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How to Build a Successful Business?

30/8/2018

Sarathi Karmkar grew up in New Delhi (India) and moved to the US for his first job out of engineering college with a large multinational in the late 1980s. He spent 17 years in the same company before moving out to start his entrepreneurial journey by setting-up his own business, Freedom Systems Inc, a cyber-security company based out of US. He recently started another technology company as a co-founder and investor, Gyan Inc. He is an angel investor in 8 other start-ups, is an Advisor & Mentor to the Founder CEOs of these firms, besides contributing through charitable work. What drive him are joyous and productive conversations.

Carefully Designed Business Model - What you do is not as important as why you do it?

Freedom Systems has been in business for nearly 9 years, employs only 20 people and posted USD 16 million as turnover in 2017. The company has grown organically and has never sought external funding. The gross margins are hugely attractive and much higher than the industry. This is a function of the business model that Sarathi has crafted with careful thought and conscious deliberation –

Focus on Fortune 50 clients
Products and services with built-in recurring revenue characteristics
Older and more experienced employees with a stable outlook
Conscious decision to keep the company small, simple and personalized; rather than big, complex and depersonalized.
Structure of the company is such that it serves the employees first. The jobs are structured such that their lives are compatible with their roles, rather than forcing it the other way around.
Less is more
Do the right thing

Fundamental Principles

For Sarathi, business is more a vehicle to design a lifestyle to be fulfilled, experience freedom and have fun; rather than it being a profit-generating machine. Even his new business that he co-founded this year is because it is with talented people he has been friends with for long, at a stage where they all could take on another venture.

There are couple of fundamental principles that have supported him to create success, professionally and personally –

1. Why are we doing it?

If you are going to include something in your life; it is extremely important to make sure you know why it is there.

Especially, for a company in a growth mode, one is looking for any and all opportunities to grow one’s business. In contrast to this way of growing his business, Sarathi believes in making business decisions; whether regarding which business line to add, which clients to take on, which industry segment to work in or whom to meet or whether to network; based on having a kind of life that he has chosen. He prefers what he calls a directed way of living, an active way of thinking about what you are putting into your life. What to say No to is a key principle that supports him to live a life that he has chosen to live.

2. “Pay myself first, not necessarily in terms of money.

Taking care of my needs first allows me to carry the day through without giving in to the daily stress.”, he says.
He has time carved out before starting work at 10 am to take care of things that he considers personally important. He meditates, runs 3 miles with his dog and drops his 2 boys - 16 and 12 years old - to school to get into a tranquil state of mind to bring that energy to the rest of his day.

3. Build the structure of the company to cater to the people who are in it, first and foremost.

Sarathi takes a long time to understand what a person considers important before hiring them. Much like his business model is an expression of the lifestyle that he wants, he is committed that each of his employees’ role supports them to create the lifestyle that they want. To an extent, that limits the size to which he can grow his firm.

His observation is that in a larger firm, things become depersonalized, things tend to fail and people don’t feel fulfilled. Every person who is in his firm today has their employment structured in a way that is compatible with their life. The employment contracts are structured to support the employees to live the life they want to live.

4. He believes in slow organic growth, with an intense focus on building authentic relationships and deep connections.

He doesn’t add employees, customers, business lines or service lines without a lot of careful thought.

The deliberate decision to engage few larger companies as customers rather than many smaller customers has not only helped him to scale faster but also given him a much more stable way of operating, The choice of staying with larger customers has been an important one because it is always difficult for a smaller company to grow sales which leads to a lot of uncertainty in the business structure. So, there is a deliberate choice to engage with a very large customer and spread footprint within that customer as opposed to going and acquiring 50 other smaller customers for the same amount of revenue.

Another deliberate choice is to provide technologies and services that have a built-in recurring revenue characteristic to allow for long-term relationship with the clients.

5. Mentor to expand one’s own mindset

He has invested in 8 start-ups. His principle here is also to find like-minded people to work with, who have similar energy so that the conversations are more productive and joyous. Though he expects them to be profitable in the future, he is aware of a large amount of risk associated with investing in start-ups.

He gets a lot of gratification from helping the Founder CEOs. For him, advising and mentoring typically younger people with all their chips on the table, full of infectious enthusiasm, borrowing money from everybody they can for their start-up, chasing a dream, is very rewarding in itself and much more gratifying than the financial returns through investing in their businesses that may or may not happen.

In his words, “Involvement with the start-ups helps me engage on many other dimensions than just working on the business that I own. Expanding my mindset in this fashion has been extremely helpful and energizing.”

He further shares, “Couple of years ago, I started engaging with seeding companies with capital. I have more than we need just because of the way we live. It is very interesting to involve with other companies right at the inception for two reasons. One is to broaden my own interests, it gives me momentum, allows me to have varied conversations with different types of people about completely different kind of things.

The second reason is to build their way of working with what I am trying to do. You meet people who are looking for capital, you have two or three conversations. You proceed forward with only those people that you connect with on that level. They get a real sense of you and you want to be around them. I have been lucky to have found a few. I have spoken to several others where the real connection wasn’t just there.”

6. Good physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health is very critical for business success.

They are symbiotic and each feeds off the other. Based on his experience, you have to watch what you let inside your circle (physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually) because that’s your life.

He is really careful about the choices he makes about work, people etc. as the type of energy that is around you is what becomes your life. He is very careful of just not inviting something in, which he is not entirely sure of.

7. What you say No to has a greater impact on your life, professionally and personally, than what you say Yes to.

This is the principle that I love the most, in his own words:

“I’ve learnt that the things I say yes to are less relevant than the things that I say no to. That actually defines the space that I live in. It’s more pushing out the world and creating a circle with only the things you want in there. That applies not just to business but every other place in life.”

Professionally, that means saying no to many lucrative business opportunities just because they would disrupt the structure and culture of his organization.

Personally, that means being careful about managing the time in his day because he doesn’t want to spend an evening away from his kids. That automatically implies keeping certain things out.

In his words, “There are always endless opportunities from a family standpoint, friends, social network and professional network. There are over 30 professional events that happen over a month that I get invited to. It is very easy to say no because I don’t want to spend an evening away from my kids. That’s not even a discussion. It would have to be something important, very specifically an active choice to actually to go there. Am I missing out on something? Probably, but unlikely. It’s more a question of fetching from the world what you need as opposed to just connecting to anything and everything.”

8. Doing what you love and what you are passionate about is far more important than earning money.

He tells his older kid about to leave for college in a few years, “I would be very disappointed if you are working on some boring job somewhere because at this point, financially, you don’t have to do that. So, there’s really no excuse to not pursue something that drives you, something that you are passionate about, whatever it might be. Pursuit of happiness, first. What drives you, what makes you passionate, what brings you happiness; do that. You will figure out some way of eating, having a house and a car later.”

9. Actively create your Life

He works from home as often as he can though he has quite a few offices around the country. In fact, he needs a reason to be at the office. It’s not something that he does every morning. His default state is to be at home. After the kids and wife leaves, it’s him and his dog at home. He’s very happy to be on the conference call for 30-40 minutes, while playing tennis ball with his dog outside the house. His home is his base. He drops and picks up the children from school. That anchors and lends structure to his day.

Everything else fits in around it. His work, home and social life is sort of a continuum. Priorities come and go, and go hand in hand. There’s no fixed amount of time he spends here or a fixed amount of time he spends there. It’s all very fungible. He moves from one thing to the other in a flow. There’s no time-off, in a sense. He doesn’t feel as if he needs a time-off.

A key tenet of his life is doing things that are important to you and letting them be the things that you prioritize. It is important to actively create one’s work-life, which is in harmony with rest of one’s life instead of it being dissonant with it.

He observes, “If I want to take a nap in the middle of the day, I naturally should. Why not live a life that you are basically biologically designed for? There’s a contentment in having a sense of control over your own time that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it.”

He refers to what his sister, a psychiatrist, told him earlier, “Joy for most people is something that escapes them for most of their life. But, what they don’t realize is they actually know what the joy is for them and how easy it is to reach for it. You just haven’t done it, so you don’t know.” He adds, “Once you have experienced that joy, you realize how easy it is to access it, if you so choose to. It’s hard to be around people who haven’t.”

In response to how does he access this joy, he says, “Just waking up and realizing everything that is in my day is because I choose it to be there, I feel very free. If there’s a day I don’t want to work, I won’t. It is just to achieve that. It is not the money. It is about just waking up and having the choice to spend your day the way you want.”

Success Habits

1. Nurturing your Employees

Sarathi has built his business to be a loose confederation of like-minded individuals with the role designed to suit the employees’ lifestyle and their needs based on their phase in life, just like the business model is built to suit his lifestyle and his needs. The roles are structured to fit their lives unlike elsewhere in the corporate world where the employees have to structure their lives to fit the needs of the role.

2. Relationship of Equals

Sarathi has a relationship of equals with his employees, instead of an employer-employee equation. He doesn’t see his organization in a traditional sense, he sees it as multiple one-to-one relationships. Predictably, attrition isn’t an issue he has to deal with. He has never placed a job posting. All his hires are senior experienced professionals either whom he had known personally or came through referrals. Employment contracts are also more like welcome letters written by him to them.

At the end of the year, they all get together to check if it is working for everyone. It is important for him that it does. Everyone in the company has a general sense of actively choosing their life, with an experience of control over their lives.

3. Recognizing and living from the consciousness, moment by moment, that Profit is the Output that can only get created by focusing on the Input; which is building a culture of deep trust, authentic connection, freedom and transparency in your organization

There are no worries about quarterly revenue goals. The company grew by 30% in the last quarter. This is more an observation rather than a stated goal chased. It does go on to show that growth is an outcome of focusing on your people inside your organisation rather than focusing on creating growth on the outside. The first automatically leads to the second.

There is deep trust in the organization where interestingly, everyone knows each other’s compensation and there isn’t any argument about it. Sarathi has created a culture of deep trust, authentic connection, freedom and transparency. He has given each of his employees the ability to actively choose to be who they want to be. Counter-intuitively, this has resulted in greater growth and higher margins than the industry.

Employees are by design older people, who have intellectual depth and are fun to be around.

They don’t have giant enormous conference calls in their organisation with everybody present and taking a roll call. It all flows from people basically having ownership of their work.

Every arrangement for the employees, compensation etc. is structured in a way that they know it is fair to them. They know they are fairly treated. There is zero conversation around money amongst his employees; it is never a source of argument of any kind. Unlike big corporates, compensation strategy is not even part of his organizational culture.

As per Sarathi, this is an outcome of the people being there for the reasons that work for them. Money isn’t the driver; it is their exercise of freedom that is facilitated by being a part of this business. That is much more value than another X dollars per hour. There’s as much transparency as anyone needs.

