Speaker : Simon Sinek

We make assumptions based on incomplete information and our perception of the truth. Our behavior is governed by assumptions. Do we know why is a customer our customer and how to keep the ones that are loyal?

There are two ways to affect human behavior :

• to manipulate [ drop prices, promotions, fear, peer-pressure, aspirational message, pseudo-innovation - innovation is not a shiny new feature, innovation is game-changing - it changes industries, nations. ]
• to inspire

There were two Colgate toothpastes in the 1970s. There are 34 Colgate toothpastes now. And we’re not even talking about the other brands. There is too much choice and companies are having trouble differentiating their products, even though they are using manipulation in their marketing. Manipulation does not breed loyalty, it becomes expensive, stressful to both seller and buyer.

Talking about inspiration : Golden circle

• Why [ not to make money - that's a result - but what is the purpose, cause, belief, why does your company exist? Why should anyone care? Why do you care? ]
• How [ some know how they do it - companies know USP ]
• What [ what they do, what it is that you do ]

As an example : Apple : everything we do we believe in challenging the status quo, we believe in thinking differently [ why ] no trickery, no manipulation, no celebrity endorsements.

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. They don’t buy it for you, they buy it for themselves.

What you do simply serves the tangible proof of what you believe and why you’re doing it.

This isn’t some theory pulled out of thin air – it is cross-cultural as long as your customers are people and this is also grounded in the tenets of biology – the brain’s neo-cortex and limbic systems.

Why does it, sometimes, just feels right no matter what the facts and figures say – it is because of trust. And sometimes, no matter how rosy the facts and figures, it just does not feel right. This is where you’re functioning from the part of your brain that has no language powers – you just know it. It is your gut – [ but gut decisions are not scalable ] – why do you love your husband / wife – impossible question sometimes answered with “He / she completes me.”, which doesn’t even mean anything logically.

Feelings drive our behavior.

Repeat business is different from loyalty. Repeat business is, “I will come back to you and buy from you again and again and again.” Loyalty is, “I will stand in line for six hours and buy your more expensive product.”

If you don’t know why you do what you do, then how will your customers? This is followed by the discipline of ‘how’ – values, guiding priciples – followed by ‘what’ you do – results.

How to instill authenticity : this means that the things you say and the things you do, you actually believe.

We are social animals, ability to form cultures communities – culture is a common sets of values and beliefs – to ensure our own survival – when you surround yourself with people with similar beliefs, trust emerges.

Differentiation does not happen in ‘what’ – it happens in ‘why’ and ‘how’ you do it – you can’t copy and expect it to work – best practices are a joke.

Price, quality, service, features – these are adjectives for commodities – if these are the only points available for comparison / differentiation, then there’s no ‘why’. What the product does serves the tangible proof with which customers can rationalize why they need it.

Law of diffusion of innovations. Read more here and here.

I have a dream vs. I have a plan. The latter is uninspiring. Yes, you need a plan but you don’t START with the plan – give instructions after inspiring.

Being rich and famous are ‘results’ – if you don’t care why you’re doing it, you’re screwed.

For passion to survive, it needs structure and for structure to flower, it needs the growth of passion.

Successful businesses – entrepreneurships are always two people. Partnerships. JFK RFK. Steve Jobs and Wozniak, etc.

We’re always looking for advice – how and what to do – asking friends – don’t take all the advice – the ‘why’ will be confused.

Stop talking about what you do and talk more about the why you do it. Once you’ve created that value-connect and trust, then talk about the how you do it and then finally what it is that you do.

Maybe I need to start listing out things I’ve accomplished each day and then I won’t feel that I’m wasting my time. Although, there might be a tendency to count things that don’t quite matter – but they’re still chores that need doing. Worth giving it a shot.

Stuff I did today

• Field-tested the spy lensand wrote a review / blog post about it on the studioaside blog.
• Added the Facebook fan box to the sidebar on the WordPress based studioaside blog
• Edited the WordPress code on Bharat’s gaming blog Morpheus.in to align content on all pages, sidebars, search results, taking the organization of the blog to the next level.
• Prepared EPS, PDF, PSD, JPG, PNG and black and white as well as Pantone, CMYK, RGB logo files and emailed them to a client.
• Consulted another logo design client to help them make the right choice on the logo – which they did. Created & emailed the invoice to them as well
• Replied to a prospective client email for a logo design engagement enquiry
• Dug out my insurance paper work and ‘submitted’ to Dad for review. Also managed to locate some previously-missing fixed deposit receipts & in the process put in order some bills and statements that were floating around.
• Finally blogged about my Malazan story on this blog
• Because of the above, re-wrote some elements on the WordPress CSS for this blog
• Watched Bones, Season 05, Episode 08

Can’t think of much else.

