Low Nutrition content vs High Nutrition content. One would think with the vastness of the internet and content creators, humans would have by now evolved to a nutrient-dense information diet. Yet here we are. The internet and online content pose a very unique problem, the more content there is out there the less depth it covers. Some of the most engaging content, is polarising, divisive , shallow or entry level. More competition should have brought out better content, but what seems to have transpired in the race for eyeballs & ad-dollars; we are producing more gossip columnists vs journalists. Like junk food, with its big signs and attractive logos, junk-content is also the easiest to find, much like in-expensive fast food, and the low barrier to discovery, junk content operates on the same premise. Mass produced with low residual value. As we spend time on our healthcare and diets we must also teach & train our selves to not fall for the trappings of a low nutrient content diet. This reminds of me of the Gresham's law, observation in economics that “bad money drives out good.”

Outcomes

I read some thing fascinating over the last week. Change your outcome by changing your responses to life's events. Take 100% responsibility of your life! Short. Sweet. Articulate. Yet we miss this most of the time. Some daily activities where you can change your response(s) to see a difference.

• You don't feel the urge to look the part? Know this, there is no such thing as being overdressed. There is only making other people feel under-dressed. If you cant even look the part, surely you cant play the part either.

• You cant make things move by wishing, or willing. So stop checking a clock or your stock portfolio or your social media statuses. Nothing you can do can make them move. Instead use that idle time to invest in your self to enhance other outcomes that you do have control over.

• We all have trouble getting started, a wonderful way to get past that trouble is to look at small data. Meaning, you go ahead and make micro commitments. The five minute rule. Start doing some thing for five minutes, when you get started you can extend in incremental blocks of 3 or 5 more minutes and over time you can be at a 30+- min interval. But you have to start small.

• Nothing is as easy as it sounds. Especially passion projects. Don’t ever invest in a startup, restaurant or your or some ones shared passion project(s), for reasons other than passion. If you cant differentiate between business sense and matters of the heart, you are better off working for some one vs thinking other wise. If you really want to launch that restaurant. FFing do it. Don't call it your passion project. Decide. Is it merely a passion or does it make great business sense?

• Plan exits. Know the difference between plan B and an Exit. An exit is a lifeline that you need to have in place to manage outcomes, a plan B is to get to different outcomes. Vastly different, almost confused daily.

One New Thing

We have all heard of Libraries. There are books, then there are audiobooks, but now the concept of borrowing a human being to talk about a challenging topic is gaining pace. It's called the human library.

The Human Library is, in the true sense of the word, a library of people. Against the backdrop of a rise in curiosity and the thirst for authenticity, the idea of learning and being transported by a person telling their story rather than reading it from a book, is growing in popularity.

The original concept was created in Copenhagen in 2000 by Ronni Abergel and his brother Dany, along with colleagues Asma Mouna and Christoffer Erichsen.

The projects website explains “Every human book from our bookshelf, represent a group in our society that is often subjected to prejudice, stigmatisation or discrimination because of their lifestyle, diagnosis, belief, disability, social status, ethnic origin, etc”.

The human “books” in these cases are volunteers. Those with a story to tell. And the way they are dispersed is tailored to each individual’s own biases and prejudices. The premise "It’s easy to hate a group of people, but it’s harder to hate an individual", this is about "Un Judging People". A great concept that can truly be replicated in our parts. Any takers?

Boring stuff(concepts) that scale

Some thing, any thing, can only look obvious after it's done. We need to teach our self to "get things done". You can only scale what is boring enough to do in the first place, or perhaps not. But till it's done, only then does it become obvious. Or obvious enough to scale. Learning from other peoples responses, experiences is a good conversation starter, but the reality of life is such that till you do it your self, it wont be obvious to you. Relying solely on shared/borrowed experience does not teach you the discipline to do. Only doing, incrementally teaches you to do more.

Look at scale the following way:

Once you are ready to scale, you add people with low tolerance for risk, but high tolerance for process. But to add these people you need to know how some thing is done, or what its basic outcomes are, so that you can define it well enough for the people that will eventually help you scale. You may have high tolerance for risk but till you execute some thing, you cant de-risk it enough with process to make it work for others, so they can help you repeat it at scale.

