Attitude Vs Talent – Harsha Bhogle Speaking at IIM A

Is it Attitude or Talent that can make you a success? The most important ingredients to success are:

1. Having the right attitude.
2. Passion to Perform
3. Good work ethics

Harsha Bhogle at IIM giving a talk about attitude and talent where he mentions that talent can open the first door for you, it may open the second door for you but it will never open the last door for you.

A must watch the video for every entrepreneur.

The great example that he shares is about Vinod Kambli who couldn’t play a test match after the age of 22. He had the talent but it was a talent that did everything for him before an incident and not had the right attitude or mindset.

You need to fail and how you handle your failure and come out of the situation is the key.

You can watch the entire video but if not at least watch it for a couple of minutes starting at 47th min.

He has shared many other good views and incidents about

• Ego and anger. If you have ego and anger, you don’t need an opponent to defeat you. So true.
• How one can achieve excellence by not worrying about the results but focus on the process.
• Shared so many inspiring quotes from some of the best sports personalities.
• What he thinks about luck and how you can be lucky often.

Attitude Vs Talent or Mindset Vs Skillset

The highly paid skills are the ones every freelancer wants to focus on. Often we neglect the core of becoming a freelancer which isn’t the skills but it is the mindset.

As a Developers / Freelancer

It is the attitude of a developer that makes him or her an employee or a freelancer.

As a PHP developer, when you are working as a freelancer, your expertise may be in 80% of the project but you have your own doubt in the rest 20% requirements of clients where you don’t have your expertise.

It is the attitude of freelancers who will jump to such an opportunity if need be where he knows he can manage to enhance his skills and learn something new to get the rest of the 20% delivered.

In fact, when I started as a freelancer, I didn’t even know how to write Hello World in PHP. So working right away in complex CMS like vBulletin was tough. However, I was ready to do it no matter what it takes. It made me move into learning PHP and ultimately vBulletin.

As a Writer / Blogger

The difference between a hired writer and a blogger also lies in the mindset. You may be an awesome writer who can write for others because of good writing skills.

However, to be a blogger you need to have the right mindset where you should be fine if you and your close family members are the only ones reading your content. Every super-successful blogger’s first few articles were only read by their selected few people and there is nothing wrong with it.

With a few good books on English grammar, anybody can start writing but to be a blogger, you have to select a niche, have a passion for giving something back to society.

Final Thoughts

Each new area will need many different skills. More importantly, it needs the right attitude to learn them and then trying to excel in each.

The Internet has made level playing field for everyone and you don’t even need a formal degree to show your knowledge and talent.

My investment blog, I have no formal education related to finance, and whatever I write is from reading different books. Yet it is something that many of my blog readers like it.

Similarly, if a geek wants to be a freelance developer with no formal computer education, it is doable.

Skills can always be learned but it is the attitude and the mindset that separates the men from the boys or rather freelancers from the employees or bloggers from writers.