Published on LinkedIn on September 22nd, 2016
There has been something that I have noticed about Apple that I’ve really wanted to write about, but never really got the chance. By the time I had the time it was too late. With the hype about Uber’s new application and interface, it has turned into an opportune moment to revisit the topic. Please do note that most of these are personal observations and not necessarily facts.
So the Uber app has created a lot of buzz. The look, the feel, and the features scream Uber 2.0 (Uber calls this 'Where To?'). Much of this, however, is not an Uber ingenuity, but rather something that Apple made popular in 2014 with iOS7.
At a time when the pressure to continue differentiating was very high, Apple decided it was time to regress a little. Relying on its past success of telling the users what they want instead of the typical scenario where users dictate what they want and the company complies, it decided to go the other way. So rather than trying to complicate its product, the computing giant thought that it was a wiser choice to release an operating system with an easier to use and cleaner looking user interface (UI) rather than one with more buttons and sophisticated graphics.
This pattern Uber followed. In fact, the launch page for 'Where To' states: "Since our last redesign in 2012, our app has become complicated and harder to navigate. To recapture the clean and simple aesthetic of the original Uber experience—without sacrificing the choice our riders now expect—we rebuilt a faster, smarter rider app completely from the ground up." However what Uber failed to learn from Apple was that the latter had a strategy to implement new features.
When the smartphone war started, companies were competing for users and would go above and beyond to get them to use their phones. Most companies relied on the versatility that Google's Android system offered, using it to highly customize some of their features. Other companies went above that and added hardware to work in tandem with their personalized software. Apple, on the other hand, knew that the marginal utility and value added of each of these features decreased exponentially if released all at once (a big bang approach), and releasing a single phone with every feature it wanted to implement was not going to be the most profitable, especially if customers wouldn’t know of/ remember all of the new additions it would make. Thus, Apple decided it would phase out its features (phased approach), and rather than hitting the users with brand new updates that did a billion things better/more than the older phone, decided to use their phones to tell a story.
Apple slowly rolled out faster processors, better cameras, and added features one at a time. This allowed customers a year to fully absorb all the changes, learn them, and only then did Apple release the next set of updates and features. One thing you will often hear with every new iPhone release is “well HTC had that three years ago” or “Samsung did that first.” What they forget is that Apple is not trying to throw all it can at a phone, but has a systematic, as mentioned before, story-like approach to its phones.
So why do I think Uber is failing what I believe to be its mentor (Apple)? The application has added a little too many features at once. First I believe the redesign alone is a feature that customers need to get used to, including things like navigation. In addition, however, it has added the ability to get to friends rather than just places based on their locations. It also added a hint of AI where the app learns your travel routes and adjusts based on the time of day and the day itself. The UI also has new features in the “ride” section, including Yelp integrations. It has also lent its API to Facebook (something I recently noticed). If a friend mentions “Uber” on Facebook Messenger, the word “Uber” becomes a hyperlink, and you can order a ride from right there on the Facebook app.
While none of these features are useless and do not violate the “keep it simple” strategy, they do violate the “putting too much on someone’s plate at once” strategy. Very few people will have an issue with a PB&J sandwich, but if you give them ten of those, at some point it becomes overwhelming. I guess the summation of this is that Uber needs to slow down a little, and if it does want to follow the Apple strategy, it should see it through fully.
Disclaimer: I don’t know if there was anyone else who was able to commercialize this strategy successfully and I, therefore, I use Apple as the pioneers of it.
Published on LinkedIn on November 8th, 2016
There has been a longstanding argument that old white men in suits are to blame for, and excuse my English here, the douchebaggery that occurs in a pharmaceutical company’s boardroom. Mylan’s CEO has turned the stereotype on its head, providing some evidence that the gender of the person in a suit perhaps isn't what is causing the trouble. My question then becomes, is the problem the person in the suit?
No. It is not. We are part of the problem. Neigh, we are the problem. If you own a single piece of stock, understand that you are the problem. If you have a 401K, a Roth IRA, or own any form of healthcare stock, know that you are the problem. Are you knowingly so? The answer to that question is no just as well. So how do we contribute and can we do anything to solve it?