People being spiteful to each other just doesn’t happen. People know each other’s compensation. There’s a culture of deep trust. It is not just the money that they are working for; it is the ability to exist in a way that they choose to exist, as a person. That’s why people generally don’t leave.

He says he depends on people truly representing their actual needs. It doesn’t work if you misrepresent what you want. It shouldn’t be like I want this because I should want this. The question is do you actually really want this. So, typically people who are part of his firm are a little bit older. They have moved further along in life and are able to think that way. As per him, people have to have some life experience before they can realize who they are and what they truly want.

4. Giving priority to being of service to his employee & customer communities over making money

If wealth creation were the tail of the dog, most businesses spend their time moving the tail from left to right and right to left or beat the dog to get it to wag its tail. The most effortless way to get the tail to wag would be to feed the dog, live your values and be of service to your people and your customers through your business.

That is the reason building his business has been a fun, easy, joyous, hugely profitable ride for Sarathi unlike most of his peers who may be lit up working on their business in the beginning of the journey but usually crumble and fall apart along the way giving in to the stress of forcing the dog to wag its tail.

5. Choosing to be a Peaceful Warrior instead of a Fighter

Another observation I have about Sarathi is that there is no desire to dominate or any need for external power, whatsoever. This is an attribute that shows up consistently in my work with authentically successful leaders, who I call Peaceful Warriors or Gear 5 Leaders. This is an attribute that is consistently missing in Leaders on an unsustainable success run. I call these leaders Fighters. They are High Performers but pay a huge cost for it and ultimately crash out.

The ups and downs of business does not impact Sarathi because in his own words, “Stress only comes from standing in the way of what naturally needs to flow and not if you preserve the harmony of what needs to occur.” This graceful acceptance of all that comes his way gives him the secret power of being stress-free, calm, efficient and highly productive in the face of anything.

He says, “Why not work with what’s naturally going to occur? I want to do things that kind of make sense to me. I don’t ever want to be in a situation where I don’t know what I am doing there.”

Losing a client because an employee suddenly has to leave on account of a life-event would not at all stress him and all his attention is actually focused on supporting the employee through their life journey. For example, an employee lost his spouse. For him, what to do with the client is almost insignificant to what the employee is going through.

6. A deep connection with your own self and people around you

For me, that’s what spirituality means. I believe that is the where the next revolution in the business world will take place as Business Owners and CEOs realize their leadership ability to lead their organisations from good to great lies in consciously evolving to connect deeply and vulnerably with their own true selves and with people in their organisations.

He inherently needs less from the world. Being picky about what he gets from the world is very natural for him. In response to how he ended up being like this, he laughs and says that’s not how he was 10 years ago.

It is amazing to be in a conversation with him that flows along almost effortlessly. He seems to have gone past the chattering monkey in the head, judging self and others, to directly connect with his authentic inner voice.

7. Seeking peace, fulfillment and freedom instead of chasing wealth and success

A perfect day for him is a day that he has time for himself, he is not rushed, is not part of any conversations that he doesn’t belong in or know the reason for. That’s really all that he wants. None of these things have anything to do with money. He says, “Can I pick up my kid from school? Can I spend the next 45 minutes in a conversation with him without getting disturbed? I put my phone on ‘Do not disturb’ to make it happen. I have zero problem doing that because that’s what I want. If something prevents me from doing this, I would become unhappy. Then, there’ll be something I would need to remove from my life.”

Most people choose to chase wealth and success. There’s no guarantee that they will find peace, fulfillment, freedom; neither is there a guarantee that they will find wealth and success. Sarathi has chosen peace, fulfillment and freedom as his goal; and built his life around it, including his business. My observation is that wealth and success always ends up chasing such people.

He doesn’t wake up worried about a quarterly revenue goal. He and his team have some planning in place, though it is never like we have to grow by 30%. It is more an observation that we grew by 30%. This definitely turns Sales on its head and the enormous pressure that businesses put on their sales people to sell to match up to a concocted number.

How much more evolutionary it is to focus on the input side of things - fulfill the needs of the clients and employees, do whatever for that – and let the output organically follow through from there; instead of stressing yourself with the output.

The created stress reduces productivity, performance, creativity, innovation that would in turn reduce the effectiveness of the input anyway; resulting in less than optimum output.

8. Living the Mission rather than talk about it

He holds the loose confederation (as he calls it) of his people by giving them the freedom to be who they are. In his words, “The company doesn’t have a mission statement. It doesn’t have stated principles and values. The organisation is almost an amorphous thing that exists because of people who are connected to each other. Yes, it is a legal entity but not much more than that.

The company is what is inside it. We are not pushing out a sense of how it should be. It is because of what’s in it. You just make sure that what’s in it are people who are alike in a lot of ways and it kind of attracts a lot of people like that.

There are no non-compete clauses in the employment contract. Infact, the employment contracts are not even given to the lawyers for review. The contracts are more like writing a letter based on the discussion we have had.”

Though there are no mission statements, principles, values that are explicitly pushed outwards to his people and made a noise about; the organization does have a very strong sense of a mission, a living set of meaningful principles and values that holds the organization together because Sarathi breathes, thinks, talks and acts from there, though almost unconsciously.

Yes, whether we accept it or not, organizations always mirror the leader at the helm. If you are grappling with employee disengagement, profitability issues, quality concerns, attrition; it would be far more effective as the CEO to look at the mirror for the source of the malaise rather than waging the battle on the outside.

9. Playing the game of low revenue, high margin, top-of-the-pyramid, high-end niche player

Sarathi has made a conscious choice not to be a high revenue, low margin, volume player. His game is to be a low revenue, high margin, high-end niche player because it is intellectually fun to do and you are around people who are intellectually and otherwise fun to be around. His business is structured to give the people the freedom to be who they are and do what they want to do. He says, “These are the people who don’t need to work for you, they want the freedom to work on things they work on.”

He didn’t choose Cyber-security as the domain of his business because he was an expert on it prior to starting the business. He became knowledgeable as an outcome of running the business. He chose the domain based on observing secularly which market was growing, which was high technology, somewhat esoteric, of high value, requires intelligent capable people that you would like to talk to.

You can’t run a business like this by taking on a lot of capital and fixed assets and having to produce a specific amount of return every year for an x amount of growth. That doesn’t sound like fun at all to him to do something like that.

So, all Sarathi has really done is chasing his heart, to do stuff that is fun and intellectually engaging, which is the right way of running a business.

10. The end goal is for the business to become self-sustaining

He doesn’t have a revenue or a size goal. The next goal for him is to have his business become self-sustaining so that he doesn’t have to be here. He wants to institutionalize the way he runs his business; put in place some sort of a charter or constitution, some rules for self-governance.

11. A goal is a place to come from and not a place to go to

He shares, “The business books, Jack Welch, Peter Drucker and the likes of them never made any sense to me. The purpose isn’t to build the company. The company takes the shape it takes because you want to live a certain way.

I think I am going to get to some good place if we manage doing things every day that make sense, that flow naturally from your life, with your life.”

What kind of future to build is not his main consideration, it is all about the journey and the quality of it. Most people get so caught up with the goal; it becomes the place to go to. There’s always a gap between where I am and that is where I want to go to; that most of us end up living the life of scarcity and yearning all the time.

There is so much unfulfillment in the world because one is always looking at somewhere else to go to from where one is right now, as if where you are right now is somehow inadequate.

The way Sarathi runs his business is fundamentally how businesses will eventually evolve to in the future because no other way is sustainable.

12. Meditation for connection with self

Towards the end of the conversation, I finally get to know the secret to Sarathi’s deep stillness within that allows him to run a business with a natural rhythm.

He shares that he has taught Transcendental Meditation to each one of the Founder CEOs of the companies he has invested in. He explains that it is a way of managing stress; bringing balance in your habits and clarity to your thoughts. The results from doing Transcendental Meditation twice daily have been almost miraculous for him. He shares that it is funny that people remember his coaching them Transcendental Meditation and thank him for it more than anything else.

I could totally resonate with him with my own daily practice of Vipassana Meditation, which is my way of centering and grounding myself. Interestingly, my most creative and productivity-enhancing ideas come to me while I am meditating.

A few more Questions

1. Which Places, Habits, People who fill you with energy?

Nature fills Sarathi with energy. Couple of times in a week, he wanders about in the museums, gardens and sanctuaries in his city. In fact, he takes people to the museum of fine arts for a meeting instead of a busy noisy coffee shop. He laughs that even if the conversation goes nowhere, he at least gets something out of it.

Every business trip that he takes, he plugs in another day to the itinerary to do something nature related nearby. On one trip, he drove a scenic 40 miles to have a meal by himself at a famous 1930s restaurant and spent some time on the beach before driving back to fly back home.

It’s his way of refreshing and re-generating in the midst of the tedium of almost similar kind of business meetings. He laughs that he used to be a kind of person who would have gone to the airport earlier instead of spending time with nature to rejuvenate, so that he could sit in the lounge and work more.

People who fill him up with energy are those who are open in many ways, with whom he finds resonance with, who are empathetic.

Habits that energize him are meditation, his daily run that creates the momentum for his day which he would miss otherwise, time spent with his kids that he values more than anything else, great meal once in a while, his sojourns in sanctuaries to breathe in nature, museums.

2. Which Places, Habits, People drain your energy?

If he had to sit in the office the whole day, he would be miserable. People who can’t see past themselves drain him of energy. People who are subdued by their circumstances and become negative sap his energy; as do people with whom he can’t find a way to talk to.

If he can’t sleep properly, that gets him off-balance. So, he would cancel his meetings, take a half-day off to catch up with sleep to get back his balance.

3. What makes you forget about time?

Foremost is spending time with his kids. He has no sense of time when he is with his kids. Also when he is out in nature, time gets suspended. Sometimes watching a movie that he is enjoying or being with friends gets him to lose his sense of time.

4. What’s working? What’s not working?

What’s working for him is that he does the things that fill him up with energy every day as part of his active practice. There are things that don’t work. He simply stops doing them.

On being asked what is not working for him, he responds, “Nothing really. Sure, there are daily challenges but they don’t bother me. I don’t really carry them in my mind. I have a sense that not everything is perfect because it never is. It’s a matter of whether there’s anything that I can do about that.”

His 84 years old mother is going through an early stage of dementia. He is not depressed or upset about it because he simply accepts life and whatever life throws up for him. He doesn’t experience unhappiness about anything, just recognition of how things are and how does one make the most of that. He makes sure he calls her every morning.

Even from a business perspective, he simply accepts what there is. Giving an example of how at the client negotiation earlier in the day, the outcome was inconclusive and the conversation would need to be carried forward as the client was being aggressive. His response to that situation is that he doesn’t really think about these things very much.

