FASTer - Issue #10

Eid Mubarak to all. 10 issues. Consider this edition Digital Eidi as it took a lot to get this one out the door(from a time perspective) + I decided to release it FASTer than the usual 320pm Friday slot. For the growing number of international subscribers who may not be familiar with what Eidi is, heres a short primer on the tradition and an other perspective for parents of young children on how traditions must also be balanced. Whilst we are at it, I found an other interesting perspective from Egypt and the evolution of Eidi from a publication in the UAE.

Outcomes

TL;DR Stop selling the process. Start selling the end-result.

Outcomes grab people’s attention and get them interested in listening to you. Always start with the outcome/Always lead with the outcome. Then drill down on the how and why.

At some level we are all in Sales, but the thing that sets apart great sales people from average people is when you make it less about your amazing service and more about their(customers) problem, that's the golden ticket of successful selling.

1) Sell with stories - humans remember and relate to stories far more than reason

2) Outcome = total value delivered. You will do better work when you think about each piece of the outcome in terms of the end user value. Maximise for that and you will have a very different experience from the one you have traditionally had.

So the hottest industries/verticals/skills being talked about these days are, building D2C-Websites, Marketing, Content Creation(Copy Writing). Every ones talking about, building in public, sharing your IRR, talk about growth, personalise for twitter and other algos. All that is for zero if you cant sell the outcome.

What do I mean?

• D2C-Website= branding your virtual real estate vs having just a presence

• Content/Copy writing = converting visitors vs attracting window shoppers

• Marketing = find common grounds to build a community, grow it and then sustain it

One New Thing(Literally)

I read an article in 2013 that spoke about an author challenging her self to do some thing new daily for a year. "I Dare Me" . Subsequently building on the same thread I came across an other article in 2019 (Highlights below & full article here ) it said "that our brain takes footage of things(memories)" and its not like one would imagine.

We all know we have memories and that our brain is a storage vector. But when u factor in the footage element your perception changes. It says that "When we’re bored, frustrated, and/or annoyed, time seems to move more slowly. When we’re caught up in some fun and/or focused activity, time can seem to fly by.

You’ve probably made the observation that as a child and young adult, your days, weeks, and years seemed really long. High school and college only lasted four years, but probably seem significantly longer in your memory.

There is a reason for this too: researchers have found that whenever your brain participates in experiences that are novel and/or emotionally salient, it figures, “I may need to remember this later” and so takes plenty of “footage” of what’s going on. When you later look back on those periods, there’s plenty of “film” to unspool, so the experiences seem to have lasted a long time.

However, when you do things that you’ve done before, that are familiar, and follow the same routine, your brain already knows what to expect next. It’s seen this movie before. So off clicks your mental camera."

This blew my mind completely. What it also forced me to do is practice this. For the entire period starting from when I read the article to writing this one, I have gradually built up the ability to run the experiment of generating new footage. You ask how?

Lets re-wind a bit. The article had a profound new idea,(at least for me) that may not seem new, rather it seemed logical but it gives you some interesting insights if executed with belief that will result in positive footage:). It said to generate more footage: Take a One-Month Challenge “Do Something New Every Day”. They have list in the article .

Long story short, you can literally force your brain to enrich your memories if you make sure that you feed it some thing new every day and break the monotony of every day things. So this month, invest in your self, generate longer, better footage and then reflect on your month. In the end evaluate; does it feel like some thing changed?

Boring stuff that scales

This is the part of the newsletter thats my favourite yet the most challenging one every week. It so hard to identify signals in a world of noise. I decided that this week (Eid Special), I will share ideas fro my scratch pad(things I am building(via funding), would like to build, invest in-long term, or encourage entrepreneurs to focus on) as a list of things that can eventually scale. This is never a definitive list but ideas that will force you to think about market product fit and go beyond your current list of potential business ideas.

  1. Micro Acquiring in the real world. The premise of this idea is that many boomers are set to retire and many businesses will be shut down. Yet there is no list of SMEs that one can look at to know when opportunities may be coming up. So a real estate listing service but for qualified SMEs.

  2. In-Country tours + host(ing) services for in bound international travellers, bloggers. Curated food tours, equipment rentals, transportation. With the influx of foreign bloggers who continue to show up on our shores, why not lead the charge and be the white glove hosting service for all such folks who produce content. Be a curated service for all such in bound traffic. By providing a "local team" for their entire trip. With an element of Insured services.

