Archives for category: Advice

What is the single most important thing to be successful?

March 18, 10 //

Mike Taber, over at The Single Founder, examines what it takes to be successful. The single answer is that there is no one thing. Being successful takes many things to get right but more importantly focusing on the most important things to get right. He explains in this post and sums it up nicely. The sum of your successes should be greater than the sum of your failures. Quoted here.

“Running a small business is like flying an airplane. There’s not a single thing that keeps you in the air. It’s doing a lot of things right. But the truth is that whether it’s landing a plane or running your business, you can screw some things up and still be successful. You can recover from most mistakes, while others are going to be catastrophic. Forgot to refuel the plane before heading overseas? Probably catastrophic. Didn’t do the best SEO for your website? It will probably cost you more to acquire customers by using AdWords, but ultimately is probably not going to kill your business unless you screw that up as well.

If you compound your mistakes, your chances of failure increase dramatically. But each success will reduce the consequences of the mistakes. This is why large companies can have such a shoddy product and still make money off of it. They have so many things going on that the law of averages ultimately weighs in their favor. Does the product manager suck? No big deal. The engineering team will probably pull his weight. The code is riddled with bugs? No problem. The support team is there to help with workarounds.

So the secret to success is to realize that there isn’t a secret. Everywhere you look, you will find something that needs to be done competently. For everything you do that doesn’t measure up, you will have to make up ground in other places, keeping in mind that one success is less than or equal to one failure and that the sum of your successes must be greater than or equal to the sum of your failures.”

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Will Smiths advice to living.

March 7, 10 //

I know who I am. I know what I believe. That’s all I need to know. Period.
Powerful stuff from Will Smith, one of my favourite actors, and idols. Watch this video!

Dictum of Business – 3 tips from in-business friends.

March 5, 10 //

When you spend half of your time reading up on business, entrepreneurs and successful billionaires you inevitably either dream about the billions or you start putting together ideas of what you could do as a business man. Mostly you realise that you can only get headway somewhere by actually seeing what people are doing and talking to them. In one word experience is better than theory ever will be.

I used to be a big fan of this zen online -self help thing. Till I realised the whole thing is great for about some time. Then the so called masters keep expounding the same bullshit. That’s why I gave away most of my books on that topic.

Self help begins with the self. Help yourself first then take advice from others on helping the “ideal” self. And all this faff talk is great for the ears, but gets you no where (As I am constantly reminded by a very smart and successful friend).

So as today, I’m not going to give you self help bullshit, because I can’t be fake. I will however continue to keep giving you quality (;-)) stuff to read about people who have made it successful and why. I have a couple of special interviews planned too !

Anyone can start a business.

Anyone can run a business. Anyone can also strike it rich by being lucky. That doesn’t make them an entrepreneur.

(By the way, that E word has been so overused that I want to puke every time someone who started a website puts Entrepreneur in his linkedin profile. Let me get that out of the way, a guy who takes a risk at the throw of a dice NOT for the sake of risking it (daredevils can be idiots too) but is willing to shake the system up is the only one that can bear that title).

Some very smart friends have shown me that starting something the first time coupled with luck can help you strike it big. But doing it again and again and never giving up is where the thing is really at. So here are 4 tips from them.

Think Big but think in numbers.

I had a business plan. I saw most people making money out of blogging, some claiming to be experts at it, but in the end it was just a blog that depended on, what I now think, is a fail strategy of ad selling. As my friend says, putting it in numbers to make sense. But more important is thinking big. Let’s start with the numbers part. The friend here is CEO of Krawler, Shashank Dixit.

A business goes like this. If you are alone and you hire one guy. You’ll get overheads. To be in a decent range of financial independance you need to make minimum 5 Lakhs in your first year or min 10L if you want to re-invest and grow. That comes out to be 20k USD or 2K USD per month which is about 100 USD a day (that’s about 5000 ~ 6000 Rs per month). That’s when you have a zero investment business. Flipkart is not a zero investment business, but keep that in mind. If you have a eCPM rate of about 5 dollars then that means you need about 500k hits per day to make 100 USD.

Do you see the beauty of putting it in numbers? You suddenly have a target and goal to reach. Besides wanting to be Techcrunch to get those numbers, you clearly see why most people drop out of blogging. The original uncles keep at it because they had the first mover advantage, every other noob claiming to make money through blogging (if they do it at all ) has to reach those numbers. So blogging for money doesn’t cut it. Not anymore.

