The title of this post would have suggested by now, that this is not about social media or marketing. Yes, its not. This one is under the life experiences and learning’s which I share.
A confession – for the first time in public!
This is probably for the first time in public, that I am sharing this. There is this strange presence of a floating figure inside me, which makes me be in a situation, be present to everything which is happening around me and still see myself standing at a distance and seeing the entire action unfolding in front of me, as if I am an audience and never a part of the situation.
A confusion!
Over the last many years I have lived, just like everyone else, I have taken decisions, calls, many of which worked out for the great, some for the good and the others, well, I learnt great deals from them (people call them failures). But still the confusion remains, is this the right thing I am doing?
Though overtime I have also realized there is nothing called ‘right OR ‘wrong’. Its all actually a perceptive notion made by the human mind. Interestingly, the human mind makes itself suffer by making things wrong OR right. It just somehow makes its own meanings to things and then creates a ghost called ego, which makes the human take drastic steps to keep the meaning up-right.
Who am I?
I am thankful to the clear vast sky above, yes, I am sane still. I have learnt from the vast, endless sky along with the Bhagvad Gita (a Hindu scripture), the answer to the question, who am I?
The reality is, I am nothing but an ‘awareness’ which is a complex combination of biological processes. There are many things that form ‘me’. I am actually existing, only till the time, I am conscious about it.
To make things simpler: when we fall un-conscious, there is nothing that we feel/ experience. The human hence is the exact opposite of this state. The conscious. The human actually is the ‘conscious’.
The reality of life – But I get hurt!
Yes, as a human I get hurt. I do have emotions, I do feel pain, I do smile, I eat, I fight, I love.
An Activity for everyone reading this post, for the next minute: replace the ‘I’ in the above line, with your conscious. You feel the pain when you make yourself conscious about it. You love, when you are conscious about it.
The moment you realize that its NOT ‘you’ but your ‘Conscious’ which you are dealing with ultimately, you get the powerful insight, which makes you realize, no-one can actually hurt you. No-one can actually harm you. You can powerfully change the play of ‘existence’ of that ‘conscious’ by making your ‘conscious’ stronger than the one, which might hurt you in any manner. Here the expression ‘stronger’ means, you can make the other person (conscious) cease to exist for yourself (conscious), by just being present to the thought always, that all that you are dealing with is another ‘Conscious’.
So what is the human then - if its the conscious?
The body is another form given to conscious. Its like the car body which conceals the engine. There are deep descriptions of the soul OR the aatman in Hinduism. A powerful extension to the aatman is ‘Aadhyatma’. Aadhyatma is the understanding of the inner self, the soul.
Once you learn to keep the ‘Aadhyatma’ growing, while keeping yourself ‘aware’ always of the fact that you are nothing but a conscious, you will learn one of the most powerful expressions of human life: ‘detachment’. You will be able to clearly establish a distinction between the ‘aatman’ and the ‘body’.
This distinction is the understanding of: Nothing
Nothingness is the ultimate state to be in. You can be with millions of dollars in your bank and still be in the state of nothingness. Once you are clearly able to create this distinction, you start experiencing some interesting things, which I am experiencing now-adays:
There is no-one out there to hurt me/ harm me and I strongly believe it
My body can be taken, but not my conscious
I still need to do everything I am to do in my lifetime, take birth, study, get married, have a family, die, but my conscious remains and that is what I need to build in my lifetime, because everything else I do/ have, will finish/ cease to exist for me, the moment I end.
I am limitless, there is no definition that can define me, I am a ‘conscious’.
But where is Nothing?
That’s the entire point. Life ends with nothing. There is only the conscious which remains.
Lessons learnt?
There is so much more to life than doing the usual things we do. For a start, I would like to mention two expressions, hatred and forgiveness. Both the emotions have been talked about greatly in the Bhagvad Gita and the Mahabharata. I am trying in my personal life, to move my ‘living’ conscious towards forgiveness. At times the confusions cloud the mind, but when you close your eyes and tell yourself, that you are only ‘your conscious’, well, then you go the extra mile to make your conscious rise higher than anything else around.