  3. Equipment rental for Audio + Video for the local content producers who cant afford to buy the equipment.

  4. Rental studios for Podcasts.

  5. Concierge + Price Validation services for big purchases (Think of some one or a service that knows the price/availability of every thing from Refrigerators to the best Wi-fi Equipment to cars, an offline/phone based/in-person service for the vastly offline consumer who doesn't have access to online reviews or just doesn't have the time but wants to ensure they get a price check) Build an affiliate model on the back of this across all brands in a chosen vertical so you win ethically every time. The consumer decides what to buy based on the info, you don't make the choice for them, but for connecting the supply to the demand you do make some affiliate PKR.

  6. Seven eleven but virtual to you door step past 11pm. So 11/7

  7. Teaching people crypto. Crypto has serious FOMO. The time is now to get into this space if you practice what you (will) preach. Authenticity is key.

  8. Post Production Services(Audio-Video) for Home Based Chefs/Sellers

  9. On Demand Graphic Design Services from a set menu

  10. With Corona easing up there will be a surge in "Get Aways" so vacation planning / ticketing / booking services for people looking for a getaway off the beaten path. Along with a visa guide. Bring vacation certainty for those who have to spend hours sifting through the options.

  11. Local Vacations + Road Trips Done right. End to End planning + hosting services for inter-country travel. Reliable vs I know a guy who told me you need to do X. Add take a "local guide" on your road Trip as a service

  12. Basic Home automation as a services (set menu from 20k PKR to 1m PKR) Productise what you want to sell.

  13. Solar service provider selection + ratings for local companies

  14. Local food vendor catering as a service. Use case, you like Waheed from Burns road, you like Nihari from Javed, bun-kebabs from X. You are hosting a small gathering 10-20 people. Its neither large format catering nor food-panda but some thing in between.

  15. Project Management as a Service. Every event, project, service, change in circumstances, would do better with a project manager, some one who can off-load tasks from those who are struggling with time. Essentially a white glove service for the well heeled. Some one who can organise chaos in to manageable decisions for those who hire them.

  16. Let me do that for you as a service. Perhaps obscure, but there is a latent demand for an every thing concierge service. The reason you cant get the average Bykea to do things for you is because of the communication and experience gap in what you need vs what they are exposed to, to fulfil your requests. Having some on the phone or to show up at your door-step to be your concierge for a task, the day or for a week is a service with merit. We are lost in the "rider" as a service but there is an upmarket niche thats ripe for the taking.

  17. Home based product sourcing for insta/fb chefs. Scour social media for folks selling food products. Make a list of most used ingredients and start targeting these chefs with an on-demand product fulfilment service.

  18. Co-creating apps with domain experts using no code. A lot of people have really good niche ideas because of their passion for that niche and they have no idea how to turn it into a marketable product. Be their enabler. Finding them is no easy task but instead of people getting caught up with software companies and others, this is a faster path to GTM.A relatively small demographic are action takers enough to learn a no-code platform and build out their app idea. Fewer still will do the marketing, launch, community and maintenance. It either costs too much time or too much money. You can solve for this.

You heard(read) it here first ...

Hepatitis C is serious. “Unfortunately, more than 280,000 new HCV patients were adding annually in Pakistan which was much disturbing for health mangers”, said Prof Tayab, who is also heading medicine department at Postgraduate Medical Institute (PGMI) in Lahore.

The treatment in the US + West is expensive due to the various health insurance / pharmaceutical industry woes. Gilead Sciences makes the hepatitis C drugs – Sovaldi. That was not available to Patients in Pakistan till 2014. All that changed when Freoze Sons Labs brought the miracle drug to Pakistan. It costs $85,000 an only in America price. Sovaldi sells for about $1,000 a pill in the U.S., while a generic version costs only $4 a pill in India. Canada pays $55,000 for a course of treatment. France recently got Gilead down to a price of about $33,000.

