Daybreak - Olympic swimmer Nisha Millet on why some goals should feel out of reach

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

What does it take to perform at your best — not once, but over and over again? Olympian Nisha Millet has spent her life answering that question.In sport, as in business, success isn’t about one big win — it’s about showing up, even when it’s hard. From the pressures of competing at the Olympics to building a career as a coach and entrepreneur, Nisha shares what the pool taught her about focus, resilience, and managing performance under pressure.In this episode, host Rachel Varghese explores how elite athletes think about consistency, how they recover from failure, and what leaders everywhere can learn from the mindset of those who compete for fractions of a second.Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production.

Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first video. episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. It's not easy being an Olympic swimmer. Even in a well-maintained competition pool, anything can happen. And once I was at a national meet and the previous day there was a sandstorm. So the sand was in the water, the water was brown, and I had to trust my own instinct.

about where the wall was, keeping my eyes open, trying to look through that brown water. That was Nisha Millett, an undisputed swimming champion from India in the 1990s to early 2000s. And for her, situations like the one she just described, where you're literally feeling blinded and lost with only yourself to rely on, are plenty. She's sitting with us today because we're trying something new on daybreak. Of course, most of us aren't Olympic athletes. But we can still relate to some aspects of their life. Even in workplaces, some of these struggles sound familiar.

Grooling hours, frustrations that come with not always being able to perform the way you imagine. Dejection that comes with failure or with unforeseen events throwing even the best laid plans off track. Athletes, especially those who compete at the level Nisha did, have built themselves up to make it through exactly these situations and still deliver. Nisha, for example, has represented India in the Asian Games, world championships and even, even in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. And even after she retired in 2004, she couldn't let go of the sport. She founded the Nisha Millett Swimming Academy.

So for the rest of us mere mortals, on the days that feel like we've been thrown into the deep end, who better to guide us through than Nisha Millett, who quite literally teaches people how not to drown? Nisha tells us what goes into building that mindset, where you're performing at your peak every day. When even a millisecond can make a difference between Bick's, and loss, what does it take to grow with that treasure?

How does one deal with the anxieties, the scrutiny, and the taxing hours that go behind the scenes of record-breaking achievements? And which of these lessons has she taken into her journey as an entrepreneur and mentor? From aiming for something that seems entirely impossible to attain, to the importance of leaning on community as you build. Nisha shares what drives her, what motivates her, and ensures she keeps showing up day after day. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from The Ken. I'm your host, Rachel Burgess, and every day of the week, my co-host, Nika Sharma and I, will bring you one new story that is worth understanding and worth your time.

Today is Friday, the 14th of November. Hi, Nisha, welcome to the show. So, to start us off with, would you give us a little bit of an introduction of yourself? Well, I'm Nisha Millett. I was the first Indian swimmer to qualify for the Olympics in swimming. I started off my career as a nine-year-old who was quite petty. of the water and overcame not only my fear, but fell in love with the sport of swimming. And that's how my journey began when I lived in Chennai and I took my first dip into a public

pool along with my dad for a summer swimming camp. And like they say, the rest is history. I missed one Olympic trials, narrowly missed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics when I was just 14. And then, you know, it became my mission that 2000 I would touch that qualifying time. So in 2000, I qualified for the Olympics in the 200-meter freestyle and continued swimming till 2004, missed another Olympics, and then I decided that my time at competitive swimming was coming to an end because my parents had put in a lot of financial, you know, had a lot of financial support went into backing an international athlete in the 90s.

We had absolutely no financial help or prize money or funding. So that's when I decided to start my own academy. So the Nisha Millet Swimming Academy was born after 2004. And now it's been more than 21 years of teaching and coaching and still doing what I love. That's amazing. That's such a interesting story because you went from being an athlete from a really young age. So you've kind of all your life been dedicated to this. And I think it comes full circle because now I have 12 year old daughters who are also now competitive swimmers.

They've just started their own competitive journey. So it feels like it's come full circle because now I'm. not only a swimmer, a swim mom, and a business owner, a swimming academy owner, but I also now, the swim parent part of it is very, very new for me. Has the journey been reflected in your daughters as well, what it was like for you? I think they grew up around swimming. Only at the age of 10, they came up to me and said, Mom, we want to be competitive swimmers.

