Raghav Jhawar is one of the co-founders of the State Plate company. They deliver regional food products from different states of India. Snacks, Pickles, sweets, staples, etc., from Different regional places of India like Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Gujarat, They package and deliver wherever across India 🥘

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What is your Morning routine like?

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I'm not a very fancy or a different morning kind of guy. I wake up, spend some time in the sun, have a good breakfast and leave for the office. 

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I love to start my work as early as possible because it just gives me that mental boost that I have completed a lot of work before lunch 👨‍💻

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What do you do in the evenings?

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In the evenings, I started going to the gym four to five days a week 🏋️‍♂️

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After that, I have a good dinner, speak to my family, and maybe watch movies or read a book.

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How do you manage your workload?

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One of the key things that has helped us is managing and boxing my time well. 

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So in the morning, the first thing I do is calendarise all the stuff that I have 📆

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That really helps me take charge of my day. I get to understand how my day is looking and how I'm able to put in my time. 

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At the moment, your work exceeds that time frame. A lot of times, you realise that you have either too much on your plate or you're spending too much on something that you should not be. That’s when you know it’s high time to delegate work 📓

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Doing it constantly and making sure that you follow that routine opens your mind to what you should focus on. 

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How do you Identify areas to improve?

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As an entrepreneur, one of the curses is that you don't have a review call with your manager because there's no manager.

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But a few ways are:

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Self-introspection 🧐

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That's really important. I keep thinking about where I could have improved in my previous meetings or ideas and try to come up with solutions myself.

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Feedback from people with who I work 

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I make sure that I go to them once a month and ask them about any feedback that they have for me.

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I think. Rather than expecting them to come and give you feedback asking for it proactively is really important. People are happy to share feedback, but it's just that people only want to share it once somebody asks, or they know that the other person won't take it positively.

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Cues from people

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Investors, external stakeholders, and even some team members who can't speak to you directly, whenever you speak to them, people keep dropping cues or hints that this is something that You should have done in some other way.

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So people keep saying that you must take the right signals and act on that.  

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What do you do for your mental health?

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I have been a person who had been really dismissive of it for a long time before I understood the real importance of it after encountering one or two things myself and then also seeing my people close to me going through it.

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I realised that it's not something that is just in the air. It's something essential and bothers a lot of people 😣

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I realised there are a few things. 

1. When your expectations don't match the work you are doing, a lot of stress goes on, which Creates or leads to mental health issues.

2. Being dependent on one thing from which you derive happiness when becomes toxic to the point it will affect you.

3.  I've decided to make sure to set my expectations at the place where. I can deliver output. It means making sure that you set realistic expectations for yourself. 

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I love playing cricket, so with constant efforts, I have made sure that I have made a group with whom I can play cricket. That's like a time, and though for those four hours 🏏

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I forget everything else and just go inside the game. 

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I think having things outside of one core thing, which is work is super important and helps you relax.

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I know it's something very cliche that everybody says, but finding it really helps, and once you get into that zone regularly, then you realise how important that was.

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Any advice for team leaders?

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I think just accepting that there are people and there are issues that they can derive from anywhere and from anything 🤯

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Something might not be so important to me but is important to someone else, and that might create issues for them. I think just acknowledging that fact and putting a personal bias is super important. 

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Constantly make sure you are doing things for yourself and your team and make sure everybody in your team is working in a good environment. 

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Being transparent with your team by sharing feedback. 

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Celebrating your team for their good work is very vital, and being there for them during their bad time is something very important too. This makes them feel like you understand their issue and accept their mistakes. These mistakes can be then solved in small steps.

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Thank you 🧡