The way we are the problem is that we require stocks that grow exponentially and add to our net worth, but yet somehow refuse to take on any added risk. We reward company executives based on how much they make for us, not by how well they innovate or by how much they have attempted to change people’s life by. We scowl at executives that spend too much money on e.g. the environment or public efforts.
The thing you must be wondering right now is “I can’t be part of the problem. That sounds like a Wall Street thing. I’m an average Joe”. Well, when you contribute to a pension fund and expect them to deliver your house in Florida at age 65 with a few hundred thousand in change left over, you are becoming part of the problem. Stand alone you can do nothing, but once your money gets pooled with millions of other people, then you become the issue.
Because you want more money without any risk (the definition of a pension fund), Wall Street demands from companies to deliver the same. R&D adds risk. Innovation does not come without a cost, and for many large pharmaceutical company executives, taking on the added risk is just not feasible for them. If they do pretend to take on that added risk and fail, they know they will be shown the door. As the CFO of a prominent company told me recently, “they (the shareholders) will replace them (the old execs) with new ones that will get the job done". In other words, they will just elect someone that can deliver the greater shareholder value through increased profit and not add risk. The only way to achieve higher profits this way is to either reduce costs or increase prices.
Let's look at the EpiPen, a controversial topic to say the least. It costs a dollar to make the actual drug; there aren't any significant margin boosters there. So what do you do to deliver the value demanded? Increase prices. And are executives reprimanded for this? No. Instead, they are rewarded with bonuses and pay increases. Again take Mylan (the producer of the EpiPen) CEO Heather Bresch. If someone offers you 18 million dollars a year up from 2.5 million dollars in just four short years, are you seriously telling me you are not going to do whatever it takes short of illegal activities to achieve it? There are very, very, very few people in this world that would pass up an offer like that.
So that’s the problem, what is the solution? The solution is for us to change how we think about healthcare stocks individually. These aren’t like cars or houses; drugs are life-saving molecules. We cannot reward executives for cutting costs and delivering higher profit margins at whatever cost possible. Instead, we need to reward them for innovation and not forget the innovators much like we forgot Nikola Tesla. Will that happen in the near future? Probably not. As economics tells us, we as individuals are selfish and look out for our best self-interest today, even if that harms us in the long run. For now, this is just a single Economics and Finance major’s outcry to the public to stop criticizing those doing the jobs we’re asking them to do, and instead, ask them to change how they carry out their work. You wouldn’t believe the power we have to change the world if we wanted to.
Published on LinkedIn on September 6th, 2016
As you read this, keep in mind that somewhere there is turmoil. Some government is trying to stay in power and do things its way while others seek to change that. This battle has never been anything new. Think the American Civil War, think Gandhi, think Martin Luther King Jr. What’s new today, however, is the sheer amount of it happening. Not only that, but we must also place emphasis on who is doing it.
One key thing that has changed since almost six-seven decades ago is the Internet has become a powerful tool. It has banded people together and allowed for communication to be more widespread. I don’t have to be as influential as some of the leaders that have been at the forefront of a revolution. Instead, all it takes is people willing to listen and to support the cause. The next thing you know, you might just have a revolution on your hands.
Other forms of communication, broadened by technology, have allowed people to learn from others. Much of Arab Spring happened when people heard of how Tunisia was able to overthrow its government. The news spread like wildfire and next thing you knew governments in the region were struggling to stay in power.
However, the key factor of these revolutions has not been these enhanced methods of communication and organization which aided the movements, but rather the wielders of such communication. Millennials.
As the largest cohort of the population, our ideas are the ideas. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, we are the people that decide what goes on shelves. We dictate how markets move. We are the center of attention (sorry baby boomers). As you can understand from these sentences that only begin to scratch the surface, we hold a lot of power in our hands. And as we push the limits of currently societal boundaries, we are becoming more and more aware of what this power can do, including creating revolutions.
Revolutions might not be too bad of an idea. If millennials are the largest cohort of the population, then they are the majority by definition. Rules and regulations should be built around us. People in office should cater to us if they want to stay there. Where it gets all screwed up, however, is the world we grew up in.