So I can't explain the kind of happiness to have a competitive athlete, to have their kids want to choose the same sport and for the same reasons. that they love the sport, they love the camaraderie, and while swimming is thought of as an individual sport, frankly, it's all about team. Yeah, so that's actually one of my questions, but we will get to that. I wanted to kind of go back to your beginning as a swimmer, right? So once you first started competitive swimming, what was that experience? Like, I'm sure that was very different from learning how to swim or swimming with your parents

because I've read that, you know, your dad introduced you to swimming at a very young age. So when you decided to compete and first went through that competition, what was that experience like? I think for me it was about also working my way up in the team and proving myself. I joined the swim team as the slower swimmer. You know, we start one by one in a lane. So the first person, the fastest swimmer starts after five seconds, the second person. And when I went into the team in Chennai, I was dead last. I was very slow.

I had a lot to catch up. but instead of getting nervous or anxious about it, I took it as a challenge. I said, let me try and beat one person at a time and move up to ultimately lead my lane. And that's how I think the competitive spirit started, it was just me against me, picking off one person at a time,

trying to be better, trying to work harder than the rest. And slowly I started seeing that I was able to compete with girls my age, then girls who are older than me, and then I even started challenging the boys. So that to me was very exciting. And I think it comes also from the mindset that my parents both instilled in me. They never talked about age groups. They never talked about height or weight.

Their point was, if you're the fastest one at the end of the day when you touch the wall. So I found that excitement not just in competing, which I absolutely love, but also in the process of training. And it is very, very painful. There's a lot of discipline involved. So this started at a very young age. For me, it became a way of life, right? sleeping early, waking up early morning, packing your own swim bags. So the discipline that comes with sport, I think, is very, very important.

And that's one reason I tell even adults today that you need to get into some sport. It could be a team sport or an individual sport because it gives you so many of these life lessons. Got it. So that's actually one of my next questions. Could you break it down for us what the training process is like when you talk about discipline? what goes into it exactly to build that kind of, you know, routine, that muscle so that you're doing all of this day and day out without, you know, I mean, I'm sure you feel tired, but still continuing to keep up with yourself and the goals that you've set for yourself. Like you, so the first thing is obviously setting that goal. For me, at the age of 10, one year after I learned how to swim. I was enjoying swimming. I was just about winning medals at the state level. And I happened to watch the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

And I saw these Olympic champions. They look like dolphins in the water doing their butterfly, you know, winning medals for their country. And the kind of emotion I saw after they won a race. So when they finished the event, I spoke to my parents and I said, one day I'm going to be at the Olympics. And just like that with that one sentence, I kind of cemented something in my mind, which was, this is my goal. And I would do whatever it takes.

So I think first is having that goal. And then this is what an average day of a social day of a. swimmer and most competitive athletes look like. So I would wake up at 4.30 in the morning. I had a postcard of the Olympic rings posted up next to my bedside. So when I first thing when I wake up, whether it's very cold, it's winter or you're very tired or you're little unwell. But when you wake up and you see those Olympic rings, you know why you're doing what you're

doing. So I figured out my why. Everything else was able to follow after that. So 4.30 we were up 5 a.m. We left the house. At 5.30, we reached the pool. And we would swim anywhere between 5 to 8 kilometres in the morning. School was tiring because, you know, we all were, we had finished a very tough workout. We had to focus on studies. And as an athlete, I decided, let me try and finish my homework in my lunch break because that gives me more free time. So while my friends were chatting and having fun, unfortunately, I would have to make those sacrifices.

11 sessions a week for many years. From the time I started swimming in 1991 to the time that I ultimately retired in 2004. So 13 years of hard work, I think, really got me there. And it took a lot, but I would say a good friend of mine, Aparnapo, but she says,

don't think about it like a sacrifice. It's something you want. So it's a choice that you're making every single day to get up, follow your dreams, push your limits. and that's what keeps me going even till today even in my daily life now I may not be competing or trying to win any medals

but I have certain goals whether it's my physical fitness whether it's my business I try and look at at the beginning of the year put down some goals either in writing which I always love I feel like if you write it you'll hold yourself accountable thank you so much for sharing that

so I wanted to go back to something you mentioned about like I also came from this idea that swimming is like a solitary sport, you do it by yourself. But you mentioned that you have a team and you also keep talking about like this community that's around you, your parents, your friends, your coach. So can you tell us a little bit more about what it takes to build that kind of a community? Because I'm thinking a lot of especially founders, they're kind of going through this journey by themselves and it's important for them to rely on certain people.