Can you implement this in business?
Well yes! Treat your business as a life, which remains for you till your very existence and ceases to exist for you the moment you do. Now if you treat your business as your ‘conscious’ then you will constantly move towards improving it. For your employees, your customers, stakeholders and the ecosystem around.
A lot can happen over coffee!! Yes I agree to it as would thousands of others who flock to these cafe shops each day and spend a chilled out time with their friends and folks.
Most of my informal business meetings and many a times, startups that I consult have just one thing to say: hey lets catch up at CCD (whatever place) and we will talk.
Though this post is not to promote this coffee chain in either way. What I am talking about is how the positioning of a particular franchisee of the coffee house affects sales for the franchisee.
Positioning, yes I already know it, this post is much late in todays time!
Yes, I know it is, but hold your horses.
Can a good dentist be responsible for the Cafe store’s business booming?
Good thought? Well, I am undergoing a treatment at a well known Dental Surgeon in south Delhi. Now after each sitting, I am instructed to not have anything solid or warm for at least 1-1.5 hours and have only liquids during this time. Moreover since I am numbed with anesthesia, thus for the next 3-4 hours at least I am not supposed to be eating anything.
Let me describe you how the dentist is positioned. The dentist’s clinic is on the 1st floor, facing the market entry and there is a Cafe Coffee Day at the ground floor, and with the human eye if you are standing 7-10 feet away at the ground floor, in a single vision you can both of them.
OK, GOOD, but how does that affect CCD’s business?
Well, I said hold your horses’. After every sitting when I am told to just consume cold liquids, the first thing I do is to go to the CCD and order a cold coffee. And not just me, almost each time I am at the coffee house, which is as small in size as you could think of, I see at least 5-6 people who were sharing space with me at the dentists’ a few minutes back!
In the world of Online Media
In this world of online media, proper positioning for your brand is a an ultimate necessity. Brand positioning is affected with the message that you devise for your client’s client. You need to get out of the advertising clutter and make sure that your brand has exclusive access and a good eyeball time by the intended target audience.
There already is so much of Brand Clutter out there, that reaching out to the relevant market and getting the right eyeballs for the sufficient time is becoming increasingly difficult.
In the race to make easy money, advertising platforms are becoming more and more cash unfriendly and provide not much of an option to the advertiser to really showcase the BRAND DIFFERENTIATION and ENGAGE his target audience.
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We dont do Google Ad’s just to earn a few bucks. We believe in creating value for the customer and help our advertisers engage their customers
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Ohh, so what’s the big deal? Ad’s are given by everyone?
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I am Social Media Marketing Evangelist and over time a crucial aspect of the entire Social Media Marketing process has come into the picture which if inferred in simple terms makes you ponder over the most basic question:
Do Your Clients Really Understand Your Service/ What You Are Trying to Do?
As with the new buzz word and with a huge outreach new brands are coming onto the social media scene and products and services are trying to connect to the relevant audience, but somewhere I personally feel, many Online Marketing companies, are just trying to experiment with the customer, in the process, not really being one with the customer’s business objectives.
And there goes the entire effort down the drain, with the client dissatisfied and disillusioned at the end.
Listen to your customer!
I strongly suggest all marketers, expecially those in the online domain to listen to their customers. its highly crucial that you understand the customer’s business objectives and are on the same page as the client. Its necessary that you have a solid graps of business understanding of your customer, to be able to create solid and successful campaigns and create success stories in the online world.
LIVE Blogging the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 48th session, and well we are going to make it interactive says the session lead Mr. Kumud Goel who is also one of the founding members of NASSCOM and the founder KLG Systel a leading power solutions company in India.
Incidentally its a great day, coz the NASSCOM EMERGE Community turns one today, I must congratulate Avinash (NASSCOM) for the same and now we have the session underway
Mr. Kumud Goel a technology veteran for over 25 years, is leading the session. We have Ankur Lal, CEO, Infozech Software introducing to the audience and well as usual we have the participants introducing themselves to the entire audience.