Ferozsons Laboratories is the sole company which was granted rights to sell and market this much-awaited drug in Pakistan at a price approximately Rs1,940 for each tablet. The company will make available a pack of 28 tablets for total price Rs55,000. This was a watershed moment in Hep C treatment. Yet we don't celebrate the amazing things Pakistani companies do at scale. I personally know of long term patients who were reliant on the drug, that essentially mortgaged their present for their future to get this treatment out West. Far and few in-between due to the pricing. We need to celebrate such advances and their impact and recognise those in health care who have strived to bring positive change at home to Millions of Pakistanis.

What you should be reading(If you can get it)

Rick Barot’s exquisitely-designed chapbook During the Pandemic (2020) was limited production/circulation but a pleasure to read. During the Pandemic is the third chapbook in Albion Books’ seventh series. Rick poet based in the San Francisco area and a great find. Courtesy of a twitter thread.

Monetise your time

By investing in learning no code tools. So what is no code?

"No-code frameworks are software design systems that allow even non-technical people to execute software without composing a line of code. These tools usually have a user-friendly interface and drag-and-drop capabilities, allowing you to envision the implementation process and describe the overall business logic with ease.

A no-code framework is a programming platform that uses a visual development interface to enable non-technical users to build applications by dragging and dropping software components to create a full app. Users don’t need any previous coding experience to build applications using no-code." So now you know.

But how do you get started? I have curated some worth while things to read whilst you are still on Eid Break.

4) SIMPL is your key If you are struggling with process automation. Platform for developing process-controlled applications with Web front end.

If you are an angel investor, a digital agency or a business looking to diversify. Why are you still sleeping on using no-code projects for growth or marketing, scale or entering new niches. Create a service differentiator for your clients and provide a new growth lever for the employees you already have.

A quick approach or 2.

Hire a prolific no-coder or two or re-allocate the bored, soon to quit employees who feel their roles are stagnant, allocate a small budget to ship 12 projects in 12 months to stir up the niche you want to operate in based on the clients you have helped over the years or areas where you have invested or feel there is potential.

No-Code as a “growth lever” is still under-appreciated. Monetise your employees time or yours and use this.

Made in Pakistan

The top suggestion I got last 4 weeks is for this section. So what is it? The audience is suggesting, I open this up. So if you are reading this section and you know of, some thing amazing that is made in Pakistan or that you want to share with the rest of the readers take a few minutes out of your time and drop your suggestions here, ideally with a link and a few lines about what you feel this made in Pakistan product or service is worthy of discovery beyond its current audience. Try to avoid folks selling Lindt Chocolate X on FB:).

One Last thing..

This news letter is free and likely remain free for the most part as it's a medium for social experimentation & hypothesis validation besides being a small contribution to the ecosystem of tinkerers, doers & the otherwise curious. The interesting this is the demographic, reading and consuming the content. It's broad and generationally spread out. Like most things Pakistani, besides the truly engaged and the those who have a sense of paying it forward, feedback for some thing that is free is an interesting experiment in a "consumers drive".

Based on engagement rates, 100%+ growth in online audience consumption for 5 weeks running, I tried to analyse why is it so difficult for people to provide, bad, good or even ugly feedback. In my limited experience it boils down to a sense of entitlement (free consumer economy syndrome). Even for things that are free to you(the consumer), whilst they take up an ungodly amount of time(mine to produce), the relationship in peoples mind is; that even if they drive value from some thing free, there is no social contract or obligation to even provide simple feedback.

Unlike tips, or subscriptions it is free to give, sans ones time. Yet it's not wired into our social fabric. It gives insights into why it is difficult for us to build online communities and tribes unlike the rest of the world. This has been my top takeaway in the 10 weeks of producing this news letter. Its not meant to offend any one but to share feedback on the learnings I've had.

This is a catch 22, the reason why I went about putting out the newsletter is in some ways to change our entitled mind set. To provide people colour into being better ecosystem players. That thought is clearly validated.

For perspective out of the total audience that has a 64% open rate on the news letter for 9 weeks running, the amount of folks who even click a thumbs up or down is 19%. For folks who are consuming the newsletter online(6x larger than email) and have more than 60% clicks on embedded or further info items, their feedback is less than 8%. In absolute terms more online visitors provide feedback, but I have no way of knowing if they are reoccurring folks or is it a new person every time. Feedback is truly a gift, if you enjoy reading this content, be generous and leave detailed feedback or just click the yes or no buttons below:).