Thinking bigger therefore leads to a syndication network. That’s where the money is. Prime example:- Gawker media. I’m not saying you ape it, I’m saying that’s the sort of thinking we must have to become affluent.

The Love vs Need thing
Hugh Macleod has this great Sex vs Cash Theory. I urge you to read it. I have been shown the Love vs Need theory. Which sort of derives from the Sex Cash theory but more important is more grounded. The love part is what we are brought up – Passion. This whole passion thing has been a sexy thing the Media has been jerking around us with. Few people live their passion. But everyone successful is MADE to be passionate about something.

Think DLF’s head was “passionate” about house building? Balls. He saw business opportunity in it. Decided to go ahead with it.

Think Azim Premji was “passionate” about IT services and infrastructure? Nonsense. That brings us to the most important thing that most of us don’t see. The Need thing. Indians need to get out of this passion thing. Till yesterday I was rosy glassed over by this passion become Steve Jobs thing. Today it hit my head that it’s about the needs thing. I’m sure this sounds like common sense, but few heed.

The needs thing dictates that to be in business you serve a need that people want. This doesn’t mean 10 percent better service. This means a new service or a well defined niche. Chocolate doughnuts are great. But selling icecream is another opportunity NOT selling chocolate doughnuts + nuts shop. But remember think big.

What are your tips?

What does it take to be a billionaire?

February 26, 10 //

Person standing next to a billion dollars.

Shaun Rein, a great person who replies on twitter too!, is the head of the China Research Group. He had an interesting article on what it takes to be a billionaire. Obviously, that caught my interest as it is in the list of things I plan to do.

I like his writing style and in this he explains what is observed as a common pattern among billionaires (besides luck and timing). I firmly believe that a person who strikes hot one time was smart enough to ride a wave. Like a lot of these online marketing gurus are doing these days. But to consistently do it AND to have liquid cash in your bank is where the real deal is at.

Shaun brings in a good point to billionaires (and that applies to larger than life celebrities – Not including the internet online marketing social media hacks in this).

While almost everyone we interviewed said luck and timing played a role in their success, we found some other similarities in their responses, too. Most of the truly rich, perhaps surprisingly, are not that different from you and me. They have the same fears about their children and their health, and the same desires. But we did find some differences.

We narrowed those differences down to three secrets of the truly rich that most of the people we talked to said had helped them get to where they are:

The three secrets are.

1) Never be Afraid of Failure: Many of the billionaires chose the road less traveled and more important the route harder to travel but offering the greater reward. Even if you fail, get back on your feet real quick.

2) Look creatively at problems so that your solution is non main stream: Great story here. Ever passed by a petrol pump? Ever stopped to buy chips, sometimes even have a coffee while you are on the move? Do you know the creator of this “concept” was ridiculed many many times before he sold this idea. He’s laughing at those critics today with 5 personal jets. Those critics have found a new persons ideas to laugh at. The billionaire wanted people to spend more time at his petrol pump. An important point here is not be an idiot in being different, such as saying: Walk on your feet, it’s the new black. Not.

3) Marry well: He writes this better, so I’m quoting him.

Starting a company or running a conglomerate takes a lot of sacrifices. The stress can be a killer. Having a good spouse to support you and, most important, believe in you as you struggle to the top is critical.

Heh. I don’t think this is a P1 item. But someone who fits your wavelength is important. The physical deteriorate and settlers never do anything. Neither do gold diggers. I recommend the read by Shaun, hit it up here.

Comic Book writer Alan Moore on Life, Focus, Identity and Hardwork.

February 7, 10 //

Anyone who has held a comic book of the DC universe has come across Alan Moore. A writer extraordinaire and an artist too, he has worked with titles such as Swamp Thing, Batman, Superman and many many others. His comic works like V for Vendetta, Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have been converted to movies and blockbusters at that.

Alan Moore brings a profound realism to his writing and he is one of the writers responsible for taking the comics we know to a different level – Adult Graphic Novels. A lot of the dark imagery and moods set have often been an industry first initiated by Alan Moore.

But that’s not what this post is about, this post is about his advice to people who are starting out on writing and reading. In this gem of a youtube video he shares his thoughts. Now he’s british so it made it quite hard to understand him but for anyone not able to understand what he says, I have taken the trouble of transcripting the interview for you here. I think it’s a fantastic read. Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Importance of Focus.
The first thing you really want to focus on is why you want to do this. If you want to be famous or you want to be rich, then it ain’t going to work. The only thing you can do is if you want to become a success focus upon the thing that you do purely for its own sake. If you like drawing comics, writing comics, making music or whatever and you are not doing it to become famous or get money and you are focusing on it because you love it and you only want to get better and better and better. Then you probably will do it right.

