How I Turned My Pain Into Power?

Before I started Zalonin

Today

It was September and I was standing in my room, irritated and confused owing to my last haircut which wasn’t good and the time had come again to get another one. I was going to book a taxi and wondered how awesome it would have been if I could book my haircut service with a few clicks.

PAST

I wanted to build a business since I was a child. I remember when I was not even 10, a friend of my father came to home for a friendly visit. I adored his personality, his vibe was different and I admired it. I talked to him. He told me he was in oil business. To my head, only one thing came to my mind, parachute coconut oil because that was the only oil product I could recall at that time.

Funnily, I didn’t realize he was talking about the petroleum industry back then,the biggest industry of all but the best thing was, I wanted to be a business man since then.

FEW YEARS LATER

Years rolled by and as I recall, my father always told me articles on about Bill Gates, Jobs, Kalam, Sachin or anyone who’s struggle or success story was published. I used to cut it out of the newspaper and keep it, the Steve Jobs articles and Bill Gates articles were my favorite. I had a collection from both, Hindi and English columns.

Somewhere along all this, the movie, The Social Network came out and I watched it. I was mesmerized. I watched it again at my friend’s place and excitedly told everyone what will happen next and everyone was irritated of me but I loved the movie. Since then, I know I have watched it over 50 times from start to finish, dot. I researched everything about the movie and of course, Facebook Inc. I wanted to build one for myself now.

Last year of my school, a friend of me and I started making a website, “Atkinson” in our web technology classes. It never got finished but I learned I love building things up from nothing.

PAIN

College began and first year of college was difficult for me because I was carrying a heart filled with grief from my past owing to you-know-what. I dig down deep inside to find safe but I couldn’t. My head and heart were not coordinating. I started to stay alone more and more.

Loneliness had become a solitude. I realized I needed to pick myself up as it was something only I could do and no one will hold you and take you away from the dark. I started motivating myself by reading more and watching loads of inspiring movies and videos.

REDEMPTION

This changed my lifestyle. Subsequently, it changed me. I wasn’t regretting anything any more, I started to stay more and more grateful for the pain had made me a better person somehow. I wasn’t going through my problems now, I was growing through them.

I realized that thoughts were everything. I started to stay more positive. Calm against problems and aggressive towards solutions.

Change your thoughts and you change your life

One step at a time. One step.

THE AVERAGE

Since childhood, I was the kid who went through tests for autism as I stayed quiet and only kept things to myself. Some people even called me dumb.

I was the kid who got bullied like most of us. I was the kid who suffered through classes because I didn’t like to study what I didn’t like. I loved maths though and a few things in science because it filled my curiosity voids.

I used to be below average in my studies. Although, my two back-to-back fractures in the same year, 2009 changed my academics because I actually started using my head a lot more (since my freaking hand was in POP but I still had to study) and suddenly I became genius in my own terms and on my report card but as of today I know the later doesn’t matter. Late but nevertheless.

I was the average kid.

CHANGE

After school finished, I told myself, no more. No more do I have to be the average.

I understood few big things of life and the best of it all was, if I wanted to be something or change something, know matter how impossible it looked at the start, it was possible, irrespective of what others say.

My life was in my hands, in my control and the world doesn’t owe me anything.

I changed the loneliness into solitude with pride.

BACK TO SEPTEMBER

Coming to the September when I was wondering about haircut services.

I was a thinker now. I knew, if I want to change something, I need to do it myself if no on else was doing it. I brain stormed more and more about the salons. My first internship after the first year of college where I went to 3–4 cities and worked directly under the founders of a startup, which taught me some valuable things that would go on to connect the dots later.

Made me think about how the salon operates. Me being me, the wishful problem solver began thinking what could be done to solve this issue. I thought an online booking service didn’t exist, at the time of my eureka, and thought I’ll make one online service.

I was amateur at the time about it all thinking it would solve the problem. As I wandered to salons and discussed it more and more with my friends and mentors, I realized a much bigger problem existed which was the core of it all.

It was not only the customers who were suffering, but the business side too and I concluded after all the brain storming and going through industry statistics and history that standardization is the golden solution here. This industry never solved the issues which might look small problems but really were the core problems.

You could get the same service at different prices and you could get different service at the same price, the quarter of salons were organized but they were too expensive for an avg customer.

THE REAL DEAL

I knew what I had to do. Standardize this industry from it’s core inside-out so customer could get the salon services with some standard like satisfactory service, zero-waiting time and all this at reasonable price. The mediocre salons which provide good services can get more customers unlike their history of being empty for most of the hours in a day.

All this was there in mind when it all hit me. This was all my personal pain point and everyone like me had their for this industry and there was one more big thing that was there, trend. The trend setters, the trend followers. We are a age of social media and people love to express themselves. More importantly I wanted to break the society norm where certain people think that certain people should look a certain way. I believe that everyone should be the way they want to be for themselves irrespective of what others might think.

That’s when I thought to introduce the social platform and I could see the potential tagline in my head, “Look, carry and be the way you want to be”.

CONCLUSION

No way I’m successful in the eyes of the society but in my eyes I get to do what I want and that’s beginning of success for me.

I don’t care much about being a successful business man or an entrepreneur but I want to be successful as a human.

To live the life to it’s fullest and stay grateful for it all. My work is a big part of it and my past was an amazing opportunity.

Don’t stress. My definition of ‘success’ and the success in the eyes of the society is way different.

Giving is success to me. Living with peace of my mind is success to me. Living with clarity is success for me. Risking everything is success for me. Doing thing that scare most people is success for me. Feeling deeply is success for me. Helping people is success to me. Inspiring people is success to me. Loving people is success to me. And there’s a lot more but don’t stress.

I wasn’t qualified to sit for placements in my final year due to my back-logs which was mostly due to me working on tons of other things than attending college. Although, I made up mind in second year itself that I won’t sit for placements anyway but you know what? I did. I did sit in the placements, just on the other side of the table. I do go to college, just not to classes but to my office in the incubation center of the same institute.

A life is not worth it, if you are not going to bed knowing you did what you wanted to do and stay grateful for it.

Be whatever you want to be, whoever you want be, however you want to be for yourself and be resilient and use the problems to grow yourself.

You can change the pain into power. I believe in you. Just keep listening to your heart and your heart only.

The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new

Want to know more? message me at rahul@zalonin.com or visit the site and the facebook page.

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Email: rahul@rahulabhishek.com

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