Gig work is catching on. Yet most gig workers make the same mistakes that prevent them from succeeding. In the 5th episode of Dreamers and Unicorns by PeopleStrong, I invited Joshua Karthik to join me in the studio to discuss the #NewCodeOfWork. You may have read about the 6 tips for Business that I wrote about. Read it here <click this>

I met Joshua Karthik in 2016 when we were both chosen to receive the Distinguished Alumni Award. Joshua was given the award for Entrepreneurship. So I always wanted to know what he does differently from so many others. Joshua Karthik finished MBA from XLRI in 2005 and joined Asian Paints. He worked there for seven years and in 2012 he joined his brother Joseph Radhik to form Stories by Joseph Radhik, arguably India’s most sought after wedding photographers. In 2016 he co-founded PEP that organizes the Photography Conference. He invited me to speak at the Conference and I got a glimpse into a world I had never seen.Joshua Karthik and his brother are behind the Virat Kohli-Anoushka wedding photos that got 10 million views. Their photos of Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas have been viewed 17 million times.You can read about it here <Storytelling tips from a wedding photographer>What was the trigger to become an entrepreneur?Here are three things Joshua Karthik spoke about

1. Usually people walk away from something – a bad boss, a boring job, a poor increment, office politics etc. Instead walk towards something that you feel you cannot wait any more for. Walk towards something – not away from something.

2. Quit your job when you are on a high. Carry the positive energy into your new job. Joshua Karthik quit his job at Asian Paints after 7 years when he was doing really well.

3. While you are still an employee, practice doing things which no one may have asked you to. Build your skills. Help a colleague. Build a wide network of people.

Listen to Joshua Karthik talk about it.

People often advise the gig workers to have a “decent” bank balance before they jump into doing freelance work. Some people suggest having six months worth of money in the bank so that you don’t get stressed waiting for work to happen. Some people suggest a larger amount. Joshua’s take was more pragmatic.If you are a gig worker, listen to the episode. Joshua Karthik gives you the most usable and practical piece of advice you have got. If you are THINKING about doing your own thing some day, then definitely listen to the episode and make a checklist of what you need to know one day before you quit your job.You can send your friends this link and tell them that this is the No 1 podcast according to Apple.

Here is the link https://maedinindia.fanlink.to/DAU

Listen to Pankaj Bansal speak about entrepreneurship <click here>

Listen to Anita and Harsha Bhogle speak about lessons from sports <click here>

Listen to R Balki talk about tech and creativity <click here>

Listen to Renuka Ramnath talk about Finance as a Career <click here>

If you like the episodes, please give it a high rating and review it. That will help it show up more often.

Thanks. Happy listening.

Renuka Ramnath handles a BILLION DOLLAR fund called Multiples. She speaks about why the financial sector is still full of opportunities even after she has spent more than 30 years in the sector.

Renuka Ramnath

The 4th episode of my podcast Dreamers & Unicorns by PeopleStrong brought Renuka Ramnath into the studio. She has been featured in listings such as: the Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Business (Business Today, India); India’s most Powerful CEO’s (Economic Times), the Top 25 Non Bank Women in Finance (US Banker’s global list).As the MD & CEO of ICICI Venture for close to a decade, she led that firm to become one of the largest private equity funds in India. In January 2009, she quit ICICI Venture to set up Multiples a private equity fund with a billion dollars in the kitty.But before I talk about this, thanks to all of you for the overwhelming response to our podcast. It continues to be  the No 1 podcast. Thanks for letting a Dreamer compete with the Unicorns and Market Shapers. That is us in the top left there. Thank you!!!!

Winning in a Man’s World

What makes her achievements even more special? I found two admirable elements:

1. Winning in the financial sector – a sector seen everywhere as a man’s world. Think of the gender stereotypes of a financial whizkid. They are almost always male. The volatility of the sector is a learning opportunity. It does not allow her to sit back. There is always something happening all the time. There is also the opportunity to grow for the next two to three decades. The opportunity to enhance financial inclusion and take it to lower down to the bottom of the pyramid is the opportunity.

