Why I Stopped Wearing My Socks by Alok Kejriwal

All things start small.

Book – Why I Stopped Wearing My Socks

Author – Alok Kejriwal

Genre – Business, Non Fiction – Memoir

Publisher – Westland Publisher

No. of pages – 222

Ratings – RECOMMENDED

About the book –

By the time he was twenty, Alok Kejriwal had his life pre-planned for him. He would inherit the family’s socks manufacturing business and be the hard-working, money minting, quintessential Marwari businessman, forever. Except that it didn’t turn out that way. A few years after surviving the family setup, something turned up that sent Alok on a completely different career path: the INTERNET!

Why I Stopped Wearing My Socks is Alok’s real life story of an aspiring entrepreneur.The book details the amazing success of contests2win.com and Mobile2win, a venture eventually acquired by The Walt Disney Company. The chapters in the book are actual stories, throbbing with memorable anecdotes that conclude with crisp learning for the readers.

Why I Stopped Wearing My Socks is a deeply compelling story about beating the odds, staying motivated and entrepreneurship. It is an inspiration as well as a practical guide to emerging a winner.

This is a book for entrepreneurs, a guide book to sales.

Book Review –

Even though Alok had a well set business, it was not all roses for him. He got into the family politics trap and found out that despite working and giving his best to the family business, he was to make no name for himself.

Why I Stopped Wearing My Socks by Alok Kejriwal is a book where Alok shares his unbiased insights and candidly puts forth his views and thoughts about entrepreneurship.

The book is divided into 38 chapters where Kejriwal concentrates on a particular incident or event chapter wise. Every chapter ends with a short paragraph called ‘Learnings’ where he shares his insights and views on what he got to learn from that particular life phase.

The book is about entrepreneurship, stories that teach important principles and a guidebook for sales.

What I loved about the book is that Alok does not preach about any particular thing. He simply puts down every incident of his life over the span from his family business days to the set-up of his business- the ups and the downs. So basically, there is no gyaan but only learning and interpretations. It is up to you to inculcate what you read and learnt or to move on to the next chapter.

“As a seller, I have learnt that come what may, I will never lose or compromise my self-respect for anything , leave along a business deal. Losing dignity means stooping below the threshold of purpose, intent, and effort.”

My major takeaways after reading this book are about the ethical approaches and how trusting your gut feelings is important when you undertake risk or are about to make a very difficult decision. Being true to yourself, your business and your clients. His approach to never give up and always find a way to be better at what he is doing and his search on how to scale up his business motivates me to improve at whatever I am at.

Next thing which I learnt from this holy book for entrepreneurs is that being an introvert or being scared to start a conversation and being reserved is going to take me nowhere. That is the socks I decide to not wear to get started with post reading the book.

I was not bored but rather was looking forward to know ‘What next?’ was to come in his business and life adventure.

The book is very easy to read and is highly recommended for every businessmen, entrepreneurs and especially for college students. This might be the book which will help you to take your next step on what you are planning to start with but are hesitating.

“Feeling sorry for yourself and living in self-pity are counter-productive. Even if you are a nonbeliever, I would say do consider praying sincerely for freedom and super success. There are unseen and unknown forces in the universe that are waiting with bated breath to grant you your wish. You have to activate them. Of course you have to act to make things happen.”

You can buy the book from here.

– Kinjal Parekh