And while communities do exist, you know, it's important to actually make sure that you're relying on them and using that community to bolster your own growth. So can you tell us a little bit about how that looks like for you? I think the most important thing about sport is the community participation. Yes, goals are very important, but being part of a team, I think, pushes you and keeps you accountable every day. So if you miss a session, your teammate might say, where were you? You know, we had an important workout today.

Or if your friend misses out, you tell them, you know, what happened? Even I was tired, but I still made it. I think it's much easier when you're in a team environment to, one, enjoy the sport more because there's a little bit of chatting, joking, laughing that makes the tough times. Because any sport is tough, especially when you're at a competitive level, you're at an elite level. You really have to focus, you have to be disciplined, you have to be consistent.

It's very painful both physically and mentally every day. But if you have somebody else in the next lane, going through the same thing with you, you know, you feel like if they can do it, I can do it. And you're also pushed to do better. I always, some of my closest friends were also some of my biggest competitors, whether it's my sister,

whether it's Shikha Tandon, who was another Olympian in 2004. We were very, very good friends, but in the pool, we would compete, we would race against each other, we would keep pushing the boundaries. So winning all that is an outcome, but what you should be focusing on

is the community, the people that strive together, have similar goals. at the best part I think is sports when you're part of a team it's the good kind of pure pressure you know it's the friends it's the sports people it's the coaches who are talking to you

about failures how to overcome them goals discipline you know so I think the whole environment changes when you surround yourself with people who have similar goals that you do and for me that's what I absolutely loved so when I go for a competition yes I'm competing on my own

individually but I win or lose it's fully on me. At the same time, people who cheer for you loudest, not only in your swimming days, but I think even much past your retirement, are those people who were in the trenches, who are working hard with you,

and who continue to have this lifelong bond. Got it. Thank you so much. I wanted to go back also to another thing you mentioned, you know, when you're performing at this elite level, right? You're not just any swimmer. You're not performing at the national level either. You're performing at the Olympic level.

So what does it take to kind of level up? until you get to that point. You know, like how are you training? How are you looking at how you're training? How do you change up the schedule or your regimen or how do you plan those things out? The elite mindset is what you're talking about. Yeah.

Because physically you can train all you want. You can have the same workouts as a person next to you. But the person who eventually wins on race day is the person who has taken care of other aspects of their life. It could be psychological aspects. More and more we are realizing the importance of mental training. We do so much of strength training, training of our sport, which is sport specific. But we don't really train our mind.

And that can let you down on race day. Nerves, anxiety, questioning yourself, you know, lack of confidence. So when I was in Australia, it was the first time that I spoke to a sports psychologist. And that made such a big change to my mindset about how I dealt with pressure, how I communicated my needs and my wants to the parents and my supporters, my coach. And I think it just gives you a lot more clarity. The next thing you could do is obviously prioritise rest and recovery. Now, that's something that we were not taught when we were young.

We were taught that the more you train, the faster you'll go. And it was almost like a sign of pride that you were almost burning out, that you were pushing to the limits and, you know, literally killing yourself in the pursuit of your goals. But nowadays, a good change that I've seen is that even the elite athletes have very focused on the fact that rest and recovery is this, key to longevity in sports and in life, right? You don't want to burn out and go through a crisis when it can be awarded. So I remember after qualifying for the Olympics, the Olympics was just a few

months away. But I was training in Australia and the head coach of the team said, Nisha, one whole week, I don't want to see you at the pool. And here I was feeling guilty because I have qualified for the Olympics. I'm on funding from the International Olympic Committee. So I felt like I was wasting that money, but he had to explain to me that rest is very important, not just physical rest where your body recovers from a competitive training, but also mental rest. And the best part about the elite mindset is when you have your recovery time, you recharge, but when you get back into the game, you're 100% focus. So I think focus is very important where even if I'm sitting in a crowded classroom trying to finish my homework, sports gave me that the tools to focus

and drown out the noise. So this is something we do even at a competition where there's so many things going on against you, but you stay focused, you visualize, you think about the race

that's coming up, you wear your earphones and block out people talking to you, any negative comments, you're listening to music, something that calms you or something that really motivates you.

And I think the last part about being elite is realizing that you can also ask for help. Nobody can do it alone. Even the best athletes in the world have amazing support systems where they take care of

what they have to do and other elements like the diet is given to them by a dietitian, you have a sports, you know, a strength and conditioning coach to help you with your physical fitness, a mental strength coach, mental health coach. So you need to have that entire

ecosystem surrounding the swimmer. Only then can we have elite athletes. So I think it's important to understand that while an elite mindset is very important to win, it also has to translate into post your sports career, right? The strengths, the characteristics that you build up through your sport has to go on. And for that, you can't afford to burn out.

