Knowing when to stop selling is as valuable a skill as selling it self. We are always selling in what we do, but it's takes time, mastery and exposure to understand when one should contain their excitement & when it may be more detrimental than not. I say this because I recently met a founder. Exceptional, bright, real revenues, all the right mix. But he would not stop showing his wares. I felt like the opposite of what Ron Popeil (must read the history on the link) used to do on infomercials. He'd tell you a narrative, he knew his target audience, more so he knew his product, he knew his price, he knew the levers of discounting and he'd launch into a well scripted narrative. This founder was focusing on a market 100x smaller than the actual potential and missing the big picture, he over indexed on showing all the goods in the hopper vs being mission centric, lock the deal, get a commitment and pose solutions for investment. "Being open to every thing" is not a fun thing either. This is not tinder. Inventors need help, when inventors go out to sell, most times, not always, they need a counter part to their genius on the sales side. As they are un able to read a room as well as they can read a manual. Inventors need to be paired with CEOs, good inventors who are bad ceos relinquish the task and focus on the "building part" whilst some one else focuses on the "growing/scaling part". If this is you, if you are a founder/ceo/innovator/inventor product geek, either learn to sell or get out of the way and let a co-founder or ally do it. You deserve to win.

Outcomes

Let's talk about sampling instead. Jealousy is easy but it's not good, even envy, we all go through it, till we don't. It can brutally ruin your life's outcomes if you cant see past it or get consumed with it. Just like you order a sampler platter at a restaurant, treat jealousy and all its cousins as such. How? you ask.

If you are a founder, builder, creator, employee, friend, what ever and in your peer group some one is doing better and showing you a better phone, a better house, a better car, a better vacation picture or a better life style.

Step back. Pause. Re calibrate.

All the bounties they have, that you are either working towards or don't have but have access to either see touch or feel, do you ?:

a) try them on for size to see how/what you may like/need when you are at that point in life?

b) be bitter and ruin your actual outcomes in getting there?

Enter: Sampler platter, sample what the world has to offer, sample what your friends, others who are making you envious are doing and re direct the focus to thinking, ok, do I really want this, or need it. If the answer is yes, work towards, it, every time you are envious, pick some thing from some ones good fortune, add it to your plater and work towards it. If they are a good friend, go try it. Sample other peoples good fortune when ever you can to make up your own mind if you actually ever want it or need it.

The only way to fix your outcomes is to fix your thinking, that can happen by small adjustments in the way you think. Condition your self with positive frameworks and use even the negative things to drive positive outcomes.

One new thing. (History)

I am blown away every time I go down the rabbit hole of a specific topic. I was curious, when did muslims first get to Canada? I have no clue where and why my mind wandered there, so from census data(yup searchable online), to an article that had this info:

Many people believe the first Muslims came to Canada in the 1950s, but this is not true.

The community's real history in this country actually begins 150 years ago, said Hassam Munir, an Islamic history researcher and founder of iHistory.

Where I found this and many other exciting pieces to read.

"They were a young couple, James and Agnes Love, who had emigrated from Scotland in 1851 to become the first recorded Muslims in Canada. This is interesting because it is commonly believed that the first known Muslim in Scotland was Wazir Bēg, a medical student from India who studied at the University of Edinburgh in 1858 and 1859. But this doesn’t necessarily discredit the faith of the young Muslims who set out for Canada several years earlier, because Islam was not unknown in the United Kingdom. Whatever the case may be, James and Agnes arrived in southern Ontario in 1851 and settled there. Three years later, Agnes gave birth to a child who was named after his father―the first known Canadian-born Muslim. The couple would go on to have seven more children, including the youngest, Alexander, who was born in 1868, a year after Canada was established."

Why is this relevant or interesting to me? Because I cant stop thinking of the generational traditions and success of the families. How did the future outcomes get impacted, where are the families now, did they retain faith, was faith any part of their success or identity. What regions did they migrate from? Does that even matter.

Then within the same content portal I discovered an other article about Ali Abouchadi, the trailblazing Canadian Muslim.

The Klondike Gold Rush had died out by 1899, but news travelled slowly. In faraway Lebanon in 1905, Hussein Abouchadi was travelling from his native village of Lālā in the historic Biqā‘a Valley to Beirut, 30 miles away, where he intended to board a ship to a distant country called Canada. He and his friend Sam Jamha had heard that there had been a gold rush there, and they hoped to take part in it. Accompanying him to Beirut was his 13-year-old nephew, Ali Ahmed Abouchadi. It is said that Ali had been herding his family’s sheep earlier on the day that Hussein set out and that he only tagged along only because he wanted to see Beirut.