We are the first technologically native generation. We don’t understand the concept of waiting. My mother was telling me a story recently about how she had to wait for ages to hear from my father when he was abroad-mail took quite a while to get around the globe. I couldn't fathom waiting for that long. Today I can send emails, texts, Facebook messages and so on and so forth to get in touch with someone. If I want to get somewhere, I no longer even have to worry about getting a taxi; an Uber is a click away. Amazon Prime has ruined us too, with two-day (now turning into one-day) delivery. We have created efficiency and effectiveness. But what we have also done is traded immediate gratification for patience and process, which I also extend to long term planning.
What’s worse is that we also aren’t very confrontational. We won't call someone unless we HAVE to. We’d rather IM each other when we sit two cubes across than just come over and talk face to face. We use email and online customer service chats to discuss our issues. Add to these matters short attention spans thanks to 140 character tweets and 10-second Snapchat videos.
So while we want governments run our way, we want them to run our way NOW. We don’t want to wait. We’ve never had to deal with planning for tomorrow. We create revolutions, do all of these protests, but when we get what we want and push comes to shove, we panic. We achieved what we wanted. But a lack of experience with long-term planning throws us for a loop. We aren’t confrontational either, so things continue to deteriorate. Soon enough, we’re no longer bothered by it, and we move on.
Now there are a lot of policy implications of this. The biggest one being how can governments adapt to an ever-evolving population that wants to be pleased here and now, with short attention spans and a lack of confrontation? My opinion is that it is impossible. Implementing new software at a company can take up to 2 years, so how can we expect governments to change overnight?
We are powerful, but we need to learn how to use the power more effectively. We cannot rush into government and expect it to act as fast and robustly as a startup. Nor can we think of it as an Uber and disrupt 'the governmental market.' Demanding a free/new healthcare system, for example, requires you to think long and hard. How will medical professionals get paid? How will insurance companies work? How will we buy drugs from pharmaceuticals (currently the government buys drugs at 15% lower than the lowest price on the market. A very unsustainable measure if implemented across the board)? Revolutionizing healthcare alone isn’t as easy as getting a Keurig and some beanbag chairs in the office. It is much more complicated than that, and it's time we understood that before we started to abolish entire regimes. We can make this world a better place, but we cannot do it the same way we do business. Think fast Hong Kong, think fast.
Published on LinkedIn on August 10th, 2016
Over the past 10 or so weeks, I've had the opportunity to intern for Iron Mountain, a great Fortune 500 company. Over the course of this time, I've come to realize a lot more about millennial thinking and career paths.
Talking about career paths, to this day it astounds me how people that went to school for finance end up as marketing gurus or vice versa. Brought up in a foreign country the ideology is that you go to school for one thing and then work in that same field. Very rarely do you hear about the person that worked cross functionally. Not only that, but people start planning their careers in 9th grade in many countries, and very rarely get the opportunity to switch. If they did, it would almost be starting all over again.
Yet, meeting some top level executives, you quickly realize how different the culture is in the United States. The first time I met someone with a different background than what they did today was three years ago when I first came to the States and met my first executive, then another and another. They all had completely different backgrounds than where they were today. At first, I thought it was a fluke; perhaps it was just one or two executives that were similar. Over the course of my internship, it has been the contrary. A significant portion of the executives have had similar experiences.
What I've come to conclude is that while you don't need to have a crazy experience to become an exec (I've also met people who started in a career and claimed their way up), it gives me a lot of solace in knowing the fact that I'm not necessarily boxed in by what I do in school. What is necessary, I've noticed, is working hard and grabbing at opportunities.
Along the lines of career paths, I've met several millennials who don't believe that they have a choice when it comes to entering the job market, myself included. Jaded by what happened during the Great Recession, we have this belief that when we're out there looking for jobs, that our needs don't matter, so long as we can get a job where we can pay the bills for the first few years, that's fine.