Focus on the right things.
Do not focus on the fame and wealth, that’s what everyone wants. You can become famous and get money purely by going on Big Brother. What does that prove? Those things can be got easily. Focus purely on what it is you like to do. If you got a talent you got a talent even if its not that much.

On Talent and continual improvement.

That’s how we all start out. I couldn’t write when I started out I couldn’t draw either. But I liked writing. I liked writing compositions at that phase in school as a phase in school. And I liked reading. And I liked thinking, ok how good am i as a writer compared to these guys I liked reading. And you think, actually I am rubbish. So you try to make yourself a little better and if you are honest with yourself. Not over critical, theres no point in looking at everything and and saying it’s rubbish and tearing it up. If you can atleast be honest and say ya this has got some bits in it that are good, I could have done better with these bits. This is not good as so and so, who I admire would have done it. Next time this is going to be better. And you try and make each thing you do a little bit smarter, a little bit more sophisticated than the thing you did before. Eventually people will notice.

Importance of Identity.
Eventually, you’ll start to move beyond what everybody else is doing. And with out ever having a master plan to it but you’ll find suddenly without having to compromise anything, without having to sell out your vision and it’s important that you do that, because that’s the only thing you have really got that seperates you from everybody else. There are probably loads of people that can sing or do music or write or draw the way that you can. The only thing that makes you unique, is that you are you. You have your experience, you have had your life. You have got sort of your knowledge. So put all of that into what you do, make it individual, make it unique and make it your selling point. You have had this experience, so put it to use and I don’t think you’ll go far wrong.

It’s not easy.
There’s a lot more to it than that of course and there’s a lot of boredom, grind and anxiety where there’s this ”Am I good as I think I am?”. “Am I ever going to really make it?”. But don’t worry about that, if you are doing what you love, even if you aren’t making any money out of it, you are still better off than 99 percent of the people in this world who are not doing what they love. They are doing something that gets their day by. Maybe they are entertaining dreams that one day they could be this and one day they could do that but often those deams just die in the cradle. Stay true to yourself. There is nothing you can’t be if you try hard enough.

The Youtube video is here if you want to watch it.

Lesson of Life: Running for life.

January 28, 10 //

“Every morning in Africa, a Gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a Lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest Gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Lion or a Gazelle… when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

Roll your sleeves up it’s time to work. Insights from pros on goal setting and accomplishing.

January 3, 10 //

You know it’s 2010. It’s that time of the year to bring in some new resolutions, hold it by the ear, successfully resolve that you won’t mess up like the last one and then go back to that cake you were eating.

Put that cake down now $#%3er.

I’m done with this slacking, whether it was weight loss, meeting that person, taking that trip whatever it might have been it’s a new decade, I’m sure you are too.

New resolve.

But I have been reading Tim Ferris’ book again and also following Leo Babuata and I realised that setting those Big-HAG (big hairy audicious goals) are good for the spirit but not necessarily for accomplishment.

And really it’s best to not announce your goals as Derek Sivers puts it. Here’s my quick notes on productive goals that I would like to share.

Setting goals.

a) Set 6 goals for this year. That’s it no big thing, 6 worthy goals. Just to clarify. Getting laid is not the goal, finding love is.

b) Set a time frame to accomplish them in. The better you frame it out with steps the more likely you are going to get them. A goal for me is 5 kilos a month for 3 months = 15 kilos (to start with).

c) Arrange those goals in priority, something needed in december is not something you do in January.

d) Go start them , take small steps. Running a marathon starts with running 1 km at a time without coughing your lung out of your nose.

Chris Brogan prefers to use 3 words instead and break it into many actions.

Accomplishing those goals.

There are a few years to realise these goals.

a) Translate Being to Doing: This is important. An example is learning French this year (being) translates to Talking with a colleague in French for 10 mins daily (doing). So list out the big goal, but write down the short steps.

b) Write down the steps necessary to get the goals done: I repeat this, you should plan the path but be open to change alongside. Nothing goes according to plan, that’s ok. Just keep a general direction in mind and not nomad it up.

b) Set in a time limit to accomplish them in: If I told you that you had 24 hours to live and you had to write that will of yours or clean that cupboard, you’ll want to do it quickly and finish it off as ap. That’s the power of the impeding deadline.

