On 14th August, the Beyond Management session at Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA) was graced by the presence of actor -entrepreneur Mr. Arvind Swami. The highly engaging session was on “Life-Lessons”, where he shared with the students, the learnings that he had acquired during different phases in his life and how he applies them to further his personal as well as business growth.
His father taught him that there will be a consequence to every action, if he was late to school he was dropped to school in the milk-van and this taught him to be punctual early on in life. Later when he interned with his father’s company he started from the welding shop, which further down the lane made him realise the need for the bottom up approach, to understand the processes and also the problems faced by clients. Though he wanted to pursue medicine his father insisted that he should take up commerce. When confronted with this situation he took up the challenge and discovered that if one isolates the disappointment one would be able to stay happy accepting the reality of the situation. Even after delivering box-office hits like Roja and Thalapathy, he went on to discontinue films to pursue his masters to honour the promise he had made to his parents.
At 23 when he lost both his parents with in a years’ time he turned to movies where at times work extended beyond 30 hours at a stretch. This helped him heal as well as develop a work ethic which blurred time zones and stood him in good stead when he started his maiden venture. Further down he took a break from his acting career and turned to equity trading where he discovered that in certain situations cutting ones loses and moving on is the best decision.
Mr. Arvind Swami also spoke about the traumatic phase in his life when he was partially paralyzed. Despite his doubts regarding the effectiveness of Ayurveda, it helped him get back on his feet and start again, leading him to be much more open to new ideas. He also emphasized on the importance of asking questions. He said that one should not hesitate to ask questions as well as admitting, to not knowing something. While recruiting an employee his motto is not to go in for the guy with the best talent, rather to hire the one who is hungry to succeed.as this hunger to learn and improve oneself will transform an average person into a winner.
He concluded the session with the quote, “The number of sand grains in the entire planet is less than the number of stars in the universe. The earth is just a nano fraction of the sand grain and, you and me are not even the size of something which can be measured. So focus on how to make life interesting – define yourself by the work you’ve done and not by what you own.”