WHAT MY FATHER TAUGHT ME

To be brought up by a loving and supportive father is one of the joys of life. you  never know how the things that your father does for you when you are a child will impact you when you grow older. my brother and I were very lucky to have a father who thought the Sun rose out of the eyes of his sons!

In the association  I had with him, there were certain aspects of him that were so inspiring and true that i thought that I should put them down.

1. LOVE YOUR CHILDREN, SUPPORT THEM AND PRAISE THEM

My brother and I were brought up in the 60s and 70s when it was common place for fathers to physically strike their children and overall strike terror in their hearts. In my association with my father I do not remember a time when he struck me physically. He loved his sons to distraction and found it easy to support them in whatever they did. Whenever i fell short of money, help was easily forthcoming from him- "'It's all for you guys - whatever I have is yours." In need of a Motorcycle after I had passed out of Medical College, he bought a Yezdi motor cycle for me and had it delivered to Dehra-Dun - the place where I was posted!

In fact the day before he died he was with me in Delhi and had gone to visit a senior official in the Ministry of Foreign affairs - Mr Katoch. In the middle of the day I get a call from Mr Katoch telling me that my father is sitting with him and he felt he had to talk to the person my father was speaking so highly of. I told Mr Katoch - Sir he is just being humble - we all love and respect our father so much because of the person that he is. That was just about the last time my father and I spoke with each other. He left for Surat the same day and we lost him the next day.

There were times I would tell him - why do praise us so much in front of others? It is embarrassing!

He always had a stock reply - Because you guys deserve it. 

2. DON'T GRAB ANYONE'S RIGHT AND DON'T GIVE ANY OF YOUR OWN

It sounds more appropriate when expressed in Hindi - Kisi ka hak chheenna nahin, Apna hak dena nahin! It was never more evident when there were attempts to encroach upon our property by our neighbour cousins - he stuck to his ground, even to the extent of going to the Court for establishing our rightful claim to our areas. I think this came easily to him because he was a lawyer and a Judge in the Army.

3. KEEP YOUR PAPERWORK METICULOUS - PUT EVERYTHING DOWN IN WRITING

We have a joint property, and it is easy to have disputes in such a situation. We could win all our rightful claims to our sections of the property because he had meticulously put everything down in writing and it was all stamped and registered. I am still trying to reach that  level of documentation sophistication!

4. IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO PICK UP A NEW SKILL SET

After his full stint in the Army my father decided to settle down in Surat,since my brother would be setting roots there and I was being shunted from place to place, being in the Army myself.

As soon he reached Surat, he embarked on a tortuous course to learn the language! He succeeded partially but was confounded by the numbering! I remember him walking around the house with the 'Gujarati Primer' in his hands, muttering kem chho and tamaro abhhar! But he gave up at '

Ognees Wees' (nineteen twenty in Gujarati)!

He picked up employment with two companies one after the other, but felt exploited. Nor was he happy with the corruption that prevailed even in the private sector - regular workers subcontracting to outsiders for 'overtime' and then sharing the spoils! And then this Judge from the Army decided to go into business for himself and set up a Security Agency! Calling it ''Vigil Securities" he set up a business venture from scratch and raised it to become one of the most trusted names in the Security Business in Surat! And now, many years after his demise, thanks to his foresight and my brother's tenacity the Company continues to be one of leading players in the city!

After his demise I went to close down his desktop system and was most astonished to see that he was taking tutorials in typing lessons - so that he could improve his Computer Skills!

5. WORK HARD 

I think these are things you pick up subliminally. Whenever I look back upon my father I can only see him as doing something useful with his time. Though he loved listening to the news, he never watched it on TV - he had a trusted transistor that he would keep with him, and in the early morning hours he would tune in to BBC news for his updates.

6. EXERCISE REGULARLY

Having been brought up in Jalandhar in pre partition Punjab, his preferred languages were Urdu and Punjabi. He spoke and wrote English very well. So the tree was '' Drakhat" and the morning paper was ''Akhbaar" and his morning exercise, which he never shunned was ''Barjish!" - no such things as ''work out'' or  any other phrase for it!

7. PERSONAL BRAVERY

We owned a property in Surat which was wanted by some land grabbers. One day, while my father was at home, some 10-12 goons landed up at home to grab the land. My father went into the house, brought out his licensed Pistol and waved it in the face of all the men – “The first guy who comes in will be shot!” The goons scooted.

He was more than 70 years old at that time.

To have been brought by such an inspirational father was a stroke of luck for my brother and I and we will always be grateful to God for having granted us this privilege.

WHY I NEED TO STOP THINKING LIKE A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER

I am the owner of a small boutique Ear, Nose & Throat Centre in Delhi, being an ENT specialist.

When the young audiologist in my Centre enters his room in the morning and switches on his AC at 18 degrees, while I suffer in silence under a fan rotating at speed 2, my vision is diverted immediately to the whirring Electronic Meter and the huge bill that will land on my table a few days later. While he nonchalantly plays with the infinite distractions on his phone my day has begun on a sour note.