As we take our finals steps to reel from the recession, it's impact has left a permanent scar on us. To this day the monthly job report is a huge thing, and the recession somehow a good 8-9 years later still a lukewarm topic of discussion. Given this, I think most of our thoughts are within good reason. But now I hear about millennials who aren't just putting their music and art careers on hold, but those who are putting their primary needs of a work environment at risk.
I know of people who, if their job doesn't provide a work life balance, know for a fact won't be happy. Or the intern I met yesterday who is passionate about business and passionate about traveling, but wouldn't dare combine the two and try to find careers to satisfy both passions. With the economic outlook on the rise, and with millennials being the largest population out there, I think it's up to us to search for jobs we are passionate about. Jobs we don't have to learn to love. Jobs where we don't feel stuck. I'm sure if we look hard enough we'll find something. If we don't, I shudder thinking of a miserable world where we work for the sake of working, not just disregarding our passions but the simplest things we believe wholeheartedly will make us happy.
I think if we can't fight for what we want and get the jobs we dream of while we still have a fire in our souls, then I dare to make the prediction we really will wake up. Once you put out a fire, it's near impossible to light damp wood. And hey, if we do fight for our needs but still end up not liking what we do, we always have the chance to pivot to something else, so long as we continue to work hard and jump at opportunities that present themselves.
Published on LinkedIn on July 27th, 2016
In a recent business plan proposal, a team of my peers and I were asked by fellow millennials who ran a company why we thought Snapchat was a great marketing strategy. Why would people want to make their faces look like tacos, or add filters with teddy bears on their pictures? At the time, our response was a shrug, a nervous laugh, and a "people just do" comment. After a couple of months of contemplating, I think I have an answer.
The explosion of social media during the earlier part of this century was combined with the explosion of our privacy or lack thereof. At first, like many people, I too beat my chest and yelled for my private information to stay private. But through exploration, I realized that for companies to create products I wanted, they needed to understand me, and that meant getting my information. Soon enough I gave up on the idea and embraced companies sifting through my information. At some level or the other, I do believe that most people understand the importance of this. The debate of convenience of business and the inconvenience of privacy vs. the convenience of privacy and the inconvenience of business, I'd take the former over the latter.
But of course being on social media has much bigger implications to that. It means that we have to act a certain way, almost as if there were hidden cameras everywhere and the entire world was glued to their screens watching us. Many a time I've heard the phrase "don't be stupid on social media. Don't post this, don't post that. Universities you apply to will take notice, employers will take notice, coworkers will take notice." And while many of us have adopted these criticisms into our social media habits, I believe that there is still a part of us that would like to act like a complete goofball whenever we want, turning our faces into pancakes or adding teddy bears to our pictures.
Sadly and unfortunately, our lack of privacy means that there isn't a forum where we could act in such a manner. When new social media platforms came onto the scene, very soon the same problems started to emerge. They provided a safe way to express yourself, but soon enough the walls of privacy once again fell. Some apps like Instagram linked our accounts to Facebook, increasing our likes and the viewership, but again, reducing privacy (Facebook that owns Instagram now is more about openness, or at least that's what I believe).
With all of this bottled up expression needing to be let out and a lot more silliness to incorporate into our lives, Snapchat came to our rescue. We could be silly with one friend, a couple, or all of them, at the touch of a button. With a picture worth a thousand words, I could send a thousand words to my best friend, my roommate, or even something relevant to someone I hadn't talked to in ages without it being extra weird. Plus, people like visual expression more than verbal. Snippets of our life expressing a thousand words at a time are perfect for a generation that feeds off of 140 characters. Snapchat came with the conveniences of pictures lasting only 10 seconds, or if we ever wanted, 24 hours at the very most. Even if an employer followed me on Snapchat, there is no way they could go back to what I had posted yesterday, let alone to what I posted when I was in a phase of ultimate expression (basically the time when I was stupid and did absolutely silly things). The other thing, of course, is that Snapchat won't let you follow anyone unless you know their exact username or have their number. Even then a two-way approval process is required, with nothing, not a picture, not a name, just a username to identify others. Don't recognize it? Don't add it. Simple.
