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

Finding the right talent in place. Yes, when you are leading a small organization, the priority work for you is to streamline the projects you have and focus on scaling the operations. But in order to do so, you must have a right talent in place & that's a biggest challenge I feel any small organization face. So when you find someone, you train them & you decide to focus on other priority operations to expand the company & they quit. This makes you fall back to clear the mess and this goes on & off. So until and unless you have a right talent in place, you won't be able to scale. But nevertheless, the two directors of the Company Mr. Ashish Jain & Mr. Mahendra Pandey has really helped me out on this situation. A big thanks to them.

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

Ever since, I started my career, I always aimed to have my own venture at a certain point of time. I worked for it multiple times & failed, but this doesn't let me stop. I never gave up & took my time to redo this again with all my energy. In COVID times when everybody was falling back, I was fortunate enough that Ashish & Mahendra gave me this opportunity to lead & I decided to Step ahead. I quit my full time job & decided to do this with my full capacity. And things started working. In the last one year, we have been able to scale our staff from 2 to 10. And things are looking promising for future.

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

In the course of 10 years of my professional career, I have realized that when you start your day early, you are at a much piece when the day ends. I wake up at 7.30 & by 9 AM Sharp, I am at Office checking my emails. I plan out for the whole day and does most of the stuff in the first half before lunch at 1 PM. The later half is more focused towards brainstorming operations to scale up, meetings and training.

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

Discipline & Punctuality. If you are not punctual or disciplined, you as a leader can't grow. You have to lead by example. Be humble & make yourself available all the time to learn more. Give your colleagues more opportunities & bring them up. The more leaders you create in your down line, the more you will grow.

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?

"Bhagwad Gita"
It has complete "saar" of life. Everyone who belongs to Hinduism should read it at least once.

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

I think I answered this partially in question 4. You have to give a space to your colleagues & co-workers to perform. Correct them & train them to bring them up. Everybody is different. Change your leading style as per your colleague but the sole aim is to create more leaders in your down line. That's the only way you can grow.

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

You have to be ready for ups & down. Leading a small organization is the toughest thing. One day performance can make a big difference. You gain a new client with an opportunity to scale more whereas you can also lose a client with a fall back. You have to be ready for all such things. Have a backup plan for at least 6 months to cover up for all these issues.