He simply says, “We are going to make the best decision we can. We’ll hope for the best outcome, just so long we are clear about what we need. We’ll try to get as close to that as possible. When it stops being something that sustains us from a profitability standpoint, we’ll just stop doing it. We’ll do something else. I don’t get bent out of shape about these things. There’s no one else in the company also, who gets too fired about these things.”

He doesn’t have a sense of anything missing for him, any sense of scarcity. He will go do whatever it is, if there’s something missing.

He has recently co-founded another company and is totally cool about one of the other co-founders being the CEO. The reasons for founding the new company are mostly because of the people involved and the technology that would be fun. There’s a sense of curiosity, the venture being another interesting experiment. I notice how he has zero pressure around making the new venture successful; what he has is a refreshing sense of joyful playfulness about starting a new company, almost like a fun game he is playing with zero stress that one usually sees in a start-up environment. What an incredible energy to bring in!

As an aside, he doesn’t understand the energy around new years. He says, “If it is a good idea, do it right now. Why are you calendar-driven? Then, you are setting yourself up for failure because you don’t know why you are not doing it. Why do you need a date to do it? That is surely not the missing component.” Makes perfect sense, Sarathi 😊

5. Where do you hold back?

He responds, “I have observed that I hold back in providing any kind of criticism that may seem harsh. It is not interesting for me to do that. I am not here to change the world. That’s not my sense of it. I am not here to solve the world’s problems. Just flowing from a sense of what you consider important, relevant, things that are coherent, not dissonant, more a passive way of being. There were things that used to irritate me, many years ago. Politics in this country, for most part, doesn’t make any sense for most people. Those kinds of things would bother me. People who are extremely negative would bother me. I don’t really think about that so much now. It’s funny just learning that you have a choice not to do certain things. That’s more difficult for people who are employed, work in an office, are part of an org structure. That limits you in some ways. Leaving that structure frees you in many ways. You do pay a price for that in terms of not having a fixed monthly income.

I don’t think people, who have a desire for something better, realize how small a gap there is between what they think they need and what they really need. Just get out there and live the way you want to live. There’s a sense of this elusive thing called joy. You don’t realize how well you know what that joy looks like and how small of a reach you have to make to actually get it. The hesitation is there but the distance is very very small. Just being aware of that. A part of it involves shedding off of all the other stuff, so that all that remains are a lot of things that give you joy. You can still make a living. You are just not as invested in all those kinds of things emotionally.

Maintenance of life takes up a certain amount of time. I think 90% of what we do in a business falls into that category. There are things you have to do so that you can get to the good part. Energy, thoughts, emotions are directed towards things that you actually want. If you knew you were going on a vacation at the end of the day, you would work differently, won’t you? That’s what it takes.

Where is the highest return of investment? It is clearly my children. There really isn’t another place. Where is even the discussion or argument on how you should spend your time? Even if you want to look at from business terms on how you should prioritize things, you look at where is your greater return. Where is your personal higher rate of return? Is it at work? I seriously doubt that. No matter who you are, in many ways. I don’t know, maybe I am fortunate that I think in that way.

I don’t consider us living in an opulent way. There is adequacy in terms of resources that most people are not fortunate enough to get there and I am completely aware of that. You are starving to death. You live in a slum. Then, life looks different. This is after you have crossed a certain threshold, then you don’t have any limitations other than those you choose to recognize. What do you do with yourself in the world? You have a college degree, you are a professional, you are an engineer, an MBA from a fine place; if you are miserable then, you need to change something. There’s nothing inherently stopping you from being completely at peace with yourself and the world.”

6. What’s your real gift?

“Good Gosh, I haven’t thought about it. I don’t know. I don’t really know. Oh, it’s funny. I do kind of have an answer for that. I was having a conversation with my financial advisor, who I mentor. He has had a difficult upbringing, grew up without parents because of which he has a skewed way of being. He is involved with a lot of my businesses. He said that he wanted to drop that and do something else. And, I told him, “If it makes you happy, I am all for it.”

If you think about it, the only real gift you can give to someone is to be invested in their happiness; otherwise it involves you and what you want out of it. It’s not actually a gift unless it costs you something. Most people impose their own expectations. Usually, we gift things that we want to gift. Giving joy to someone has to be the joy that they actually wish to receive. That doesn’t have anything coming back to you, it’s all for them. It’s even better if it keeps you from benefitting.”

7. What people miss most about you when you leave a room?

“I want to be the least interesting person. What I hear from people is that they get a boost of positivity talking to me. They tell me – I need an hour with you, I need a reset.”

8. What’s your biggest impact?

“I hope my kids when they start off in their life. I just wish they have all of the things that I wasn’t aware of when I started - find your passion, find your joy. Let that be a joyous centering approach to how you construct your life. Everything else isn’t going to matter. Just find your joy, what drives you, what gives you passion. I also encourage and support them with those kinds of activities now. You have an interest in it, you want to explore it, just go for it. I am fortunate enough to have resources to expend though most of these things aren’t resource-driven; they are more an investment of your time, in the sense of exploring it with them. I just want to make sure I don’t leave them deprived of anything that I know now. It’s the luxury of time to engage with them, that’s a big deal for me.

One of the challenges that I see having people growing their companies is that they bring the negativity and the stress, the draining parts of their job back to their home, to their lives. The direction has to be completely the other way around. You project the strength of your support system out into the world, and do that in a way that doesn’t drain you.”

9. How is your relationship with your wife?

“Good. We are both fiercely independent people. We have known each other for 25 years, married for 21 years. I am 51, that means half my life. She has great interest in art and history. She is away this week and has taken the kids for a trip around art.

We have learnt to find which parts of us work together and there are certainly other parts of us that don’t overlap at all. And, that’s ok. Just because you are married doesn’t mean you are completely coupled and tied to the hip. That sort of is our relationship. It just seems to work. There are parts we do together and we have a common investment in our children.

We have gone through our own phases in the relationship. One thing I have always had a sense of is that you are responsible as a person for your own happiness. That’s not something that you outsource to somebody. Nobody is obligated to provide you with happiness. You have that responsibility as a complete human being to find your happiness. If you are not happy, it’s your fault. You are not doing what’s necessary.

It’s not that I am in a relationship and I need that other person to make me happy. It just doesn’t work that way. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding about happiness if you are expecting it to come from somewhere other than yourself. I see that as the trap.

We have had a few years in the middle where we were unbalanced around that part of the equation. Then, eventually you get connected to something that nourishes you personally, emotionally, mentally. Find that happiness and the relationship starts to work better. Marriage works because you are responsible for your happiness individually, it’s not the marriage has to work and therefore, you are happy.”

Running Business in alignment with the Natural Law

Sarathi and business leaders like him is the reason why I am interviewing CEOs and business owners around the world to bring to notice that there is a fundamental way to run business in alignment with the natural laws which results in greater sustainable profitability on the outside and peace, fulfillment, joy on the inside.

Business, as anything else in our life, is about managing the input side; essentially what energy you put in, the purpose why you are doing what you are doing, creating an organizational structure where the lifestyle of the individual people who make the organization determines the role instead of the other way around, the business strategy to have long-term mutually beneficial relationships with clients with the focus to make a difference, nurturing your employee and customer communities to support their growth; instead of the mad running from pillar to post stressing about the results and in that rush, forgetting that the basic reason a business exists is to be of service to its people and customers.

Given that input, profit is a guarantee. This concept is intellectually understood and splashed around on the walls as mission statements and values. That makes zero difference.

What would make a difference is to focus leadership development and evolution on coaching people to

Be connected with who they authentically are as human beings
Be authentically connected with each other without masks and defenses
Discover their purpose, link that purpose to their work so that they can bring the joy of that purposefulness and the resultant ownership to their job
Discover the exhilaration of craft mastery and play the game to be the best in their domain
Be on the journey of personal mastery by transforming across all the 4 bodies of their Being (physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual) by letting go of limiting habits and taking on growth habits

For this, the business owner / CEO has to first walk this path.

The right way of doing business does not get any media attention because Level 5 leaders (who, as per Jim Collins, lead their organizations from good to great) running these kind of businesses go about their work quietly, preferring to spend time with family rather than get caught up with unnecessary media attention. This is unfortunate because the world ends up seeing the wrong kind of role models – the aggressive Level 4 Leaders who are out there chasing goals with no time for personal nourishment or family.

As we end our conversation

On being asked about sharing his message with the wider world by writing a book, he responds that he does that in a limited way by mentoring and coaching Founder CEOs; though he protects his time, which is another fundamental principle of his way of life. Spreading things out in the world invites a lot more encroachment of his time which would totally ruin his lifestyle and that doesn’t work for him.

The irony is that people who haven’t gotten the joy and fulfillment, professionally and personally, end up writing so much more, talking so much more, making a lot more noise, attracting a lot more media attention. People who understand and live the secret of having it all – deeply fulfilling successful profitable businesses, loving harmonious relationships at home and at work, happy responsible kids, lots of nourishing nurturing me-time, while making a difference in the world - are not inspired to attract attention to themselves in any way by writing about themselves or telling the world about themselves and are content to live their lives quietly away from the glare of the limelight; so the world just ends up not getting the right message.

This article is in a way an attempt to bring to light Gear 5 role model Leaders, or Level 5 Leaders as Jim Collins calls them.

I have no doubt in my mind that this is the direction businesses will eventually evolve towards because what is the highest and the best is the only thing that sustains in the long run, as Charles Darwin has beautifully made the world understand.

I am looking forward to witnessing the transformation of our species from fear-based Survival of the Fittest to the love-sourced Transformation to our Highest Self, led by businesses who will evolve their leadership model from being fear-based to the leadership model sourced in love, gratefulness, reverence, integrity, personal mastery, joy, gentleness, connection creating abundance, prosperity, fun, freedom and fulfillment for all.

Pseudonyms have been used for the serial entrepreneur interviewed and for his businesses to protect his privacy. In his words, “Other than discomfort about privacy, it’s a concern about upsetting the balance in the company by me standing in the spotlight so to speak. That runs counter to the basic thesis of this not being about a single person but a community of equals. I would be fine with publishing it anonymously - both my name and the company.”

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Book of the Week: Selling the Invisible (A Field Guide to Modern Marketing) by Harry Beckwith

29/8/2018

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Selling the Invisible is an easy read and yet very powerful in its message. This book is a must read if you are selling services. It cuts through all that you think you know about selling and brings you to what you really need to know to be a profitable, successful, world-class services business. Harry busts many myths being understood as gospel truth. The ideas in the book are hugely thought-provoking, yet bite size actions that you can immediately take that add up to move your business forward with velocity. It is hugely entertaining as well, being full of anecdotes and interesting examples.

