Dressed up in my “most expensive” formals that I carried from my hometown, my bag carrying a book that I would never read after day 1 in office, and loads of hope and dreams, I got into the elevator (the only time, I otherwise use staircase) to get to the 9th floor of my office, of my very first job.
Greeted by another colleague who recognised me from the interview (but I didn’t), she handheld me to our office space and gave me a bit of informal induction to our work culture.
From that sunny yet confused morning in New Delhi in April 2015, I have always been baffled by the amount of respect I have gotten in all my jobs.
Being served the best cuisines.
Getting to experience air travels and great hotels.
Working directly with people who had 20-25 years of experience when I just had 2.
Going on to hire people that would take on key roles in the company.
People taking responsibility for actions you have assigned to them.
I am someone who is never looking for external validation.
However, I have been acutely grateful for every good thing that has fallen into my lap, especially those that I did not witness before I stepped into the corporate world.
As an entrepreneur, though, you have to earn that respect.
Every single day.
You are not working for a company.
You are working for yourself.
You are not representing a bigger team, a powerful entity.
You are representing yourself, backed only by good work.
You are not where you work at.
You are what you work on.
That is a journey almost every entrepreneur goes through.
The respect, the applause, the privileges — were never for you. (I’m glad!) They were for that position and the company.
Once you are on your own, even when you make way more money, you have to earn that respect, that applause, every other thing that you thought you deserved.
You deserved none of this.
You earn everything, through your work and your values.
And a bit of rubbing your nose every single day 🙂
Humility, it turns out, is not a virtue of being an entrepreneur. It is an essential entry level qualification, in the absence of which you will only be serving your cloud and clout of ego.
When everything else fails, humility wins.
When you win, humility still wins.
