2012 March

Try something new for 30 days

At the beginning of this year, I challenged you to fight status quo, remove your baggages and act on your ideas. We’re nearing the quarter mark of this year. How did you do?

For most of you (including me), you probably could have done better. I tried out new things. But, as always, there’s room for improvement. I haven’t been proactive enough in pursuing personal growth. I’ve gotten so busy that I’m slipping back to my old ways of just letting life pass me by.

The 30-day challenge

This week, Aubrey, one of my closest friends, shared to me a TED Video of Matt Cutts, a Google engineer. Matt Cutts took my challenge of fighting status quo to the next level. He suggested that you try something new every 30 days.

The challenge is simple enough (and that’s the beauty of it). Think about something you always meant to do, wanted to do, but just havent. Then, simply try it for 30 days.

Take a look at what Cutts have done in the past few months:

October 2011: went vegan for 30 days
November 2011: grew a moustache for Movember
December 2011: do an act of kindness or a good deed a day for 30 days (here’s his Google plus log of what he did)
January 2012: draw something everyday
February 2012: exercise everyday
March 2012: avoid reading, watching, or hearing the news

How about you? Why not try 30 days of meditation or 30 days of dancing? What have you been meaning to do, but haven’t gotten around to doing it? Maybe you wanted to take more pictures. Or you wanted to read more. Get off your ‘but’ and actually try it out for 30 days.

If you really wanted to badly enough, you can do just about anything for 30 days. The sky is the limit. Have ever wanted to write a novel? You can write one in 30 days! In fact, tens of thousands of people have tried writing their own 50,000 word novel from scratch in 30 days during the National Novel Writing Month of November. All it takes to accomplish this challenge is to write 1,667 words a day in a month!

Whether your challenge is as crazy as writing a novel or just simply exercising everyday, be ready for change. 30 days is about the right time to add a habit or subtract a habit. Cutts asserted that when you learn small sustainable changes, things that you can keep doing, they were more likely to stick. Then soon enough, it’ll be a part of your daily life.

Next Steps

Once you’ve decided on what you want to do for your 30-day challenge, make sure you take the necessary steps to accomplish it.

Schedule a part of your day to do your 30-day challenge.
Read or watch resources online such as instructables or ehow to help you get started
Find a friend who will keep you accountable and check your progress on your 30-day challenge.

If you wanted to pursue a hobby even further, you can even look for a teacher for it. Just make sure you don’t get a bad teacher. A bad one can really kill a blooming passion.

That’s how Lesson Sensei (the startup I’m working on) was born. It’s an easier way for people to find ‘senseis’, teachers who are masters in their craft such as dance, music or cooking. I had this problem when, after years of playing blues, funk and rock guitar, I tried looking for a jazz guitar teacher. I tried Craigslist and Kijiji. But there’s no way to tell if the people there are really who they say they are. In Lesson Sensei, you’ll be able to watch videos from the senseis, view reviews from past students and see the credentials of the sensei.

In Summary

The next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not. Why not think about something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot for the next 30 days? My first 30-day challenge next month is to exercise everyday. I was doing it a few months ago. But life got in the way. What’s yours?

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: 30-day challenge, improve, learn, status quo, TED, upgrade, video

The F-word is not a bad word

by Ramli 1 Comment

Failure is not a bad word.

When you hear it, you cringe. When you see it, you run for cover. When you smell it, you throw up. It can bring a strong person to their knees and make them cry. It’s the dreaded F-word: failure.

Since you and I were young, we were raised with the mentality that failure should be avoided. All throughout school from kindergarten to college, the student who got the least number of failures (or wrong answers) got the highest mark. We carried this must-win mentality at our workplace. The employee who gets promoted is the one who made the ‘right’ connections and the ‘right’ moves, with the least number of visible failures. But what they taught us in school is wrong [I'm sure this isn't the first time you heard this (: ].

Failure is always an option

Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, hosts of MythBusters

One of my favorite TV shows is MythBusters. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out! It’s a perfect mixture of popular science and explosive fun to prove or disprove myths. Early on in the show’s development, co-host Adam Savage came up with the phrase ”Failure is always an option.” Savage wanted the film crew, producers and other people involved in the production to always explore, test and uncover answers and solutions. He wanted to communicate to everyone that failure is an opportunity for learning. Failure builds character. And it takes character to become successful. In the video below, Savage even owns up to some of his biggest failures early in his career.