The book is especially useful if you want to grow your business. Read the book to avoid being blindsided and driving on the wrong road to nowhere. It is truly a field guide as the name says it is and will guide you right back to the path of fulfilling success.

Here are few gems from the book:

1. Unfortunately, this focus on getting the word outside distracts companies from the inside, and from the first rule of service marketing: The core of service marketing is the service itself.

2. Assume your service is bad. It can't hurt, and it will force you to improve.

3. ... everyone's focus for marketing for the year immediately turns to "How do we sell this?"

Instead, everyone should start at ground zero. They should ask, "Is this viable anymore? Is this what the world wants?"

4. Stage one in an industry is product driven. Stage one companies offer their clients the accepted product. ... Stage two is market driven. Stage two companies offer their clients the desired product. ... Surprising the customer is the driving force in stage three of an industry. Stage three, as a result, is imagination-driven, and a company in this stage offers the possible service. ... Every service company must look at stage three; that is where glory, fame and market share lie.

5. For a dozen reasons, conduct oral surveys, not written ones.

6. Focus groups tell more about group dynamics than about market dynamics. ... You are selling to individuals. Talk to individuals.

7. "We can have great talent, products, prices, and advertising. But if that sales clerk at the end of the line fails, everything fails. The buyer doesn't return. And if the buyer suffers a very bad experience, he tells all his friends not to come, either.

Everyone in your company is responsible for marketing your company.

... Marketing is not a department. It is your business.

... Every employee should know that every act is a marketing act upon which your success depends.

8. Find out what clients are really buying.

9. Most companies in expert services - such as lawyers, doctors, and accountants - think that their clients are buying expertise. But most prospects for these complex services cannot evaluate expertise... But they can tell if the relationship is good and if the phone calls are returned. Clients are experts at knowing if they feel valued.

In most professional services, you are not really selling expertise - because your expertise is assumed, and because your prospect cannot intelligently evaluate your expertise anyway. Instead, you are selling a relationship. And in most cases, this is where you need the most work.

10. Before you try to satisfy "the client", understand and satisfy the person.

11. ... your prospect faces three options: using your service, doing it themselves, or not doing it at all. In many cases, then, your biggest competitors are not your competitors. They are your prospects.

12. The competent and likeable solo consultant will attract far more business than the brilliant but socially deficient expert.

13. Service businesses are about relationships. Relationships are about feelings. ... In service marketing and selling, the logical reasons that you should win the business - your competence, your excellence, your talent - just pay the entry fees. Winning is a matter of feelings, and feelings are about personalities.

14. ... in successful companies, tactics drive strategy as much or more than strategy drives tactics. ... Sometimes, the very first tactic you execute changes your entire plan.

15. If you are prone to being certain, copy Jay Chiat. The head of Chiat Day, the ad agency behind many of America's most conspicuous advertisements, Chiat carries a note in his pocket. The note reminds him that whenever he is in an argument he should remember the note's three words: "Maybe he's right."

Maybe others are right and you are wrong - even if you are certain you are right. ... also not to be overwhelmed by other person's total convictions.

16. You are just this invisible thing - a service - a mere promise that you will do something. ... It is less risky for the prospect to do nothing. At this point, you do not need to put more sale in. You need to take some of the fear out. ... Always remember: the prospect is afraid. The best thing you can do for a prospect is eliminate her fear. Offer a trial period or a test project.

17. Rather than hide your weaknesses, admit them. That will make you look honest and trustworthy - a key to selling a service.

18. To broaden your appeal, narrow your position.

19. "If they can do something that hard, then by lesser logic they can do this." ... In your service, what's the hardest task? Position yourself as the expert at this task, and you'll have lesser logic in your corner.

20. A position is a cold-hearted, no-nonsense statement of how you are perceived in the minds of prospects. It is your position.

A positioning statement, by contrast, states how you wish to be perceived. It is the core message you want to deliver in every medium...

You can establish your positioning statement by answering the following questions:
Who: Who are you?
What: What business are you in?
For whom: What people do you serve?
What need: What are the special needs of the people you serve?
Against whom: With whom you are competing?
What's different: What makes you different from those competitors?
So: What's the benefit? What unique benefit does a client derive from your service?

21. In positioning, don't try to hide your small size. Make it work by stressing its advantages, such as responsiveness and individual attention.

22. ... if you do not have a focus, you soon might not have a business.

23. If good value is your best position, improve your service.

24. A service is a promise, and building a brand builds your promise.

25. The most desirable services, then are those that keep their promises.

This also means that the heart of a service brand - the element without which the brand cannot live - is the integrity of the company and its employees.

26. A service is a promise. You are selling the promise that at some future date, you will do something. That means what you really are selling is your honesty.

Tricks and gimmicks aren't honest. Gimmicky headlines, swimsuit models, direct marketing tricks - they are all a form of bait and switch.

27. People notice marketing communications that refuse to strain the truth because people notice the unusual and understatement is unusual. Far better to say too little than too much.

28. Tell people - in a single compelling sentence - why they should buy from you instead of someone else.

29. The most compelling selling message - I understand what you need.

The selling message "I have" is about you. The message "I understand" is about the only person involved in the sale who really matters: the buyer.
Find out what they want.
Find out what they need.
Find out who they are.
It will take extra time, but it can make the sale.

30. If you make a client think you will do better than you can do, the client will end up disappointed. Even worse, she will decide that you misled her, or lied.

It isn't worth getting that business. A disappointed person who thinks you are a liar will usually tell three other people. Suddenly, one great sale has become four big problems.

... This means that one of a marketer's most suicidal marketing weapons is hype.

31. Gail Sheehy began her research looking for the secrets of truly contented people. She wondered what made these people feel such a sense of well-being. She learned that "people of high well-being" shared just a few traits and this was one: They all had taken an enormous risk.

Selling a service involves personal risks. You can look too pushy. You will be rejected. People won't return your calls. You run the risk of feeling bad when you go home at night.

But the rewards of all these efforts will make you wonder: Why didn't I do that in the first place?

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book word to word. It was refreshing and rejuvenating to read the complex ideas so simply laid out. Read the book, apply the ideas and create a whole new way of doing business joyously and effortlessly.

The inquiry I want to leave you with is: To be successful at selling services, who do you authentically need to be from the inside?

For my clients, an even deeper inquiry - What kind of leader would you need to evolve into to build a successful, profitable with much higher margins than the industry, world-class services organization?

Wishing that you make an enormous difference to your customer community that they chase you instead of you chasing them.

Love,
Jyoti.

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Why are You Born in the Country You are Born in?

22/8/2018

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Why are you born in the country you are born in? Why are you born in the community you are born in? Why are you born to the religion that you are born to? Why are you born in the family you are born in? Why did you get married to the person you got married to? Why do you have the kids that you have? Why did you grow up in the specific schools and colleges that you went to? Why do you have the specific friends that you have? Why do you have the specific teachers, mentors, coaches that you have?

Did you choose them or did they choose you? How is any of this related to what is your life about? And, ultimately, what is your life about? What is the purpose, meaning of waking up, going about the day, sleeping; and day in, day out repeating that ad infinitum? Why?

Hmmm. I don't know about you; though here are my answers that make sense to me and gives me the energy to move from moment to moment with joy and gratitude. You can make them your answers if they connect with you.

We are born in our country because we are meant to carry forward our country's legacy to the world and serve our country to make an even bigger difference to humanity.

We are born in the community that we are born to because we are meant to heal the shared history so that the community connects even more deeply with its roots and with each other to make a much bigger contribution to the country it is a part of and the world as an outcome of that.

We are born to the religion we are born to because we are meant to go beyond our customs, rituals, traditions, mythology that separates us and connect to the real essence of our religion - spirituality - which connects all of humanity through the language of love.

We are born in the family we are born in because we are meant to break the limiting patterns of loss and pain that are passed on from generation to generation; and connect to our authentic selves. In our connecting to our authentic selves, we will connect with vulnerability, deep love and unconditional acceptance with our spouse, kids, parents, siblings and all our family members to lead all of us to freedom, peace and fulfilment. Quoting from a book I read recently - "We are not separate because of the wars. Wars are because we are separate." This separateness, disconnection begins at home.

We are married to the person we are married to because in the pain of that relationship lies our individual growth to our highest self; only if we don't numb or ignore that pain, only if we allow ourselves to feel the pain that there is. This most intimate of relationships is a beautiful lab in which we see in the other the mirror which reflects back to us what is missing in us. The error we make is by deluding ourselves that the missing is in the other, all the while all that the other does is to play the role of our mirror. The other cannot complete us. Two half circles cannot experience completion and connection. Only in each being complete and whole, will the relationship be complete and whole. That is why divorces don't make sense because we are not really running away from the other. We are really running away from our own selves. Unfortunately, there is no way to run except inside our own selves to dig out and own our own pain to be free.

We have the kids that we have to serve them by being on our journey to our highest self because that is their only access to being on their journey to their highest self.

We went to the specific schools and the colleges we went to because we are meant to give back to those institutions. My 72 years old father goes back to his village school once a year to offer scholarships to bright, deserving, poor students so that they don't have to earn money like him, while still at school.

We have the friends we have so that we become their accountability partners, holding them accountable to realise their greatest dreams and not let Life make them forget what makes their hearts sing and feet dance.

We have the specific teachers, mentors, coaches we have so that we can get connected to our purpose and remind them of theirs.

What are your answers? Actually, the power is not so much in finding the right answers but reaching the right questions. So, let me begin by asking, what are your questions?

Love, Jyoti.

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What to do When You have Run Out of Ideas?

21/8/2018

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I am stumped today because I seem to have run out of ideas on what to write to make a difference. That gives me something to deep dive into. What to do when you have run out of ideas :-)

The first step is to take a break - a power snooze break, or a music break, or a reading break or a fruit / juice break. I took a 5-minute power snooze break followed by an apple break.

In fact, we work best in cycles of 90 minutes with a 10 minute break in-between. It's called the Ultradian Rhythm. Pioneering researcher, Nathan Kleitman, discovered that our bodies operate in 90 minutes rhythm not only during the night but also during the day when we move from higher alertness to lower alertness.

In his renowned 1993 study of young violinists, performance researcher Anders Ericsson found that the best ones all practiced the same way: in the morning, in three increments of no more than 90 minutes each, with a break between each one. Ericcson discovered the same pattern among other musicians, athletes, chess players and writers.

Experiment with scheduling your day in slots of 90 minutes interspersed with 10 minutes of break. The moments of most focus are immediately before the break and after the break. By creating a number of smaller breaks into your schedule instead of one big break, you are actually increasing the duration of intense focus and concentration.