You can't afford to have a nervous breakdown. So actually, one thing that you mentioned really interested me, so when you first talked to the sports psychologist, like you realized that there were things you could do to deal with pressure, you could ask for things more easily. Can you, like, break that down for our listeners specifically? like how did you deal with pressure in that time? How did you like change the way you approach the sport after that conversation?

Definitely the most pressure I felt was going into the 2000 Olympics because I had missed one Olympics in 96, four years before that. That was because you didn't qualify? Yes, so we have certain qualifying standards set out by the International Swimming Federation called World Aquatics. And I missed the qualifying time and so did at the other Indian athletes. Nobody had qualified. then the government gets to choose who they want.

And we know in India there's so much of politics and sports. I was only 14 at the time. So they gave chance to some other girl, you know? The point was I had missed it. So my point was, if I needed to get to the Olympics, I needed to qualify. I couldn't hope to be lucky enough to get selected. So that's when I had these very clear goals.

I had sacrificed so much. And then I reached Australia for my pre-Olympic year training. And that's when I could feel the pressure because the media, my father and my son, sister had sacrificed by saying that obviously the funds would not support me, my mother, my father and my sister to move to Australia. So to test my mother and me. So that's when I started feeling the pressure.

My father would keep asking me, are you ready? Do you think you'll qualify? People from the Indian media would keep calling me and saying, you know, last 10, you missed. What will happen this time? So when I met the sports psychologist, they said, just don't take any calls. Everything has to go through your mom. So I handed over. I mean, we already had landlines in those days.

but my mom would just answer any phone calls and if it was media person they would say Nisha is not free she's coming back to India just before the Olympic she'll speak to you then so that gave me that mental space

learning to prioritise what's important to me which is rest recovery training improvement over you know having constant questions and constant people that I had to deal with so that's something that I even try to do today

when I find I'm being a little overwhelmed I try to use those techniques where if somebody calls, I don't know the number. I have too many things on my plate. I will just send them a message saying, please send me an email or a message so that I can deal with it when I do have the time. And very clear that we have to sometimes say no.

And that's something that took me a very long time. I was a bit of a people, please. I wanted to please everyone. I wanted to be the nice person, right? So I've learned now if I can't and I don't have the time to do something to vocalize and say it. It takes away from my important,

goals is not being selfish. It's actually being smart about how you handle your time. So I think that was the best way that I managed pressure. And also I think the way we talk to ourselves in our own head is the most important thing. And self-talk is something that athletes do very well. And when I go to have to do motivational talks at different corporates or even at a school or a college, it's something I tell people of any age that people can say what they want about you.

But if you talk to yourself in a very positive. positive, affirming, kind way. There is nothing better than that. You can have the best coach. You can have the best support system. But if the negative self-talk is there constantly, it's very hard for you to be elite, for you to perform to your maximum.

So you need to be talking to yourself on a regular basis, encourage yourself, push yourself, and ultimately have that self-belief. So self-belief comes from showing up. So whether it's in the workplace, whether it's in the swimming pool, or whether it's in your day-to-day life, when you say you'll do something,

you need to make sure you're there and your commitment, your word is taken very seriously and you stick to that. Whether it's in your professional life or your personal life, we need to really learn how to cut out all the noise, focus on what's important, you know, and priorities.

Got it. So just to follow up on that, so you mentioned at our last event that we did together, that you, when you set a goal, you usually also give yourself like a very realistic time, frame so that you can build the necessary skill set for achieving that goal. But, you know, obviously time is always not something that you have. And I'm not sure if that is true for an athlete, but at least for business people, you might have to meet certain goals

without the time that would ideally be necessary. So how do you kind of balance that and make sure that you're meeting these goals without burning yourself out or while also building like the necessary skill set? Like you said, very important, first of all, to figure out what is your long-term goal? You need to have different short-term, mid-term and long-term goals. So in terms of the long-term goal, it's very important that whatever you fix your mind on, that suppose you don't make your goal in two years, do you have what it takes to maybe push it by another year? Or maybe you look at a different way of getting the same goal, maybe the way the processes that you've been following have to be changed. At the same time, it's important.

why I feel goals are important is because if you don't have these goals then you're not dreaming big enough a short-term goal is something that seems achievable but a long-term goal should feel unattainable, something that you have to strive for that's how you become better and I feel that one thing that as athletes we learn

is that we have to constantly work on skills like you mentioned that skill building is very important whether you're a swim coach whether you're a business owner whether you're an athlete never stop learning and trying to improve You know, the only constant is change and times are changing so much.

