1. What have you found most challenging as a leader of a small or medium enterprise?

The most challenging part I found is to convince the internal team to stop thinking like an SME when it comes to the attitude or the zeal for providing customer service. First the SME has to believe that they have the potential to become a market leader in the industry, then own that responsibility and work accordingly only then you can achieve it.

2. How did you become a leader of an SME? Can you please briefly tell the story?

The path was not easy but very interesting. We were dealing in the same domain with small Ticket clients so we had to go all out to masses. That's when we realised that it is almost impossible to serve well to those many clients and thus we took a hard and well thought decision that in the same domain we will step into the Enterprise segment where the billing was minimum 40 times of what we were charging before. It took a lot of time, a lot of effort, a complete shift in mindset, attitude, the way we communicate, the way we present, the team we have everything needed a shift and on top of all that a lot of patience was required to start giving fruitful results.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

My schedule is looking at the top priority tasks first thing in the morning. It starts with a process by taking an overview on what is happening on all clients from the team and if there is anything where I should be involved. Post that I look at my short term goal on my favourite white board which is like a lifeline to me and devote my time accordingly to get in touch with them. I also give 1 hour of my time to learning new things especially on marketing, communications & sales subjects. And before finishing my day since I am a night owl I definitely watch a comedy movie or series as I love to sleep peacefully.

4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?

Think of innovating when your success tide wave is going up, don't wait for the tide to go down to switch.
If you have something in mind try it when you can do it on your choice and not by force, don't wait for the situation to go bad to try something new, try it when you can afford it, when you have the capacity to do it easily.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Rich Dad Poor Dad
This book has not only impacted me in terms of money or finance but has also made a huge change by highlighting how Rich mindset people think. The difference between "I can't afford it and How can i afford it" speaks volume about mindset. The moment you start questioning - How can i get it? How can I afford it? How can i improve my speaking skills? How can I get one of the biggest clients in my industry? How can I become a personal brand? is the moment the universe opens its arms towards you and gives you all the answers you are looking for.

6. How do you build leadership capacity in an SME?

Don't tell people what to do, find out what they are good at, look for what they are happy doing and then just expand on it. Focussing on Skills that people are passionate about is the key to building leadership in any enterprise be it SME or a Large Enterprise.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader of an SME so far?

We once had built a successful business with an associated company and we were on our path to create a meaningful journey when suddenly the company changed on their words and took almost all of our efforts and clients just because we had everything verbal and not vetted by a legal team. We lost a recurring business billing worth crores just because we were only focussed on our business and not other factors that can affect your core business. The lesson learned from that incident was to fill up all the holes that can leak in your business pipeline. As a business is more than just dealing in core products/services and mistakes will happen, failures will come but make sure you are learning from it and not repeating it.