See, even though I coach my clients on the ultradian rhythm, how easy it is not follow what you teach? I remembered this principle only when I was struggling with the writers' block and realised that I was at my desk non-stop for the last 6 hours till I remembered to take a break.

The second step is to not stay distracted but come back after 10 minutes to the original place where you are stuck. One would have a tendency to wander away to tick off some other easier item on the task list. If it is important to have a breakthrough in the spot where you are stuck, it would be productive to come right back to where you left off and you will find an access to move forward. Just like I did.

The third step is to use the power of writing to engage the full horsepower of the intellect, if you are working alone and the power of questions if you are working in a group. Instead of wrestling with things in your head, it is hugely effective to pour it all out on a paper. I have some of the most elegant solutions through the process of submitting the mind to the discipline of the written word, allowing the words to freely flow out and not let the mind come in the way.

With groups, I use what I call Socratic Discussions where the power of questions is used to lead the group forward for inquiry, discovery and insights. Only 2 rules, either you have a question or you are answering a question someone in the group asked. Owe my 2 years of training with Worldwide Institute of Action Learning for my love of questions and the ability to use them to engage in effective conversations for creative solutions.

Well, I got off from where I was stuck. You can too, everytime.

Love, Jyoti.

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Book of the Week: Real by Catherine and Duane O'Kane

20/8/2018

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Real (The Power of Authentic Connection) by Catherine and Duane O'Kane has the potential to transform what it means to be a human being by giving us a structure to come home to ourselves forever. If the CEOs learn to authentically connect with themselves and with people in their organizations; unimaginable productivity, performance, creativity, innovation and profitability will be unleashed.

It is the CEO on an inner journey of personal transformation who will have the courage to lead his / her business on a journey from good to great. If business excellence be the house, leadership depth is the foundation on which the house is built. Running a business is an opportunity to be on the path of personal mastery. As the leader at the helm learns, grows and evolves; so does the business because the organization invariably mirrors the strengths and weaknesses of the CEO.

This book has had a profound impact on the way I run my businesses, how I coach, my relationship with my parents, sisters, spouse, kids, clients and myself. It has been a tipping point on my journey to myself. All the work that I had done on myself up until prior (and I have done some massive inner work on myself) had me intellectually understand and be aware of how the 'suspicion of self' was playing out in my life. It is only on reading the book and doing the self-application that the jigsaw pieces fell in place with clarity that I hadn't seen before. I am standing taller than I have ever stood in my life.

Much gratitude to Catherine and Duane for your vulnerability, authenticity and courage to share your work and your life with the world through a book. You both made a difference to my life.

I recommend that the book be read from start to end to do the work to come home to yourself. Here are a few excerpts from the book:

1. Human beings are happier, healthier and live longer when we have strong relationships. We are at our best when we are living a connected life, surrounded by people we love and care about.

2. The lack of authentic connection permeates the very fabric of how we organize ourselves in the modern world. It explains and contributes more to our personal malaise, work issues, high divorce rates, mental illness, and physical sickness than any other factor.

3. We aren't avoiding each other because of the problems. We have problems because we are avoiding each other. We aren't separate because of the wars. We have wars because we are separate.

4. Connection gives meaning and purpose to our lives. We all want to belong, to love, and be loved.

5. Just as fitness is a by-product of exercise, happiness is a by-product of loving, relational action.

6. There is nothing to fear, because we belong and are good enough as we are.

7. The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large scale revolution until there's personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first. - Jim Morrison

8. We prefer to see the problem as something outside ourselves, therefore the solution must be outside ourselves as well. Therein lies the dilemma. If the problem and the solution are outside of self, then we are doomed to be victims of the effects of external causes ultimately beyond our control. If the problem and the solution are within, then we can change.

9. How you connect is the strongest determinant of how you feel, and how you connect exerts a powerful influence on all those around you.

10. We cannot not communicate. Connection is active all the time, with every thought, every word, every action. Not communicating is communicating. We are communicating all the time and are connected all the time. There are no neutral moments or situations.

Every time we actively communicate, there are two levels to that communication: there is the content or literal message, but underlying that is a relationship message that is conveyed mostly non-verbally, through body language, facial expression and tone of voice.

In terms of the impact of a communication on the receiver, the content of the message is worth about 20% of the communication, while the relationship level is responsible for 80%. The relationship message always overrides the content: you cannot lie at a relationship level. What you are really feeling always comes through, and when what you say with your words doesn't match the relationship message, people will respond to the relationship message.

… We are impacting others all the time with what we believe about self, other and the world…

… Thoughts and beliefs such as these are not neutral, dormant, sitting by themselves on an island inside my head. They are active as hell - or heaven. These are the thoughts and beliefs that I brought … before I met you. They are eager to prove themselves.

11. The difficulties we experience in life, which are ultimately relationship difficulties, are because of what we hold in the basement of our psyches. If our psyche is metaphorically a house, the basement is the place where we hide our fears and vulnerabilities. We all have fears in the basement about not being good enough, being inadequate, unlovable, and so on, but we rarely reveal these fears. Instead, we hide, pretend and defend, and that is ultimately what gets us into trouble.

12. …it is impossible to get out of childhood without developing a basement to some degree. This isn’t because of bad parenting, it is simply because of how we develop as human beings: we do not have the ability to understand nuances and context until adulthood. If we accept this, then we can proceed with the task of adulthood, reclaiming self from the basement in an integrated fashion, so what we know to be true matches what we feel to be true. That is what we can do to prevent the horrific stories from replaying in the next generation.

13. What is really happening as we wander obliviously through our daily lives is that something or someone triggers our underlying Suspicion of Self (that we are unlovable, not good enough and so on) and we don our armour to protect ourselves, attacking the thing that triggered our old, historic fear. We mistake the person knocking on the door to the basement for the one who put us there. However, that isn’t how it feels; it feels as if him or her or this or that is causing our upset rather than simply triggering it. … We fear that if we let that aspect of self be revealed, we will be rejected. To prevent that outcome, we consciously or unconsciously do what it takes to push people away.

14. How we hide, pretend, defend, and offend in all our relationships is key to what we end up experiencing.

15. … busyness (has) a hidden agenda: it allows (us) to focus on “what to do” and avoid what (we) are feeling.

16. … we set up people around us to become the very thing we are trying to get away from in our past. Because of what we are hanging on to in our basement, we are wired for fear and defence. We are hyper alert for evidence that what happened back then is happening again. In essence, we see what we are looking for. It is as if those fear-based beliefs are written on the lenses of our glasses, and as we look through them we latch on to what agrees and screen out what doesn’t.

… We are looking out through the lenses of our suspicion of self (that we are unlovable, not good enough etc.). We are hot-wired from the basement to react with our strategies and defences. How we respond then invites the very thing we are trying to avoid.

17. We are not so much perceiving reality as projecting our own version of it, seeking to prove our own fear-based beliefs. Our defences create the very thing we are defending against. Our SOSs (suspicions of self) were made up in relationship with another person and must be corrected in connection with another person. We cannot heal alone. …

18. The waves we create with what we upload into our connecting relationship lines or system do not just go out. They return to us a perception of the world in front of us in such a way that it reinforces whatever we already believe about self, other and the world.

19. Have you ever achieved some goal you set for yourself and then wondered “Is this all there is?” Because we hold these suspicions of self, we end up resisting the very thing we want the most, even when it lands right on our doorstep. We do not allow the good things we have in our lives to enter because we don’t feel worthy of them.

… In order to address what is in the basement, we must stop the harmful (strategic - masks & armours - and defensive) behaviours we engage in. When we do that, what is hiding in our basement will make itself apparent. Opening up requires opening the door to the basement, where this hurting aspect of our authentic self resides. We are frightened of being vulnerable because we are convinced that what we made up about ourselves is true. It is not!

… When we are brave enough to risk being seen, fully and deeply seen, then the good stuff can go to where we need it the most.

20. Throughout the history of your family, people have experienced losses and hardship and have developed ways to cope with these losses.

… the family develops a strategy for survival on the foundation of loss, which (out of the best of intentions) is then transmitted to the next generation.

… The difficulty in this is that when you are set up to make up for someone else’s loss in the family system, you will carry a weight of expectation, of dreams unfulfilled, that isn’t actually yours to carry. You will be subtly or overtly directed away from things that might be more authentic for you and directed towards things others want for you or expect of you.

Not only might this contribute to your own loss (because you sacrifice doing what you want), but you might not even know what you want because you have become more attuned to what is expected. … When a family teaches a strategy that is founded on loss, it also transmits the anxiety, fear and unprocessed grief around the loss. The person receiving the directive might know nothing about what happened but still feel the anxiety.

21. We actually have two related fears about allowing someone close to our basements. One is the obvious: we don’t want anyone to see who we fear we are because if they do, we fear we will be abandoned, rejected, punished, or found lacking in some way (just like when …).

We also fear allowing someone power, allowing someone to be important. In our attempts to avoid letting someone have power, we withhold our love. We refuse to give because we don’t want what we give to make us vulnerable.

This is a really important thing to realize: we are not only trying to hide, we also actively hold back from contributing positive feelings and giving ourselves fully to our relationships. We are just as frightened of the good as we are of the bad. If it gets too good, we fear losing it, and we would rather just have it be mediocre or even bad, believing that if we don’t let it be too good we won’t feel the pain of loss. The fear of loss comes from our personal experience around what happened when someone was important, and from the legacy of loss in our family.

The above excerpts are from the first few chapters. Read the book to understand and escape the tyranny of the trap of living life from the default limiting self into freedom, authenticity, wholeness and joyous connection.

When that happens, you will find the courage not only to lead your business from good to great; but also to have loving harmonious relationships at work and at home, happy responsible kids, lots of nourishing nurturing me-time, while making a difference and increasing your impact in the world.

Love, Jyoti.

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Who Inspires Whom - the Teacher or the Student?

17/8/2018

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The teacher inspires the student and the student inspires the teacher. When you are in a cycle like this with your coach, mentor, guide; that is when the relationship is most productive and contributes to both the teacher and the student to reach their highest self. This is how the teacher-student, guru-shishya, coach-coachee, mentor-mentee, parent-child, leader-team member relationships are meant to be - relationship of equals.

Love, gratitude, reverence flows both ways because the teacher would not be the teacher without the willing student and the student would not be a student without a teacher equally willing to learn from, grow and evolve with the student through the process of teaching. Giving cannot take place without receiving; and both the giver and the receiver equally give and receive in that exchange of energy. Similarly, teaching cannot take place without learning; with both the teacher and the learner equally teaching and learning.