It was December 2006 and I was visiting my parents – flew in from Bombay to New Delhi for more-than-a-month long vacation. The long vacation was primarily to clear my head and take a decision on whether the marriage was working or not and also to wind down and let my parents pamper me some.

My introduction to The Malazan Book of The Fallen

A childhood friend [ @shadeheart ] was also on a vacation from his Merchant Navy job and we decided to catch up for a bit. It had been ages since we’d had a chance to hang out and the plan was that Bharat would come and pick me up from home and we would drive down to Gurgaon to hang out at one of the many malls. We decided on The Metropolitan Mall – I’m not sure why or even ‘who’ decided that.

Bharat and I were sitting on one of the benches near the elevators and the Om Book Shop was visible from the corner of my eye. If memory serves, Bharat suddenly decided to show me some of the stuff he was reading – he warned me it might not go down well – it was epic fantasy and I’d never read any – but I do love books. Bharat thought it would be a good idea if I started with something light like David Gemmell but I decided to take the plunge and not only did he buy me a copy of one of Gemmell’s books, we also found Steven Erikson’s Gardens of The Moon [ or maybe Bharat loaned me his copy - which is highly unlikely because he doesn't like lending hos books - neither do I for that matter. ] My memory sucks – I follows the rule that the secret to a happy life is a short memory.

Apparently, that was the point where Bharat and I realized that we had a lot more in common than we had originally believed. And we also did not know anyone else who so much as ‘knew’ about The Malazan Book of The Fallen.

Life goes back to normal, the book takes over.

We went our separate ways. Bharat sailing and me back to Bombay after a disastrous New Year ‘celebration’ in Goa. Disastrous for me that is. Once back in Bombay, I decided to get a divorce and moved out to a new place. Gardens of The Moon turned out to be a tough read – I skimmed many pages without a thorough read but one thing was certain – I was definitely going to be reading more from The Malazan Book of The Fallen. In Bombay, I looked high and low for copies of the other books from the series and they were exceptionally tough to locate – even book stores like Strand and Sterling, ancient, well-known and exceptionally well-stocked, did not have copies of ANY of Erikson’s books.

Bharat and I were exchanging emails for a while and discussions invariably led to Erikson’s book. It was as if I’d found a new way of expressing myself – referring to events in the book, characters, dialogs, slang – it was like a whole new world. [ It still is. ] One of my closest girl friends was flying to the US and I asked her if she would please get me as many of the books as she could – I wanted all after Gardens Of The Moon and I was aware that many had been published in the States and elsewhere.

Priyanka managed to get me three of the books and I was over the moon. Since I was dying to read them, I skimmed till I hit Memories Of Ice. There is NO WAY you can skim that book. Absolutely no way.

Crazy lady at the book store

I still wanted the others and after another couple of months of running around from one book store to the other, I was The Infinity Mall’s Landmark bookstore – it was about to close for the night but I managed to get in. As always, I walked over to the “Fiction/Fantasy” aisle and screamed when I saw that they had all SIX Erikson books! The people who work there were first scared-shocked, then it quickly turned to ‘crazy-lady-shocked’ and soon turned into ‘wow-sales-shocked’! They told me they knew quite a few book fanatics but they’d never heard someone scream quite the way I did. I don’t quite remember when this was but I bought all of them – even though I had copies of some of the books – but because the covers were different. I had a purpose in life!

Many favorites stored on the NOTES on my mobile phone

This is a dialog between Stormy and Quick Ben from The Malazan Book of the Fallen, when these two and Kalam are staring at the looming K’Chain Che Malle SkyKeeps over their heads and wondering what the fuck they’re doing there.

“You know what’s the problem with you? I’ll tell ya. I’ll tell ya the problem. You think too much, and you think that by thinking so much you get somewhere with all that thinking, only you don’t. Look, it’s simple. Something you don’t like gets in your way, you kill it, and once you kill it, you can stop thinking about it and that’s that.

But what if that “something” is too big, or too many, or nastier than you?

Then you cut it down to size.

And if you can’t?

Then you find someone else who can. Maybe they end up killing eachother and that’s that. You think you can make all sortsa plans? Idiot. I squat down and shit on your plans.”

