This has been the most challenging issue thus far for me to SHIP. But I Shipped no Less:) Why you ask? Time. Even with the best time management in the world, time is some thing that: well you can only manage but not stop, rewind , undo or get-back. We must be thankful for the time we have an be mindful of how to use it. Once lost, it wont come back. Todays news letter theme is around time. The key is in not spending time, but in investing it. 

Outcomes

Identifying a clear and meaningful vision is critical towards personal and organisational success and excellence. A life without a clear vision is a life without a direction, a life full of confusions and contradictions. When you think of the most admired CEOs and designers of our time, what makes them so great? It’s often their vision: their ability to articulate a meaningful desired outcome(s).Think of your vision as what you want to achieve and your purpose as why you want to achieve it.A vision is a mental picture of the result you want to achieve---a picture so clear and strong it will help make that result real. A vision is not a vague wish or dream or hope. It’s a picture of the real results of real efforts. It comes from the future and informs and energises the present. Visioning is the most powerful tool I’ve witnessed in over twenty years of helping organisations and individuals get the results they want. Yet the single biggest thing missing from the took kit of local CEOs, Saiths and organisations. This is then reflected in employees being random output junkies vs vision-led contributors.

Positivity led vision is also what is missing in our context. Be positive.Acknowledge the difficulties, but don’t try to motivate yourself or others with a vision of bad things that might happen if you don’t succeed. Negative re enforcement as a tool is why our local organisations have failed in creating meaningful leaders and talent. A vision based on fear may help fuel immediate action, but it can also limit your results to damage control rather than getting to positive change. The right outcomes, the need right vision, the right vision needs an investment in time and the understanding, that unless you train people to visualise the best outcomes for all, no one wins. If you do it in time, you are set for the long term, if you don't then all you do is manage for the short term.

One New Thing(Literally)

You need to look up Alfred Adler. His teachings are distilled in a book called The Courage to be Disliked, which argues that all your problems, with being yourself and doing what you want to do, are because you don’t have the courage to be disliked. This is a super powerful construct. If you do not have the courage to give your self the time to be disliked and all you do is spend your time to be liked you are not winning. 

Being okay with being disliked grants the freedom to do whatever you truly believe in.

The solution is simple, but not easy. You must separate your “life tasks” — the things you can control — from other people’s life tasks. You can’t control what other people think of you, so why worry about it? You can’t control whether another person cheats or takes advantage of you, so approach relationships with unconditional trust. This boils down to self-acceptance. If you’re comfortable in your own skin and control what you can control, nothing else matters. Have the courage to be disliked and live your life your own way. If someone dislikes you, it means you’re living freely, the way you want to live.

The concept of horizontal relationships is some thing we must invest time in understanding. So what is a vertical relationship then? Vertical relationships are hierarchical — boss / employee, parent / child, coach / player. Horizontal relationships treat everyone as equals. Adler believed that all relationships should be horizontal. We should have confidence in others and not try to manage or manipulate (or be manipulated).

Treat Life is Like a Series of Moments vs NOT

The day you understand that life is a series of moments a game with many objectives vs a singular goal, you will go far "in the moment" .Think of life as a game. When you play a game any game, you may end up somewhere different than where you started depending on circumstances, outcomes, other peoples decisions, just moving from Point A to Point B isn’t the goal in the game. Participating in the game is the goal, playing it for "fun and or learning should be the goal". Life is similar. If you focus your entire life on accomplishing a specific goal, but fall short, you’ll end up feeling meaningless. Focus on the journey, not the destination. You can’t control the past or the future, only the present, so embrace it, enjoy it, and live mindfully and aware that you did the right thing with your time.

Boring stuff that scales (that you must do)

Managing time is boring. But it scales well when you know and define roles. Some one who has done this well is a Training company led by Suleman called Time lenders. What have they done? They have developed a framework based on the Islamic Ideology. They have taught this ‗Balance-in-life Framework (BIF)‘ to thousands of people with wonderful results and over the years, BIF has evolved and refined through teaching and research. This is not a paid post:). I have not attended their trainings but about 15 years ago, via my dear friend Tausif Ahmed, I met Mr. Suleman Ahmer . Suleman had me captivated about how I thought about setting visions in every thing we do and Tausif who is a mentor to me, taught me the importance of compartmentalising roles, based on Sulemans training. It is one of the best life lessons; I use to this day to evaluate investment in time in the roles we all have. Below is an excerpt from Sulemans Model on roles and how it has allowed me to scale my relationships, my time and what I can invest, both monetarily and by investing the most precious resource I have (TIME).

From Sulemans work what I understood "Islam, like other societies throughout history, has addressed this matter and the Islamic definition of balancing one‘s life and the ideas to achieve this balance are highly elegant, sophisticated and versatile and differ with the dominant intervention paradigms originating in the West today. "

They converted these definitions and ideas into an operational framework—the BIF—to restructure our lives to create a balance. Additionally, the framework is a great tool in understanding the underlying concepts and paradigms.

What Tausif bhai took from that and shared with me is what has remained with me 15 years later, the simple concept that we all have different roles in our life; we are fathers, sons, breadwinners, husbands, wives, mothers, CEOs, bosses and members of social clubs.  Each role can only scale if we invest time to understand it. There are mandated and non-mandated roles + societies define minimum performance levels (MPLs)‘ in all possible roles. MPLs are dictated by the underlying dominant ideology of the society and form the foundation of the legal system. Due to different underlying ideologies, MPLs differ from society to society. Underlying dominant ideologies in most of the societies are a mix of many defined ideologies and unique beliefs and views

He Made me do the following worksheet (available here in the e-book that time lenders has made public, where most of this content is borrowed & referenced)

The day I understood and defined my Minimum Performance Level in each of the roles I have in life, I was able to take this super boring concept(at-least leading up-to that time I felt it was boring) and was granted the ability to scale it. I would urge you to explore the linked e-book above and invest time in this activity. Better yet, register and do the time lenders training in strategic visioning. I have been blessed to have friends and mentors like Tausif bhai, who have had a profound impact on my life and consequently the lives of others, based on their oversized ability to sit down and invest time and teach many like my self in enhancing and defining our scaling options, be it in life, business, time or roles. I urge you to do the same and pay it forward.