There are loads of laws that go into effect , the most deadly being Work expands to fill itself in the time allocated.

So what goals are you setting yourself this year?

Happy New Year People. Here’s to you.

January 1, 10 //

There is a thought that struck me really well this new year. Here’s to you.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary

- Steve Jobs, 2005.

6 Lessons from a guy who changed the World and Media.

December 29, 09 //

Today I bring to you a life changing read. This is a story about a little guy with big dreams.

A guy who didn’t give up. These anecdotes are followed by key lessons this chap can teach us. I’ll give you a free book if you can guess who this guy is before you reach the end. Remember don’t cheat, fill in your name at the comments if you really did get who it was and I’ll enter your name in a draw for a free book.

The story.

Early back in the late 90s. This young youth -drop out of college because he didn’t want to get a job anywhere, decided to leave his hometown of Nebraska and move on to California. He had no education.No degree either. What he did have was tons and tons of self confident attitude.

Lesson no 1: Be confident.

He always believed himself to be entrepreneurial. Not like the idiots today branding a tag, this kid wanted to do things, change things, make a dent in the universe (steve). He started his career by working for HP where he learnt web development on his own and went on board for about 7 months as a consultant to work his way up. He had no idea about the trends, but picked it up quickly.

Lesson no 2: If it’s required to be learned. Learn.

Shortly thereafter, he started raking in some money and met a consultant. She had an MBA and he decided that she could help each other put together a company that made a product for project management. Something like basecamp, but very early alpha. They worked on it on their own and this lad taught himself all the necessary coding required to build it. They named this product, “Stuff”. While Stuff was picking up and they had a good thing going on. They brought in another guy to help them build this little tool that could help them exchange notes. It was a web log of data, notes and other interesting stuff. Quickly becoming the nervous system of the company, this product started showing signs of maturing and overtaking “Stuff”. He was excited to get it rolling and so were his partners, so they split their attention in developing this web log and simultaneously working on Stuff.

Lesson no 3: If an opportunity presents itself, grab it.

They started scaling themselves pretty well, put together some funding and decided that this was what they wanted to do. This weblog, by then acquiring it’s fancy name we know of today, called Blog was rapidly picking up among geeks. This was close to the bubble burst time and this lad decided it was good enough to launch publicly. This company decided that they would halt the Stuff product and work, instead, on this Blog thing. They generated no revenue. But they wrote their business plan the day before they sought funding.

Lesson no 4: You don’t need funding or a business plan till you

have something to show in hand.

While they rose, their lack of revenues and monthly churn out rate put them in great danger. This little team of 2 had grown to a family of 7 only to make ends meet a veritable task by itself. This guy went frankly to his team and told him there was no money. He told them, “You can work with me on your tomorrow or you can leave”. They decided to leave. Even the woman with the MBA who had poured 2 years into this. It was only him and dark times. It was a scary scary thing for a guy growing up to be feeling. But he decided to stay on. He was alone. He learnt Linux and java and decoded bugs as and when they came along. He shared his story to the readers and asked for help along the way, all the while never stopping to fix what was needed. The technology kept growing and he didn’t want to quit just yet.

Lesson no 5: Believe in yourself and know if you are on to a good thing.

Lesson no 5b: Do whatever it takes to stay afloat.

His girlfriend broke up with him. His rents piled up. He was living skin to teeth. He was sued by his team mates. He wasn’t going to quit just yet though. This blog thing, now named Blogger, was growing big. He had 50,000 users, his determination and most important, vision to take this forward. It was crude, but he was on it. He was being abused, tarnished and pointed fingers at. He went underground and worked full time on Blogger.

Lesson no 6: Trust in the most important person to you. You.

He put in ads in the start. And charged people money to remove the ads on their pages for $12 a year. Slowly money trickled in. He slowly started making money to pay his hosting bills. He had given up his office and was lent a desk for free in a company. He then wrote the blogger APi, which became very important later on by hiring a programmer and redesigning it around a bit. Then they released Blogger Pro, a vision he had, and got back staff on board to take this product full time.

Then Google called. The rest is history. The rest is also to be read in this fascinating story of the guy being interviewed in a book called Founders at Work. Recognise him? Maybe a picture would help.

The greatest advice ever given.

December 26, 09 //

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

Originally written by Mary Schmich and later converted to an audio by Baz Luhrmann (if someone has the mp3 please mail it to me!).

Posted via email from Kage’s Pages.

- Steve Jobs, 2005.

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