Rama Moondra

” Guess What??”  Nikhil,my new client is a fitness freak. His excited voice made me nervous. Must be a new protein bar has hit the market. I let my horses of imagination run loose.

“hirrr!! New gym ..same place where Goldshield operated. Now great Mumbai chain of a celebrity fitness guru is opening here.” I sighed. Not out of relief but disappointed. How can it be??

Market sensitivity and research is vital before starting any business venture. Any product or service needs to identify itself with market need and then meet it too. This is a tough economy so survival is only of the fittest.

Sounds simple doesn’t it? Yet its so amazing, how many people don’t get it.

A new gym has just opened up where the earlier one shut shop. I do not believe it is a good idea. Why? It was at a disadvantage because it was at a place which has no parking space. Most others do operate in residential and do have parking facility.   If the gym doesn’t have a place to park, how can one patronize business? If parking the vehicle itself  is an exercise then how to get takers for the gym?

So the best thing to do is not to touch such property at all and that too with repeated business failure history in a saturated market with mature competitors.

And after all good businesses need is someone with a bit of common sense but sadly most businessmen are lacking in that skill.

People do not sell profitable businesses, unless of course they are retiring, and expect it to cost a fortune if that is the case. So, unless you are doing something radically different, don’t bother buying a cheap business. It is like catching a bullet at shootout scene.

Ancient Egyptian believed that to go to heaven, you need to know two significant answers to most basic questions.

“Have you experienced joy in your life?”

“Has your life brought joy to others?”

Simple, isn’t it? Not really, if you sit down and try answering it deep within your heart. Your mind may get cluttered with more painful thoughts of you trying to bring joy or get one but failing.

Honestly, joy is simpler to get and give. It’s not about buying a new car. It’s about getting perfect caramel popcorn in a boring movie. It’s not about having a great house but about making a great home you want to come back to. It’s about getting a good job and not about a boss you secretly wish to vanish away from mother earth.

Joy is understood by even the smallest child. They are drawn to it and captivated by it. They know that is precious. As we grow older we lose the understanding of what joy is. We become distracted by what others would have us believe joy is. Joy cannot be found in possessions or in social status. It is found in who we are. Laughter is the easiest way to describe joy, but even that word falls short.

Watching a child take its first steps is joy. Feeling an unborn child kick for the first time is joy. To spread laughter is to spread joy.

So, what’s your recipe of spreading joy this morning? Mind if I make a simple suggestion? Go and make breakfast for someone who you like to give joy.

On a bad hair day, I always tip the waiter extra or give an extra ten to auto-rickshaw and see them surprised and smiling. It just cheers me up seeing that I am reason of someone’s happiness.

And who says, it needs a lifetime to last? Begin today and it has no boundaries.

Off late, I am working a lot with voices. Ohh..Did I mention my course of Voice –Over Artist that I took last year. They taught me how   to play with tone but right now, I am writing about telephonic conversations. People judge a lot by the voice they hear. I do  transition coaching on phone and have heard my coaches react sharply to different voice-modulations.

While a picture may be worth a thousand words, a voice is priceless.  Many things a voice can reveal that are worth knowing about someone. Certainty, cooperativeness, authority, and attention are  natural traits that are visible  :) on phone, and a savvy person knows how to leverage them .From umm’s to huh’s, voice is filled with signals that might make a person repeat, skip, or rephrase a question. I do that a lot to get cues in training hall.

In the world that we are in, Internet rules our life. We talk with fingers and learn with eyes glued to computers. Long that you spoke to an old friend wishing New Year. It’s about e-cards and sms.

A lot of conflict resolutions can happen in colleagues if you do not cramp the mail box and call the person. The more we learn with our eyes and tell with our fingers, the less we’re hearing what’s being said.  Voice communication will prove ever more valuable as  the social networking and search engine optimization crowd our world.

A word that comes from a person’s mouth and not their keyboards is going to become as precious as ever. Number-crunching will  get the point across, but voices amplify the meaning.

Listen up.

Let us talk a little business today.

Remember the neighborhood store you used to go to when you were tiny and choosing a chocolate was the biggest difficult decision you made. Every child in your vicinity knew about your latest possessions. You told people about you and how did you get that winning stuff convincing your father.

You talked about yourself then but you do not now. You go unnoticed so many times. So if you are thinking of starting something new or are a small entrepreneur, read on.

It was a time of small towns and family owned businesses. Why were they doing brisk business in those days? What has gone wrong? Blame it on the malls and stop FDI . But small entrepreneurs need to revisit the power they have and underutilizing it. The power of you, talking about yourself. Who can do it better? That’s the way you create “Word of Mouth”.

Talking was the secret to all those family owned businesses way back when (you know, in the 70s and 80s) but it really wasn’t a secret to them; it was just common sense. If you want someone to know about what you’re doing, then tell it to some and they will tell the rest of the world.

In a world controlled by the social networks and media, People love to talk. So, if you are running any small business, got a new practice set up, started a new venture. Speak up, talk about it. Share your vision that you have for your enterprise. Don’t worry about creating a sales pitch. Just convey your passion you have for the business and people will want to tell someone else.

Go ahead..Speak up. That’s the only way people hear you.