What It Takes To Reach The Top: Founders Share REAL Career Advice

My 40-minute conversation with Suchita translated into a goal-setting session afterwards. Her first advice was to stop over-indexing your job. She explained in the simplest way possible, “When you're in a relationship, the first advice someone gives you is don't count on this person for everything. The same thing works with work. The biggest mistake that people make is that they look at their job as the end all and be all of their professional expectations. But every job is not going to be that. It’s about identifying one or two things you want from it.” 

It really boils down to having clear goals and expectations from where you are currently. I think we set our goals from a far-off lens, which often makes us lose sight of things we can do right now. Suchita goes on to say, “things that you don't get out of your job, you can get from other places.” 

This can also be the formula for having a better relationship with your work. The moment you stop over-indexing everything on one person, or in this case, a job, the healthier your relationship will be with work. 

Your job and your work can be different. Suchita explains, “Hypothetically speaking, say, my work is that of someone who wants to be the best brand builder, but my job may give me like 30% or 40% of what I want my work to be, but I can get extensions of that by starting a podcast or reading a lot of books or signing up for an executive MBA.” 

Another thing she said that stuck with me was “just want things for yourself because if you want things for yourself, you will find people who will help. People don't want enough for themselves and pass the blame of not wanting enough for themselves to other people, which in this case usually ends up being an employer-employee relationship.” 

It reminds me of a phenomenon I read years ago; the actor-observer effect, a self-preserving human behaviour that I now realise creeps into our professional life too. It outlines the tendency to attribute (read: blame) external factors to one’s own behaviour. It’s only human, but the power realises in being aware of it. 

While you may have heard that overconfidence isn’t good for you, Soumya believes otherwise. She asked me, “What’s the worst that can happen?” and I didn’t have a response. She says, “you're not always going to succeed at everything. That doesn't mean you'll constantly take a hit on your confidence, and that's what women usually do.” 

She also sheds light on workplace bias, “I would go and present to people and sell the pitch. But at the end, they would ask who is the decision-maker? Are you going to decide on the commercials? In these situations, I see how that can work for me, which in this case gave me the power of negotiation.” 

This chat with Soumya quite literally forced me to think of all the instances in my life where I could’ve made the situation work for me, all with just a little bit of (over)confidence. Biases exist, there is not denying it. And, yes, we all need to do our bit to solving the big-picture issue, but maybe it is alright to game the system now, while we work on the bigger issue. If there is a bias, find a way to make it work for you, instead of against you—I’m starting to learn that maybe there is a way around most things, we just need to know how to work it to our advantage.   

We also spoke about how the start-up culture has been glorified in the past few years. Soumya points out that, “It has become this cool thing to do. People have started to do it for all the wrong reasons. Have you tested the market? Have you seen a need gap? Have you done your research? Do you have an option for financial fallback? Don't do it just because it looks and sounds fancy. I think truly a boss move is to be financially independent.” 

Akriti says, “success has a lot to do with being more assertive about things you require.” She speaks about how women have been taught to be polite and how that starts to reflect in one’s work life in the smallest forms, like talking to a vendor or a colleague.

While she tells me a little more about Aku’s Burger, I can’t help but notice the number of times she had to restrategise to reach her goal. Changing from her initial plan of opening a fine-dining restaurant to realising a market gap in the fast-casual restaurants in India to adopting a delivery model when Covid hit and quick thinking like coming up with DIY deliveries, Akriti genuinely didn’t take no for an answer. When I asked her about what kept her motivated, her answer with simple, “I didn’t see anything else as an option.”

My biggest takeaway from our conversation was recognising multiple ways to reach your goal. It’s a good idea to have a little wiggle room, some buffer and flexibility in the path you carve out for yourself. Don’t be rigid in what you want, better things might be in store. I was reminded that speed of success doesn't equal guaranteed success, and neither does having something planned to the T, maybe pivoting is the best thing you can do for long-term success. 

Archana Jain says, “There are no shortcuts to hard work and perseverance, however, sharp and smart you may work. Only committed and passionate hard work can earn you confidence and respect in your profession.” My 13-year-old self, who thought filling hour-long surveys would make her rich would surely have benefitted from this. 

Archana believes that to be successful, you must offer contextually relevant and insight-driven solutions. These sound like a bunch of technical jargon, but in its most basic sense, it means do your research and have solid grounds for the decisions you take. 

Out of all the things shared, the one concept that was recurrent was that of confidence. Making me believe that it’s almost a prerequisite. She says, “don’t shy away from promoting yourself, we have to be our own advocate.” 

The good thing is that confidence is more nurture than nature; it can be learnt. Rogers in his humanistic approach spoke about the ideal and real self. The ideal self is what you want to be and the real is where you are right now. Higher congruence (read: overlap) between the two, higher your self-esteem and self-worth. Now, going back to tip number one, set your goals right, ma’am. 

Ragini says, “In your hardest times you learn your toughest lessons—stay put and always remember that smooth seas never made a skilled sailor!” It’s easy advice with harsh applicability, but somethings you have to live and you learn. 

There are no shortcuts to success, yes, but there are choices you can make to multiply your growth. Ragini shares, “be in a room full of smart people! And I cannot stress this enough. You learn so much from just osmosis! If you have the opportunity to make a choice—don’t over-optimize for remote roles. There’s so much real world ‘mentorship’ available, so much to learn from how leaders handle situations/make decisions.”  I think this is great advice, especially because some of us started or got used to working from home after Covid. It seemed like the best thing that could happen, no more commuting or having to dress up. But most of us don’t realise the opportunity cost of it. Reflecting now, I do realise how small conversations eventually compound to growth, whether it be working across teams or having silly conversations about TV shows with your team. It all adds up.

The short answer is no, there is no secret sauce to success. But that doesn’t mean you can’t figure out a recipe that works for you.