Technology
The ups and downs of business
How to forge ahead through challenges
By Meredyth McKenzie
Smart Business Los Angeles | January 2009
Page 1 of 2
Zafar Khan
founder and CEO, RPost US Inc.
Zafar Khan says that building a company can be like
riding an emotional roller coaster. Positive things can
happen, but you also may face
challenges.
“It’s having persistence, so
that you can make sure that
you drive through any tough
situation that you’re in and
keep focused on what the
goals are,” says the founder
and CEO of RPost US Inc.
That persistence and focus
have helped Khan lead the 50-employee company, which
provides software-based business communication services.
Smart Business spoke with
Khan about how to be persistent, focused and have the
courage to take risks.
Q. What are the keys to
being persistent?
It’s continuing to think of
ways in which you can reach
the goal or accomplish what
you need to get accomplished.
There might be five different
ways or five different things
you need to try, but if you hit a
brick wall, you don’t stop, you
think of other ways to get
around it.
In growing a company, often
it’s those who can keep you to
plug forward that will eventually be successful. Those who
give up at the first sense of
challenge are certainly not
going to have followers who
join the team and are not
going to be successful.
People generally forget
about the hurdles that one has
to get through to get to where
they’re going and focus just on
that success story.
It’s easy to dwell on a specific situation, but if you do,
that will eat up too much
time and energy. It’s much
better to focus on, ‘We know
there’s an issue; now, what’s
the solution?’
A lot of it is about having a
clear mind, so you don’t let
any stress or pressure get to
you, and you can again focus
on what needs to get done.
Sometimes, it’s just thinking it
through — where do we want
to be, what has to happen at
the end — and then work
your way backward. These
are the first things that we
need to put in place before
we worry about the fourth,
fifth or sixth thing that
needs to be done.
Before we even think
about those, we need to
get these three things
done first. It’s — at least
in your mind — having
that map in place of all
the things that have to
be accomplished and
then building the detail
as you get closer to
approaching those specific tasks or initiatives.
Q. How do you keep
focused on reaching
goals?
One of the issues that
you have to watch out
for is setting too rigid a
path. Early on, we set the
objective of the company,
and the objective has not
changed. And we went down
one path to work to set the
foundation.
For us, it was making sure
we were nimble enough or
agile enough to shift directions and constantly evaluate
is this the right thing we
should be doing to get to
where we need to be as
quickly as we can for the
least amount of cost and
resources? It’s being nimble
and agile, not afraid to
switch directions, in order to
take the steppingstones that
you need to take to get to
that ultimate goal.
