Dear friend,

Keeping this one short as I’m on a 3 day ‘street food exploration’ with my father.

I have a few thoughts I’d like to share with you.

1 - Life is short. Make sure you spend some quality time with people you love.

2 - Life is unpredictable. Remind yourself to keep smiling and keep counting your blessings.

3 - Life if beautiful. Keep your eyes, ears and heart open and let Netflix things and people touch you and leave their imprint on you.

Here’s something I painted sitting by the window of our hotel room.

—————

While we were walking around the Amber palace, many vendors were approaching tourists like us attempting to sell us some traditional handicrafts and paintings.

They were especially running behind the foreign tourists saying this like - "you like?" And "how u you willing to pay?"

My father and I felt really sad looking at their parenting condition. Sad because I’m their desperation to sell (and hence make a living), they were dealing and demeaning their own product.

Sales must never be an act of desperation.

It is not their fault. They never were taught things like selling, understand Customer needs, asking good questions, prospecting, packaging design, pricing, etc. They do what they do because they know no better.

But, I feel it’s not that simple. Our guide told us that the benefits were given a space to set up ship and seek their wares. But after some time, they stopped doing that and got back to their old ways of chasing customers.

The problem is complex.

They need training and awareness on the science on retail, merchandising and psychology.

I would love to run a project with a group of after ventures and work with them to find ways to upgrade their systems.

They are true artisans, our street business people. With a little change of attitude and some modern knowledge, the game can change!

————

But the truth is, even the most educated among us make the same mistake. We don’t bother learning how to sell. We don’t bother understand the psychology of business. We end up demeaning and belittling our product and our selves.

Paco Underhill Is the OG Guru of retail selling. I read his first book "Why we buy" almost 15 years ago and it deeply impacted me. If this interested you, have a look at this 4 minute video of his.

———

And lastly, if you are a foodie like me, and would like a copy of my father’s and my list of street food places in Jaipur, just write back to me, and I’ll share it with you by the weekend!

Enjoy.

In fratitude (Friendship and gratitude)

adi

Founder and Chief Playfulness Officer

Enterprise India Fellowship