Have you ever noticed, that Companies perform better when they have an enemy, real or imagined?

I have a mentor that used to say if you don’t have one, you need to invent one. I guess this is a pretty contrarian but its true. After having interviewed at least a 1000 people over the last 10 years and I am convinced that having some one or some thing to compete against is a pretty good thing to have in life.

If you are in a position to recruit people you have 2 choices essentially. You can either hire mercenaries or missionaries. If you know the difference & understand your need, only you can decide the path. There is no one great answer, but when you divide people into just 2 choices you force your self to select vs analyze and waste time.

All the people and all their resumes will lie to you about what they want or aspire to get to. Most people don't know what they want, they know what they like instead. The common belief that people over index of past achievements on their resume is a myth, why you ask? Because the greater risk is them not knowing where they should be. You have to pay attention to their actions to get the truth vs worrying about how they rated their skills. I fear more when I meet some one who doesnt know where they want to be and why, vs one who architected some fictional responses to get to an end state they are clear about. People with clarity are a rare breed. Look around you, there aren't too many of those, when you cant drive in your lane you clearly cant be expected to have directionality on where you aspire to be in life or your career or both.

When confused about some ones maturity or thought process, there is a simple test. In the many interviews I've done, People naturally assume everyone shares their values. Thats just human nature.

So prove to be the enemy, engage, incite and see how the other person reacts. Religion is the easiest one, but not the best unless you are tactical your self, you can tell mature people because they've learned it’s better to just let other people be wrong or if in disagreement, not engage in an item that has no positive consequence even if you are right.

Outcomes

I read some where that "make sure you’re playing the real game, not some more complicated game you’ve made up for yourself.” This is critical in every thing we do. When we complicate stuff in our mind due not finding either a path to execution or the resources we get into circular motion that convolutes our thinking and as a consequence delays and damages our outcomes. Make sure you are playing to win.

In the world of gaming, a scrub is someone who isn’t playing to win. This sounds a little bizarre — what competitor isn’t playing to win? I’ll let Street Fighter tournament player and game designer David Sirlin explain:

"Scrub" is not a term I made up. It sounds like kind of a harsh term, but it's the one that was already in common usage in games to describe a certain type of player, and it made more sense to me to explain that rather than to coin a new term.

A scrub is not just a bad player. Everyone needs time to learn a game and get to a point where they know what they're doing. The scrub mentality is to be so shackled by self-imposed handicaps as to never have any hope of being truly good at a game. You can practice forever, but if you can't get over these common hangups, in a sense you've lost before you even started. You've lost before you even picked which game to play. You aren't playing to win (emphasis added).

A scrub would disagree with this though. They'd say they are trying very hard. The problem is they are only trying hard within a construct of fictitious rules that prevent them from ever truly competing.

If you can do one new thing today, internalize this thinking. You Will 10x your game.

One New Thing (That I have been reflecting on)

If you're perfectly qualified to do something, you've already outgrown it.

There's a certain range and number to the problems faced in nearly every job. Where you've solved it all and it becomes automatic. Once that point is reached you are no longer growing, merely cementing in place grooves of routine that are difficult to replace.

Alternately, If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting the rest of your life. To have the right outcomes you need the right mix of drive and ability to force your self to take the leap of faith.

Boring stuff that Scales

By some what popular demand we return to boring ideas this week that have the potential to scale.

A fascinating business that has scaled in India but I haven't seen much of locally, are omelette stands.

Every time some one asks me about low capital expense businesses, this is perhaps the one thing I see missing from the ecosystem of food purveyors around us. Eggs continue to be affordable, you need 2 with some bread to basically do a good job at managing hunger.

At a base price of 15 per egg, time material, labour etc all in for 60-80 Rs you could build an all star menu for under 100 PKR.

No ones stopping us at a 100, there is enough product innovation to go around. The startup capital is a flat working surface, gas cylinders, cook tops, utensils and a push cart or motorized one with a bike. A permanent location works better no less. Could even start it as a literal hole in the wall operation in areas that have mix use residential plus commercial.

Not to say we don't have our versions of the omelette kings but we are fixated on Anda Paratha and need to move past it.

If you are looking to start some thing small scale either your self, or as a venture to fund to put others into a position of gainful employment and over time grow out a network of these businesses, heres a video for you to evaluate the diversity of menus across the border (below).

Moving along to an other great business. Its around Chai.

For perspective.

Some Facts:

1)Circa 2018 Tea consumption in Pakistan=1,72,911 tonnes

2)By 2027 its supposed to hit 2,50,755 tonnes

3)Pakistanis consumed tea worth $233.632 million during the first five months (July-November) of 2020

Our desire to consume Tea is directly not inline with our ability to manage spending on FX. Its a foregone conclusion unless there is a new food revolution & the generationally inclined find an alternate. Till then, lets look at why we can make more tax rupees & create employment. All on the back of the simple chai. How you ask?

There are zero brands that follow the simple nation wide formula of

1) Clean hygienic tea store front

2) Franchisable model

3) Integrated supply chain

4) High margins but lower, end consumer out of pocket expense due to scale

Start small. Think big

1st store front

1)100-200 sq feet, in a bustling high traffic or vertically dense area

2)Clean kitchen space & limited options

3)Repeatable brand experience

4)10 streets down, store 2 in 6 months

5) Increase options ,keep building brand loyalty & trust

This is if you your self want to build this out. This is mass market and not your 5 star 400+ PKR beverage chain.