Adding process to any thing is natural, but taking risk is not. Doing things is akin to taking risks. You don't know it today, because you don't "do" a lot of things your self, you are reliant on others to tell you what to do. Or you are waiting, wishing for things to get done. When you go down that path, it's best that you know today from me, that it's not the best path.

Process people tump risk people. It's a hard fact. We are wired that way. For you to be able to effectively scale any thing, Its a 3 step process

1. Do it your self

2. Push/encourage others to do it

3. Teach people the power of taking calculated risks, by referring them to point 1

You heard(read) it here first ..

1. Some people just want to be told what to do & they'll do it.

2. Some people don't like to be told so you give them ownership.

People are weird. If you are in the second category, do not let some one else define what to give you ownership of. Corporate careers have built empires on the backs of honest people who feel like taking on "ownership" but don't realise that all this ownership with out "profit sharing" shouldn't be their life's work. Sadly we have been conditioned to believe this and be slaves to our desires of pay checks till we are 40 yrs in to our working life and edging on retirement. If you are in the first category stick to your day job.

Still, If you are in the first category, you can enhance your outcomes if you follow the following principles.

Treat your career like a game even if you like being told what to do. All games have outcomes based on actions and inputs. Don't play like a fool.

To win, you have to emotionally dis-engage and figure out which sections within the game are worth playing.

If you cant see as far out as understanding and assessing what prizes lay ahead, you will play the game(s) with serious struggles, competition, drama and politics to arrive at a shitty prize. I am only trying to help.

So before you struggle to get ahead(and think that you are doing as you are told but in the end it still is not the best experience) evaluate the prize and calibrate your careers effort based on that, so you can decide which games to play and when.

If you are in the second category, you are in a far worse position. Only at the starting point and only if you cant make ownership work for yourself. I say this because you do have a super power only if you use it to your benefit. You, also have to assess what games are worth playing. Because you aren't being told, explicitly. But implicitly there are organisational boundaries drawn around you that give you the false sense of ownership & security to believe that you are in charge. Organisations are amazing at giving people this false sense of security.

Think about what your goal(s) are. Is your goal to make money and so you can quit trading your time for money as soon as possible? Then you only need to take ownership to a point, where you have the cut over planned(Exit). Meaning you take ownership only to speed up the $ amount needed for a clean break. If its not money or being independent then you have to ask your self what the goal is? Is it value creation? is it making peoples lives better? is it scale? is it societal change? is it some thing else that you as an individual cant bring to the table and need an organisational sponsor to deliver on?

Then you really aren't in category 2, you are a category 1 who is being delusional. Be a realist. Figure out your goals. Stop crying and take stock of defining what you want to do and what you are willing to trade to get there.

My fav example is: THE END.

Imagine what winning feels/looks like.

Is it a big office 80 hour working week and comfortable pay?

Evaluate your boss, and their boss and up the value chain and ask your self the following:

Do they enjoy their lives?

What ever the answer. That is where you will be when you win sir/madam, they got told what to do and won. If thats the prize you want by all means go for it.

Free advice. If you are almost there in your golden handcuff dream but feel the view at the top is really shitty and you didn't know any better when at 18-19-20 some one sold you the view that life-time employment and being a big boss in a big owners company/large corporate, is all ; that matters. It's tough to course correct now. But do it today vs when you are 60. We all have chances, depends if we are willing to do, or take them. If every one around you is super smart but un-happy, be the one that changes their outcome to being smart and happy. Especially if you are just joining and organisation or just got started. Poll for the end state and re-calibrate.

What you should be (Watching)...

Candyman - Trailer — www.youtube.com

I thought you may want a wild business story? How? Go watch “Candy Man” on Amazon Prime. It’s the story about David Kline who invented Jelly Belly’s. This is the best story you would have heard at least this year, it's that good.

It's time to spill the beans. Candyman is the amazing story of the candy inventor from LA who in 1976 had a billion-dollar brainwave and invented the Jelly Belly bean, the small, colourful beans that came in many bizarrely realistic flavours and were a radical, pioneering new sugary product that took the world by storm.

