Life as a leaping frog :-)

Another year passed by, before I could take note - and here I am, shuffling time and dates trying to accommodate the best in what little the time can facilitate. Seems like I'm getting used to this city now (residing at a very busy, noisy and a bit shabby part of the town - Mogappair West). Over the last 6 months, I've been hopping back and forth between Chennai and Bangalore on work. Seems like I've made up for what I thought I had lost in the past 2 years - large established client contacts.

For the last 2 years, I was strictly concentrating on building new clients here at Chennai. Somehow, it seems that the market is slow and somewhat stagnant here at Chennai. Few clients and few good offers had kept me busy for sometime (with some good old clients who knew me since ages from out of this city). Now, I'm back to form as an almost full-time Corporate trainer. I've finally managed to stream-line my focus on training alone where the market seems ripe for my technical skills and my teaching abilities.

There was a time (while I resided at Sholinganallur) that I had a fully capable lab setup for handling internal training programs and finding it hard to gather enough mass (of students) consistently for training programs. As usual, I'd also blame myself for the lack of *consistent* time schedule. As of today, I've been constantly contacted by individuals who want to get trained by me - so what's holding me back ? The sheer lack of time (I've managed to keep myself engaged even during the weekends) and yes - no space/venue to host any training programs that I used to do, while at Sholinganallur.

I've also been meeting people/businesses who wish to be associated with me for business (training institutes, start-up dot-com, FOSS technology-oriented ventures) and all they point out is - "You cannot scale up as an individual - you'll need us at some point in time to grow" - while my hard hunch cautions be to be as I am - free, independent, self-contained and focussed to where my interests lie.

I'm just trying to give myself some more time before I associate with any business body or sell my soul to a VC. There are many more leaps to hop and there's so little time at hand.

Meanwhile, hopping into various BIG companies, meeting with their team and getting a hint of their work-culture, guiding them to learn and explore technologies that help them grow higher - are all that keeps me happy and motivated.

I'm also happy that over the last couple of months, I managed to tie-up with some of the best training organizers around - hard working, dedicated, focussed with an edge in business. They remove the big burden off my shoulder now - managing my schedule, client-interactions, and every other nuances of business that a person like me hate burying hands into. I'm thankful to them for letting me remain in what I'm good at - technology, consulting and training. Else, I'd have been shuffling roles as a business/marketing whiz too (the other facets that I had to wear-on, painfully for the last 4 years).

One of my acquaintances quoted "With the amount of experience that you owe in technology, and your technical expertise - you are aimlessly hopping like a frog from one company to another...". What he apparently failed to realize is that frogs leap forward not aimlessly - but largely in hunt for their prey; then there's survival, comfort and everything else that keeps them leaping forward. Trainers *do* have a highly reputed career if they stay focussed in what they do and their needs wisely - I guess that's going to be a topic of another blog of mine.

What I need to stress here is the fact that one can aspire to grow as an individual with proper time, skills, people, money and stress management. You do not need to start-off as a VC-backed company to scale up. Prove your worth as an individual, and at some point a "company" shall surround you for what you're worth.

Let's hope 2008 to bring success and prosperity to all! Happy New Year!