I am surely glad to be LIVE blogging the 48th session and well, always get excited to feel as we near the 50th session. Interestingly we have quite a diverse audience related to the product space today.
I am a case study of failures – shares Mr. Kumud and though this was said at the end, I would want to start my blog with it.
Kumud is interestingly sharing an incident from his life and my respects to the man as for young entrepreneurs like me, its surely highly invigorating and a great learning to interact with learned people like Kumud. And well, let me not keep it a secret anymore. Kumud is sharing the story of NASSCOM.
When we went to COMDEX years back, nobody used to talk to an Indian
That is when this desire of fighting these people came in me and I had a lot of experience in programming and I started my company which had only emotions behind it and no business plan.
On my first wedding anniversary my father told me that you have no money in the back and hence I gave away my dream of creating software for the rural India. At that time most Indian company did the right thing by making things for the foreign market but we were again at the step when we were looking at a product for the Indian market.
After 25 years of my experience I today feel taht what is more important out of a business model and a feeling is feeling, coz I believe that the business model shall follow
Once you have made an emotional decision of making a product for India, there were two drawbacks…I was at the Silicon Valley two weeks back and I met this guy who is regarded as one of the best deal makers in the tech space, and he told me that Kumud what you are doing is worth 500 million dollars and since you are sitting in India it is worth 20 million dollars. I had to go to the IBM’s of the world and get a recommendation that my technology is good.
All the great companies in the US have come about and have based out of the fact that the government has helped them. The SME’s in India who innovate do not have their path as easy.
The tendering system in Government of India is such that an SME cannot ever go up.
Today US is making money out of innovation and not selling someone else’s goods. Kumud now shares a highly interesting insight into the Chinese government way of working and wow I am amazed. Well, I think this is an applausible moment and I am saying this for the first time in a NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 session, Kumud has broken the wall and is now talking about what NASSCOM should really be doing for the SME’s.
Start-ups and small companies have to get reservation in the government and NASSCOM should take care of that
There Is NO CORRUPTION in INDIA
Do what they want you to, don’t fight them…its your dream, coz you are giving them a poison which will kill them automatically. Corruption is not a hinderance, it is a way to survive. And for the first time I am supporting Kumud on this coz he shows tthe audience the bigger picture.
Your cash flow has to be positive, your spirit should not go negative, you have to live through those initial years. for sometime you need to live like a rat if you want to survive.
And now Kumud shares a story on a book he read “the saga of Dharampuri”, which he is relateing to the Indian IT industry. We have so gotten accustomed to the white man that we cannot think of anything out of it.
This life for ME is so shameful that after being 25 years into the industry, I still don’t have a world class product
The govt. of India will spend 5000 crores dollars to the MS’s of the world and lets say there are 5000 SME’s from India, now if I divide 5000 what do you get? But how many companies are standing today for it?
Psychologically we need to start thinking of ourselves as better people than the foreign lands. We need to just break out of this trap, coz we actually are better than anybody. If you need to create the best OS from India, you need to have that feeling into you and only then it would happen.
The Indian out there is GOD shares one of the participants from the audience.
You have a dream, great! But you anyhow need money to make sure that you survive and take your dream further. You need to somehow find a way by hook or by crook, to reach that 50-100 crore level, otherwise your so called innovation would die.
I made 3 websites when I had 15 crores in the bank and I wen t overboard, we advertised like hell and people came to us. But because we believed into our stuff so much, we never realised the internet bust, and I went bankrupt. So now we had no money, but we had a dream!
Audacity, Audacity, Audacity and Arrogance
We raised money for about 11 million dollars and that came to us only because we had audacity.
The next I thought what is the next problem in India. And I chanced upon power. You need to be like the James Bond, who would take it the way as if the world wont be no more if my software wont be there. I went and borrowed 137 crores and I developed cleantech technology. And I bet my life on this.
And I bought myself a BMW, because I was going to change the world.