I know even the technique of the swimmers in the 2000s, very different from what it is in 2025. So as a swim teacher, as somebody who runs an academy, I have to keep learning, I have to keep building up skills and I have to make sure that I'm at the cutting edge, whether it is using AI when I'm working, whether it's learning how to maybe delegate a little bit better. So I think it's very important that you have this path

that you're going to your goals, sometimes there'll be setbacks, you realign yourself, and you always ask why, why am I doing this? And then your answer should be relevant to your goals. So for me, it was like, I want to get myself to the Olympics,

that's my goal. But I'm doing this also because I really love it. You know, so my goals became easier. When I didn't make it, I would give myself the time, but you have to real align yourself with where you're going, make some changes,

you know, improve your mindset, improve your physicality, and put all those elements together and that ultimately will help you to actually get there. Can you break down for us what is like going through your mind, especially when you have like a setback, whether it's like losing a competition or not making a certain time that you've set for yourself?

How do you kind of go back to the drawing board and like realign yourself? Like what's going through your mind then? I think the main thing for me is you do need to feel sad. You do need to feel upset. You need to feel the emotions of I feigned. I didn't do it, you know, but you cannot wallow in that success. You have to look at these failures as missed opportunities and say, what can I learn from

this instead of letting that failure define you? So many athletes, so many adults that I know, kids that I know, look at that failure and say, I'm terrible, I'm useless. And that's where they go wrong. You know, everybody has setbacks, whether it's, you know, the number one athlete in the world, whether it's a CEO running, you know, a Fortune 500 company. So at the same time, you need to know, okay, I failed, what can I do to get better? So feel sad, I'm a big cryer.

So we do something called croggling, you know, after you finish a race and you're upset with your timing for some reason. I was not too focused on the medals. I was always focused on timing. So sometimes I won a national medal, a national goal medal. But because I'm not happy with my timing, that would make me very upset. You know, I'd be crying. But I'd get it out of my system.

You know, I stopped feeling sorry for myself. and then I'll reassess and say, okay, now, what can I learn from that? And it's not as easy as it sounds, right? It's easy to say these things. But in reality, it might take one week, one month, one year. You know, I had a back surgery just after the 2000 Olympics. That I think was one of the biggest hurdles that I had to overcome.

So 2000 to 2002, two crucial years of my training for the next Olympics was spent going to doctors and hospitals. And ultimately, they found that I had a benign tumor on my lower back. You know, and so the first thing was, okay, let me get past this surgery, let me finish taking out this tumor and then assess where I'm going to be. You know, my parents were worried about cancer, but I was worried about what is going to happen to my swimming career. Will I be able to make it to that next Olympics? So that is when you have to keep being very, very positive with yourself, surround yourself with a proper team. The people who have been in my life, I think, have always stood by me, whether it's my sister, my family, even my swim teachers and coaches, you know, actually pooled.

in money from the pool that I was training at. That's something that's very, very important. And, you know, that's what helped me get to my goal. So while you have to pull yourself up, you also need a good support system of people who will really help you get to where you want to go. So I wanted to ask, so like after the surgery is when you decided to quit competitive swimming, right?

Is that like, did you mean almost immediately launch your academy soon after this? Definitely something that I always thought about was teaching swimming. So my dad would make me actually listen to videos, audiobooks, watch swimming videos to see how I can improve myself. It's not just about competing but it's also the knowledge that we gained. So that I have my dad to thank. And I think he was a great teacher. He would really help me figure out my weaknesses, watch other athletes, strategize, you know, so I knew my competitors' weaknesses as well. So that's

how I started studying other swimmers. So when you start noticing the small points when you start studying your strokes and the strokes and the technique of other athletes, that's when I think you already have started learning to teach in some way or teaching yourself. So when I quit swimming, like I mentioned, the reason I quit was not that I felt I couldn't do more in swimming, but my parents had literally sold our family house and put that entire money into funding my swimming. So at the age of 22, I think I was old enough to understand that, wow, my parents have sacrificed so much for me. And now it's my time. turn since they're much older, it's my turn to start contributing. So initially I knew that,