If the teacher is not learning, growing, evolving through the process of teaching the student; the student is really not learning, growing, evolving. Each puts the other on the pedestal by giving their unconditional love, gratitude, reverence to, trust, faith, belief in the other and that is how they both rise higher and higher.

The teacher continues to work on themselves to be worthy of being a teacher and does 10X of what they ask their student to do. The student challenges themself even more than what the teacher has asked them to do and create what was impossible, unimaginable before. One inspires the other in an ongoing cycle of growth, evolution and transformation.

If we step back and focus on our breath for a while to still our mind, we will realize that is the purpose of each of our relationships - to connect with our teacher in the other; especially in our most difficult relationships. That relationship is difficult just because we are meant to learn something that we are resisting, that we are unwilling to learn. We can shed that resistance by standing with our hands on the side and bowing down to the teacher in the other, as we would do in Martial Arts. In the Indian tradition, the student bends down to touch the teacher's feet. Only in our bending to acknowledge the teacher in the other is the learning possible because then we are saying to the Universe, I know not. It is when we know, that we block learning and growth from taking place.

I recently came across these lines in an amazing book (Real by Catherine and Duane O'Kane) which beautifully captures the essence of this -

"An enlightened master is not a master who is omniscient and certain of the truth about all things all the time. An enlightened master is a person who bows to not knowing the truth about all things and is open to knowing more about all things all the time."

The joy of learning is what gives us the joy of living. As we relate to everything and everyone around us as our teachers, we will find the joy coming from even a chance encounter with a beggar on the road.

Organizations will grow to their highest expression in impact and profitability, if they acknowledge and embrace the secret that leaders are meant to be teachers, guides, coaches to their team members; and learn to lead their teams by walking the path towards their own personal mastery of who they are as human beings.

May we all come back home to ourselves and experience the joy, fulfilment and freedom of being who we truly are.

Love, Jyoti.

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Why Motivation is Bad for your Health and your Business?

16/8/2018

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Why motivation is not good for your health or your business? Because it doesn't last and it may even leave a negative impact. You may experience high energy for some time, but then you will fall back to your default original state. Stop seeking motivation and trying to motivate others. Seek to get inspired and inspire others instead.

Inspiration is the energy which comes from within in response to someone who has connected to their depths to do something that was impossible for them before by going beyond their fears, resistance and inertia. To inspire someone, you want to be authentic and vulnerable, and take 10X action of what you are inviting others to take. To inspire others, you take action not to seek others' approval, appreciation, applause but for your own inner god.

Motivation makes a lot of noise. Inspiration is silent. Motivation gives a push while Inspiration results in joyous effortless action. Read about the greatest human beings on Earth to be inspired or talk to people who bring warmth in your heart and stars in yours eyes to be inspired. Live your greatest dreams to inspire.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the acclaimed astrophysicist and cosmologist, beautifully brings about the negative impact of motivation in his review of the movie 'Whiplash' during an interview -

"I just saw Whiplash. It was interesting. Here’s why I take issue with it. It’s one jazz musician and one overbearing coach, so I get that, but I come from a world where true success is completely driven from within the individual and not from someone outside of them. While the case portrayed there is some fraction of cases that are out there, at the end of the day, Einstein became Einstein not because someone said, “Keep studying, keep studying!” and someone didn’t say, “Isaac Newton, go invent calculus!” He invented it on his own. So in my world, there is no success without people being self-driven, and to believe that you only achieve greatness because someone pushed you there? I don’t see that. The story was nonetheless intriguing, but I feel it may be the minority of cases who have succeeded in a singular way in life. If someone treats you that way, you may become really good at something but you won’t become the greatest at it, and you’ll resent them and you might even turn away from the subject entirely."

Steve Jobs used the power of dreams and questions to inspire. Here's an excerpt from an article from Entrepreneur magazine -
" A retail executive who was once tasked with revitalizing the Disney Store called Steve Jobs, Disney’s largest shareholder, to ask for advice. Jobs said, “Dream bigger.” Those two words contained a wealth of wisdom and inspired Disney to think radically different. The Disney Store would no longer provide a place just for customers to buy products. The store would be a physical manifestation of the Disney experience.

..... Jobs was a master of dreaming big and he encouraged others to do the same. Sometimes the inspiration came in the form of a question that forced people to re-examine their lives and their businesses. The story of how Jobs challenged then-Pepsi president John Sculley to do some real soul-searching is now well-known. “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?” Jobs asked. Sculley once said the question landed “like a punch to the gut.” (Sculley was vice-president and president of Pepsi, until he became chief executive officer of Apple)

..... Jobs did not ask his team to build a retail store so Apple could sell more products and increase its market share. Instead Jobs asked, “How can we reinvent the store?” The question forced his team to think outside of the entire category. Instead of copying other electronics stores, the team visited The Ritz-Carlton hotel for inspiration. What they learned became the foundation for the store. Walk into an Apple Store and you’ll be greeted at the entrance, like at a hotel. You won’t find a cashier at the Apple Store, but there is a concierge. You’ll even notice a "bar" at the back of the store, but instead of dispensing alcohol, “geniuses” dispense advice. These innovations were the direct result of Jobs asking the people around him to dream bigger."

I am inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote that inspires Jeff Bezos. This is what Jeff tweeted about it - Love this quote. It’s been on my fridge for years, and I see it every time I open the door.
"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."

I seek out thought leaders, master coaches, industry leaders who inspire me because they connect me to the highest in me by connecting to the highest in themselves.

Good leaders lead. Good parents parent. Good coaches coach. Great leaders, parents, coaches simply inspire.

Love, Jyoti.

References:
1. Hat Tip to Master Coach Rich Litvin for getting me to become aware of Tyson's interview through one of his many inspirational posts.
2. Tyson's Interview
3. Article in Entrepreneur Magazine on Steve Jobs
4. CNBC Article on Jeff Bezos

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The Session That Was

8/8/2018

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My 12 year old daughter wanted me to take a session for her class at school. I was surprised because her instructions to me at home are pretty clear - Don’t coach me. I know why that is so because I keep breaking the fundamental principle of the Coach’s Hippocratic Oath with her - Don’t coach without permission, which means coach only if someone has paid you the money to coach them. Though sometimes, inspite of paying the money, clients are still uncoachable. Then, of course, it is more effective to end the coaching relationship and return the money because it is painful to see people refusing to remove the blindfold preventing them from seeing how they are at the source of all that is working and not working in their lives.

Of course, all of us are at the source of all that there is in our lives. But, if that’s not the premise on which the coaching relationship begins and the client refuses to even consider that as a possible source, not much transformation will happen. We may keep bandaging to stop the blood from flowing but it doesn’t work for me if I am not coaching to heal the root cause to permanently stop the bleeding. That reduces the number of people I end up working with because there are very few who are willing to step out of their comfort zone to do the deep inner work to bring about total transformation to live their greatest life. Most of us are happy with what there is and an incremental change from there. I respect that too because each one of us are on our own journey and we make choices based on what feels most authentic at any moment.

I confess, I digressed. Coming back to my daughter’s request, I, of course, agreed and ended up experiencing profound learning from a group of 12 year olds. I ran the session as I would for my clients. They had huge amount of pre-work to get them into the space of inquiry about themselves and their lives. They shared anonymously with me their deepest fears, secret dreams and questions they were scared to ask anyone else. My heart broke to read through their pre-work. Their pain was no different than what I experience from the 40+ that I usually coach. Just that the experience of the pain was far more intense as the young people hadn’t yet learnt to numb their pain to live the drama of adulthood. With the 12 year olds, the pre-work was sufficient for them to feel connected with what was really going on inside them. For 40+, it takes months and sometimes years of coaching for them to come to this level of vulnerable self-awareness.

It is when that pain in the basement of our psyche is pushed deep inside and we lock it away even from our own selves that we begin to live an inauthentic existence. It is this disconnection that causes all the relationship pain that we go through all of our adult lives, impacting us adversely both professionally and personally; coming in the way of our creativity, innovation, performance and productivity that we end up living good lives instead of great lives.

Nothing wrong with a good life. I respect the choice made to live a good life, just that not living the greatest life (professionally and personally) leaves us with an empty feeling in our hearts that has us feeling not good enough, not loveable, not worthy. And, yet, we can live life another way. I believe that is the purpose of our life - to remove the thick dark curtain inside and let our light shine through to make our world brighter than it was before. It is then we feel deeply connected with who we are and feel an authentic fulfilling connection with people around us; experiencing elation, joy, authenticity, harmony, tranquil stillness within with nowhere to go and nothing to prove, no yearning for anything, nothing to chase, love, reverence, abundance, prosperity and everything else on the growth spectrum. In this shift on the inside, we step into being a leader. We may have had a designation and a role before but its only with this massive shift in our consciousness that we understand what it means to be a leader and become one.

Based on their first pre-work, I sent them some articles that I had written for my customer community of CEOs and Business Owners. I sent a message to them to search for their answers, like detectives, from what they were reading and send me another set of responses. Through their responses, I experienced their joy of discovering their answers on their own, connecting to their inner wisdom; and even more questions came tumbling out. I realised, their connection to their inner wisdom is so much stronger than ours and we, in the name of parenting and education, slowly and steadily keep breaking their connection to themselves so that they can grow up as adults.

So, a week later from when my adventure began with them, I finally find myself facing 28 twelve year olds, curious as to what this new teacher will get them to do now. I started with giving them a choice to be in the session because they wanted to, not because they had to or because someone had told them. The murmurings stopped and I got their committed listening. Interestingly, not one left the room. In giving that choice, they let their walls fall and allowed me in to their hearts. We began with them closing their eyes and focussing their attention on their breath coming in and going out; to get aware of what thoughts, feelings, sensations were coursing through their body and getting present to their intention from the session. As they opened their eyes and re-connected with the world outside, each one shared their intention with the group in the form of a single question. I invited them to consider that fulfilling their intention was their responsibility and that I was with them merely to give them whatever they took away from me. They accepted my proposal and agreed to pull their learnings from me rather than me pushing it on them. Once the agreements of the game were in place, the socratic discussion began. Of course, I had few distinctions that I wanted them to experience viscerally so that the notes were etched on their souls rather than on a piece of paper. I let them pull it from me. It was the most energising, engaging, refreshing conversation of my life. We ended our 2 hours together with each one of them declaring their personal inner commitment of what they wanted to be the best in the world.

I figured I must have done something good as my daughter brushed past me after she came back home from school, murmured 'amazing session' and quickly rushed out of the room before I could blink. I have grown enough in the last 12 years of being a parent to gracefully receive that as my gold medal :-) Even more fulfilling was when later she told me that she discovered why she wasn't playing well in the last golf game we played together. She had nearly quit and hung on till the end of the game only because of her father; inspite of her headache, body ache, tiredness. My admiration for him as a dad grew multiple folds that day.