And then my favorite by far – the dialog between Tool and The Adjunct.

“Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?’
The Imass shrugged before replying. I think of futility, Adjunct.’
‘Do all Imass think about futility?’
‘No. Few think at all.’
‘Why is that?’
The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. ‘Because
Adjunct, it is futile.”

There are way too many to list on blog post! It IS an epic series after all.

How it all has a life of its own

The series has gotten darker – a lot more morbid than book one. Some times I used to feel like the book was running my life. I was evaluating things based on what Kalam would have done or Quick Ben would have done! Comparing my love life to Kalam and Minala’s! It was obsession. My friends were tired of hearing about ‘this book that she reads’.

I moved to Gurgaon where my parents are settled and am only now looking at options of reading Erikson’s novellas.

I finished reading Dust Of Dreams, book 9 about a couple of months back and so far, it is the darkest book yet. And I’m not thrilled that I will have to wait more than twelve months for The Crippled God to come out. I am dying to know what is going to happen next. None of the other books leaves you the way Dust Of Dreams just picks you up and slams you – picks you up with all the new stuff that happens and slams you down with what Erikson’s not telling – not just yet. Damn.

Till the time The Crippled God is out, I’m going to read the novellas – I’m currently reading Esselmont’s Return Of The Crimson Guard and it’s nothing compared to how Erikson writes. Esselmont’s writing seems disjointed and he doesn’t seem to have the ability to connect stories like Erikson does. Maybe it’s because I haven’t read Knight Of Knives, which is supposed to be the prequel to Return Of The Crimson Guard.

I also have to re-start the series – each time a new book is published, I go back and start reading from book one – one of the down sides of a short memory I think! So I’ve read 1 and then 2; then 1, 2, 3; then 1, 2, 3, 4; then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; and then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Now till the time no. 10 is out, I need to go back to Gardens Of The Moon and start again. Another chance for an absolutely fantastic journey! It takes some self-discipline to stay objective and keep real-life separate from the book – the book truly does have a life of its own.

End well, into a new beginning. Just like Erikson tying everything together so well

In other related news, Bharat and I are engaged and we’re getting married in January 2010. So now we have more than two copies of each book. Every time I see a new edition with a new cover, I buy that as well. Still have to start on the hard cover collection – the only one I have with a hard cover is Dust Of Dreams. Maybe something gilded? We’ve also discovered quite a few Malazan fans on Twitter – mostly thanks to the efforts of Rahul Vohra. And there seems to be some big news in the offing as well.

You need to go to the Mini Secretariat.

Once there, you need to go to the Deputy Commissioner’s Office.

Once there, you need to meet with the DC’s Reader. His / Her assistants and typists will then proceed to tell you how it’s done.

The office is open from 9 a.m. till 5 p.m. and lunch is said to be from 1:30 p.m. till 2 p.m. although you might find them gone before that and coming in earlier than expected or vice versa.

Bharat & I didn’t want the whole shebang that comes with a traditional Indian BIG FAT wedding, hence the court seemed a convenient option – and it IS convenient.

You will need the following things done / documents / etc.

• One of the applicants should be a resident of Gurgaon.
• Notice of Marriage. [ the office will fill this in. You basically need to get a Rs. 25 ticket / stamp - not stamp paper - stuck on an empty sheet of paper and give it to the DC's office.
• Proof of Date of Birth for both. [ Passport, Tenth School certificate, etc. ]
• Proof of residence of both. [ Passport, Ration Card, Voter ID Card, Electricity Bill, Credit Card Bill etc. ]
• Marriage Notice fees of Rs. 90 to be paid through Treasury Challan.
• Notice to be witnessed by 3 persons.
• Witnesses will also require to bring in proof of residence and ID cards.
• Witnesses need to be present on the day of submitting the application for marriage AND also on the day of the marriage – same witnesses.
• Fees details letter. [ This also the DC's office will print out for you. You need to affix a blank sheet of paper with a Rs. 10 stamp - not a postal stamp but a legal 'Ticket' available somewhere near Gate Three near the courts - you WILL have to ask around for the Ticket Vendors. There is no way in hell I can give accurate directions. ]
• Affidavit by bride and groom on stamp paper of Rs. 10 [ this is a stamp paper, not a stamp on a blank sheet of paper ]. This needs to be attested by the notary public.
• Three photographs each of the bride and groom and each of the three witnesses.
• Four envelopes with requisite regular postal stamps to send notice to home address of applicants and to the Marriage office of the district – in this case, Gurgaon. You can find out who the marriage officer is for Gurgaon by asking at the DC’s office.
• After the application, the Tehsildar will verify that one of the applicants is staying in Gurgaon. The file will move further only if the verification report reaches the DC’s court. I’ve been told this can be an issue sometimes but I will only be able to report this once I’ve reached this stage.
• Applications SHOULD NOT be staying at one place – not under one roof.
• If the above process is not completed within three months of filing the application – for any reason whatsoever – all of the above will need to be repeated.
• Publication in National Newspaper. There is an ‘ad’ guy who sits in the DC’s office who should be able to do it conveniently – we’ve been told. I don’t know yet how much it costs.
• Notice period : 30 days from the day of the application. So you wait for 30 days after you’ve applied and then present yourself at the DC’s court to get ‘married’.