you know, instead of thinking of maybe doing an Emmy, I had finished my BA in psychology. Instead of doing that, I said, let me start earning. And I knew that without a doubt, I wanted to be a swim teacher. But contrary to what other people believe, they thought maybe I will go for competitive swimming, I find the joy isn't teaching someone how to swim, helping them overcome the fear, like the fear that I had, you know, and to see whether it's a one-year-old or a 70-year-old, do their first lap or learn to blow bubbles. That gave me so much of joy. So that's how the Nisha Manit Swimming Academy was born

to really get people to enjoy swimming. That's amazing. So obviously you're a very interesting profile for us because not only are you an Olympic athlete, you're also a business owner and entrepreneur now. So what are some skills that you had to build up for taking on this new journey? And do you feel like you carried over some lessons as an athlete?

not just, you know, like teaching swimming, but in whatever goes into running into a business, do you think you carried forward something from your time as an athlete? Definitely, I think, like I said, I've never done an MBA. So everything I've learned has been through experience, number one, but also my swimming background has helped me really stay the course. One is not giving up, right? So in COVID, so many people who didn't really love the sport,

who are not really passionate about the sport or swimming, had to close down, because they didn't believe that they could resurrect, you know, their business. They didn't believe that people would come back to swimming pools after COVID. But I had to have the belief and not only me, I had to inspire my team, keep talking to them, give them the faith that, yes, we will be back and people will want to swim. And what I feel I learned from swimming was one discipline, whether it's raising my kids, whether it's, you know, working very hard as all entrepreneurs have to go above and beyond.

We don't have a 9 to 5 job. You know, our job is 24-7. If I have work at, that takes me up till midnight, I have to stay up. You know, I have to work on holidays and birthdays. At the same time, the satisfaction I get from, one, getting people involved in the sport I love, but also being able to set my own rules, you know, my own environment that I'm creating, the community that I've built over 21 years. You know, those kings give me immense joy.

For you to be a good team leader, you need to also be able to follow. So following the instruction of your coaches, your teachers, your seniors, that is something that every athlete learns from a very young age. So even today, if I go to the gym and I'm listening to my, you know, the teacher of, you know, a gym teacher, a gym coach, I would listen 100%. I want to learn. I want to get better. So I think the fact that you need to one, learn to follow, learn to, you know, let other people lead as well. Sometimes you know when to take a back seat. all those skills I think I've learned from swimming

and one super important one I would say that all sports people learn is time management like you said time is limited and in swimming even more so we understand the importance of 0.02 milliseconds that could mean winning or losing a race so I think we try to utilize as much time as we can

and while on a rest day you try to relax having some kind of fixed schedule is what has worked for me till today, if I have an alarm that I've set for myself, I do not snooze my alarm. So I feel that one important goal is, like I said, if you have to wake up at 5 a.m., your alarm rings, you don't give yourself that grace period of five moments. I get up, put off my alarm, brush my teeth. Once I'm done with that, you know, whatever happens, however you're feeling, you will get there and you will get the work done.

So showing up, I think, is half the battle one. And then, of course, there is hard work, right? there are no shortcuts. You learn that as a swimmer. The second you get complacent or you try and cut corners, that's when your career will start going down. That's when your timings will reflect that. It's the same thing, I think, with business and with life.

You have to hold yourself accountable. You need to have your morals. You need to have some accountability. So I love the people in my life who talk tough to me, who hold me accountable, who push me to be better. You need the constructive criticism. And that's something that we learn through sports, that if you can take that constructive

criticism and know that it's not about you, don't take it personally, but see how it can help you be a better person, better entrepreneur, better mom, things would be much better. So it hurts sometimes, but listening to people who have your back who are really in your corner, really helps you get through life. Thank you so much. So one, I wanted to ask about like any specific experience where you felt like you overcame like a challenge. When you're competing or training other than injuries or cramping and things like that, what are some things that can go wrong? And how do you kind of prepare for those things

or when those things happen, how do you kind of deal with it? That's a great question. I think things can always go wrong at any point of time. So you have to prepare for the unexpected, right? And you have to understand that you can only control yourself, your efforts, your actions, your thoughts. And the environment, like I said,

the only constant is change. Your swimsuit can tear. I've had that happen to me. I remember once I swim without goggles because in my days we didn't have good goggles. So I swam the Olympics without swimming goggles. And once I was at a national meet and the previous day there was a sandstorm.