2. Leadership styles from Dreamer to Unicorn: The insights on what it takes for a startup to grow from being a Dreamer to a Unicorn. Renuka’s insights on the role of the founder(s) resonated with me. When the Founder starts the business, they do it because they see an opportunity that others cannot see.

I asked her what she enjoys more, raising money and investing it? Or running a company with the founder and helping it scale?

What is it about the financial sector that keeps her interested even after 3 decades. Doesn’t she get bored?

There is another sketchnote given below where I doodled about things I found fascinating in her talk.The role of the leader in a start up is to bring the energy and passion.

The founder of an organization in the Dreamer stage

Here is the MUST listen episode featuring Renuka Ramnath. Don’t miss the segment where she speaks about how the changing consumer behavior of the Indian Kitchen can be a big area of growth. Listen here

Don’t miss the previous episodes

Have you heard the previous episode of Dreamers & Unicorns by PeopleStrong where film maker Balki speaks of storytelling, team work and creativity? <listen here>

What is the biggest life lesson that sports can teach you? Is specialisation bad for your career?

Anita and Harsha Bhogle speak about it in this episode of Dreamers & Unicorns by PeopleStrong <listen here>

In the very first episode of Dreamers & Unicorns by PeopleStrong, you can hear Pankaj Bansal speak about the downside of being an entrepreneur; if employment, entrepreneurship and gig work are the three stages that define the #NewCodeOfWork? <listen here>

If you subscribe to my podcast, you will get to know about the fascinating guests who come in to the studio every Monday. You can listen to it on an app of your choice – Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify … or wherever you listen to podcasts. Choose your platform here https://maedinindia.fanlink.to/DAU

The Olympics motto is Citius, Altius, Fortius. That means faster, higher and stronger. That motto offers a great faith in human potential. Every four years, people gather together to redefine what is humanly possible. Every four years the record books engrave what is the ultimate achievement in every sport. Four years later athletes gather to break what was once defined as the outer limit of the human being.In the world of work we are once again back to the drawing board. We are once again defining the outer limits of human capability and what machines and algorithms can do. When I was thinking of who I should invite for the first episode of Dreamers & Unicorns, I could only think of Anita and Harsha Bhogle. They run a workshop called The Winning Way where they speak of sports as a metaphor for life.Sports is one arena where people of different backgrounds come together to give their best. To meet their individual ambitions and make the team win. The leader has every chance of failing at exactly the same task that they are demanding from the team.Anita and Harsha Bhogle have had a ringside view of the world of sports and have had successful corporate careers. They have been employees and gig workers. They were the perfect choice for episode 1.

Anita Bhogle

I know Anita as the founder of Bizpunditz – a digital learning platform. She wanted me to record a few episodes for her. Here is one of the episodesAn entrepreneur, Anita Bhogle started the consulting firm Prosearch, with husband Harsha Bhogle – a sport-based consultancy where she brings in her business expertise. An alumna of IIT-B and IIM-A, Anita started her career in advertising. She attained the position of Director—Account Planning and Research at FCB-Ulka, before leaving it all to set up Prosearch with Harsha. She is also Director (Content) at Bizpunditz, India’s first digital learning content library for managers.

Harsha Bhogle

Harsha Bhogle started commentating at the age of 19 with All India Radio, while living in Hyderabad. In 1991–92, he became the first Indian commentator to be invited by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation during India’s cricket series before the 1992 Cricket World Cup. He has since worked for ABC Radio Grandstand during India’s Australian tours, and for eight years worked for the BBC as part of their commentary team in the 1996 and the 1999 Cricket World Cups. The Australian tourism uses Harsha’s commentary to entice Indians to visit Australia. That is the power of 8.4 million followers of Harsha on Twitter.Since 1995, Harsha Bhogle has been presenting live cricket from all around the world for ESPN STAR Sports and was part of the ‘Few Good Men commentary team that included Ravi Shastri, Sunil Gavaskar, and Alan Wilkins along with Geoff Boycott and Navjot Singh Sidhu, for a few seasons, and later, Ian Chappell and Sanjay Manjrekar.Here is the first episode of Dreamers and Unicorns where Anita and Harsha Bhogle speak about the lessons from sports, the way they have reinvented themselves, their struggles and what makes them tick as business partners.Listen to the episode hereFeel free to right click and download the sketchnote as you listen to Anita and Harsha tell you how they went from being Dreamers to Unicorns.