Personally I was broke, my stock is pledged, house with a bank, my wife and kids were the only tangible assets I had. And then I happened.
Innovation is like a black Hole, after a certain time you are dead. But once you are dead what can you do – STOP WORRYING!
You have created the aura of being the biggest player in the power industry and since you have already invested into it, you can demonstrate what you have already implemented. For 25 years you have been waiting to say it and when the big companies of the world come for you, to partner, what do you say…Go to !@#!
If you want to be an Innovator, You have to be a great Gambler as well
Anybody who does not listen to you has to become irrelevant!
The last lesson would be – your dream has to be bigger than the world, you will create the biggest product, all you need to do is to make sure that you get some cash in.
Kumud ends the session with some NASSCOM bashing, which he started the session with on a lighter note. I am certainly with Kumud, as this would surely be great for the entire SME community in India.
Small companies should file for patents and should do them religiously. This shall make sure of a winning road for you.
Now we have the participants sharing their thoughts on the entire topic and I can see the thoughts coming in together in the similar direction.
And now we have the session in the Q&A mode.
Thanks Kumud for an amazing session, I have been blogging the NASSCOM friday’s 2.0 for long, and certainly find you one of the best speakers, sharing from the heart.
A good business strategy – tell your customer NOT to buy your products
I know many people would think that either I (the author of this post) do not understand business or Iv slipped my words here.
Well, let me clarify again, no I haven’t slipped on my words and well, I do understand business.
So how in this bad market conditions, can I ask my clients NOT to buy from me and still SURVIVE?
Innovation, my friend is the name of the game! Evolution is the way you play this game!
I got this idea when I visited a local market in New Delhi, for a small item I wanted to buy and there were two parallel rows of shops, which had the same stuff, each shopkeeper with some attractive discount or some other thing on offer. So competition in this market region was tough, I realized the moment I entered the small gully.
Now in this stiff competition how do the shopkeepers survive? Selling pretty much the same stuff, how do they really fetch business? Do they eat into each other’s I pondered! And then I went to one of the shops, who had the stuff I was looking for, but I thought I could get something better and I asked the shopkeeper, and he smilingly suggested me the parallel shop. I was pretty amazed at the gesture, because well, the basic business understanding says: market is competitive, conditions are tough, should’nt I look at covering the maximum?
I took this question home with me and started searching for examples on the internet, and I chanced upon Xerox. Yes, I know you know this name. The same company which is a second to none brand in the printer and copier industry. Every big installation, there are chances that you would see a Xerox printer in action! Now in this fiercely competitive market, what other than building the best printing tools for the print ecosystem should Xerox do to stay put and forge long term relationships, which probably may restrict the sales/revenue in the short term, but is a sure shot methodology of making it right in the longer run.
Ever heard of End to end solutions strategy to your existing printing infrastructure?
YES! That’s what Xerox has done! From selling printing products Xerox has diversified into selling printing solutions. There is such a lot of wastage that happens in your print infrastructure, which Xerox can help you save! I searched the Xerox India website (for their consulting services) and well, my understanding got confirmed. The client’s testimonials on the site, clearly state how just by consulting a client on an end to end basis on the existing infrastructure, Xerox helped the client not by asking him to replace all his existing printing infrastructure to its own, but Xerox consulted the client in increasing the basic efficiency of the overall system!
And the clients’ love Xerox for this! What’s Xerox earning from this game?
Well, though Xerox as a company, may not really be able to achieve its business targets in the short term, but the successful consulting assignments, which are increasing the overall efficiency of the client, reducing costs at the same time, are helping it forge new relationships. Bonds that would fetch Xerox, connected and trusting business.
So, sometimes its good to NOT tell your customers to buy your products!
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- Nidhi, Founder CEO, Pinnacle Works
LIVE Blogging the NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0 48th session, and well we are going to make it interactive says the session lead Mr. Kumud Goel who is also one of the founding members of NASSCOM and the founder KLG Systel a leading power solutions company in India.
I took this question home with me and started searching for examples on the internet, and I chanced upon