Ask him how he is doing, and he always says, “Awesome! I couldn’t be better!” He says he is crystal clear about what he wants, and is working towards it every day. When Vallal Jothilingam’s day begins, he springs out of his bed, energized and excited about his life, and ready to make the most of his day, full of his secret potion: Daily Juice. No, you don’t get it off the shelves, yet.

One of the hallmarks of greatness is the desire to spread what one knows, and this is exactly what Jothilingam has set out to do.

Consequently, he has ranked this daily experience of his along with quotes of, to mention a few, Mahatma Gandhi and William James. He terms this—rather neatly, it must be admitted—as “Daily Juice.” The “life coach” underlines the benefits of this nectar: happiness.

Happy, Not Paranoid
Craig Barret once remarked that “only the paranoid survive.” Jothilingam, however, takes it a step further and believes that it is the ones who are, in his words, “happy,” who thrive. He should know, for he is a person who has experience where it counts.

Go West, Young Man
His latest start-up, Zqest, is the fourth of his successful ventures. The first was when he was fresh out of engineering college. He had landed a job in a Bangalore-based IT company that showed great courage by sending him to Mumbai to set up the western Indian operations. Not surprisingly, it was a huge success, and grew to encompass four other states in that part of the country.

Shortly afterwards, he joined HCL, which was thinking of taking a toehold in the PC market. It did so with India’s first consumer PC, the Beanstalk. The Jack who climbed this super-botanical manifestation to slay giants was none other than the man himself. Giants like Compaq and Apple, he says, were kicked not too ceremoniously in the posterior.

After this, he headed to Santa Clara, where he studied MBA in marketing with an international business focus. A project he did for CatchTV helped him to a good introduction to the TV industry worldwide, and especially in Europe and the United States. Jothilingam says he had always been fascinated with any form of technology or media that had to do with consumers. Some time around then, it struck him that television was quite a big media. He remarked to himself: “This is great. Let me do something with the TV industry” and went ahead to do just that.

The TV industry experience came handy when he joined forces with Manu Mehta, who had boldly ventured where others had not dared, to set up MbTV—Metabyte Television Network, an offshoot of Fremont, CA based Metabyte’s IT consulting business. Recognizing the not-so-latent talent in his new found protégé—Jothilingam avers that he considers Mehta, one of his mentors—Manu Mehta parked him in the management team.

It proved to be a good decision. Jothilingam was instrumental in defining and launching the company business plan. Within two years of launching mbTV raised about $20 million and develop strategic partnerships with French based Canal+ (a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal then), Thomson, Seagate and Scientific Atlanta.

MbTV captured nearly 50 percent of the U.S. cable TV market for digital video recorders and interactive TV by licensing technology to Scientific Atlanta for its set top boxes and the technology today powers more than a million set top boxes in U.S. homes. Metabyte Networks is now a part of Thomson.

Smart Lessons
There were lessons to be learnt, and, more importantly, taught, from all this. Along the way he has coined many a maxim, and picked up many more.

The first of them, he says, is that there is no such thing as limited resources, whether time, money, resources or manpower. There is only a perception of limited resources. The difference, being a subtle one, may prove elusive to many.

It is this difference, he says, that proves to be the making or breaking of an individual’s career, business or, indeed, his life. He offers a thought provoking comparision of the millionaire big boss playing golf, and the laborer toiling twenty four hours a day. “The same resources are available to both, yet how did one manage to—and still manages—to make these million dollar deals, while the other is still working hard to achieve so minimal a result?” he asks. “As much as change is a constant, so is time. You can’t control it. But you can control what you can do with it. That comes with being crystal clear about what you want to do. Clarity is power!”

So the real skill rests in making use of this limited means, or rather—since now they are not really limited—percieving that they are not really limited. The concept isn’t really clear, which is exactly the problem Jothilingam seeks to address in his mission to help businesses and individuals. “If people can show up happy in their lives, they will most probably be successful entrepreneurs.The “life coach” has designed a measurement platform—a “business quadrant” for enterprises, and a “life quadrant” for individuals. He says, “Business is about people.” To have a successful business, one has to manage people well—build strong relationships. And, even more profoundly, that “the No. 1 relationship which a person has is with himself”. Then come family and friends, employees, vendors and customers. For all these relationships, there is one, and only one, guiding philosophy. That is to “treat people as you would expect them to treat you”.

All these principles are not distinct, water-tight compartments—they are enmeshed together. Their purpose is to establish a sense of trying to achieve something. Otherwise, life would be in a state of constant doubt, in a mess, thunders Jothilingam. “In such a situation how could, for example, one look at a VC in the eye and ask for 10 million of his best dollars?” poses the coach.

Ask any VC today, he explains lucidly, whether he would bet on the horse or the jockey. The answer leaves no room for doubt: it’s the jockey. And what’s more, “the jockey needs to bet on himself.” And this is to be done “no matter even if the bookie says always put money on the horse.”

Life is Fun
“If you look at business or life,” expands Jothilingam, “you find three elements—people, processes, profits. If you manage yourself (in your life) and people (in your business), and are clear about the processes you adopt, profits will follow.” The bottomline is that it is not as much as getting to Point B from Point A, as much as the process of getting from Point A to Point B. “Think of anything you have done in life,” he says, his voice pitching higher to match the enthusiasm with which he is trying to get the point across. “It’s getting there that’s the fun. Say you want to make a million dollars, and someone hands it to you on a platter, you will not enjoy it. On the other hand, if you worked smartly at it, put the right things together, then you will. More than the guy next door who made a hundred million dollars.”

Business is fun. And, as he insists again and again, life is fun too. Vallal Jothilingam is having fun teaching you this bit. He may just be able to make it a serious business for himself, yet again.

Details of Vallal Jothilingam's enterprise can be found at www.thegamecalledlife.com