It takes a special kind of person to move on to their second or third talent and make it work. I was thinking about the story of a man whose first love was music, but he didn’t have the talent to make it as a concert pianist. Instead, after graduating from an elite engineering school in 1971, he joined his father at the construction firm founded by his grandfather in the city of Roubaix. 

An exchange with a New York cab driver that same year planted a seed that would grow into an empire and make him one of the richest men in the world. He asked the cabbie if he knew of France’s president, Georges Pompidou. “No,” replied the driver, “but I know Christian Dior.” . The man is Bernard Arnault, the empire he built is LVMH. He did eventually buy Christian Dior in 1984 for which the media dubbed Arnault “the wolf in the cashmere coat.” 

Outcomes

You don't lack motivation, you lack a better reason. Bernard Arnault may have come from privilege but he didn't lack reason. It is also true that every single person you meet knows something you don’t and if you prioritise your learnings and your outcomes vs your ego you can win big. That day Bernand learnt some thing new from the NYC cabbie that give him the super power to change his outcomes. Motivation and a reason. Find yours. Life only gives you what you decided you could have, same thing for all your outcomes. If you don't decide you want it, you will never have it.

When trainee chefs start off in a kitchen, they have to make a scrambled egg typically. For most of us who have some cooking skills, we know that it seems pretty easy to make but its not about knowing what to do or having the motivation to do it. If you don't know or haven't been taught or haven't taken the time to learn a better way or never had a reason to; how ever easy the task and how ever simple the outcome, you personally wouldn't have arrived at it.

This video on making a simple scrambled egg from star chef Gordon Ramsey has 44M Views. Probably for a reason. People wanted to fix a simple outcome in their life, enjoying their breakfast, making something so common place but looking for the key to getting it right? Something new doesn't have to be the pursuit of a unicorn, it can be the pursuit of a satisfying outcome.

One New Thing

When it comes to your mind what you think is what you create. Research in the past few decades makes this clearer every day. Your body and bio systems automatically align with your thoughts. Our fore brain has an incredible capacity to manifest reality based on thoughts. Italian researcher Fabrizio Benedetti did a study on Placebos, he replaced the drug Sumatriptan with a placebo in his subjects. Results showed the same areas were active on both cases. Neurobiology doesn't lie. Why is this new? Well its new because you can use it to manage your outcomes, more so condition your brain to get to the state you need to be in, mentally. For colour, Benedetti's studies examined the effectiveness of placebos in the treatment of Parkinson's disease and the effect of this treatment on neurons that control movement. He found that giving these patients a placebo led to a decrease in the rate at which these neurons fired off, about 40%, and that this enabled the patients to move more easily. Then there is the element of conditioning. When you associate a past memory with a physiological change. Like taking an aspirin when you have a headache the meds you take create a physiological response, something external changes something internal within you. This is called associative memory. Keep that thought. When we take a placebo, it happens involuntarily. So you can literally manifest the outcomes or conditioning your need. Why am I borrowing from this? Simple, you as the founder, leader, individual, mom, in the varying roles you have in your life, can use this.

Just think back to your self or some one else, let's imagine they had terrible back pain and have been on meds that haven't done much. Then the doctor suggests a new treatment that has worked wonders for others. Now, your brain is automatically expecting a cure. You are more suggestible and also welcoming to change. This is about setting the right expectation. If you really want to do some bio-mental hacking stuff, I suggest you start here by reading You are the Placebo by Joe Dispenza.

Boring stuff that scales(that you make better)

Thinking about launching a business? It may be time to explore the B2B space versus the B2C space. It's a mindset thing, for you to go build a consumer base, audience, D2C or other type of X2C engagement. You will need content, product, funnels, sales, closures, individual client management at scale etc. All this is true for b2b as well but its a very different skill set to master and a different mind set is thus required. The volume of engagement vastly differs from b2c as does the quality of time invested.

I like to think of it as the BASF thinking hat. BASF is a German multinational chemical company and the largest chemical producer in the world. The reason I love them is very simple, many years ago when I was starting off my career, their TV Ads were taking hold in the US. They came up with genius marketing, but behind that marketing was a remarkable presence that made "chemicals" a seriously boring business feel like the coolest business in the world. How? By being authentic. How? They came out and said "We don't make most of the things you use, but we make most of the things you use, better". The best boring business is, where you add value to some one else's business. So today if we step away and think about how to help others scale and grow by being the best at what they do, by adding your incremental contribution to their bottom line, so you can scale 10x, that is a winning formula.

It's a powerful idea. Better visualised here.

You heard(read) it here first

I have been asking my self, "why we haven't or why we cant yet build a Google out of Pakistan?" Lets park all the business, internet, talent, government, legal items to a side. Let's visualize for one minute that we had all that going for us, I feel we would still be a long way from building a globally competitive scalable company.

In my mind it's fairly simple.

If you build some thing based on your experience, memory, exposure or talent or with those who rely on the same or similar experiences, memories, exposures & talents you innovate within your box. Clearly there will be exceptions and I am praying that there are. But we have been robbed of one key item generationally. I will break it down further by societal attributes that hurt our imagination and took out our ability to dream.

What you should be reading & then watching

This is the only major work on Ajrak, the famous double-printed cotton cloth of Sindh, Pakistan. The author, talks about discovering in the 80s, Ilahi Buksh Gazar, Pakistan’s only surviving cultivator and maker of the natural indigo - neer - from the plant Indigofera Tinctoria. Indigo was the most fabled and valued dye dating back to the period of the Indus Valley Civilisation over 3000 years ago. Once upon a time this was exported from here to the rest of the world. Not so much any more. This is an amazingly engaging historical and cultural read that takes us to a much more beautiful time. Once you have read the book, I would urge you to watch the documentary by the author linked below.

Monetise your time (by)

Starting your life at the end of your comfort zone.

By messing up

By getting up

By doing some thing you didn't expect your self to do

Monetise your time (by)Knowing this today and always that:

People don't care about us.

They don't think about us all day.

We shouldn't think about them all day either

They don't remember our failures or our wins.

We shouldn't care if they do.

Monetise your time (by)Completely avoiding:

Thinking about where some one lives

How big their house is

or What car they drive

or Who they are married to or who they are related to

Monetise your time (by)Realising that by the time you are in ur 30s (its already too late)

These will be un healthy obsessions

They will be dinner conversations that will rob your children of dreams(in the future)

They will be un-healthy for those listening & worse for you

Monetise your time (by):

Capitalising on the experience of others, know that Failure doesn't hurt as much as we think it will.

Understanding that the turmoil is short term. The lesson is life long. Like bad scandals, only you remember them after a few weeks.

Remembering that you're the one with control of your outcomes

Knowing that any one who doesn't pull you up is dragging you down, all those are just crabs in a bucket trying to pull you back in because they are in a bad cycle with no way out.

Get out of your comfort zone & monetise your outcomes!

Made in Pakistan

Im trying to get a list going of companies, products, ideas, things that were once made in Pakistan and aren't any more, or those that have global scale potential but have remained largely local or vanishing over time. It would be great if you could add your contributions via Twitter on this weeks post and share your input. Here are some things to get the conversation started.

• Benz Mango

• Suzie Wong

• Waheed Kabab

• Tee Jays

• Cafe de khan

• 50/50 (Tv show)

• Drive in Cinema (so I hear)

One Last Thing