Adventures in Entrepreneurship with Jeremy Hanks

Can It Get Any Worse?

I’m in India again for business, checking on the new platform we’ve been collaborating with Impetus on building for Doba and eventually Catalog Science.

I brought Amy this time, and since on previous trips I end up pretty much worthless for a week when trying to jump right into work the day after you get here (11.5 hour time diff), we decided to take a few days to adjust to the time change, then hit work hard at the Impetus offices in Indore. So we came to Aurangabad. There’s not much to do (planned), but there are a few caves close, and mostly we’re just letting time (and ambien) get us on the right schedule.

When we got here, the Lemontree Hotel upgraded us to a suite. It was a nice room. But there was some sort of weird smell that came from around the bed, almost like one of those musty fragrance plug-ins, but we couldn’t find it. We concluded it might be mold or mildew. Smells can give me pretty bad migraine headaches, so when I come to India, it’s a crap shoot, since this place smells (good and bad) pretty much on a scale of 9/10. I was dealing with it by sleeping with my head at the foot of the bead. Then the front desk calls in a frantic, “There’s XYZ important politician coming in 30 minutes, he’s really a big wig, and we don’t have any of the larger rooms he needs, it’s an emergency! I shouldn’t call you, I feel bad, but would you switch rooms?”

I’m a nice guy, they had upgraded us for free, and I’m thinking, maybe the new room won’t have this smell that’s got my head pounding for about 3 days straight. So we switched. Guess what? New room? Worse. Different smells entirely, but definitely worse.

So here are the lessons:

A. If things can get worse, they probably will.
B. Don’t let the fear of things being worse keep you from acting.
C. Keep trying till you find an option that isn’t worse, eventually you’ll find one that’s better.

Stumbling onto something better while on a road that was leading you to worse is the formula for finding a successful product, solution, or situation.

Me? I’m switching rooms again tonight. Very well might be worse. But there’s always that chance that it will be better.

Popularity: 8% [?]

6 Comments; Filed under Entrepreneurship, Travel

india, outsourcing

Subscribe by [RSS] or [Email] to enjoy regular updates from my blog.