6) You repeat the model, to hit 5 stores

7) Then you work on putting your business in a box model

8) Meaning any one who has space or access to it, can be a franchise

9)Simpler than it sounds, you productise, your buying/sourcing,packaging, your 6th store is actually going to be a prep kitchen

10)This has all been done before https://billslemonade.com for inspiration

11)To see how its really done look at https://teatimegroup.com 1400+ locations pan India

They state 8 carore cups sold. At a menu I googled, say avg price is INR 22 that equals 1.76bn INR or 23M$ of Chai. I hope my math is not too off, but you get the idea around scale on just one element of this business, as its beyond tea. Menu below

Looking beyond the fact that we import most if not all tea. If each store has roughly 3 people working in it. 3*1400= 4200 direct jobs, imagine the logistics and fulfillment, store, branding ops, corporate employees etc & you have a great model. Granted it takes time to get to scale.

We already have this in the dis-organized sector, dozens of corner "quetta chai" places.Every thing has a market but; branded, disposable, faster in & out experiences with loyalty rewards will go further. Local tea brands(Vital/Tapal) that have given the likes of Lipton a run for their money.May even think about building their own franchise stores $ work on even higher margins. Others can do it too. You have to start some where, if you want to start from a 100 sq feet dream to a 1000+ empire you have do the math and get going. 0.9M PKR gets u a franchise.

Now imagine if you were selling that franchise. It adds up, you create employment, you empower many other industries at scale, with some thing so simple as Chai. This is the reverse Starbucks in terms of pricing models. But for scale it draws a leaf from their model.All we have do is to take learnings from adjacent markets and give it a shot.There is no rocket science, just perseverance, the desire to pay taxes, do above board businesses and have a desire to scale and yes hard work, it starts with one store and a dream to productize goodwill.

Most markets & industries have done this, yet as a chai consuming nation we have literally nothing that operates mass market, creates employment & focuses on solving for an honest days work, any kamyab jawan type schemes should come with viable biz models to invest into. Growing tea is perhaps an other side of the same coin. But let's look at what we can fix short to medium term by encouraging more people to get into boring businesses ideas & scaling them.

What you should be reading (reflecting upon)

My dear friend Ali Nawab shared with me the first/oldest known Organizational chart in the world some years ago.

Todays org charts are top down. But the first modern-day organizational chart wasn’t made to remind lower-level employees who they really work for. No, one of the first company-wide organizational charts was actually a 19th century invention of necessity.

Back in the mid-1800s, the Erie Railroad was a thriving but disorganized company responsible for transporting goods throughout the Northeast. The railroad company had more than 500 miles of track, making it one of the largest of its time. This was good for business, but bad for organization.

Today we deal with inconceivably large amounts of data that is made comprehensible only by modern technology. Back in the 19th century, big data meant something entirely different, but managing it was as vital then as it is today. But you dont always need sophistication to manage or organize data. What this chart tells me is that we as humans are great at small data, when we break things down into small parts, we can really exploit the opportunities of big data. But without the understanding around small data and missing out on small parts of data we can never get the big picture right. To have the best outcomes, always focus or start with small data.

Monetize your time

The best way to monetize your time is to help or solve the problems of other people. Money will find its way into the picture.

Google isn’t selling any physical products directly, but providing a gateway for people all over the planet to find answers to their searches. From there, they started serving ads to these people. Google made over $130 billion in Ad revenue in 2019.

Facebook started as a social media website to help people (especially in far places) communicate and keep in touch. Now, Facebook is making so much from Ad revenue and helping businesses find customers.

The more value you offer to people, the more opportunities you have to monetize your time.

Most people monetize their time by working in a job. But this is a very limited way of earning money - whatever you earn per hour. When you stop working or clock-out, you stop getting paid. If you don’t turn up, you don’t get paid. Build a perpetual motion machine but for making money:)

It’s better to use some kind of automation or leverage to monetize your time. Its super hard, but it can only happen when you start being deliberate about the outcomes you want in life.

It's not easy, you have find a model and build towards it that allows you to trading your time for money. Or one that makes others pay you in parallel.

Made in Pakistan

High quality steel knives, that are under rated. A huge exportable commodity that can do extremely well in the Western world.

High carbon steel, Viking knife with boar head hilt [Made in Pakistan] it’s a beauty! Another addition into my collection :p : knives

Sharp and pointy stuff!.

Bought for 60 euros to an artisanal leather reseller's in Yvoire, France, they are made in Pakistan out of abandoned railways (the actual metal of the rail itself) (the leather case was made by the French guy) : knives

Sharp and pointy stuff!.

The global knife market is estimated to reach US$ 2,848.9 Million by 2027 from US$ 1,916.0 Million in 2018, and is projected to exhibit a CAGR of 4.5% over the forecast period (2019–2027). Some food for thought for us to get on this export band wagon.

One Last thing

The real baby steps (unbalanced, wholehearted, enthusiastic lurches into the unknown) are the ones to take. What a fantastic take on what we think some thing means vs what it could actually mean.