systems and good business practices into the business of any franchisee. It is important to adhere to these values to ensure that there is no clash of values between the franchisor and the franchisee. 3. Marketing costs are lower through volume – Becoming a member of a large franchise operation helps to defray marketing costs over a large number of business owners. 4. Mentoring the franchisees – The franchisor must put together a senior team that is available to mentor all franchisees through their early stage of taking the franchise. This mentoring is really an extract of all the learnings of the company over a period of time through experience. 5. Reduced risk through proven business model – The franchisor must believe that the learnings of the franchisor can be transferred to a potential franchisee so that his learning curve is not as steep or as expensive as that of the franchisor. 6. Defined territories protect franchisees from competition – Once a franchise territory has been defined, it becomes a valuable piece of “real estate” since there should be no other franchisee in this defined territory. Franchisor Checklist A franchisor must look at what he can to offer to a potential franchisee before agreeing to sign up and give the rights to their brand to any franchisee. 1. Strong Value Proposition – the brand proposed to be franchised must offer a strong, clear and unambiguous value proposition to the potential franchisee. 2. Control Systems – The franchisor must have strong back office and control systems to help a franchisee manage his business as well for the franchisor to manage several franchisees. 3. Buy in from everyone within the company – Getting a buy in from every department and every head of department is essential for the process to work. The franchisor must create a dedicated team of people who will be able to address the issues faced by any franchisee. 4. Business Plan – The franchisor must not prepare or commit to a business plan for any franchisee. All that he should do is to give the assumptions for preparing a business plan and share all the relevant data from their company owned operations in a similar market. The business has to be run by the franchisee and they have to commit to their numbers, not the franchisor. 5. Don’t differentiate from company owned store – Franchisee operations have the same needs as those of a company owned operations and the franchisor cannot afford to differentiate between these. This problem becomes more acute at the field level where issues start between the two formats. Such issues need to be tackled immediately before these become serious problems. From a customer’s perspective, the franchisor must remember that there is no differentiation and if there is a problem in service delivery, the franchisor cannot tell the consumer “The problem occurred because of the franchisee”! Franchisee Checklist Before an individual takes up a franchise of any brand, he must address the following questions to his satisfaction. Once money is committed, then it is very difficult to change one’s mind. 1. Is this the right franchise for you – Every franchisee should ask himself the question whether he has the skills or the training to handle the chosen business. I have met a number of potential franchisees who assume that they simply have to make an investment and then wait for the results. When I tell them that they have to actually run their business and not simply make an investment, they start to think twice. 2. Get professional advice from an accountant, lawyer or other business expert – I always ask a potential franchisee to develop a business plan before they start making the investment. Unless a franchisee understands his own business model, he will never be able to extract the maximum value for his franchise in terms of monthly returns after meeting all his costs. 3. Check out the franchisor – It is the responsibility of the franchisor to give a detailed data pack to every potential franchisee to conduct a detailed due diligence on the company and its directors. This is important so that a person who wants to invest money satisfies himself about the franchisor and people behind the company. 4. Speak with existing franchisees – Potential franchisees must be encouraged to meet and discuss the franchisor experience with other franchisees. Only when they hear a satisfied franchisee speaking will they understand the value they can get for themselves from the brand and organisation they may choose to partner with. 5. What is the exit strategy and what goodwill can be retained? – For every potential franchisee, the franchisor must offer an exit by offering to buy out the franchise at the end of the agreed period. If the franchisee wishes to continue longer, the renewal should be on terms then applicable. http://www.businessinsider.in/Franchising-Basics-Everything-That-Prospective-Indian-Franchisees-Should-Know/articleshow/45055547.cms

