FASTer Issue #5

April 09, 2021

“Feedback is the breakfast of champions.”– Ken Blanchard . Some valuable feedback from friends, readers, critics is to "trim" the news letter. So this weeks edition is an attempt at incorporating that feedback.

Outcomes

Saying "No", gracefully, is a superpower. Saying "No" fast(er) is a bigger superpower. As you put yourself out there means you'll eventually receive more asks than you can say yes to. So learnt to say no so you control the outcomes. The key is to say "No" while being helpful and not being a jerk?

Letting people know its not personal. If you are some one people always want to reach out to, put out a small non-douchy guide to tell them what makes you say yes. It makes this much easier.

Stick to your own goals vs scoring own goals. Meaning be consistent, make sure your goals are being hit. If somethings not aligned to your goals its easy to say No. Consistency also helps "no" not be personal. People know about your laser focus and know its hard to distract you to pick your brains for instance. But if they must and you must, then reduce the economic cost to your self.

Instead of devoting the 90-minutes (including travel time), you can suggest a quick phone call. Calls cancel a lot of awkwardness and can be made brief, if it doesn't involve getting up and leaving. Learn to leave on demand.

My top learning, I get asked to be on "advisory boards & new co boards" all the time. I am flattered and it's easy to get ahead of your self. Most of these boards aren't for me, I suck at things I am not passionate about. Just lending or rubber stamping my name isn't worth the board fees. This year Ive said no to 5 Paid advisory/director roles. The key to winning is making sure they know it's not personal. I wanted to help so asked if I could help refer a better candidate than myself & I did.

Whilst life is fun with small data, I love scale. 1:1 Mentoring/advice doesn't scale so where possible I've moved it to a group activity and have gotten extremely selective. It was fun 1:1 but eventually got too demanding on my time. I learnt to say No a while back. But I do grant my self some "interesting yes's even when its not aligned with my goals".

Make it tough, when its easy for people to message you any where, set boundaries, like say only respond in DMs or Email. Unless some ones really serious they will walk and not make the extra effort to write a thoughtful email or message. Do your self a favour and watch this video.

From the book "Anything You Want" - by Derek Sivers

One New Thing

Pakistan produced its first vehicle in 1953 at the National Motors plant in Karachi, according to the Ministry of Industries & Production. The plant was opened in conjunction with General Motors who arranged the facilities for the production of Vauxhall cars and Bedford trucks. Subsequently, buses, light trucks, and cars would be assembled at the same plant. In the same year, Ford trucks partnered with Ali Automobiles where they introduced Ford Anglia, Ford pickups and the Ford Kombi.

Additional info here &

The story of the First Pakistani built and registered car here 

Boring stuff that scales

We are going through a closed economy problem, where existing incumbents continue to sit on capital & new entrants have issues of scale, growth capital, market access & reach. Especially in traditional businesses, this where a new kind of growth professional can help build bigger moats.

Its a mindset thing. A 'Monopoly Capitalizer'.This can be a superpower to build moats in the interest of self preservation of domestic goods, services, companies, & people, to become the be all end all of most industries.But instead of dominating new verticals using technology

The incumbents keep on resting on their laurels. They try to keep out competition using policy, regulation, dirty tricks. They can instead use their scale, diversity + monopolistic optionality to further entrench them selves in adjacent sectors of the economy by coopting startups.

They have to move away from a winner takes all mindset, to a shared winning mindset in new verticals & hence increasing their over all pie or create a new pie & share it. We continue to focus on the same land grab, there is way more potential in expanding beyond the traditional. For example, we had Kolson foods.The company was founded in 1946 and was one of the first pasta makers in Pakistan. Yet to the best of my knowledge no one makes fettuccine pasta locally, yet we see over 2 dozen imported varieties.This is the moat to build as a monopoly capitalizer.

My two boring product ideas that the food guys can copy and scale & even export are:

1) @Bohanalife popped water lily seeds just copy it pack it and ship it (healthy snacks are all the rage)

2) Kimchi, for all the guys in the Achaar(pickle) space and export it.

You heard(saw) it here first ...

The picture shows how the monument, when seen from above, looks like a flower nestled on a star embraced by two crescents, a white and green one each.

The monument's brilliant architect was Nasreddin Murat-Khan — a Russian migrant who had made Pakistan his home. He had wanted to create a "memorial that would symbolise the force which shaped Pakistan", as per a letter he wrote on the letterhead of his architecture firm, 'Illeri H N Murat Khan and Associates', which has been archived by Google. What makes me sad, is that in the same archive for a man that had forgone his own fees, he had to write a letter to be acknowledged by the government for his contribution. The more things change the more they remain the same. If you want to more click the link and go on a historic magic carpet ride to understand the essence of the monument and the man behind it.

*Nasreddin Murat-Khan* Born in Dagestan (then part of the Russian Empire) in 1904, Nasreddin Murat-Khan made Pakistan his final home in 1950.

What you should be reading(exploring) & why

So this week we move away from books and look at some interesting tools instead

1) Numbeo (the worlds biggest cost of living data incase you are thinking of a move some where or exploring possibilities)

2) ThisToThat (Find out what glues to what) possibly replicate for local issues or just bring out the hobbyist in you and fix that one thing that defies logic.

3) Radio.Garden (Listen to global radio stations by moving around on a map)

Monetise your time

Start learning about and reading up on digital transformation. We are past the hype cycle, most changes are here to stay. The better informed you are the fast(er) you will be able to contribute to it within your organisation, ecosystem, community, startup, business etc, without being left out or feeling like you do not have the requisite skills. Below are my the top 3 threads on the subject on twitter for you to get perspective and get practical advice.

businesses ahead of the curve”

Made in Pakistan

So once up on a time we had a trade marked product called "Doodh Patti" out of a sachet, add hot water and you you had an amazing ready to go, chai. It some how vanished. I was a fan and even wrote a detailed blog piece on "One Idea Can Change Your Life & other things that (typically) don’t work in Pakistan." Basically highlighting the importance of building Local brands and how we dont really focus on doing so. So why now? Why bring this up. I am told that Benlays the brand behind the product (post some internal family re-org, meaning some one internally picking up this orphan product is having a go at it again". I was even forwarded the new ads, see below and told its available locally but mostly focused on export biz. I love a good come back story always. Heres to hoping this scales.

One Last thing- that doesn't add up

Iran Pakistan trade. Iran has been sanctioned since as far back as I remember. Granted they have petroleum and we don't. But what is throwing me off is that sanctioned state has more to offer than us? A free country since 1947 has a little under 5m$ worth of exports to show for, whilst importing 500m$ worth of goods and services from them. All this whilst the PM had to step in and articulate the border smuggling of fuel must stop. The article linked says that we loose about 150bn PKR to this smuggling alone, so thats about 1bn$ in addition to the 500$M worth of products we import. An other interesting article here on whether this is smuggling or trading? Finally Irans official stance, they seem to think/want and articulate that more trade /exports from Iran should happen into Pakistan. So I guess the problem is bi-directional.