This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.

Who are the people who become successful, rich, hot and have amazing lives?

I used to think you are born rich or hot. Growing up, I learnt from my parents that we are poor and have to make choices accordingly. For example, we can’t afford chocolates that other kids can afford.

I used to think that the best I can aspire for is a well paid job. Then maybe I can afford a car one day. Maybe I can travel abroad also. I thought: one day!

My parents also told me if I study hard, I will not be poor. So I studied. But I always wondered, didn’t my parents study enough? They did have government jobs. Then why are we poor?

My parents lived that life. It circled around their job and raising us. Secure, middle class, risk-averse family life. I was going to live that too, but hopefully a slightly better version. They wanted me to become a doctor or engineer. That’s what I was raised for.

The first sign of problem started from there.

When I decided to study law, it was because I could see something else. I could see that studying law will give me access to a world of power. I had an image in my head. It was of a diplomat walking through the corridors of the UN. I had no idea what those corridors looked like, so I imagined a more opulent version of my school corridor. It is ridiculous now, but back then that was a powerful image in my head. I aspired for it. I felt I will get closer to that if I studied law.

I could not imagine earning a lot of money or living a rich life at this point. I could imagine being a part of the powerful elite. Having a seat at the table! And it thrilled me. My parents did not understand that dream, but I fought with the whole world to study law.

So when I went to law school, failure wasn’t an option. I had to pay back the enormous education loan. I had to earn. I had to be successful. I had to live the dream! Most importantly, I wanted to be right. I wanted to prove that I was up to something and that I did not make a mistake. I had to show it to my parents, to the teachers who wrote me off for studying law and the neighbours who sniggered at me for not writing the JEE.

The idea of becoming a diplomat faded away somewhere in the first or second year of law school. I was addicted to a new dream – being a powerful corporate lawyer. I read books like Predators’ Ball and King of Capital and wanted to be a deal lawyer. I wanted to earn 1 lakh per month to start with.

Dreams change. I started doing freelance work while I was still in law school and earned enough to pay income tax in the top bracket. The jump in income wasn’t that much if I joined a law firm.

But I did go to a law firm for a year because I wanted to know the world of law firms through my own experience. I had multiple offers, and I joined one in Mumbai with a brand name for being progressive and new age.

I knew by that time in my heart that I will quit it soon to pursue my new dream – entrepreneurship. Working for a year in the law firm only fuelled that dream. I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny! I wanted to leave a mark. And that’s how the most challenging, rewarding and crazy journey of my life began.

Suddenly, I was not anyone else’s responsibility. There was no safety net. There was no boss to keep an eye on me. There was no senior to tell me or train me on what I had to do. If I made a mistake, it was entirely my own. If I failed, it was my failure. I will take myself and all the other people with me if I were to go down in flames.

I had only one assurance at the back on my head, if I fail, I will apply for a masters in good universities abroad and try to come back to the job market. Hopefully, that would work, if I got a scholarship. With that imaginary safety net in the head, I jumped in full time into my dream of building India’s most ambitious online law courses and legal literacy platform.

I am very glad that I started early in the journey of building my own vision, my own organization, my own products and services. I did not even start with an established niche, I went straight for a blue ocean venture, where nobody had any previous record of success and there was no blueprint for us to follow. We had to make the rules and find out how to make things work as we went along.

It was very challenging. Even while we were making money, hiring people was difficult. Nobody wanted to work with us back in 2012, given that we were a fledgeling company and worked out of our bedrooms or living room mostly! For the first year, we didn’t have money to even hire an office.

We didn’t show off. We just kept our head down and worked. And made it work.

When we learnt to hire, the next was learning how to train and how to retain people. We had to learn how to make them productive and how to fire them if they were taking too many liberties or not producing results.

We had to learn about the market. We had to learn about technology. We had to learn how to deal with aggressive and opportunistic competitors. We had to learn how to convince people to buy courses from a new company that they had never heard of. We had to learn to build a blog of our own because we did not have too much budget to advertise. We had to learn to stretch every paisa.

But all of that made us strong. We did not take any shortcut. We did not raise angel investments or venture capital though it was possible and our competitors did so. We were offered investments and lucrative acquisition offers and we said no. We said yes to a difficult life for the sake of our dream. We did not bank on advertising to sell our courses but went for building a captive audience on our own and a brand. We could not hire expensive people but we hired who we could and trained them to do the best work in the industry. We made tough choices from day 1, and that set us apart.

And we can proudly say that in 2019 we are the biggest online legal education brand. We have hundreds of lawyers joining our premium courses every single month. Every single day we get testimonials from people who tell us what a great difference our courses or content has made in their life and career.

Lawyers are learning new skills fast and adding new practice areas to their practice.

Lawyers are getting jobs that they failed to get earlier, thanks to superior training with which they can now dazzle their interviewers and give evidence that they can do top notch work.

Businessmen and professionals are taking up our course and acquiring competitive advantage over their rivals.

Top companies like ICICI, ITC, Mahindra (and many others) are hiring us to deliver customised legal courses to their lawyers and other professionals. Corporate enrollments where companies sponsor their employees to join our courses is at an all time high.

We even get international enrollments, despite teaching Indian law, every month!

