Do you have a business idea, but are filled with so much self-doubt that you never think you can turn it into reality?
This story provides both inspiration ad practical advice for dealing with self-doubt and doubters, those people who will always question your ideas.
Our guest, renewable energy startup entrepreneur Swarnav Pujari, is the founder of Touch Light Innovations and the inventor of Energy Tile, previously known as PowerPad. He has the vision to create a renewable energy source located in urban environments one step at a time. It’s a huge idea and you can bet the bigger the idea the more doubters there are!
Currently, he’s a sophomore at the University of Illinois studying engineering. He’s also busy running around the country promoting his technology by winning contests and competitions of all kinds, which is helping to fund his business.
Here are a few of the lessons we’ll touch on our conversation:
- The importance of asking for help. You’ll see how asking for help at every step of the way helped make Swarnav’s vision grow.
- How to deal with doubt and doubters. Discover, why he believes doubt, can be useful.
- Embracing and managing change.
Life Skills That Matter In This Episode
- Building a supportive community.
- Self-directed learning.
- Experimentation.
How Swarnav Works and Thinks
- Wake up time: Depends how late he stays up, but he likes getting up early because it’s quiet.
- Superpower: Resilience.
- Ideal work environment: He’ll find a way to work anywhere as long as he has access to the web.
- Core work habits: Networking, scheduling and organization.
- Self-reflection practice: Writes poetry and talks to his advisors.
- Book recommendation: Lean Startup and Crossing the Chasm.
- Wants to meet: Elon Musk or Bill Gates.
- Favorite productivity tool: OneNote and Google Calendar.
- Unproductive habit: Stretching himself too thin by trying to balance both college and managing a startup.
- 90-day goal: Finishing up his market prototype development, so he can start accepting pre-orders.
Inspirational Quotes
“Networking is so valuable in the early stages (of starting a business).”
“When you leave this earth, you will be remembered for something.”
“You have to cancel out the white noise and move ahead with what you know is true.”
“The reason anything in this world works is because of change.”
“Self-improvement never stops.”
Coaching Advice
Have an idea for your business, but don’t know how to start testing it?Swarnav offers these suggestions:
1) Embrace your self-doubt because it helps you vet your idea and challenge your assumptions.
2) Simply write down your idea and get it out of your head!
3) Meet with people to discuss your idea and get their feedback.
Resources + Bonus Materials
Giant List of Startup Competitions
4 Ways to Dominate a Pitch Competition
Connect With Swarnav
Special Offers
Swarnav is now taking orders for PowerPad! Email at demos@tli.technology for a free demo and let him know you heard him on the Life Skills That Matter podcast for a special discount!