My failures are the only way I learn to be a better mentor. I welcome them with open arms as without knowing things firsthand one cannot be the best mentor or entrepreneur.
I incubate visionary and literate entrepreneurs but I consider the failures of these entrepreneurs as my failures. Their successes are mine as well.
The most important aspect of my mentoring is in how successfully a visionary entrepreneur is able to remove poverty amongst the skilled and manager entrepreneurs. There is raw pain in these entrepreneurs. Poverty is not only about money and materials, but most importantly about thinking and behaving. Here is where there are battles that get lost so often!
There was an angry young man who joined one of my incubated ventures. Anger meant that he could use blades and knives to hurt as well…Trying to understand him showed how society could hurt the child in him so severely that he resorted to hit out at the slightest provocation. He was a fantastic skilled entrepreneur and could turn waste to wealth easily. We lost him….not due to his anger which we could bring down by several notches…but to greed…For as soon as he realised that he could have a more peaceful encironment around himself, the opening up of possibilities that a social venture gave him, was too tempting to make him stay within the community and do the grind of helping himself and others…It was nicer to help just himself…
I lost two very good visionary entrepreneurs who could not bear the pain and sacrifice, that comes with helping others while helping themselves. This is a mandatory requirement asked of a fractal entrepreneur. They came to me when their chips were down. It felt exhilarating as long as they were learning and innovating. But the moment they needed to learn to survive in spite of helping others, the pain was too much to bear and they quit.
I have lost several aspiring women entrepreneurs due to pressures from family due to impending marriages; dominating husbands; child delivery and sheer lack of believing that they can…
There were also two cases where two traumatised minds enjoyed the process of releasing themselves from the bonds of trauma through my mentoring and then there was not enough energy to go ahead with becoming a social entrepreneur! They just wished to wallow in their newly found peace!
I lost a cowboy who loved to shoot from his hip but not before he learnt to pause some before pulling the trigger!
I have had to refuse to take on several youngsters as at the very beginning they could not comprehend that the idea with which they came to me in the first place implied doom to them or the planet. I would give options for these kids to choose but they would simply opt for a dangerous, far-flung fanciful option quite outside my area of mentoring. I remember particularly this kid whose main ambition was to do business, become rich and own several BMWs…I hear tell that these vehicles blow up sometimes…even the choice of the poor kid was bad!
I battle every day with vengeance, jealousy, lack of integrity, manipulation, blindness to truth due to layers of external influences that stop minds from staying curious…adults are just wayward children…
An interesting aspect about getting out of poverty is the rising feeling of hierarchy that folks feel. There is a certain claim to being close to superiors, namely the literate that automatically makes the newly released get into a pecking order with new entrants. It is quite common amongst women and subtler or aggressive with men. A deep drive towards making them introspect on who they are and their relationship with all life forms and the Universal Energy, just about sometimes works.
Stealing, cheating, backstabbing, bickering about team members, anger tantrums, dominating when visionary entrepreneurs are absent, are some very common actions that occur. The bigger issue is assuming one knows it all and turning back on the system after enjoying the fruits of all the labour of the mentors, who give away precious knowledge accumulated over years in a few hours and then demanding to be compensated for the little that went unpaid due to the pulls and pushes of enterprise…now that, too can happen.
A few incidents of questioning the foundation of the fractal model simply because of traumas in personal life is also present. For example systems of rigour about food, meditation and more will refuse to be accepted as the norm or as solutions, as the incubatees might be surrounded by an environment that taunts, mocks, makes difficult the process of upholding fractal principles.
Spouses and moms and in some cases dads have truly been pains that cannot be shaken away due to the emotional connections incubatees have with them. Some of these close relatives in fact, thrive on the glory created by fractal ventures but behind the scenes sometimes make it a living hell for the incubatees! The biggest issue which so far has been painful is having to face the threat of getting misused, as the model is extremely open and free. Only those incubatees who have an integral and strong core withstand these turmoils bravely.
Mentoring folks on compassionate detachment from all relationships will be looked upon as a “cult” activity and that would lead to questions or dropouts.
A few times the more relevant business skills are a problem threatening for dropouts but this incidence is comparatively lesser than the mind-related ones! I have had incubatees who abhor financial management, marketing, selling, facing negative cash flows, asking for loans, asking at all, managing people, simply checking mails, replying to things, managing time, facing irate customers, facing natural calamities or accidents in life…you name it and it exists!
Fifty per cent of the incubatees used to stay back. Covid has reduced this to thirty per cent. The folks who stay back in the system have one thing in common. They believe that they can do it together and that by themselves alone they might have to suck up the muck doled out to folks like them in society. This is the single common reason in all! Just this reason has given me immense confidence in the model.
Amongst this thirty per cent many still flounder but compared to their peers in society, they are truly healthier and more entrepreneurial! Even the seventy per cent who quit are better off about facing life and about entrepreneurship.
My failures reflect how much of a budget I have to enable. They are in fact great tools to enhance my model! If I had had more money to pioneer, I would venture into incubating the most difficult people that society has written off! I believe my limitations are to do with money required to undue the several ills already created in the system! Which is why I am probably doing what I am doing.
What do you think of failures in your life? Do they bother yoi? Do they scare you? Do you have questions for me on fractal entrepreneurship especially related to failures? Do write to me at radha@fractalentrepreneurship.org. Be blessed.