Even though Indian economy is staring at a recession, we are upbeat because we know a market downturn will increase the demand for courses like IBC, arbitration, civil litigation and we have already been building and perfecting these courses over the last 1 year.

We launched a package of all our courses called Master Access and began to charge 1 lakh rupees fee as of this month, and it is flying off the shelf (there are only 10 spots to start with!).

We are on solid ground here. On a track for massive growth, with amazing courses lined up to be launched for different demographics and I feel very satisfied with the work we are doing. And we have been able to assemble a killer team which is very passionate about the work and I am incredibly proud of all of them!

Why am I telling you all these?

As I have grown older, my life has gotten better, consistently. I want to share that enthusiasm with you. I want to also share what made it possible next.

There are 3 big lessons from my journey. These have been the biggest reasons for our success, and I know they will serve you well too.

Do not let your past and present define you

We all have a past. There are things in our past that did not work. There are things in the past that are broken. There are people in our past who told us that we should not grow too big for our shoes. There are people who got threatened by our dreams and ambitions.

There are people in our past who made us feel small and treated us unfairly.

And perhaps it is happening in our present too.

We all had failures. The harder we tried, the more ambitious we have been, the more we cared and battled passionately, the more we have lost. We have succeeded too, but our mind tends to fixate on our failures and losses.

I want to remind you that none of that defines our life. The past is past. The best is yet to come. Your dreams, actions and vision define you. Who are you today is nothing in front of what you are going to become? You cannot imagine what you are going to become.

I could not. I used to think I will be a millionaire one day. One of my biggest dreams, when I started a business, was to earn 1 crore. I have earned much more over the years, but here is what: I could not imagine who I would become. The strength, the power, the imagination, the vision, the credibility, the contribution I make – I could not imagine these things when I was joining law, or graduating from law school, or even beginning my journey as an entrepreneur.

You have got to have a vision that is bigger than you and more challenging than what you think you can achieve today. If you do that, you will go places that you cannot even imagine.

Do not let the fear of failure, present limitations and fear of repeating the past mistakes stop you from going all out, going hard, going with all your might towards your vision.

The challenges of the present will melt away if you set your eyes on a worthy vision, share it with the people around you, and keep your head down and just keep crawling towards it. Before you realise, you will build momentum and you might be even flying.

However, it is before dawn that the night is darkest, and never fear tough times. Nobody in the world has become great without having gone through hell first. It is the right of passage, so be prepared.

You do not know your destiny, but follow what fascinates you

You may not have the defining vision of your life yet. I probably still do not have it. There is no final destination.

You evolve and so does your vision.

Today my vision is to build a global company that makes learning the law easy and practical. I dream of building a product that is essential for every lawyer in the world to be effective in their practice.

I have no idea how I will make that happen.

As of now, though, we have Master Access, and I can see how the early users are benefitting from it, within a week of launch. I can see how we are going to add one practice area after another to it and make it into a weapon of choice for the smartest lawyers in the country.

There would be a day when every upcoming lawyer in India, and eventually the world, will feel it to be a necessity to have Master Access in their kitty, as a database of practice resources and rapid learning tools that make them more effective, save their time and help them to grow their practice rapidly.

This fascinates me today, just like I was fascinated by the idea of becoming a diplomat one day.

The journey is beautiful and keeps getting better as your vision grows. Coming to office is so exciting for me only because of that. If people talk to me about it, they can hear the enthusiasm and energy I am boiling with, because this journey has been a thrill. And I can’t wait for the future, because it is such an adventure.

What is going to be your journey? Do not wait to discover the ultimate purpose of your life. Jump into what really fascinates you today. And keep swimming. You will evolve as you go. Only risk is of not getting into the mix, and waiting at the shore for too long as your life goes by.

Start early. Do not delay the beginning. Time is your biggest asset.

Become a learning machine

I am a learning machine. That has been my greatest advantage in life.

I had competitors who were more knowledgeable and better connected in the industry than us. There is a competitor which raised a lot of money. There are ones that sold courses ten times cheaper than us. Our university partner illegally and unfairly ditched us without a warning. We were not paid dues close to a crore.

Nothing mattered eventually, because I am a learning machine, and LawSikho adapted to every single situation and we came out victorious. We will win the remaining battles too.

Before hiring for any job, I make it a point to do it myself and succeed and then only hire someone else to do it. They have to do it better than I do to get promoted after they are hired!

I am always learning from other businesses, other industries, even our competitors. I have professional coaches, I spend money on online courses, I invest heavily in my own development. There is no stopping. There is no slowing down on learning.

My desk and bed is surrounded by piles of books. I am always reading new ones. But I do not read indiscriminately. I do not have the time.

I have to prioritize.

What is my next level of success? How do I go to the next level of the game? What skills do I need for that?

I have to learn about those things. One or two things at a time. Laser focussed.

What is the next level of your game? What skill can you learn that will take you to the next level? Are you a learning machine or are you skipping that part?

No dreams will be achieved unless you keep upgrading your own self. Learning is how we get to become almost superhuman.

All the best. Make good decisions.

If you have not checked out Master Access yet, please check it out:

Here are some courses from LawSikho that are closing soon:

Diploma