In our latest interview, we spoke to two young and bright entrepreneurs Divyank Jain and Deep Shah: co-founders at The Wise Idiot. Let’s read more about their journey and how they are making the lives of their clients a lot easier!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with them:
Talk us a little about yourself, please;
Deep: Wow, ‘Tell me something about yourself’ is such a difficult question to answer every time. I come from a background of equity investors. After a degree in financial markets and dabbling with graphology, I had brief stints in the BFSI and education space; before starting The Wise Idiot. Since then – content creation is what I’ve been doing.
Divyank: Talking about yourself is never easy. But, here it goes. I have a background in commerce but my knack for marketing runs in my veins. After giving away too many useless entrance exams that weren’t close to helping me achieve my dream, I went out and joined a startup that had an app to sell and borrow books before Deep and I came together which commenced our journey at The Wise Idiot and awesome content creation.
Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?
Deep: More like entrepreneurship chose me, hah. At the time, due to some reasons I was out of work and figuring out what to do. While looking for a job as a writer, many of my potential employers insisted that I instead onboard them as clients. So, for all practical purposes, it is safe to say that entrepreneurship was an awaited step in my life. And since I enjoyed the freedom and flexibility to add value, I’ve continued to pursue it.
Divyank:For me, entrepreneurship was a natural part of me. I thought of my first product at the age of 10. It was magic water, made from sketch pen ink. The product was well received and I sold 10L of water on a Sunday morning. Although, the next day I had to shut shop after a few people complained about coloured patches on their kid’s t-shirts. Then the next product that followed was a washing cloth, which gave me a lot of business, too. All the signs were there.
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
Deep: You cannot have an ideal reality but you can have an optimum reality, and I wish to go after that reality.
Divyank: A kick! From my inner entrepreneur.
Why should people choose your products/services?
Deep: Funnily, I’ve never had to answer this question before. Whether it is our attitude towards our clients or the quality/manner of work, we’ve usually been approached by people instead of us going to them. That, in itself, is the credibility and confidence that both our customers and we, need.
Divyank: Most of the services that we provide are unique in their own way. We are consultants who can write and design which help businesses grow. Our goal is simple – to make good things better. Everyone wants to make their good things, better. That is why the Wise Idiot is there for you.
What’s your competitive advantage and why can’t it be copied?
Deep: This remind’s me of Simon Sinek’s TEDx talk. Best practices can always be copied – but the question is: are you willing to pay the price for it? Our competitive advantage is in ‘Why’ we do things. Our fierce-strong-intense-violent desire to eradicate bad/mediocre content is the biggest competitive advantage we have. We can’t stand it. The compulsive need to make good things better demands extra time, effort and emotional investment.
Divyank: Who else can be both wise and an idiot? To be honest we need more content creators because people consume content so much and no one can feed it all alone. We are awesome at our work and other people can be like us but can’t copy our awesomeness.
What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?
Deep: Every day brings new challenges. Clichéd, I know. In fact, even when we get a big contract, it’s a challenge. But our major challenges were on the business and technical front. There was a time when the hard disk was wiped clean during an urgent deadline. Similarly, there was a time when hundreds of blogs had to be delivered in a few days. It’s been a rollercoaster.
Divyank: The journey in a nutshell thus far:
Day 1: The kind of work we want to do, it is not there.
Day 2: The kind of work we want to do is there, but we don’t have a team to do it.
Day 3: The kind of work we want and the team is there, but we need the space and working at Starbucks would be expensive.
Day 50: The place and other things are there, but we want to do more better work.
Day 365: There is so much work, and there is a team trying to do so much, we need to find interns to help.
Day 700: Are we helping people enough? I think there is so much more we need to do to help.
Tell our audience more about your failures? How should one bounce back?
Deep: It took a while for me to accept that you cannot always win. Once, our biggest client fired us because of minor grammatical errors. We tried a lot to get back, but unfortunately, we couldn’t. But failure is not ‘failure’ failure. Breakdowns just happen. I’ve heard that in the industry, you’re only as good as your last project. So, just correct your mistake – do better work and bam! Good work starts flowing to you again.
Divyank: It is impossible to make everyone happy. I failed to do it once and a trillion other times. But, I am still doing it. Because my job is to make people happy and to fail more often. All I am learning from my failures is to try new ways to make people happy. And as it is said, you cannot help everyone, but you can help someone who will help someone else, and everyone will be helped!
What comes first for you – money or emotions?
Deep: Emotions – always. As a college kid, I’d heard Devdutt Pattnaik say ‘We don’t work for money, we work for aukaat (status).’ So inherently, the desire to feel good pushes us to acquire wealth. I won’t lie – earning money does feel good. But I’d rather be happy than being rich (or both together).
Divyank: You and I are already in the top 1% of the world because we have some money. Is this making us happy? Is this making us sad? Anyway, both happiness, and sadness are emotions, and that’s probably an eternal first.
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
Deep: A lot of trial and error has gone into this – and it continues. Being a writer, it is very natural to burden my diary with catharsis. I started playing the violin to explore the calmer side of me. Otherwise, a deep breath can help align that chaos around you with time enough to charge ahead.
Divyank:Can I use the word, fuck? Well, if yes it is my favourite go-to word to manage pressure and stress. I usually say fuck this shit and get over with it. If I can’t use the word, then hey I can’t have pressure and stress too.
What advice would you give to someone starting out, particularly to aspiring entrepreneurs?
Deep:There is no advice. Irrespective of what I say, you have to do, experience and succeed yourself. In fact, Elon Musk is very right ‘If you need external motivation, you’re not fit to be an entrepreneur.’ So yes, I can share 500 Dos and Don’ts for a successful career, but it is better if you write yours yourself.
Divyank:Keep it simple and go with the flow. If you can follow this, you can do anything in the world and entrepreneurship is, to be able to do anything in the world.
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