So why does Snapchat work? It works because as humans, we're expressive. We want to be expressive. Social media as it stands hinders us from fully doing exactly that. Snapchat allows us to be us in the privacy of the ten-second video that we post, with only the select people we choose to express ourselves to. People want to be silly with their friends, even if their friends are a thousand miles away, and now can do that with much more ease that's to Snapchat. So CampusSims, if you're reading this and your investors ever ask you why, you now have an answer.
Published on LinkedIn on July 13th, 2016
You're bound to have heard the words "That was my entire childhood!" when eavesdropping on adults discussing a new movie or game. Odds are that those types of phrases probably will not stop. Businesses are starting to realize the powers of nostalgia, and are willing to go to great lengths to make it happen, and of course, with good reason.
Today's average consumer wants many things, including instant gratification, ease of use and businesses that simplify their lives. For many companies, working around this concept is practically their livelihood. The trend started with the likes of Uber and AirBnb, and now has plagued the consumer markets within a decade. To be able to monetize these new personality traits has been a great deal of pain, especially for larger companies that haven't really taken the time to adapt to the new reality of the world - even more specifically, companies that were built during the baby boomer era, and continue to operate in such a fashion.
Smaller start-ups have also had their fair difficultly in making it happen. For every 8 successful startups, another 92 have failed. But those who've made it work, have really made it work, and now sit atop billions of dollars in valuation and cash. But going back to the concept of larger companies, how do they survive in a tech-y environment, especially when they're not really tech-y, or, are VERY technologically advanced, but cannot express their advances to their average consumer?
Most companies will try to either adapt to the market, or try to show the world how technologically advanced their inner workings are, sometimes with minimal success. ERPs alone take several months if not several years to fully implement and can end up costing 1.8x the estimate and 2x the time- in short changing company wide anything is quite hard. And if you do have the most up to date systems in place, sometimes your consumers don't really care as much, especially if you operate in industries such as movie studios and video gaming. They are more expected than an add on.
So how do you operate in such a world? Short answer is nostalgia. Playing on the basics of human emotion and making them work for you has become very successful for companies, and I will illustrate that with the concept of movies. I believe that it started with Toy Story 3, that brought about great success. However, there's one tiny addition to just nostalgia and that is us. Millennials have officially over taken the baby boomer generation as the largest cohort of the population. We are officially the "average consumer". That means that we are the largest consumer group out there making decisions for households. The whole idea behind children's movies are that the children can nag their parents into watching the movie. But many companies have now realized that waking up the inner child of a decision making adult that has disposable income to spend is much more effective.
"If there kids in the line at Toy Story 3, I'm going to shove past them. Those little s*#^s do not understand, this was my childhood". If you can make this happen, then you're doing it right. And what's better is hat not only can they make the inner child come out, we officially are the population to go after in terms of the market-this makes it the best of both worlds. If they so happen to pick up a child or two along the way, more money for them, but they aren't key demographics. I promise you that if you look close enough, the majority of the people at Finding Dory, as well as the majority of people on Ninetendo's servers playing Pokemon Go, are those aged between 18-32. I always wondered what took Pixar 11+ years to release Toy Story 3 and now the soon to come Incredibles 2. Slow clap for the companies like Pixar that have unlocked this little nugget.
Published on LinkedIn on June 24th, 2016
Brexit. It’s been a question flooding the news quite often recently, and less than two hours ago, Britain just voted to leave the E.U. In about two hours when the stock market opens at 7 A.M., it will crash in response. Right now, traders are frantically offloading the pound as its value steeply drops. Mohammed El-Erin, the economic advisor to POTUS, just posted this on LinkedIn "European stocks are set to open 12% down. Sterling at weakest level since mid-1980s. Yield on short-dated European government bonds have gone more negative. Dow futures down almost 700 points". What makes it even worse is the fact that hundreds of traders, with optimism in their hearts, rallied the stock market yesterday, hoping this day would never come. But was this expected?
I speak in hindsight when I say this, yes, it was very much expected. Very recently I worked on a paper for a financial psychology class, where we had to compare the great recession and the great depression, looking at how psychology and financial markets intertwined to give us the outcome that they did. The outcome of the great depression, of course, being the second world war, and the results of the great recession being more unity, more collectiveness and a sense of working together-of course that was, until this.