My intention of our education system is for education to connect young people to their biggest dreams and to give them a structure to grow intellectually, emotionally, physically and emotionally to realise their greatest dreams in deepest communion with their highest self. When that happens, we will have world class scientists, players, leaders, artists graduating from our schools making a huge difference to the world, instead of scared beings fearful of what the future holds for them. Imagine the joyous growth and liberating transformation available in the world instead of stress, disconnection, emotional and physical violence; as they step out of their schools with compassionate love in their hearts and quiet inner confidence of being masters of their craft, leaders of their communities.

May teachers learn to be coaches and leaders so that they not only teach the young people concepts but coach and lead them to remove the thick curtain inside to live in the expression of their innate greatness and inherent genius; which is the destiny of each human being. Unfortunately, we live our destiny only if we choose to; it is not available to us by default.

Wishing each of us makes the choice to walk the path to come home to ourselves.

Love, Jyoti.

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Why Dreams Matter?

6/8/2018

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The fulfilment is not so much in realising our dreams; greater fulfilment and joy lies in who we end up becoming in the process of getting our dreams realised. Therefore, let’s have dreams that scare us. Then, they are bigger than who we are right now; giving us a pathway for our growth.

In my experience, without a dream shining through our eyes and filling our heart with passion, we end up living half lives, a zombie-like existence of sorts. Wealth is an outcome of a dream and not the other way around. So, lets articulate to ourselves to begin with what is our greatest dream. The age of survival is our past, awakening to our highest dreams is our present and the age of realising our dreams is what we are living into. We have killed many dreams in the past, our own and of our loved ones, in the name of survival. Let us no longer do that because that’s what separates us from our soul and makes us inhuman.

Lets raise our kids to be deeply connected to what song sings in their hearts by deeply re-connecting ourselves to what makes us sing and dance. Lets find out what are the dreams of people who work with us and for us; and support them on their journey. In that act of loving kindness, we get the inner strength to fulfil our dreams to create a new reality.

Tell me your dream and I will tell you how far you will go.

Here are the dreams of few people who made a difference. Their dreams, which they articulated much before there was anything to show for it, created the reality that they dreamt.

We will put a computer in every home and every office across America. - Bill Gates. He not only realised his dream (Microsoft is the world's sixth-largest information technology company by revenue) but also build the world's largest private charitable foundation.

We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here? — Steve Jobs. Apple Inc. is the world's largest information technology company by revenue.

We choose to go to the moon by the end of this decade, not because it is easy but because it is hard. - JFK. USA’s space agency NASA is top-ranked in the world and is known for being a master of space research.

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. - Rabindranath Tagore. He became the intellectual and social consciousness of India. He remodelled education as a holistic development process where teachers would be more like mentors guiding students towards emotional, intellectual and spiritual upliftment. He invested his Nobel Prize money in building the campus for Shantiniketan, a University town. His educational reforms are included in many curriculae across the world. At a time when India was struggling to find the right language of freedom movement, Tagore advocated the idea of global integrity and that the man himself is a gateway to the world. This philosophy changed the way Indians saw the world. The purpose of the freedom struggle changed from protest to progress as Tagore explained the universality of man. The identity of India after independence was closely based on Tagore's ideology of peace and universal brotherhood.

Our dreams have to be bigger. Our ambitions higher. Our commitment deeper. And our efforts greater. This is my dream for Reliance and for India. - Dhirubhai Ambani. From a petrol-pump attendant to a business magnate. He grew Reliance from 1 employee to over 250,000 employees, from initial investment of Rs 1,000 to a company of over Rs 6 lakh crores, from operations in only one city to 28,000 cities and towns, and over four lakh villages.

If I were to attribute any single reason to such success as I have achieved, I would say that success would not have been possible without a sustained belief that what I did or attempted to do would serve the needs and interests of our country and our people and that I was a trustee of such interests. - JRD Tata. Under his leadership, the assets of his business assets grew from Rs 62 crore in 1939 to more than Rs 10,000 crore in 1990. He is a founder of many landmark Indian businesses - Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Motors, Titan Industries, Tata Salt, Voltas and Air India - contributing significantly to the economic prosperity of his country.

Disney had long dreamed of creating an amusement park based on his characters, but had difficulty getting financing for the project. Finally, in the early 1950s, he mortgaged his life insurance, stock holdings, house and furniture to purchase an orange grove near Anaheim, California, and finance the construction of a 185-acre amusement park. Opened in 1955, Disneyland quickly became one of the world's most popular tourist attractions. Dubbed "The Happiest Place on Earth," Disneyland became the real-life version of the fantasy world Disney had escaped to in his youth.

Don’t let cynicism, resignation and lack of self-belief come in the way of your dreams. Each unrealised dream is a massive missed opportunity for the world. All the chaos in the world is because people are chasing everything else but their dreams.

I believe it is the destiny of each one of us of realise our greatest dreams in deepest communion with our highest self but we come in our own way and add to the misery in our hearts and in the world. If we want greater love, harmony, peace, joy and progress in the world; then we must nurture and nourish our dreams for them to bloom to full glory.

Welcome home to your dream.

Love, Jyoti.

References:
www.indiatoday.in
www.rankred.com/top-10-space-research-organisations-world/
www.macworld.com
www.yourstory.com
www.entrepreneur.com
www.financialexpress.com

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Book of the Week: Become a Key Person of Influence by Daniel Priestley

3/8/2018

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Wealth follows if you build yourself as a key person of influence in your industry and not the other way around. Priestly gives his take on how to build yourself to be a key person of influence. It's an idea that needs continual re-enforcement as we tend to confuse the cause and the effect; and end up wasting a lot of money, time and effort.

Here are some key ideas from the book:

1. The harder you work, the less you earn. Your best ideas will come out to play ... not to work. ... The minute you begin to feel yourself "working hard" as opposed to "playing a challenging game", its time to take a break.

2. ... the difference between successful people (and unsuccessful people) on the planet is not Functionality, it's Vitality. Functionality is about performing a task well, whereas Vitality is about doing it joyfully. ... Beneath your desire to have a great home, a snappy wardrobe and some money in the bank is a part of you that longs to make a difference as well. Getting in touch with this part of you will give you a broadband connection to your Vitality.

3. Your greatest asset is your existing passion, the skills you already have and, most of all, your own personal story. ... The truth is that your real wealth lies in your story. Your journey thus far has not been a waste of time; it's been perfect. Your hobbies and interests are not meaningless, they are a gold mine. Your passion isn't hollow; it's the best fuel you will ever have. ... The person who just made a fortune from real estate loved real estate for a long time before they got rich. The person who trades the markets was happy trading through the ups and downs for a long time before they just seemed to "get it right". The NLP Life Coach did three years of unpaid work in the industry before they got their break. ... Unless you have been keenly interested in something for atleast seven years, forget trying to be a success story in that field. You simply can't outdo the people who genuinely love that industry, because they don't think it is a quick formula for cashing in.

4. All of your future learnings will come from the process of producing value.

5. The top 20% of the USA's wealthy control 89% of all the wealth! The top 1% control 34%. ... Wealth moves to and from a small percentage of Key People of Influence. If you are a Key Person in the top 20%, you can expect to be sharing in 89% of the pie. If you aren't, you will be fighting it out with the other 80% of people for the remaining 11%. It will be exhausting...

6. There are 5 things that you need to have in place for you to demonstrate that you are a Key Person of Influence (KPI):

i. Know and communicate your micro-niche

a. KPIs can answer the question "what do you do?" with power and clarity. ... When you know "what you are upto in the world", you become a magnet for opportunity.

b. … at the heart of a "Perfect Pitch" is a mission …,”Your Big Game" you and your business want to be known for. Your perfect pitch is your "why". It's your compass. It's the reason you get up each day.

c. More often than not, YOU will be the micro-niche. Your target market comprising a specific age group and gender will be YOU. The frustrations will be YOURS.

d. Your micro-niche should consist of people who you would enjoy connecting with and people who would equally enjoy connecting with you.

e. Choose a micro-niche that you identify with personally, with genuine concern and interest. ... you must know your stuff well that it comes more from your heart than your mind.

ii. Gain credibility through writing - Your book ... tells the world that you are an authority in your field.

a. A published book communicates some important and necessary messages about you. It says you have put enough thought into this idea to have written a book on it. People can read your ideas and get to know your story and your take on things. It also says that you must either be an expert or have access to experts. … Very few people have ever published a book and for most people, it’s impressive to know that you have completed this project.

b. … there’s a book in everyone if they follow a process and commit to its completion.

c. Here are 5 types of books you could write:

Your Take on Things
Book of Interviews
Book of Tips
Picture Book
A creative Piece

d. … a great book answers a significant question that the reader (your customer segment) is trying desperately to answer.

e. Mark Twain - “The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time, you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.”

f. … you should choose a title that reinforces that you are a Key Person of Influence. It should be “brand enhancing” and you should feel proud to tell people that you are the author.

g. … it is not vital that your book is a massive seller. It is more important that you are an author. … The purpose of the book is to promote you, not the other way around. The mere fact that you are an author and that people can see you on Amazon gives you more kudos and opportunities.

h. … it is not authors who get great opportunities, it is Key Persons of Influence. Your goal is to become the Key Person of Influence …, not to spend all the energy to sell books.

i. … atleast write a set of ten articles, each 1000-1500 words in length before you even begin to talk to publications.

j. A book is a very valuable way to publish your ideas; however, if it’s genuinely not right for you at this time, get started on creating your set of articles ready for publication.

iii. Turn what you know into product - An information product (such as a CD, DVD, Download etc.) opens up a world of opportunities. ... An information product can also be a high-value, high-margin product that can add considerable profit to your enterprise.

a. From Victor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning - “Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfilment. Therein, he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task is as unique as his specific opportunity.”

b. There will always be a limitation on what you can earn if your earning capacity is based on your personal appearance.

c. Regardless of your business, it is the ideas behind your business that make it special and prevent you from having to constantly compete on price.

d. Any industry-specific product can be worth a lot of money and can make you one of the most respected people in your field, opening you up to joint ventures and partnerships.

e. Everyone should have a free product. … The person who will dominate your industry in the next ten years will be the one who is able to give more away for free than anyone else. The fastest growing companies in the 2000s were all companies that gave away incredible value for free - Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.

f. There’s nothing you can create more cheaply that has more value than an information product that shares your experience and insights with your potential clients.

g. Share your best ideas with everyone. … The more people have, the more they want, so share your ideas freely. You will also make room in your mind to have even better ideas.

iv. Raise your profile and Google well - When people do a search for your name, it must come up on the first results page that you are a KPI in your chosen field.