This is the story of Dreamers and Unicorns by PeopleStrong– the podcast. It features Pankaj Bansal – the founder CEO of PeopleStrong.

How to name it?

November 4, 2019 – Episode 1 of my podcast Dreamers and Unicorns went live. The name Dreamers & Unicorns seemed to be a natural choice for the podcast. I wanted guests who were Dreamers – those who had turned their dreams to reality. And in the process become “Unicorns” in their field. They are all achievers.I wanted it to capture the essence of the world of work, workers and workplaces. I wanted to explore what turns a Dreamer into a Unicorn.The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. The horn is supposed to turn poisonous water into drinking water.Read more about Unicorns here

Who is Pankaj Bansal?

Pankaj Bansal @PankajBansalPB is Co-founder of the HR Tech Company PeopleStrong. PeopleStrong is Asia’s Leading Enterprise Tech company that works with over 250 enterprises and has 750,000 users.  Technology convergence is creating the  #NewCodeofWorkPankaj is the co-founder of Work10m that is working to create 10 million jobs in India. He is an Indian entrepreneur who raised $50mn in HR Tech – that was a first. He spoke about entrepreneurship, gig work, technology and his love for poetry.Pankaj seemed to be a natural choice for Episode 0 because PeopleStrong has the tagline #NewCodeOfWork (Just glance at this).

Ep 1 #NewCodeOfWork

The work of work is truly boundaryless. Working anywhere across boundaries and silos. Making the employee experience to be at the foundation of work design means using technology to enable this vision. The New Code of Work is PeopleStrong’s way of creating next-gen technology products for managing the work and the workforce of the future and delivering next level of experience to its users. It is one of the only companies in the space that is focused towards designing a technology “for the users” and boasts an unparalleled rating of 4.3 on playstore (globally) with over 100 thousand downloads and a product stickiness score in the 95th percentile which is unheard of — not just in HRTech space but business applications, too.Read:Dreamers and Unicorns are the new role models

Employee experience

The term “employee experience,” and the concept, originated as a parallel to the customer experience.

“An HR leader at a travel services company was using design thinking to study the guest and host experience—and realized that this approach could also be applied to all of the activities going on internally. The company had outsourced many internal functions, making the employee experience inconsistent; in fact, it had never been completely designed. So the leader took on the newly created role of “global head of employee experience,” applied design thinking to the problem, and the idea and role took off. The autonomy to make decisions. Having access to the right tools and tech. Access to relevant information. The overall job-design that creates meaning and the day to day workflow.”

Having access to the right technology at work is an integral part of the experience of work. Just imagine how hard it would be to work if your laptop acts temperamental. Having to work in a noisy environment how dysfunctional that is.Technology has made it possible to work 24×7 from anywhere. Companies routinely invest millions in customer facing technology. But the same companies work with clunky systems that are outdated and just simply painful to use. Investing in good HR tech can be a simple way to improve the employee experience.

How ready are we?

In this freewheeling conversation Pankaj Bansal spoke to me about what is the grand vision that inspired him to start working in building PeopleStrong. It is the premier HR Tech platform for enterprises when it comes to Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, and Human Capital Management.How well are organizations prepared to deal with the 3 phases of work – from employment, entrepreneurship and now gig work?Listen to Episode) of Dreamers and Unicorns featuring Pankaj Bansal.Don’t forget to tune in next week for another episode of Dreamers and Unicorns featuring sports commentator Harsha Bhogle and his wife Anita Bhogle who have written the book The Winning Way. Available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, JioSaavn, Spotify, TuneIn, CastBox, HubHopper … and anywhere you get your podcasts.