Building a Twitter follower base

Building a Twitter follower base Ashutosh Garg Everyone is talking about building a base of followers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. There is absolutely no doubt in the fact that reaching out directly to a group of followers is the only way to deliver your message quickly, efficiently and without too much wastage. As a new entrant into the world of Twitter, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had built a base of over 280,000 followers in less than 9 months. What did I do to build a twitter base and what were my learnings? Understand the medium well Twitter is an easy yet very complex medium to work with. It is very easy to start tweeting but it is a challenge to keep your message limited to only 140 characters. Once you are able to do this you realise how pithy your communication can become. It took me a while and a lot of reading on the net to understand what I could achieve with this medium. Everyone has a lot to say so how will you get heard in all the noise? Set up your account carefully, select your photograph and the background and establish your own security norms. There are many sites that will help you to understand your followers and unfollowers. It is definitely worth your while to visit some of these sites to understand the twitter analytics that is available for free. Decide on the subject / subjects that you wish to tweet about This is important. If you decide to tweet on any subject, remember that you must have enough to say and say it with confidence and credibility. The subject is not the issue. That is your choice. What you say is important for your large base of twitterati who you hope to have as your followers. Followers will “follow” you but your challenge will be retain your followers. It is very easy to follow you but it is equally easy to unfollow you. I decided to tweet on Startups and on Work life balance on a regular basis. Build a database of what you want to say Once you start to tweet, you will be surprised at how soon you run out of things to say. It would help to create a spreadsheet with what you have to say on your selected subject. Thoughts on what you wish to tweet about will keep coming to you. Keep making a note of your thoughts so that you don’t forget. Once you have your data base ready, tweeting becomes easy and you have a lot to tweet about! Don’t hesitate to tweet something again because your audience may have missed out your tweet in the spate of tweets that he / she maybe following. Avoid using foul language and stay away from controversy. If you don’t like someone else’s treat, “unfollow” the person instead of reacting to the tweets. Tweet frequently It is important for people who read your twitter feed to see you regularly to stay connected. Your followers must feel that they are connected with you. Therefore, based on your trial and error, you will be able to understand the best time that your tweets are read. I found that my tweets are read, retweeted or favourite in the mornings at around 7 am, in the late morning around 12 noon and in the evening around 7 pm. Remember that your tweets are reaching a global audience and time zones need to be factored in. I have also found that it is better to tweet three or four tweets at a time. When you do this, you get a “significant share of page” for a few moments for new followers to notice you and hopefully start following you. When people respond to your tweets, it is a good practice to respond to them. An engaged follower will “favourite” or “retweet” much more frequently, thus spreading your message to a large follower base. I am not suggesting that you thank every follower that you have or question every follower who has “unfollowed” you! Retweet The general unwritten custom in the twitter world is if someone requests you to retweet, you do so without wondering why you should give access to your followers. Of course if you find the content objectionable, you are within your right to block such a follower and retweet anything. There is nothing that could be as exciting as seeing your tweet being retweeted by a large number of your followers. Twillionaire Twillionaire is a term used for people who have one million plus followers. More than 85% of people have less than 1000 followers. Don’t compare the number of your followers with film stars, politicians or cricket stars. They are public personalities and people follow them so that they don’t miss out on any aspects of such high profile lives even though they may not have anything significant to say! Build your base of followers slowly and surely. From a small base you will suddenly see a lot of people following you and your base will grow every day. Happy tweeting. The author is the Chairman of Guardian Pharmacies and the author of the bestselling books, The Corner Office and The Buck Stops Here. Twitter: @gargashutosh

The Buck Stops Here

The Buck Stops Here “I want to be my own boss” is a thought that has definitely crossed the minds of most corporate managers at some time in their careers. This thought had often crossed my mind as well. It was in 2003 when I was 46 years old that I took the decision of quitting the corporate world after 25 years and take the plunge into the world of entrepreneurship. I had worked for ITC Ltd for 17 years and then in the world of aerospace for 8 years before I quit. Everyone thought that I had taken leave of my senses when I walked out of a high paying high profile job. I was convinced that I was taking the right step. Yet most people hesitate to take this step for one reason or another. Giving up what one has today, including a regular pay check and the perquisites that come with the job to pursue a “dream” definitely appears to be an intimidating challenge for anyone who is contemplating changing his status quo. Yet for people who have made this change, the realisation is why they took so long to take this step. It is never too late or too early to make a start. Getting over one’s own fears and anxieties is possibly the biggest challenge that you will face. Ensuring support from one’s family helps every entrepreneur to take the plunge faster. If the home front is solidly behind the venture then the entrepreneur can press ahead to tackle the challenges with renewed vogour. Be prepared for a complete lifestyle change. An entrepreneur’s job is a lonely one. Days will blend into nights and weekdays into weekends. No job will be too small or big and what you take for granted as a corporate manager will be a challenge you will have to address personally. Yet, the fruits of your efforts will be visible at the end of each day. Find out what is your calling and stay the course. Once you have made up your mind on what you want to do, take a plunge with 100% commitment. Write out a realistic business plan for yourself. Part time entrepreneurial ventures have never succeeded. Once you have started your journey, you will be confronted with challenges that you would never have imagined. Yet, no challenge will be insurmountable. Many ventures with high potential have failed because their promoter gave up when he was so close to seeing success. Many others have failed because the promoter started out with an outstanding idea but changed course based on a new whim. Funds will be a challenge when you start but will become a commodity when you start to succeed. A family investing its savings into a business is a strong message of confidence for any banker or private equity investor. Manage cash very carefully – costs have a habit of running out of control and revenues lag behind what you may have planned for. As long as you are doing what you had thought you would, you will start to see light at the end of the tunnel, sooner than later. Getting a strong management team and empowering them is essential for success but finding the right talent for a startup will be a challenge. Good managers will not agree to join a startup and a startup entrepreneur will not be able to afford such managers. Therefore, it is necessary to draw upon skills of friends and family and part time managers to start any new enterprise. The promoter is also human and will make a lot of mistakes. This is when a good management team comes in and takes charge. The going will be very tough and challenging for the first few years and very often I did sit back and think whether I had taken the right decision. However, looking back, I don’t think there could be any other path I would have wanted to take. Remember the fruits of all the hard work will be very sweet. If becoming your own boss is your dream, there is no date as good as today to make a beginning. Ashutosh Garg Author – The Buck Stops Here Twitter: @gargashutosh www.ashutoshgarg.in