If you’re too lazy to watch the video, let me summarize what Savage said about failures: “I feel bad sometimes about messing things up. But it is also what makes me good at what I do. And if I didn’t go down those paths to screw up, I would not be enjoying the life I had right now. I had to screw up those jobs. Those were vital for me to do.” To Savage, failure is necessary to achieve success. Behind every success is a string of failures.

Failure is the path to success

Nothing illustrates this better than Silicon Valley. When you think of Silicon Valley, you probably think of all the successful high-growth technology companies that live and thrive there such as Apple, Google, eBay and HP. Have you ever wondered what made Silicon Valley so successful as a center of high-tech growth? Author Mike Malone puts it like this: “Outsiders think of Silicon Valley as a success, but it is, in truth, a graveyard. Failure is Silicon Valley’s greatest strength. Every failed product or enterprise is a lesson stored in the collective memory. We don’t stigmatize failure; we admire it. Venture capitalists like to see a little failure in the resumes of entrepreneurs.” Silicon Valley is known as a center of significant success, but also significant failure. You can’t have one without the other.

Many other great successes started out as failures. Explorer Christopher Columbus failed when he set out to find a new route to India; instead, he found America. Out of failure, Champagne was invented by a monk (named Dom Perignon) when a bottle of wine accidentally had a secondary fermentation. 3M invented glue that was considered a failure because it did not stick. But that glue’s failure to stick became the glue used for the Post-it note, which proved to be a phenomenon. And, one of my favorite examples, chocolate chip cookies was invented by accident by Ruth Wakefield when she ran out of baker’s chocolate and substitute it for crushed up chocolate chunks.

Anything is possible

What Columbus, Perignon, Wakefield and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs understand is that acknowledging that failure is an option allows you to explore new possibilities and new worlds. You open yourself up to curiosity and wonder. It allows you to think outside of the box, to push the limit of what’s possible. It keeps your mind active and not passive, to ask tough questions, even though some people think your questions are dumb. It gives you faith to believe that anything is possible.

But, all too often, we fear failure to the point that we don’t make the change we know we need to make or we give up even before we started. As I mentioned before, I hear people talk about how they have the greatest idea for a startup. But, you have all these excuses for not working on the idea. To those people, I share with you a quote from Buddha - there are only two mistakes we should fear: not starting and not finishing. Giving up because of an overwhelming fear of failure leads to regret, the kind of regret that eats away at you for a very long time. Disappointments, embarrassments and hurt feelings from your failures heal with time; but the regrets about the things we did not do are inconsolable.

Everyone fails at something

Failure is not a bad word. In fact, especially for entrepreneurs, failure is the stepping stone toward success. It is an opportunity to explore new oceans, to invent new things and to discover your true character. Will you crumble under failure? Or, like a phoenix, will you rise from the ashes of your failures and find success? Don’t let the fear of failure stop you from building your great startup idea, or achieving your dreams. But if you do fail, have the same attitude and thinking as Michael Jordan, “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”

Filed Under: Startup Tagged With: entrepreneurship, failure, mythbusters, Silicon Valley, startup, success

Why it’s riskier to go back to a 9-to-5 job than start your own business

by Ramli Leave a Comment

To me, It's riskier to go back to a 9-to-5 job than start my own business

I told some of my Ivey MBA 2013 classmates that I don’t plan on going back to a 9-to-5 job after I get out of my MBA. A lot of them say that I’m crazy. How can I do that knowing that I’ll have a $80,000+ debt after I graduate from my MBA? Isn’t starting your own business risky?

Well, it really depends on a few factors whether starting a business is risky. As I mentioned before, if one applied the lean startup methodology, entrepreneurship is less of a gamble and more of a calculated risk. Lean startup methodology is about trying to minimize your risks in a startup by continually validating, learning and pivoting. It provides a framework for entrepreneurs to take calculated risks when building a startup.

