As we all know, creating wealth – real worth – requires risk-taking. While that seems to be obvious to most of you, what seems to be less known is that risk-taking is going against the grain, being counter-cultural, and, dare we say, engage in grown-up gender-neutral ‘bad boy’ behaviour. The very notion of buying when everyone’s selling, and selling when everyone’s buying should, by itself, tell you that to shake one’s moneymaker, one needs to get in touch with one’s ‘Jhunjhunwala’ side. Money-making, in one fundamental respect, has been immune to docile, obedient behaviour seen in most other aspects of social engagement in our culture – starting from the automatic (but complicated) respect towards elders, to a full-throated, sashtang pranaam reserved for our political figures whom, many of us, treat as divinity. But the good thing about objective activities like money-making is that they not only encourage counterintuitive business but actively encourage them.
So, while it’s safe and secure to play it, well, safe and secure, the real movers and shakers engage in – what millennials have made old-timers call – disruption. But as canny old-timers and new-timers know, disruption is as old as geological tectonic plates. Up the stakes and you up the rewards – as long as you smartly keep that trapeze safety net below.