The Buck Stops Here - The Learnings of a #Startup Entrepreneur by Ashutosh Garg - Extracts

Everyone has a story to tell. This is mine. Everyone’s life is full of unique experiences. Each one of us has faced joys and sorrows, pain and exhilaration, and has learned lessons in life. Yet, most people I know are shy of sharing their rich experience. I often ask such people what they have learned from their life and why they don’t wish to share their knowledge with others. After all, it is only when we learn to confront our own ‘ghosts’ that we will be able to really look back at our lives with confidence, joy and pride. I have lived my life on my own terms. I have been called a maverick by friends and colleagues and I know that I would not have lived my life any other way. This book is an attempt to share my personal journey from a professional manager to an entrepreneur over the last thirty-one years. Many people live their lives working in one job and retiring from the same organization. Others get a chance to change jobs, but stay within the same space. As the years go by and as our societies and the communities will evolve further, I believe that the world will offer our children an opportunity not just to change jobs but to change their careers and their lives completely. Our children can now dream of working in the corporate sector or the government, then move to pursue their passion as a musician or an actor or an author and later enter politics or contribute to civil society, all in one lifetime. I believe I have been more fortunate than a lot of others to have seen three completely different phases in my life—seventeen years with ITC Limited till I was thirty-eight years old, eight years in the aerospace industry till I was forty-six and the last ten years as a chemist, or in more glorious terms, an entrepreneur. This book is an account of my journey through life as I built Guardian Pharmacy. In order to do justice to my entrepreneurial journey, I thought that it is also very important to share some of the experiences of the first twenty-five years of my life as a corporate manager. It is this strong foundation and varied experience in the corporate sector that helped me set up the base and develop the mindset to pursue my dream of becoming an entrepreneur. I have also written about the various predicaments I have faced throughout my life and how these learnings from them have made me a much stronger person. I started out with a dream to build India’s largest pharmacy chain. It has now evolved into India’s second largest chain of wellness, health and beauty stores with over two hundred stores spread across thirty cities and ten states. We handle over eight million customers every year and have grown at a compounded average annual growth rate of over 40 per cent over the last five years. Over the last few years, I have met hundreds of professional managers who have expressed their desire to start off on their own. Some have told me in no uncertain terms, ‘We are jealous of you since you have managed to break free from the corporate world.’ When I ask them what was stopping them from leaving their jobs to pursue their dream, I heard all kinds of excuses: 1. ‘I have too many financial commitments at the moment.’ 2. ‘I am not used to working on weekends.’ 3. ‘I don’t know what to do, give me a good idea.’ 4. ‘Is this really a good time to start?’ And the mother of all reasons, ‘My family and I have got used to a certain standard of life. I cannot give all this up at this stage.’ My advice to all of them is simple: take the plunge and start your planning process now. There is no day as good as today to make a beginning, if you genuinely believe in your dream. Building a new company is very hard work. The toughest part of building a new company is not coming up with a new idea; it is to stay committed to your dream, make sacrifices and learn from your experiences. If you are not willing to give up on things really important to you or if you are likely to be discouraged because of rejection, it will be very difficult to stick to and implement your idea. As a first-generation entrepreneur, I did not have anyone to guide me on the dos and don’ts of building a business. Since the time I started Guardian, I have stumbled many times, fallen down quite often, but I have had to build the resilience to stand up, dust my clothes, learn from the mistake and start all over again. I learned to fail and I learned to manage failure, though I did not plan failure. Failure is essential for any new entrepreneur to succeed. We cannot let any adversity pull us back. We have to learn from our mistakes and our setbacks, accept the knocks our profit-and-loss account will take and keep moving ahead. Every entrepreneur has to plan for the best but prepare for the worst. I have often heard the phrase, ‘The buck stops here.’ I have also used this phrase innumerable times as a professional chief executive officer (CEO) in a large company, implying that I am the final decision-maker and that the responsibility of all my actions and those of others reporting to me finally ends up on my table. My understanding of this phrase has evolved during my entrepreneurial journey. An entrepreneur is the only person where the proverbial ‘buck’ stops. At the end of each month, he has to have the money to pay employees’ salaries and he has to ensure that there are no delays in doing so. In November 2009, as I concluded my talk at a large conference on entrepreneurship and building a new business, I was surrounded by dozens of young men and women who wanted to exchange business cards with me so that they could set up a separate meeting to discuss their business plans. Some of these young men and women came to my office and I spent half a day with them, talking about my journey as I built Guardian, as well as my transition from the corporate world to an entrepreneur. At this meeting I was asked many questions, some perceptive and some very basic, about building a business. As I answered these queries, I thought it may be a good idea for me to write about my own journey so that I could share my knowledge with a much larger audience. The first edition of this book was released on 10 January 2011 by Mr Omar Abdullah, honourable chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir. It went on to become a bestseller. This is a revised edition, which includes several new thoughts and experiences of mine since the first edition was published. Writing this book has been a very therapeutic journey for me. I hope you will enjoy reading this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

My interview in Times of India, 12th May 2014