23 October 2026 | CSK Speaks - The Legacy Blueprint - Podcast - Founders

Patience or Persistence? What 13 Years for One Title Teaches Founders and School Leaders

How long would you keep working for something that refuses to arrive on your timeline?

One year? Five? Thirteen?

Most founders I meet give themselves eighteen months. Most school leaders give a new initiative one academic year. If it has not worked by then, we call it a failure and move on.

GM Pravin Thipsay earned his first Grandmaster norm in the 1980s. The title came in 1997.

He is an Arjuna Awardee and a seven-time National Champion. In 1985, he became the first Indian to win gold at the Commonwealth Chess Championship. But when I sat down with him for Episode 22 of The Legacy Blueprint, the titles were not what stayed with me. It was the waiting, and what he did with it.

Two words we confuse

Patience or persistence? Oftentimes we treat them as the same thing.

They are not.

Patience waits. Persistence keeps working while it waits, and changes when it must.

Three lessons for builders

1. Keep working while you wait. The title did not arrive on schedule. The work did not stop. For a founder, that means the product keeps improving even when the revenue does not show it yet. For a school, it means the teacher training continues even before the results move.

2. Change your game when the game changes. Pravin Thipsay moved from an attacking player to a strategist as chess itself was changing. Persistence is not repeating the same move. It is staying in the game long enough to learn a new one.

3. Judge the journey by what it builds, not when it ends. Thirteen years is a long time to wait for one title. It is also thirteen years of becoming the kind of player who deserves it.

The question I now ask

I will admit, I used to admire speed above everything else. Quick wins. Fast growth. Early results.

I still value speed. But I have stopped treating slowness as failure.

So what are you waiting for right now? And are you only waiting, or still working?

Patience gets you through the wait. Persistence gets you to the title.

Watch Episode 22 of The Legacy Blueprint with CSK, featuring GM Pravin Thipsay, on YouTube.