So far, that’s the deal.

Today was trip number ONE to the Mini Secretariat. The typist in the DC’s office was helpful but she failed to mentioned that tickets / stamps are not the same as stamp paper and the guy selling stamp paper smoothly palmed over stamp paper for Rs. 150 instead of the two required stamp papers of Rs. 10 plus tickets of Rs. 35 in total. He also hand-wrote our names wrongly on all documents. Nothing should be written on any of the documents except the Rs. 10 affidavits, bride’s name on one and groom’s name on one. That’s it. To get that sorted, I’m going to make trip number TWO.

I’ve also checked dates from my witnesses – they should be available for both the application & the actual marriage – and I’ve asked them to get the passport-size photographs as well.

Talking in Hindi helps. I think. It helps even more if you throw in a Haryanvi accent. Since I am a Jat, the accent comes automatically. People are overall quite nice – they might not be as lucid as you’d want them to be. If the prospective groom is on his own, he’s probably going to have more trouble getting stuff done. Take your girl along.

The car park costs Rs. 10. It’s a short dusty walk. Even though the office timings are 9-5, you won’t find many of the top officials coming in before 10 a.m. The clerks / typists / peons tend to come on time.

More later!

Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.

From The Telegraph : Be Lucky, it is an easy skill to learn

Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

From The Telegraph : Be Lucky, it is an easy skill to learn

Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell – a reason to consider a decision carefully.

From The Telegraph : Be Lucky, it is an easy skill to learn

This excerpt is from Paulo Coelho’s, Like The Flowing River. Page no. 154. He adapted this from “a book was written in Japan about the spiritual art of the sword : Impassive Understanding, also known as The Treatise of Tahlan, which was the name of its author [ who was both a fencing master and a Zen monk ].”

Escaping from threats

We often think that the idea; attitude is that of giving up one’s life for a dream. Nothing could be further from the truth. In order to achieve a dream, we need to preserve our life, and we must, therefore, know how to avoid those things that threaten us. The more we plan our steps, the more chance there is that we will go wrong, because we are failing to take into consideration four things :
other people,
life’s teachings,
passion, and
calm.

The more we feel we are in control of things, the farther off we are from controlling anything. A threat does not issue any warning, and a swift reaction cannot be planned like a Sunday afternoon walk. Therefore, if you want to be in harmony with your love or with your fight, learn to react rapidly. Through educated observation, do not allow your supposed experience of life transform you into a machine. Use that experience to listen always to ‘the voice of the heart’. Even if you do not agree with what that voice is saying, respect and follow it’s advice : it knows when to act and when to avoid action. This applies to both love and war.

I’v just finished reading the 9th book from the Malazan Book of The Fallen : Dust of Dreams. And it ‘does’ end as a cliffhanger. How could I possibly cajole myself to wait another 12 months for The Crippled God, which is the tenth and final novel in the series. Of course, the news that Steven Erikson will be writing and Bantam will be publishing 6 more novels – not extending the same series – but further extending the storyline, more character background and possibly more details about what the fuck really is going in the Malazan series! It’s an epic tome alright and I can hardly wait for the trilogy on Anomander Rake.

Because of the way Erikson writes, there have been innumerable times when I’ve read a page, chewed on what he’d written, stared into space for a while and then wondered how I could expand that into words born of my personal perception’s volition. And I’ve not done much about it because I wanted to blog but this blog was more than languishing. So much so that I had de-linked it from the main nainaredhu.com website. I see that changing now. What I also foresee is that this blog will now be covered in writing and there won’t be so many visuals.

Thoughts, asides, momentary word engagements in my brain can be easily published on Twitter and thanks to the UniTweet plugin by Unit Interactive, I can now have those thoughts streaming into the already muddled puddle on the blog.

