What Sanju Samson Taught Me About Building a Business That Lasts

There is a moment in every career, in cricket and in business, where talent alone is no longer enough. Sanju Samson has lived that moment more than once. And the way he responded to it is, I believe, one of the most instructive stories in Indian sport for anyone who is serious about building something that lasts. This is not an article about cricket. It is an article about what it takes to build a business that deserves to win, and eventually does. The Most Gifted Player in the Room For years, Sanju Samson was the most naturally gifted wicketkeeper-batsman in Indian domestic cricket. Anyone who watched him play, even once, knew it immediately. There was an ease to his batting that you cannot manufacture. A stillness at the crease. A way of finding the gap that looked less like calculation and more like instinct. The cricketing world knew it. The selectors knew it. His teammates knew it. And yet, the call-ups came and went. He would be picked, perform, and then find himself on the outside again. Overlooked for tours. Passed over for the big series. Watching from the boundary while others, sometimes lesser players, wore the blue jersey. It would have broken most people. The gap between what you know you are capable of and what the world is currently willing to acknowledge, that gap is one of the most psychologically brutal places a person can occupy. In cricket or in business. Samson stayed in that gap for years. And he did not break. The Years Nobody Watched What the highlight reels do not show, and what I find most compelling about Samson's story, is what he did in the years between the call-ups. While the spotlight was pointed elsewhere, he kept scoring. He kept leading Rajasthan Royals with the same intensity and commitment he would bring to a World Cup final. He kept turning up in the domestic circuit, in the IPL, in every format available to him, not with the energy of a man trying to prove a point, but with the quiet discipline of a man who had decided, somewhere along the way, that the work was worth doing regardless of who was watching. The businesses that eventually break through are almost never the ones that caught a lucky break early. They are not the ones that went viral, or stumbled into a deal that changed everything overnight. They are the ones that kept building the structure while others were distracted. That kept developing the team when the revenue wasn't there to justify it. That kept refining the product and the pitch and the process, through the quarters where nothing seemed to be moving, through the years where the market did not seem to notice. Perseverance Is Not Passive There is a dangerous misunderstanding about what perseverance actually means. Most people think it means waiting. Holding on. Gritting your teeth and surviving until circumstances improve and the tide eventually turns in your favour. Sanju Samson's journey tells a very different story. Perseverance, done with intention, is not passive. It is one of the most active things a person, or a business, can do. It is about using every setback as diagnostic information. Every dropped selection as a question: what needs to change? What needs to improve? What needs to be built differently so that the next opportunity, when it comes, cannot be ignored? Each time Samson was overlooked, he did not simply wait for the phone to ring. He worked on specific aspects of his game. He became more patient at the crease. He developed his wicketkeeping. He expanded the range of conditions in which he could perform. He came back every time as a more complete, more dangerous, more ready version of himself. In my three and a half decades across Indian and international markets, working with startups finding their first customers, established brands trying to break into new geographies, and sales teams that were talented but structurally broken, the businesses that made it through the difficult periods were never the ones that simply endured. They were the ones that used the difficult period to get fundamentally better. They redesigned their sales structure when it stopped scaling. They repositioned their brand when the market moved. They entered the markets they had been avoiding because the work of preparation finally gave them the confidence to do it. That is active perseverance. That is what Samson modelled. And that is what separates the businesses that eventually arrive from the ones that are always just about to. The Compounding Effect of Consistent Work One of the things I have observed consistently across industries, building materials, interiors, real estate, FMCG, B2B sales, is that results in business, like results in sport, are rarely linear. You work, and work, and work, and for a long time, the scoreboard does not seem to move. The distribution numbers are not where you want them. The new market entry is taking longer than projected. The sales team is trained but not yet performing at the level the training promised. And it is easy, in those moments, to conclude that the work is not working. What is actually happening, in most cases, is that the work is compounding. Every distributor relationship you have nurtured, even the ones that have not yet converted, is a future door. Every market you have entered, even imperfectly, has given you knowledge and credibility that makes the next entry faster and smarter. Every sales person you have trained, even the ones who eventually move on, carries a commercial discipline into the market that reflects on your brand. The compounding effect of consistent, quality work is invisible in the short term and undeniable in the long term. Samson's career illustrates this perfectly. Each IPL season, each domestic tournament, each innings played without the guarantee of a future, they were not isolated events. They were deposits. And eventually, the account was full enough that when the Indian team needed someone who could anchor an innings under pressure, perform in a knockout game, or lead from the front in a high-stakes series, Samson was not just available. He was inevitable. The Question Worth Asking I have spent thirty-five years in rooms with founders and business heads at every stage of growth, from businesses that were just finding their feet to organisations managing hundreds of crores in revenue across multiple geographies. And the one thing that has always separated the ones who made it from the ones who didn't is not intelligence. It is not even strategy. It is the willingness to do the work, the structural work, the people work, the market work, consistently, with excellence, before the results are guaranteed. Sanju Samson did not become one of India's finest cricketers by accident. He became one by refusing, absolutely refusing, to stop becoming one. By treating every setback as a data point and every quiet season as an opportunity to build something the world would eventually have no choice but to acknowledge. The same truth applies to every business I have had the privilege of working with. The question is never whether you have what it takes. Most businesses that come to Creative Grid already have the foundation, the product, the people, the ambition. The question is whether you are willing to do the work while nobody is watching. Whether you are willing to build the structure before the scale arrives. Whether you are willing to enter the difficult market, have the hard conversation, and make the decision that short-term thinking keeps pushing to next quarter. Because the businesses that answer yes to those questions, those are the ones that eventually look inevitable. Just like Sanju Samson. What Creative Grid Brings to That Journey At Creative Grid, this philosophy is not something we talk about. It is something we practice, in every engagement, with every client, across every market we operate in. We work with founders and business heads who are serious about building something that holds. Not a quick fix. Not a short-term spike. A real, structural improvement in how their business is positioned, how their sales team performs, how their brand is perceived, and how ready they are for the markets they want to enter. We have done this across India, the Gulf, Europe, and Australia. Across building materials, decorative products, real estate, and cross-sector B2B. Across startups that needed to find their first hundred customers and mature businesses that needed to find their next hundred crores. That is the standard Sanju Samson set. That is the standard we hold ourselves to. And if your business is ready for that kind of work, we are ready to begin. U. Vaidyanathan is the Founder of Creative Grid - a business strategy and consulting firm working with founders, business heads, and investors across India, the Gulf, Europe, and Australia. To start the conversation - reach out directly. ********