I am reluctant to hire bright people because they cost so much! There is always a need to grow your business- so while my local Kirana store owner struggles to cope with the fickle loyalty of his customer base, and hauls his son out of college to manage the store for him when he is admitted for a serious lung infection, chains like Big Bazaar and  LocalBaniya hire smart talent and grow big at his expense.

I hate taking loans! My father was in the Army (as was I), and we grew up in a regular Indian middle class family. The Army allowed you to live in genteel poverty – though your needs were taken care of in style, you never had enough loose cash to play around with. Loans were anathema since you had limited capability to pay back. I remember two occasions to make my point. When my Maruti car booking materialized (in the year 1990 while I was a Major in the Army), my cash flows did not permit me to take a loan since I could not have afforded the EMIs. So I happily traded my booking for a premium (many thousands at that time) and bought a Sony music system with it – I still use that system! In 1992 my Army Welfare Housing Organization (AWHO) house was allotted in Bangalore – again, since the cost of the dwelling unit was about 28 lacs, I could not have afforded the EMIs needed to pay back my loan. I finally surrendered the booking at a loss! When I read a biography of Richard Branson, I was struck by one word used frequently in the book – “leverage”. It seems all that he did was exaggerate the value of his businesses to get more loans! A few days ago he was listed as among the top 20 richest persons in the UK with a family wealth of 4.1 billion pounds! When I went to pay my respects by signing in the register placed for the late Col Nair at the Leela Kempinski at Chankyapuri I was reminded that the debt burden of the company at that time was Rs 5,125 Crores! The Anil Ambani group companies have an accumulated debt of Rs 1 Lakh crores! As do most of the richest persons in the country. Is there a lesson for small business owners here? Are we too shy, too scared to leverage our businesses and grow with borrowed capital?

This is what my CA normally tells me sometime in December - “Sir, we are generating too much profit this year! We will end up paying too much tax!”  So what do I do? Stop working? Create less profit? No, I withdraw large sums of cash periodically to create what my CA calls ‘’cash in hand’’! And now I look for shysters to raise fake bills against the ‘cash in hand’ so that my tax burden is reduced.  It is not the CAs job to tell you how to use your ‘’too much profit’’ to grow your business – it is yours. When you go to the banker looking for a loan, one look at your balance sheet and the savvy banker can see through your game in seconds.  And now that I have generated that cash, what do I do with it? Buy a property/ buy gold?  So what have I done?  I have effectively buried the profit from my business that I could otherwise have used to grow bigger and better.

It is currently felt that a Doctor, especially a surgeon, is as good as the technology that she can learn to master. The use of technology is rapidly changing the way we look at and treat diseases.  This behooves the surgeon to do two things – attend surgical workshops and conferences as well as buy books pertaining to that field and secondly, invest in the buying of that equipment – both come at a huge personal cost. The day a surgeon stops doing that she has effectively declared her retirement.  Similarly, a small business owner needs to constantly train and retrain herself to understand how the world around her is changing and to make use of that change. Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft says ‘’ I buy more books that I can read, I sign up for more online courses than I can finish…” You might like to say that since he has become CEO Microsoft it is easy for him to buy all those books and attend the online courses, but I’d like to believe it was because he did all this that he could become CEO of Microsoft. If you are in any knowledge based enterprise, you have to invest in training yourself.

Currently all of us reside in two places. One is the physical world we can smell and touch. The other is the virtual world out there, becoming bigger, smarter and stronger every day. My refusal to engage with the virtual world is inexplicable. Just as we use architects and interior designers to design and beautify our shops and offices we need software programmers and web designers to create our virtual world. I attend social functions, sometimes travelling long distances just to show my presence at a friend’s daughter’s wedding and crawl back through the nightmarish traffic to reach home late at night. Social media lets me create a vibrant social presence from the comfort of my home. If I can employ a marketing person to take care of my small enterprise, it makes that much sense for me to employ a digital marketing person as well. The reach of the internet is obviously huge, the audience is much bigger!

So what’s my message?  Ok, here’s what I think

• THINK REVENUE NOT COST

• Grow your business, spend money , but wisely
• Once you are big enough, hire someone to bring down your costs and pay him a small percentage of the costs reduced

• HIRE PERSONS SMARTER THAN YOU

• And listen to them!

•  LEVERAGE YOUR ASSETS, USE BORROWED CAPITAL TO GROW
• Remember your revenue has to just beat the EMI
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• SAY NO TO CASH!
• It is a nuisance and a headache you can do without

• INVEST IN YOURSELF – TRAIN YOURSELF ALL THE TIME; READ, READ, READ
• Attend courses, learn online
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•  USE THE INTERNET WISELY
•     Don't be shy of the net - use it to help you.

I can only become big if I think big!

All the best!

Dr (Major) Rajesh Bhardwaj

Director, MedFirst ENT Centre.