You heard(read) it here first ...

I had to say it. All this craziness about Pakistani Companies being allowed to sell on Amazon continues to baffle me. Whilst generally a good and positive development, what Ive come to realise is that we are a heard mentality driven society. We cant analyse for our selves, our business journalists are not classically trained in finance and economics let alone e-commerce and technology, we love to buy cream cakes and congratulate our selves on small things vs focusing on big things, the bar has been set so low that any news, positive or other wise makes us run to the familiar. From ministers to the advisors of the PM have all taken a celebratory view on this news item.

What it really means is:

1. Amazon is not coming to Pakistan ala amazon.pk just yet

2. Serious Pakistani Sellers now don't have to buy fake credentials to sell on Amazon or rely on third parties (ranging from cousins out west to exploitive business partners)

3. We have miles to go before we understand the technical items on US Import regulations, FBA Mechanics and what if any thing it will do for our basic entrepreneur who makes and sells things locally.

4. This doesn't scale without an enabling environment and massive government investment in logistics infrastructure, training, customs revitalisation and governmental level agreements to structurally make it competitive for our products to be shipped from Pakistan to be sold in USA. China did it right and continues to do it. We need to learn.

5. We will have many predatory people selling trainings and swindling Pakistani entrepreneurs around dreams to sell online on Amazon

6. We still don't have affective payment settlement mechanisms and literally no one in the commerce ministry or SBP understand or is working on it holistically. The one person who knows pretty much every thing about it, my dear friend Faisal Khan, is some one every one should follow online to understand this space. Faisal has forgotten more about payments than the collective finance and commerce ministries have learnt in their entire time at the helm of affairs. We have brilliant Pakistanis that we must leverage vs the shoddy whatsapp groups of self professed e-commerce and amazon experts.

7. The reality is that a host of former and current Amazon executives of Pakistani origin have made this possible vs trade bodies alone or their members. They are no less using it as leverage to mislead their domestic clients as most of them run e-commerce companies and services.

8. Also whilst we must celebrate amazon wins, there are domestic wins that need the governments influence, patronage and support. Till we build local capacity we will always have short term solutions

9. If done right and at scale the ability for the government to work with large exporters to setup and commercially launch FBA services will be a game changer from a FX perspective as it will enable Pakistani enterprises to take out middle men.

10. Also we need to spend at the government level about 1m$ in Ad-network training for Serious Amazon players and not be fooled by folks who sell drop ship services on amazon. Granted they make a lot of money, but for them selves and without understanding how the Amazon sales and discovery process works, no one wins. We all loose, so we need to understand the ad-tech that will allow us to scale our Amazon ambitions. The Government has a key role to play, but doesn't have players who understand this beyond the e-commerce service pushers in various committees chaired by babus and private individuals seeking a sense of legitimacy by sending each other celebratory cakes on this news.

What you should be reading

Some thing, any thing:) This week, you should make a list of what topics interest you, find a book you have been meaning to read and get to it. It would be super interesting if you can tweet your recommended reading list this week and share it with me at https://twitter.com/faizansiddiqi . This newsletter is supposed to bidirectional, meaning I am also looking to enhance my outcomes as all the other members by learning from the community. The question is? How many will actually share? What does it mean for us to be consumers only, vs contributors? Are we really selfish or just lazy? Lets see how this unfolds.

Monetise your time (by)

1. Investing in up skilling your self

2. Researching deep niches

3. Learning a new concept that is contrary to your beliefs

4. Taking a day off

5. Visiting friends

6. Learning how to cook

7. Not believing every thing you hear

8. Disconnecting from politics

9. Surrounding you self with folks smarter than your self

10. Teaching some one some thing you are good at

11. Asking intelligent questions by researching items before hand

12. Learning to compartmentalise emotions

13. Switching jobs

14. Starting a side hustle

15. Doing one thing that makes you happy

16. Removing one thing from your life that makes you un-happy

17. Understanding that you are the most valuable investment you will ever make so be prudent when you allocate your (time)

18. Doing that one thing thats on your list that you haven't had time for

19. Cutting your losses and moving on

20. Catching up on sleep

Made(Grown) in Pakistan

Mango season is here. Yet when I google "Pakistani Mangoes", I am under whelmed. From not having a directory service of mango; growers, producers, farmers, sellers, shippers to the types cultivated in Pakistan to a market place to place standardised global orders. Every thing is missing. Besides the opportunity to own this space and build the biggest exportable niche service this is a virgin markerter's dream.

Sadly even the first news article is from Gulf News. I am looking at you Dawn.com and Geo.tv and thenews.com.pk . Search results are so telling. A sample for you below.

So what is the Bloody, Big , Bold, Business (BBBB)here? Curate and build an information platform around the 250+ Pakistani mangos species. Build the worlds best UI/UX/CX experience around finding info on mangoes from authoritative sources. Own the SEO in the space. Build a platform, then build a market place, then build a Pakistani Mango Certification business, then build an export + trade channel. All this without growing a single mango. Then build a financing market place and eventually IPO and get out. Trust me if you start today in 2 years this is a 50m$ Business if done right. Do you have what it takes? You need under 5m PKR to change your fortunes and build this if you start today.

One Last thing..

“It's called entrepreneurSHIP, not entrepreneurSTAY. Don't wait. Just ship.”― Richie Norton