On the other side, starting a business is risky. First, unless you have credibility, an unfair advantage in your niche market or a proven, profitable business model, you’re most likely going to have a hard time raising capital. So you’ll be unpaid for sometime. Second, no matter how much you have vision and passion for your startup, you have to face the very sobering statistics that 70% to 80% of start ups fail to see their projected return on investment (source). So, in some sense, starting a business is risky.

But, if you look at the other side, there are a lot of risks associated to going back to the corporate world. It depends on your personality and preference. But for me, going back to a 9-to-5 job is riskier than building my own startup. It has a lot to do with why a lot of people love or hate their job – leaders, work culture and impact.

1. Leaders

According to a Gallup survey, people leave managers not companies. There are a lot of bad managers out there. Why? I think it’s because most managers are not very good leaders. Leadership, according to John Maxwell in The 5 Levels of Leadership, is not about position, title or authority, it’s about empowering and enabling people. Good leadership is about walking beside people and helping them climb up a hill with you. The problem with most managers is that they don’t want to get their hands dirty and be down in the trenches with their own people. They ask from others what they haven’t previously asked themselves. They ask for commitment and hard work from their people, but they’re not committed and hard working. They focus on building vision statements, powerpoint slides, excel reports and strategic plans instead of building what matters most: people, culture and values.

Chances are, your manager is not a very good leader. Even if he or she is, the boss of your boss is probably not a very effective leader. Good leaders are tough to find. Out of the 4 or 5 different jobs I’ve had in industries ranging from financial banking service to food & beverage, I have met only one really good leader. That’s why it’s risky to go back to a 9-to-5 job. There’s a high chance that your new boss will be a good manager but a bad leader. In the long run, you’ll end up where you started – looking for another job.

2. Work Culture

The second risk with working in the corporate world is work culture. Culture is made up of the values, beliefs, underlying assumptions, attitudes, and behaviors shared by the leadership team and employees. It’s a powerful element that shapes your work enjoyment, your work relationships, and your work processes. Culture is very important. Culture can make work fun or a drag. I once worked at this company where you had to change your IM status to “I’m in the washroom,” or “I’m taking a smoke break” to let people know what you’re doing. In another place I worked at, I saw a lot of backstabbing and career ladder climbing. Work was a drag.

It’s tough for a company to have a fun and collaborative work culture. But it’s not impossible. For example, G Adventures, a Toronto-based travel company, has a ‘mayor’ of the company, who was voted by the rest of the G Adventures employees to “create happiness and community in the workplace.” Where most companies’ values are generic words like “trust,” “collboration,” or “passion,” one of the 10 values that Zappos, an online shoe store, is “to create fun and a little weirdness.” Google offer their engineers “20-percent time” so that they’re free to work on what they’re really passionate about. Companies with extraordinary work culture like G Adventures, Zappos or Google are hard to find.

3. Impact

The final and biggest risk for me to go back to a 9-to-5 is impact, that what I’m doing matters. I worked at a place once where whenever there was a big issue, people would tell me, “don’t get stressed out. It’s just a job.” The more I thought about it, I realized that it is just a job. Then a more serious question crossed my mind: “Is this all I’m meant to be?” It’s not only me who feels this way. I was talking to my roommate, Ali. He also mentioned that at his previous workplace, even though his work was impacting the business users, he felt like his contributions really didn’t matter to people outside of his work.

That’s the thing I realized about myself. I don’t know about you. But, for me, I want my work to matter. I want it to mean something. I want to make a positive difference in the world in whatever small or even dramatic way I can. Work is not just about money (though it is important). It’s not just about work culture. It’s not just about having a good leader. It’s about working for something I believe in with every fiber of my being. It’s about waking up on Monday morning and looking forward to going to work. It’s about working together to build something great with even greater people. It’s about being the biggest fan of my company’s product or service. If you think about it, more than 70% of your lifespan, you’ll be working at a job. Wouldn’t you rather be doing something you love?