I’m not looking to publish a book but I don’t want to kill that thought either. I might find a book-assembler who would be willing and able to x-ray vision his / her way through the muddled puddle and find the good bits and then bind them together to create something that I probably will never be able to.

aside has launched a new venture called Bootstrap Logo. As the name suggests, that’s designing logos for startups. It’s a fairly simple proposition : INR 11,160 [ or USD 225 approximately ] for two logo option sketches based on the creative brief, three iterations on the chosen sketch and file delivery in transparent PSD and PNG formats. I am the one doing the designs – no further outsourcing – so the quality remains the same.

Bootstrap Logo has already worked on projects for two clients : Integreater.org and PowerOfChange.com

The technology and software business seems to obsess with what is in flux and changing. Always new stuff. New languages and frameworks. Focus on what doesn’t change and think about the things that matter today and will matter 10 years from now.

Jason Fried of 37Signals said that. I liked it and want to remember it, so copying it on my blog. I can’t seem to keep track of all the starred posts on Google Reader. This seems like a more plausible and search able way of doing it. I don’t know what to call these – one keyword to then search for so I can read all the saved / blogged ones. Ah ha! asideas Yup! That’s what I’m calling them. But I’ll have to change the WordPress Permalink structure to make this work, otherwise more than one asideas in a month won’t be possible.

A couple of new sketches. My keyword for 2009 is FAITH and it had been swimming in my head for a while so I thought I should write it down. The other sketch is just one of those doodles. A tree trunk mostly.

I’ve used a sky-blue micro-tip pen for this and they’ve been sketched in my journo-style Moleskine. And the sketches were shot on the Nikon D90.

Someone once told me to design my life, that was the best advice I ever got. Having a beautiful view is designing my life. Have a commute that’s a walk down the block. Choosing not to work in a glass cube with a view of a brick wall. It’s being closer to nature… Breathing fresh air. Sleeping well. Playing well… I don’t have too many clients or the wrong mix of clients. Because I can work at a pace I’m comfortable with, I can excel at what I do. I love what I’m doing.

From the Design Declarations article on gb studio’s blog.

The photograph is from a potential client’s leather goods collection.

Shoot. Photoshop. Shoot. Network. Shoot. Talk. Shoot. Smile. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot.

That’s me in the mirror with my Fuji SLR film camera. I’ve used it for two commercial shoots.

When you’re starting and have no experience doing a commercial shoot, don’t diss another photographers work in THEIR face.

You don’t ever have ‘nothing’ in your portfolio. No commercial shoot? No trouble. Ask someone getting married if you can shoot their wedding. Ask someone who has a pretty house if you can spend eight hours shooting their living quarters – don’t forget to spend time first observing the place. Ask. Ask. Ask. The worst that will happen is that they will say ‘No’.

Photographers had their own darkrooms earlier, they used film and they were good with their art. You have the advantage of technology. You don’t need to invest in rolls of film or developing and printing costs anymore. You don’t need physical space for a darkroom. You do need to have the ‘eye’ for good composition & color. You do need to be more observant and you can carry your camera with you all the time.

Equipment DOES matter but only when you’re shooting for an advertorial that will finally be put up on a billboard or hoarding. If you’re starting out and investing in equipment, you’re wasting your money.

Don’t be a prick with all the supposed ‘attitude’ and arrogance. Be nice.

If you like the way something or someone looks, shoot. Wherever possible, ask for permission – nicely.

That’s me taking a break while shooting an Annual Conference for ICICI at Kumarakom, Kerala. On a boat in Lake Vembanad.

You can learn most of the technicalities involved in photography, but you can’t learn the art in it [ that's my personal opinion ]. You can’t learn how to breathe soul into a photograph. If the capture is no good, Photoshop isn’t going to save the photograph. And once you do get that commercial shoot and that first client who trusts you as a photographer, shoot. Industrial shoots where you’re shooting a factory floor, advertorials where you might be required to shoot a model or a spread for a magazine, food photography, portraits, being a wedding photographer – find what makes you passionate and focus – but don’t stop shooting everything else – the insights or ideas you sometimes get while shooting your least favorite setup can give you brilliant openings in your favorite setup. Shoot personal projects. Photograph your friends. Shooting flowers doesn’t mean you’re a sissy photographer – take what you get and make an opportunity out of it.

And I’m one more day closer to getting my Nikon D90 in my hands. Thanks Jaideep!