So the sand was in the water. The water was brown. And I had to trust my own instincts about where the wall was, keeping my eyes open, trying to look through that brown water. I've had issues where maybe I took a foul start and I was disqualified and I had to come back next time and prove myself that I can get this start. right. So I think at any point of time you will have these issues. You said

a big challenge that I had to overcome was definitely COVID. So COVID was very tough because for two whole years, there is absolutely nothing you can do online running a swimming academy. So it was literally like no income for our family for two years. So then obviously what we did was we

try to improve other skills. We try to keep our team motivated by doing online chats, little contests. And then we wanted to ensure that our staff continue to get paid through this very tough time. So apart from, you know, using our profits to support them, we also had a fundraising drive and was so touching for me. I think that's when you realize your contribution over 21 years, how much it has touched people, not just to learn a sport like swimming, but how much

our coaches and our teachers have touched their lives. Because young girls and boys would send over 500 rupees and say, this is 500 rupees for my pocket money. So we were able to rally the community, come together to get out of these very difficult situations. and that is the most important thing is to realize that you're not alone. So there will be some areas in your life that you struggle. Like my fitness struggled a bit this year. I was not able to be as active as I would like to because I had to work and be present in certain work-related events and meetings.

But I feel that you have to know that you can't do everything and you can't be perfect. So knowing that, okay, this year was not a great fitness year. Next year now that things are a little more sorted. will focus more on myself, on my fitness, and maybe work I need to delegate better so I have time to do that. So I think it's very, very important to take those challenging years, see what have I learned from it and work on being better in the next year. So this is just a wrap up. Now that you've had these two experiences, which is more like harder or easier, is it being an Olympic athlete or is it being an entrepreneur?

I think being an entrepreneur any day is very, very difficult because while swimming came naturally naturally to me and I love it. I don't love everything about being an entrepreneur. So there are many parts of it that I struggle with, that I don't really like. It could be delegating things. It could be dealing with finances, right? So normally my husband does that,

but there are times that I have to do it as well. I don't know enough. So I feel like there's so many areas as an entrepreneur that I still need to grow. So I try and surround myself at people that I look up to, mentors, other people who are also doing the same thing. because I think the best way we can learn is by interacting with other people who are going through the exact same thing that we are going through. They might have a different business, but being an entrepreneur, navigating to tough times, very, very important.

And, you know, till today, I've never looked for funding because I feel like in my swimming career also, I built myself up brick by brick. So in our journey as entrepreneurs, my husband and me, we really have to have that faith in ourselves. and we do question ourselves and the business sometimes, but we try and work together. So I feel like I really not only found a good partner in life, but also in my business. So you need to have 100% trust in the person that you're running this business with. It's like my third baby, right?

I mean, my own kids and then my third baby is my business. So I feel that I need to have that trust and I trust him implicitly. So sometimes I have a lot of things going on where he takes on a bulge. of the workload. If he's out, I take on a belt. So I think entrepreneurship is very difficult, but also it's very rewarding. And while maybe my bank balance would reflect differently if I was in a corporate job, I feel that the satisfaction that I get, you know, the kind of lives that I've impacted, the legacy that I'm leaving is cemented through my academy. And I could not have done that in a formal kind of setup. So I really feel that I'm able to be very creative.

I'm not a very creative person in terms of art or music, but when I'm handling, say, my social media page and I do it fully on my own, I feel that's like an expression of my creativity, interacting with others, collaborating with someone, thinking of a new way of presenting, making swimming more accessible through videos

and just sharing my experiences. So I feel there's so many ways that I can still keep on improving. And while with swimming I had a goal, which was get to the Olympics, and I got there. With being an entrepreneur, I think there are no fixed goals. While we have some goals,

you want to keep striving and growing. So that's what makes it difficult. You know, you have to sometimes change your path. Sometimes you have to downsize. Sometimes you have to build up and, you know, go out there and, you know,

really start expanding your business. So I think it's a constant challenge and it's something as an athlete I look forward to and I accept the challenge wholeheartedly. Great. Okay. Thank you so much, Nisha,

for your time. Very interesting conversation and like you have great insights from both your experience as an athlete and a business owner. So thank you so much and wish you all the best. Thank you. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription offers daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts.

To subscribe, head to the Ken.com and take you. click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Rachel Varghis and edited by Rajiv Sien.