So why could this be predicted? Because during the 1930’s, after the markets crashed, a very similar event occurred. Extremists rose to power, promoting hatred and fear. People, angry, betrayed, and looking for hope, in turn, backed these extremists. Several countries during this period went into isolationism, trying to build the country up from the inside out, not recognizing that it should be the other way around. A few nations sought to create bilateral agreements, but when most of the world didn’t want to co-operate, every deal fell through.
And if history is any indication, more countries are set to follow Britain’s suit and go into isolationism- it was just a matter of time. More extremists will rise (and they have-a Nazi-friendly party in Greece has started to gain momentum), and countries will fall into more turmoil. The question here really becomes, how will the rest of the world deal with it. Will they too, in a confused world look for order and create their own through dictatorships and other isolationist techniques, or will they come together and work together?
Of course, we would love a world where the latter happened over the former, but from a purely psychological perspective, it doesn’t matter how ‘evolved’ we think we are as human beings, we’re still just that, human beings. One thing we know about human beings is that we make mistakes, and sadly, after 100 or so years, we make the same mistakes again, not learning from history, because of course, “we’re much better than that, and it would never happen to us.”
One thing I fear is what will happen after this. Where will we go from here, because it’s not THAT big of a deal when one country does it. But when every country starts to follow suit, the world disintegrates. When everyone starts thinking that the world is about them, only bad things happen.
What happens to the world from a business perspective one can only speculate. Brexit alone is set to retract the job market by 820,000, prices will rise worldwide as economies of scale fall, and doing business in Europe is going to become much harder with more regulations to deal with. Speaking of regulations, the E.U. as a whole was responsible for many of these - Britain will now have to make their own to replace these. The list, of course, goes on. As I mentioned before, this is the first domino falling, and there are many more to come. Brexit, much like what it is trying to do, is not an isolationistic feature. Once all the dominos fall, only then can we really understand the complexities of the aftermath of the decision. For now, one can only foolishly pray that we don’t make the same mistakes as we did 86 years ago, but then again, human beings.
Published on LinkedIn on May 21st, 2016
Since its beta release in 2011, there is no doubt that Uber’s business model has gone viral. Everyone from my father in Kuwait (who first came to know about it because how badly it affected my bank statements) to my youngest cousins in India is well aware of the service.
There is also no doubt that ridesharing has revolutionized the transportation industry. Not only in disrupting how people use transportation on the demand side, but also on the supply side. People are no longer bound to work as cab drivers full time, nor do they need any medallion. All they require is a car, an app, and some paperwork to get started. This model has become very attractive to many people for several different reasons.
One of the obvious ones is making money on the side. It doesn’t hurt to make an extra couple of hundred dollars. Others do it because they find driving fun, and instead of going on random road-trips by themselves and waste gas, they can get paid to do what they love. Another reason to do it is that the drivers get to meet new people all the time, and perhaps get a different perspective or just have a pleasant conversation. Some do it for a combination of the reasons above, or for a reason that I have yet to get to know.
I have personally been using Uber since 2013 when it was starting to get popular. Back then, people on the lower income scale, those hit by the recession badly, or those who there full-time luxury limo service drivers were the ones that were a part of companies such as Uber. More recently, this has changed to encompass a lot more people. The idea that you can drive whenever you want and satisfy any of the reasons mentioned above has made becoming part of the supply side very attractive. In the past three years, there has been a dramatic change in who drives for Uber.
This shift has meant that today, many business professionals are part of the ridesharing world. In the past year, I have had the opportunity to talk someone who knew the head of tax services at one of the Big Four accounting firms. I exchanged ideas with a gentleman that worked in the hospitality business, helping restaurants expand. On my most recent trip to the airport, my driver was a partner at a very prominent M&A business.
What I’m saying is that networking has expanded its horizons. It’s not just cold calling (or cold-emailing if that is a word) anymore. You don’t necessarily need to use applications created strictly for networking (ahem LinkedIn). You are being given the opportunity to get to know people unlike other. One of the biggest regrets I have is that I never got the business cards of these people to connect with them after.