From wanting to seeing Beruit to ending up in Canada and leading a remarkable life. Full story here.

Boring stuff that Scales

Good teams. How? A team at school in the play ground, a professional cricket team or a startup team. It's all about people being aligned, having fun, unlocking value, scaling and growing together. Feeding off each others energy is a real thing. Work dulls that outcome, poor managers destroy that feeling.

People, businesses, founders inevitably over index on team members vs the whole team. Treat the team like a unit. Decide what goes in and out of the unit.

Much like unit economics, teams when treated as units vs pieces of artefact, help you scale faster. Build teams to scale any thing and every thing, know when to push, when to pacify, when to encourage, when to manage, when to celebrate when to grow.

Teams= people, get good at understanding people, reading peoples emotions, understanding their drive, motivations, ambitions, needs , skills and also short comings.

I think of teams as a Tetris stack. If the skills, how ever complementary, do not align, they will stack up, rack up and pile on, ending what ever chance of growth or success you may have had.

You always play Tetris until you lose; you never beat Tetris, it always beats you. Here is an incredible article on how Tetris helps you enhance your cognitive abilities. When I read it, my cross over frame work was to think about it in the context of teams and how great teams make stuff scale and how at its core its a boring process, but done fast enough, often enough and with deliberation its a super power.

What you should be Reading

A fun weekend read(No maybe a few dozen weekends). Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded

Best known as Warren Buffett’s long-time and media-shy investment partner, and as the progenitor of pithy wisdom at Berkshire Hathaway’s AGMs, “Poor Charlie’s Almanack - is an entertaining and interesting read.

It has some interesting themes, that popped out.

• Being honest

• Being patient

• Being reliable

• Not fooling your self

• Don't be enslaved to one discipline , use multiple models

One thing to keep in mind, As mentioned in the first sentence of Acknowledgement by the editors, "this book is a survey of Charles T. Munger," this is not a book actually all written by Charles Munger.

It's a clean break from deep over analytical content. It's entertaining and insightful, a must read. All killer, very few filler ideas so do invest the time in reading this.

Monetise your time

By sleeping. Resting. Working all the time is over rated. We all need a break. So read this section and review the image, understand why it's important, because if you aren't around, you aren't going to monetise any thing. Also note the effect of sleeping vs gdp.

Before the 1950s, most people believed sleep was a passive activity during which the body and brain were dormant. “But it turns out that sleep is a period during which the brain is engaged in a number of activities necessary to life—which are closely linked to quality of life,”.

Read an amazing article "Which countries get the most sleep – and how much do we really need? It makes you think what it took for countries to get to a level where sleeps impact on GDP is profound and where peoples lives are so stretched that lack of sleeps impact is so profound. Two sides of the same coin.

Made(Found) in: Pakistan

Antiques. Some one sent me a BBC clip about a gentleman in Quetta with a personal museum of sorts. Clearly it didn't end there. I found a second person whilst researching the first one as well but in a different category altogether, also in Quetta, thats two guys with personal collections, diverse as they come.

Subject one. Mr. Gul Kakkar

Gul Kakar, a resident of Quetta has a unique passion for collecting antiques especially watches/clocks plus a little bit of everything else. This is not a museum, but his own house!

There is a great video by the BBC, that just refuses to embed so you can watch it here instead and see the vastness of the collection and the passion of the collector and his outlook in life and his status as a curator.

Enter Subject Two: Javed Bangulzai

In the basement of his home in southwestern Pakistan, one man’s beloved ‘museum’ is an ode to the brave legacy of Baluchistan’s fabled wars.

Located in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, a vast collection of swords, rifles, shields and weapons used by Baluch tribes against British colonisers and before, is on display in a 35-ft basement room.

Passion knows no boundary, these two stories made me wonder how many other undiscovered and not completely preserved national treasures remain.

One Last thing

Every company will at some point be a technology company.

Of Burgers and AI. Say what? Really McDonalds went from selling burgers to a tech division to IBM. This is why, it is always good to have an open mind and a desire to work to changing your outcomes and exploring new or supplemental areas that may seem absurd at first. Don't judge anything till you actually try doing it once your self.

Joint Statement from McDonald's and IBM

Today, IBM, a leader in AI for business and AI-powered customer care, entered into an agreement with McDonald’s, the world’s largest restaurant company, to further accelerate the development and deployment of its Automated Order Taking (AOT) technology. Under the agreement, IBM will acquire McD Tech Labs, which was created to advance employee and customer facing innovations following McDonald’s 2019 acquisition of Apprente. Upon closing, the McD Tech Labs team will become part of the IBM Cloud & Cognitive Software division.