Social media is like a microphone that amplifies you out to every corner of the world. Most people are too busy playing with the technology and go too far “off message”.

v. Forge Joint Ventures & Partnerships - There are already experts in your industry who would jump up at the chance to be interviewed by you to create a product that enhances their brand (and yours).

a. Always approach this with the question: “What is my client REALLY trying to accomplish when they work with me and who could I team up with to get an even better outcome?”

b. All the time, I hear people say, “I just had a good idea but how do I actually make it happen?”. Firstly, you should never ask,”HOW do I make it happen?”. You should ask, “WHO do I need to talk to?” Whenever you have an idea, no matter how crazy, make at least 3 calls to see if it’s doable.

c. One of the key differences between KPIs and everyone else is that KPIs don’t go out looking for clients, they go looking for partnerships and JVs. … KPIs only go networking to find leverage. … To step things up as a KPI, forget looking for clients and start looking for relationships that can really make things happen for both parties.

d. A KPI is not interested in chasing sales. A KPI knows that their goal is to attract the right types of opportunities and the right opportunities for a KPI will always be win / win.

e. The money is in great partnerships and joint ventures. Whenever you want to take your income up to a higher level, go looking for a higher level partnership or joint venture.

7. Unfortunately, our brains are mostly geared to look for quick, easy wins. You mind will play all sorts of tricks on you to stop you from making it big.

8. The most powerful way to save time, money and mistakes is to learn from others who have walked the path before you. … In this age, its possible to find someone who has done what you want to achieve already and learn from them. It’s called standing on the shoulders of giants.

9. No matter what you need in your business or your life, getting it will be a function of your resourcefulness rather than whether the resources are available. The 3 biggest factors that determine your resourcefulness are:
i. The questions you ask
ii. The people you know
iii. Your willingness to stretch into the unknown

10. Unless you are a child asking your parents for something small, the language of requests does not work very often. You need to learn the language of opportunities. This is where you win, by helping someone else win. When you want something, you express it in a way that works for the person you want assistance from. … Great business people speak the language of opportunity ALL the time.

11. Firstly, get in the habit of spotting great opportunities for others. Quite often I will see something in a blog and email it to a friend. Quite often, I will connect two people who I know can do business together. Often enough I will share an idea with someone if I think it would be beneficial.

I don’t spot opportunities for friends because I am looking for an immediate reward. I do it because I believe that it strengthens my network.

Given time, a strong network leads to more wealth, more fun and more success.

12. You must focus on your passion and become a KPI in that field. As soon as you are a KPI, you will not even notice opportunities in other industries because you will be swamped with great things to do in your own industry. And the rewards will come thick and fast.

13. Resist the temptation to chase the new thing and keep taking steps closer to the inner circle of the industry you love.

14. … the people who are successful are the ones who commit to things that take them forward, even when they aren’t sure exactly how it will all come together. … there’s never a right time. You will always have challenges going on with either your time, your money or your focus. If something comes along that you know you should do, then do it, and figure it out along the way.

15. Resources show up AFTER Resourcefulness. Resourcefulness shows up AFTER you make a commitment.

16. Without a commitment, humans use too much brain energy on assessment of the idea, the timing and trying to predict an unpredictable future.

When you finally commit to an outcome, you free up gallons of energy to become more resourceful in following through.

Commit to a big goal (… sign yourself up to some sort of deadline or external commitment) and then start filling in the blanks.

17. Becoming a KPI doesn’t happen for most people because they are waiting for the clearing. They think that “one day” they will have the time, money and focus to get something done. … I ask them, “Why you are working so hard?” They reply. “So I can get some spare time and money to go and do what I want.” … Don’t work for the clearing, work for the result. Ask yourself what it is you actually want to do. Then go and do it. … Bite off more than you can chew and then figure it out as you go.

18. If you don’t become a KPI, you will get stuck chasing revenue, spend too much time searching for (half decent) opportunities and forever feel undervalued.

Now, everything Priestley says is logical and makes sense. You know if you followed the advice in the book, you will become a Key Person of Influence. But the challenge is taking effective actions consistently over a period of time without letting yourself come in the way. We all know how to be fit but how many of us are actually able to take the required actions to become fit.

Based on my experience, there are 3 journeys you would need to undertake in parallel to become a Key Person of Influence. Those journeys would give you the depth and mastery to consistently take precise powerful actions as outlined in the book.

1. Leadership Depth - The inner journey of personal transformation for an integrated wheel of life for deeply fulfilling success at work and at home; and for greater impact in the world through living our Purpose of Life.

This journey is from Gear 0 to Gear 5, where Gear 0 is when our life is still driven by unconscious fears that create our circumstances. The journey forward is an outcome of moving from limiting habits to growth habits across all the 4 bodies of our Being - physical, mental / intellectual, emotional and spiritual.

In Gear 1, you strengthen your Agility of Mind Leadership muscle that has you experience your own greatness, instead of doubting it. It has you finally recognise that your suspicion of self (I am not loved, I am not good enough, I am not important) is just that - a suspicion with no basis in truth; it is simply a paper ghost.

In Gear 2, you strengthen your Being of Service Leadership muscle that has you not just intellectually, but viscerally feel for your customer. You genuinely want to make a difference to your customer community for the sake of making an authentic difference, not because you want wealth and fame.

In Gear 3, you strengthen your Communicating while Being in the World of Others leadership muscle that has you find your voice and have the courage to speak your truth.

In Gear 4, you strengthen your Delivering on Your Word leadership muscle that gives you the depth and humility to have people experience their own greatness in your space and through your work.

In Gear 5, you strengthen your Excellence leadership muscle that you gives you access to Personal Mastery and has people relate to each other as extraordinary in your space and through your work.

You cannot find your niche if you are not operating from Gear 2 consciousness. You will not have the courage to write your book if you are not operating from Gear 3 consciousness.

2. Business Excellence - The outer journey of professional success by contributing to the communities that we serve through the work we do and leading our organisations / business functions from good to great.

This journey is from Mountain 1 to Mountain 5.

In Mountain 1, you discover your business idea in alignment with your Purpose of Life.

In Mountain 2, you discover your niche iteratively by marrying your Purpose with what’s missing in the world.

In Mountain 3, you arrive at a repeatable, scalable, profitable business model through a series of iterative experiments.

In Mountain 4, using the repeatable, scalable, profitable business model you arrived at through multiple iterative experiments in Mountain 3, you begin scaling up your business. You need Gear 4 consciousness to create high productivity, performance, creativity and innovation in your organization for the task of scaling up within (your employees) to scale up outside (customers, profitability).

In Mountain 5, your business is ready to run without you. Your organization is now a self-sustaining, value creating engine giving you passive income.

Only on scaling the 2nd Mountain of the Business Excellence journey will you find your niche and you need to have Gear 2 consciousness for inner power to climb Mountain 2.

Only on doing the work required to climb the 3rd Mountain of Business Excellence, will you deepen your understanding of the customer needs and increase your expertise. This will give you the required breakthrough ideas and solutions for the problems faced by your customer community to write the book that is relevant, meaningful and makes a difference. You need Gear 3 consciousness to find your authentic voice and the experience gained from work done till Mountain 3 for content to write your book.

To convert your knowledge and experience into an information product that is a runaway success requires you to operate from Gear 4 consciousness. Building a successful profitable information product is needed for you to scale your business and climb Mountain 4.

Joint Ventures and Partnerships create value only if you are in Gear 5 consciousness and you have time on your hand as an outcome of being on Mountain 5 to invest in meaningful business relationships. Before, Mountain 5 and Gear 5, spending substantial amount of time on Social Media wastes your energy and distracts you away from Craft Mastery.

3. Craft Mastery - Becoming a key person of influence in our industry through continual learning, unlearning, re-learning to become the master of our craft.

This journey also has 5 stages.

Stage 1 of Craft Mastery is passive learning through reading the books and researching for information on Google. It starts when you are on Mountain 1 and it helps you to zero down to the domain that fills you up with excitement, passion and joy. Gear 1 consciousness is needed to slow down to learn passively. The usual norm is for people to get excited about an area because there seems to be wealth creation opportunity and quickly invest money for certifications without ploughing through to discover what inspires them, about which community and for what problem.

Stage 2 of Craft Mastery is active learning where you are applying your knowledge learnt passively to make a difference to your customer community. This requires Gear 2 consciousness and happens while you are on Mountain 2. This process helps you to zero down on your niche.

Stage 3 of Craft Mastery is seeking out mentors of your domain and apprenticing with them to become an expert. This requires Gear 3 consciousness because without your own voice and the courage to speak it, you will merely become a copy of another master and create no differentiated value in the world. Finding your unique take on the problems of your customer community and discovering / inventing a unique, innovative solution helps you to establish yourself on Mountain 3 by arriving at a repeatable, scalable, profitable business model.

Stage 4 of Craft Mastery is mentoring others in your industry to become experts (bring them to stage 3). To give away all that you learnt in your journey requires you to be in Gear 4 consciousness and helps you to do the work of scaling up in Mountain 4. In this stage, you seek masters of your domain to apprentice with.

Stage 5 of Craft Mastery is mentoring the experts to become mentors (bring them to stage 4). You need Gear 5 consciousness for this work. Creating mentors for your industry helps you to lead your Business to Mountain 5. You have now become the master of your craft, you have become your craft and your craft has become you. You transform your industry through your work, leadership and depth of understanding of your domain. Now, you become a Key Person of Influence.

In Stage 2, writing articles to make a difference to your customer community will help you integrate all that you are learning and all your unique experiences to deepen your understanding of your craft and discover innovative solutions for the challenges faced by your customer community.

In Stage 3, you are ready to write your book. It will now be a process of reviewing your articles from a fresh perspective and collating them together to create something that is meaningful, impactful and transformational.

In Stage 4, while mentoring industry professionals to become experts and having done deep work to write a book, creating an information products for your customer community and industry professionals becomes an almost effortless process.

In Stage 5, having established your credibility by writing a book, mentoring professionals and experts, finding the right Joint Ventures becomes the next logical step. Instead of chasing customers and partners, your customers and partners chase you. When that happens, you know that you have arrived.

Too often, the journey outside gets the focus without the realization that the success outside is always an outcome of the growth within.

I am grateful to Daniel Priestly for his understanding of what it takes to be a Key Personal of Influence as it helped me to clarify lot of concepts in my own head. My reverence for his massive commitment to make a difference to entrepreneurs and professionals by writing this book.

Wishing you all the joy of the journey. Stand on the shoulders of the giants to see further than they saw and go further than anyone has gone before.

Love, Jyoti.

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