What I'm trying to say in this post to all of my friends still in school or even to my connections outside of this world is that talk to your rideshare driver and get to know them. And if they don’t end up being business professionals, they might just have a little piece of advice that can help set you in the right direction. You never know, the next ride might be the one that spins your professional world 180 degrees.
Published on LinkedIn on July 15th, 2014
Business. Medicine. Business. Medicine. That was practically the last four years of my school life. Circumstances and opportunities kept me jumping from one profession to the other. Of course there were people who told me to do both, but I wanted to focus on only one of them. After all my university offers were in, I contemplated what I wanted to do. I weighed pros and cons, I talked to teachers, friends and family. Finally, one fateful morning, I woke up with a strong feeling of business. So I paid my fees, packed my bags and started business school.
I had been a leader in high school and I quite liked it the idea of doing it again, so I joined an organization. I loved it a lot, and soon enough, one organization turned into 13. I started looking at business from a whole different perspective and found so many exciting opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t have even known about. I had chosen business, but now, from what I already knew plus what I had learnt along my ongoing experiences, what part of business did I want to do in my professional life?
The whole “do what you love and enjoy” bit sounded like silly ideas to narrow my options down. I was part of journalism, event planning and management, charity and professional organizations. 8 executive boards to be exact and there was no way I was dropping any of them. I needed another measure.
Success seemed like a good idea. Yes. I was going to use success as my next standard. I started reading about how success is measured and anything affiliated with it, including books such as “What to ask the person in the mirror” by Robert S. Kaplan (a book on leadership) and “The start-up of you” by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha (a book on professional success). Every book, every article and every piece of advice I got was different. Everyone had their own thoughts and ideas. Some people pushed for having a goal in mind and going after it. Others said you should ride the waves and keep your options open. The book that I relied on most for my ideas and thoughts, “the start-up of you”, made a really compelling argument of keeping your options open.
I agreed with a lot of what it said and I was really starting to think that book was the truest thing I ever read on the topic. Hoffman (founder of the very website I’m writing on right now), took the case of Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. He played out her life from her start at the World Bank to working with President Bill Clinton to her post at Facebook. And I thought, yes, flexibility was a good option. Don’t focus too hard on one thing. But when I read the book for the third time trying to let everything sink in, his argument, atleast to me, fell apart in one sentence. The book read “Sure, Bill Clinton decided on politics at age sixteen, and set his sights on presidency almost as young.” Did this mean flexibility might side-track me? Whose steps should I follow? A COO, or a man that was once the most powerful person on earth?
The question gave me a hard time. So I did what I normally do for answers. I hit the local mom and pop shop, bought a Red Bull, plugged my earphones in for a peaceful tune and took a long walk. I weighed all my options and everything I had. What was the best strategy? Was me narrowing down my options to one a good choice? Or should I allow myself to float around?
After 15 minutes of walking aimlessly in the 100 degree night (I sweating by minute number two), I stumbled upon a thought. What was success? How did I measure success? And that’s when I realized it all. Everything I read wasn’t wrong. Every article, every opinion I had filed through and racked my brain about wasn’t all worthless. Why? Because perspective mattered. Success to me was making tons of money (ethically of couse). Success to another person might be to be able to help as many children as possible. Success to someone else might mean becoming the best boxer ever. Another person might want to change the world. The boxer and the charity worker had specific aims they wanted to complete. The other person and I had cast a wide net. We both needed different guides to success.
Without dragging this out for much longer, I’ll sum up with two things. One, before anyone else decides to get bogged down by chapters and chapters of reading and complication, how about outlining what you’re trying to achieve? Write down what success is to you. Once you have that milestone complete, start working towards it. I know readers might think this was a long winded story just to state something as obvious as water being a liquid. But, I thought I knew too. It took me a year to realize what it really meant. And two, if tackling a matter doesn’t come to you in the most obvious way, try something else. You never know what you might learn along the way. I hope you all find success in what you do.
[1] Hoffman, Casnocha. The Start-up of You. New York: Crown Business. 2012. 57.