Conclusion

Though the risks with starting your own business might be obvious, you also have to consider the risk with leaving your job to look for another job. You have to consider the quality of leadership, work culture and impact of the new job. A 30 minute job interview usually will not give you enough information to find out if your new boss will be a jerk, the work culture is terrible or your work is meaningless. But, if you started your own business, you decide your leadership style, work culture and meaningful work. I wouldn’t give that up for anything… well, maybe G Adventures, Zappos or Google offered me a job

Filed Under: Ivey MBA, Startup Tagged With: business, entrepreneurship, leaders, risk, startup

What happens when your “But” gets too big

by Ramli 2 Comments

When your "but" gets too big, you become your own greatest obstacle to achieving greatness

You are your own greatest obstacle to greatness
- Susan Lamb-Robinson

There are many reasons why people don’t pursue their dreams. Maybe it’s because you don’t have enough people rooting for you, or you’ve run out of time. Maybe it’s because you have to move or it would cost too much. But all too often, the biggest reason why people don’t go after their dream is because of their big ‘but.’

Susan Lamb Robinson, who ranked 18 out of 30,000 speakers in the 2011 International speech contest in Las Vegas, gave her contest-winning speech entitled ‘You want to know what happens when your “But” gets too big?’ last Tuesday at the 30th anniversary celebration of Milton Toastmasters. Robinson said that when your ‘but’ gets in the way, you look back and say to yourself, ‘if only,’ ‘what could have been,’ ‘what should have been,’ ‘what would have been.’ It’s the word ‘but’ that can kill dreams. She illustrated this concept with her own personal story.

The ‘But’ of self-doubt

Susan Lamb Robinson, who ranked 18 out of 30,000 speakers in the 2011 International speech contest in Las Vegas, gave her contest-winning speech entitled 'You want to know what happens when your "But" gets too big?'

One of Robinson’s dreams when she was young was to become a professional dancer. She never took any lessons. But, even though she didn’t have the typical slim body of a dancer, she was a natural. One time, a professional dance recruiter approached her and asked her to audition for a music video. She was so excited! Finally, a chance for her to show the world her natural talent.

But as the day of the audition approached, she started hearing excuses in her head. “I should go to the audition BUT what if they don’t like me. BUT what if I mess up. BUT what if I don’t measure up to their standards. BUT I don’t have the body of a dancer. BUT this. BUT that.” Robinson said that her “But” became so big that she couldn’t fit through the door to the audition room. In the end, she didn’t go to that audition. It was one of her greatest regret. She was at a life-changing moment and she backed out because of the ‘but’ of self-doubt.

The ‘But’ of negative people

Self-doubt is not the only cause of big ‘buts.’ When you surround yourself with people who are negative, critical and unsupportive, you risk losing the passion, determination and resolve to see your dreams fulfilled. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have people in your life that are willing to give you honest and candid feedback. But, there will always be doubters out there that will make your ‘but’ bigger (it’s usually a sign you’re on your way to success). Those are the kind of people you need to avoid.

Imagine how our present lives would be different if everyone listened to their doubters:

Will Smith, when he was in high school, was often told by his teachers and friends that he wasn’t funny. If he listened to his doubters, then we wouldn’t have The Fresh Prince of Bel-air, Independence Day or Men In Black.

From elementary school through college, Albert Einstein’s teachers and professors thought he was lazy, sloppy, and insubordinate. Many of his teachers thought he would never amount to anything. He was rejected by top universities he applied to. If Einstein listened to his doubters, then we wouldn’t have e = mc^2.

Walt Disney was fired from his first job for not being ‘creative’ enough. So he tried starting his own animation studio. But, he lost the rights to his first commercially successful cartoon, Oswald and the Lucky Rabbit, to Universal Studios. If Disney listened to his doubters, we wouldn’t have Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck or Disneyland. And who could live without Disneyland?

Your ‘But’

What is your big ‘but’? Or maybe who is your ‘but’? Have you let your big ‘but’ get in the way of you achieving greatness? Maybe you have this amazing startup idea BUT you don’t have enough funds. BUT you just got married. BUT you’re just going back to school to get your MBA. BUT you have a mortgage. BUT you’re a nobody. Maybe it’s time you workout your ‘but’ and actually pursue your dreams. Don’t talk about your dreams. Talk is cheap. Ideas are cheap. Get off your ‘but’ and get out and do something about it.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: dreams, Execuses, greatness, life lesson, obstacles, self-doubt, toastmasters