Three Hundred Posts

Affirmative action, Financial Independence, Habits, Marketing

I didn’t realise it but yesterday was my 300th post. What an achievement. For someone who didn’t know what to write and was always wondering why will anyone read my posts, to today watching this number made me so happy.

This journey started about 4 years back and I took my domain name around this time. Then I took the WordPress subscription to link my website to my domain.

Initially even putting up one post was an ordeal. As a matter of fact when I hit the 25 mark, I actual had a celebration post. To write my first hundred posts took me almost 3 years painful years because each time I would sit down to write on a weekend, I would think I did not have enough data and so I would go in search of data and the post would not get written.

Last year because of the lockdown due to the Covid pandemic, I got some amount of time at home and I started listening to various podcasts, one among which was I Love Marketing which is run by Joe Polish And Dean Jackson. Joe keeps talking about 2 things which I have taken to heart.

One is that – Its better to be prolific than perfect and

Two – You learn a little by hearing / reading / watching, you learn a lot more by practicing and you love the most by teaching it to others.

I have always had this penchant for wanting to share my knowledge but I didn’t think it would be of value to others so I never bothered. Then I cam across the video series on YouTube by Gary Vaynerchuk where he would put out a video everyday on wine tasting and the kind of wines he was tasting. These were short videos.

That got me on this journey to take affirmative action, to share from my practical experiences in marketing and in finance and then whatever I was reading in terms of improving our performance and health. All my articles after that have been keeping one principle in mind, you should get bite sized information in a quick read while you are standing in the line to take your coffee.

Thank you for being active readers of my blog. I hope I am able to give you even more value in the future. This writing everyday has now be one a habit and I don’t let a writer’s block come in my way. I just put down my thoughts as they flow.

Till then

Carpe Diem!!!

Possibility thinking

Affirmative action, Human Brain, Labelling, Marketing, possibility thinking, Sales, Thinking

A lot of times I get stuck in my thinking. This especially happens in stressful situations where I ascribe an intention without the facts. To all of us, a person not picking up the phone – seems like the person is trying to avoid us, then our mind goes in frenzy identifying all the reasons that the person could be avoiding us and our mind takes us back into some random situation and we feel all bad and low.

We end up putting labels on the person, that he/she is bad, deliberately doing this to us etc. etc.

Its quite possible that the person’s phone was on silent and she didn’t notice. She may end up calling you when she sees your call and then you realise you have ended up wasting so much time.

So generally what I have started doing when I feel that something is not okay, I take the initiative in trying to check out first if everything’s okay. A lot of times I have come to realise that the person was going through some personal challenges of his own and could not have been in a position to talk with me.

But more than that I realize that there was nothing personal that this person had against me.

Now why did I give you all this story. Because a lot of times when a prospect stops responding to you, we end up ascribing all kinds of motives. When a product that you were so passionate about is not picked up in the market, then also we start ascribing all kinds of ideas.

With possibility thinking you try to look at – is there something else, is there something which I am not noticing, is there something which is absolutely unrelated to us because of which the prospect has stopped talking to us.

In sales this happens most when suddenly the prospects stop responding to your mails. More often than not I have observed that the manager gives another responsibility to the person you were interacting with and he puts your proposal on the back burner. Nothing personal with you.

One of best ways to get someone to open up in such situations is to write an “apology mail for bothering her and asking if there’s something we could have done better to not have put her off” In most situations an apology mail like this gets the person to respond with the exact situation because most people want to be fair and they don’t want you apologising for something you didn’t do.

On the other hand you could also have competition which you never thought of , suddenly appear and suddenly sabotage your sale by targeting the boss of the person you were interacting with.

With possibility thinking you like to keep asking questions without getting negative about the situation, and then getting it clarified. Time is the most important thing for a sales or marketing person. Spending that time , rueing about and ascribing all kinds of ideas to the person is a waste of time. its better to keep eliminating negative possibilities and identifying more positive possibilities.

This is not about positive thinking, about a glass being half empty or full. This is about being constructive in your usage of the limited resource that you have – called time.

Till next time then. Keep thinking in terms of possibilities.

Carpe Diem!!!

Financial freedom – Happiness

Affirmative action, compounding, Financial Independence, Happiness, travel

You would have seen so many posts from me on compounding and rates of return and long term planning to build a large asset base even with small monthly automatic deductions from your account.

The objective of doing all this is not to stop living today for a better tomorrow.

The idea of financial freedom that I talk about is to ensure that you are no longer forced to do things for earning money. I have always wanted to have financial freedom so that I could go out and achieve all the items on my bucket list.

These items on my bucket list are what will give me experiences with my family which will in turn make me happy. I have already shared how I used these principles to travel to different countries.

The end objective of getting Financial Freedom and Financial Independence is Happiness today and in the future.

If you have to work in a job ,which does not make you happy, just because you don’t have the money then you find another job or use the magic of compounding so that over a period of time at least you are in a position to leave the job and do things which make you happy.

Through intermediate milestones, in accumulating wealth, you use the wealth to get experiences . Wealth is not to be accumulated for the sake of getting to a number. You have to enjoy the journey and be happy through all of it.

Till next time then find reasons to be happy.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prioritizing the top 2 or 3 activities

Affirmative action, ideal customer, Marketing, prioritizing, Product Management, segmentation, single target market

A lot of self help books will talk about identifying the top 3 issues to be handled the next day and listing them.

The 80/20 rule is fractal, which simply means there’s an 80/20 within an 80/20. So while 20% of the causes are responsible for 80% of the problems, 64% of the problems are caused by just 4%.

Now prioritizing your day or prioritizing your marketing plan has the same basic fundamental to it. The issue is not whether the number is 3 or the number is 2 or 1. The issue is about being able to identify those key items within your next day plan or your marketing plan which will be responsible for helping you get 80% of the way.

The value is always in the hinges (20%) which help you move large doors (80%) with very little effort.

Its about utilising the 20% creative part – the subject line of your email as an example – which if done right can get the remaining part of your email campaign successful. Its not that the process of getting the emails sent is not important, but once the subject line is well crafted and gets responses, then the process of sending mails can be automated.

Within this 20% however if I look at it, identifying the right list/database/market segment, the 4% will get you more than 60% of the way, because then you can build your message accordingly better, tighter etc. Segmenting or finding a niche is all about finding the most attractive, most responsive set of clients which will help you get your product or service faster.

Not all tasks are built alike. I still get caught up in minutiae and sometimes end up spending a whole day just on them. But to come back to the self help book analogy, if you have prioritized your top tasks in your plan in advance and you STICK to them, you should be able to hit most of your goals.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!