This is a tale about David Klein, the Willy Wonka of the Jelly Belly bean, created and was then exiled from his own candy empire.

Monetise your time (by being able to pivot)

Nothing should be set in stone. You should be ready, able, willing to pivot to monetise your time. If you aren't then you alone are to blame for your outcomes.

Anthony T. Rossi was born in Sicily, Italy on September 13, 1900.

Rossi completed high school, and with $30 in his pocket, immigrated to the United States at the age of 21, in hopes of raising funds for an African film project.

After arriving in New York City and sensing opportunity all around him, Rossi quickly abandoned the film idea and began working odd jobs to make ends meet. He worked as a machinists’ assistant, drove a taxi, and even ran the country’s first self-serve grocery store, in Long Island.

Who is Rossi and why does abandoning an idea lead to monetisation?

Lets dive into it:

In search of a new opportunity and warmer weather, Rossi went south in 1940. Did 50 acres of tomato farming. Didnt work out.

Opened a restaurant, then opened an other. However, success was short-lived when gasoline rationing from World War II crushed the Florida tourism industry and forced Rossi to shut down the restaurants. It was time to search for a new opportunity. (RE PIVOT)

This led to fruit boxes to the largest department stores in NYC which led to the purchasing of small packing company. Strategic move leading to higher margins, farm to table, buying citrus from the farmers.

Nationwide expansion. There was a problem. Only the largest and best fruit would be selected for sale. The smaller and defective fruit was going to waste.

Idea time?

Rossi began to squeeze this less desirable fruit into juice. This juice was then put on speciality refrigerated trucks and shipped to the Northeast.

A new industry was born. Because this man was not sold on any thing he kept on innovating, trying, moving & pivoting as far away from his original idea as possible.

In 1949, Rossi began using an evaporator to remove the water from the juice. This allowed the company to take advantage of the growing demand for frozen orange juice concentrate, which was being used to mass produce juice.

Around this same time, Rossi registered the trademark “Tropicana”.

The real breakthrough?

While the market for frozen orange juice concentrate was becoming saturated, Rossi identified the need to innovate and differentiate.

It was with this thought that Rossi invented the flash pasteurisation process, which extended the juice’s life to months, from days, while still keeping the natural and fresh taste.

Paired with a thoughtfully-designed waxed paper carton package, in various sizes, Rossi and Tropicana single-handedly created the mass market for fresh, not-from-concentrate juice in the United States.

This is the power of a pivot based mind set. This is how the most successful ones have monetised it. Don't be married to an idea just because it came from you. Park the ego, so you can drive the trucks full of orange juice and create a new segment and own it.

You want proof that pivoting can lead to monetisation? Still?

In 1957, they shipped 1.5 million gallons of juice each week to New York.

In 1969, they went public and had revenue of $68.4 million.

In 1973, revenue was at $121.2 million.

In 1978, Tropicana was sold to Beatrice Company for $490 million in cash and stock.

The company was eventually taken private and sold off through a leveraged buyout of $6.2 billion in 1988. Seagrams, and now Pepsi, have owned the Tropicana brand.

The chilled juice sector in the U.S. is valued at more than $2.63 billion, of which Tropicana commands a 44% market share.

Be like Rossi. Learn to Pivot.

Made in Pakistan(& exported all over)

I did a simple test. I went online to look for free data around HS codes for what had the most export growth in any category to a few countries from Pakistan. Lo and behold I find a product that has 900% and 2000% growth in Canada. So I wondered... Did we miss a market earlier? What changed? We need to work on data, besides just blindly looking at areas to export and looking at niches. Most developed countries allow you to even search who the importer is, by harmonisation code.(Search and It Shall come). This is a battle ground for people to build products and find new niches in new and existing market. All the info is available. Learn to look.

Report - Trade Data Online - Import, Export and Investment - Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada — www.ic.gc.ca

One Last thing

For your outcomes to get better, work on the input. It takes a moment to do the right thing. Lead a life of "great moments" vs a life "regretting most moments."

*Note: All this content, all content is probably from all over. Just google if you want more info, I try my best to save snippets and reference back but if I don't its not intentional. The idea is to share, consolidate for learnings sake.