Archives for category: Personalities

Advice from one of Seth’s MBA school graduates.

February 2, 10 //
0

Quite some time back, the famous Seth Godin (whose blog title reads as Seth on Marketing, Respect and the way ideas spread), had posted a note on how he’s planning to offer a course on an Alternative MBA for 6 months. Over 4000 people applied (I did too but couldn’t clear the time for the customs and getting a Visa for the interview) out of which 27 finalists were picked. He then chose 9 of those people who worked for him for quite some time.

This was like the modern day Gurukul. Gurukul, in ancient India, was a type of school wherein the students stayed with the Guru (teacher) and learned from him. Derived from the words Guru (teacher) and Kulam (place/area/extended family).

So these students went and stayed at his office for 6 months. One of the students, Ishita Gupta, has posted some of the learnings (not for all 6 months but some pithy take aways) in the style that Seth always excels in. Here are my favourites. I think she has to be informed of Permalink URLs on her blog, but here is the original post.

  • Time is an illusion. Don’t measure it by the amount of hours/effort you put in, measure it by goals you accomplish
  • Doing things quickly and repetitively helps you get over anxiety about failure.
  • Making a decision is more important than doing things perfectly.
  • Doing things quickly and repetitively helps you get over anxiety about failure.
  • Making a decision is more important than doing things perfectly.
  • You just might waste your life away in idleness and bullshit if you’re not careful.
  • Taking initiative matters.
  • Being who you want to be and who you think you really are is largely a decision.
  • Learn the language of the people you wish to speak to and communicate with (French or analytics.)

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Networking 101: Notes from a professional networker.

January 19, 10 //
0

What is Networking? A good definition is Networking – the acquisition and cultivation of influential connections. Notice how there’s no “handing over business cards” or “sending cheesy emails” there? True networking is pressing the flesh and doing it often.

I have, and I’m sure you have too, noticed some people who are just so well connected. They know big names and most important they get work done and know who to get in touch with. This is something that I love doing too. But I do it because people interest me. I like connecting with different types of people. Some do it for business.

There is no talent in this per se. You have to practice and want it, just as is the formula for wanting to be good at anything in life at all. However there are some guidelines. These are notes I have composed over a period of time. Here you go. A lot of them is inspired by one of the most famous networkers in the world, Keith Ferrazzi. Some of them are directly his advice too.

1. You never walk in to meet the CEO in your bedroom clothes.
Remember the old saying, “Clothes maketh the man”? The message is simple. Dress Well appear well groomed. Scruffy beards and heavy mascara is good in a club, not in a meeting room. Unless, of course, you work in a new age company that’s like a startup, in which case you can wear anything you want. In start ups I wore jeans. I pretty much wore it in a corp environment too and I would love to wear it everywhere but sometimes you don the suit.

2. Appear Important. Look confident. Walk tall.
In article in Wired magazine about Keith, this line resonated well, “The way he walks and looks, all tanned and fit, with the styled hair and custom suit and black Prada shoes. The deals that are hanging in the air, the favors being extended or secured, the sideshows, the laughter, the juggling. That irresistible balloon of energy”. The lesson here is exburating confidence in whatever you do and truly enjoying living in the moment. He had deliberate, delicate movements, his listening as assertive as his banter. Good advice.

3. Have something to start with besides your sales pitch.
When Ferrazzi observes that his friend hasn’t spoken much. He leans in and whispers, “You’re a fucking loser if you don’t walk out of here with some reason for getting in touch with her again.” Sound advice. How many times have we seen people who are fake and have nothing to say except made up corny cliched bullshit? “Oh I heard about you so lovely that is, I totally agree with everything you are saying it is so nice.” It is not. Be genuine cut the fake.

4. Business is a game, play it to win.
Keith Ferrazi believes that business, like life, is a game, and that the people who play it best will win. And the rule in the game that trumps all others, Ferrazzi became convinced, is that he who knows the most people, and knows them well, becomes a member of the club, not a caddy.

5. Basic things you don’t do.
When you speak don’t stutter, unless that’s a challenge you are facing in which case, take it slow and explain your point. All stuttering is only due to fear (mostly) so let go of it. Don’t ask the question for the sake of asking the question. This whole CAT debate thing is the dumbest way to introduce a person to the group.Some people, when I attended, just HAD to ask because they were being seen. Often their desire overrode their brain impulses. The end result wasn’t pretty.

6. Important: what you know. More important: who you know. Most important: who knows you.
Don’t network to just network. Know what you want. If you want to be the president you can’t get there by knowing a lot of middle level people. You need to know the right people for the right reason. The more focused your goals the more outrageous your networking can become!

7. Build it before you need it.
If you talk to someone on the day you need a favour, you are not going to get it done. You have to talk them far before hand. It’s important. Learn how to.

8. Never Eat alone.
 Always find someone to talk to, someone to share stories with and someone to listen to. I’m not talking about marriage that’s a whole different thing, this is about meeting new and interesting people.

6 lessons from a guy who changed Media as we know it today.

December 29, 09 //
1

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.
evwilliams.jpg

Posted via email from Kage’s Pages.

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

December 29, 09 //
0

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.