Dating Vs Marriage

Desire of Growth can make us do all kind of things. "We are doing sooooo good just by being with each other for few hours once in a while , Imagine how awesome will it be to be with each other all the time. Let's get Married !!! "   Well....ooh la la begins here.

It happened with me, recently, wen I told my Boss, NOT to hire a freelance designer / recruiter permanently. The Boss, well, well, did not listen and now I have this experience to tell.   

So,we had this freelancer / vendor / friend  ( Lets call him 'Blink' here)  who works on our projects. We are amazed by the quality. Meanwhile our team is growing , we are adding people , adding new services. And Blink continues to work with us once in a while , notices all the growth we are experiencing. Alls good , he is happy in his world and we are happy in ours.  But as soon as things hit a plateau , sooner or later my Boss thinks   "how awesome will it be to get Blink onboard full time, Imagine with few hours of work we did such awesome stuff and how cool will it be to work together under one roof. "

Blink comes on board , and we expect him to transfer his super magical powers to other members of the team. The Boss even agreed to get few of the people that Blink thinks will be required to build a dream team. 

The honeymoon period begins , new ideas get discussed, the Boss keeps looking at Blink and smiles from within thinking about how awesome life is going to become. 

And as time goes by , Blink who is so used to work as an individual , feels clueless about all the company vision  , handling team etc and is all lost. 

Blink who came on board to be part of the team realizes it is not all rosy as it looks from outside. And now that instead of being a per project basis relationship , we have converted it into a full time employment, we  can not enforce a lot of things.  The timelines for the work done as freelancer suddenly double when Blink is full time. Blink starts questioning  how and the why of the very work he did happily when he was Single And to top it all  , Blink now has opinions on how you should run the company. I was waiting and knew WTF is going on !!! 

Well, Boss now sees that its becoming a nightmare. We decides on a mutual divorce and stay away from each other for a while.  And if we have not been too bad with each other during our times of being together there is a possibility that Blink and we can continue to work once in a while...

And we see the awesomeness in Blink returns , the peace in our life is back for good and we promise our self never to get Married again !!! Well....

So take a pause and think before any one of you make that next Offer Letter -  Dating Vs Getting Married ?  


P.S. If you are running small firm, independently, well, the King of Cuba (smallest country), is still, a King. Don't do it only for "money". Retain the awesomeness.

Impulsive, Irrational Pricing!

Do you see what I see in below image??

No?? Got an eye problem?? Go back to the image again. Stare at it, PLEASE!!! 

Do you see it now?? Well, this is what I see:

What I see is a brilliant, amazing implementation of irrational pricing

Look at the top of the menu where a 7" Margherita costs Rs. 75.

If you go for the 10" Margherita, it costs Rs. 170!!

Huh??

Technically, a 10 inch pizza in size is 43 % more than the 7 inch pizza.

But cost-wise, Rs. 170 is 126% more than Rs. 75 !!!!

In fact, if I buy 2 Domino's pizzas of 7 inches each, I get 14 inches of pizza and pay Rs. 150; but I need to pay Rs. 170 to get only 10 inches!!

Look further - If I buy 3 pizzas of 7 inches each, I get 21 inches to enjoy and pay Rs. 225; whereas 13 inches as a single pizza costs me Rs. 315!!!

WOW!!

This proves that:

- Consumers are completely irrational when it comes to making pricing decisions when they see choices.

- They choose the size they want, not the price.

- Then, they just 'accept' the price presented to them!

Lessons:

- Create a 'need based' pricing matrix - not a volume or input based pricing structure. Notice how the Inches (") printed, is the smallest font on the menu!

- By presenting lots of variations and choices, the human mind migrates to what it wants. It does not look at alternative options when one choice seems logical:

To elaborate - if the 2 of us are eating a pizza, we may call for a medium pizza and share it.

Instead, we should call for 2 separate pizzas and also give away a few extra inches to some friends!

We would've saved money and made someone happy too!

- Don't get too scientific about pricing. Get fuzzy, irrational and emotional. It works!!!

Psychology of Tackling Hard Problems

Some of you have asked me, “Sachin, what are you doing these days ?” Well,  managing a very interesting start-ups operation, now bigger than USD 500 million dollar firm. Before that I was working on launching online freelance web design firm but cancelled the idea. (Why ? In my next blog post). I have been working on a nano-blogging tool (yes I call it - Nano) that I want to be a job search platform with a viral interactivity online (like H1NI virus), as an interest in spare of time.

Its hard. Much harder than i imagined. 


The thing about hard problems / hypothesis is that there are many difficulties and few solutions. Sounds obvious, but what’s often overlooked is the psychological component to this asymmetry. There’s a simple reason why tackling a hard problem can lead to depressive symptoms: you are necessarily wrong 99% of the time.  


I failed (i.e. not a huge success) two times since college time. I can tell you that one thing from my study that I can carry over to my entrepreneurial ambitions is that you only have to be right 1% of the time. The hard part is, you need to be psychologically prepared to be wrong all other times. 


I haven’t seen much discussion of this idea, but I have faced it repeatedly myself, and I often see it in others. I have seen it so often that now I am convinced of its pervasiveness. Here is an example. 


Me: Boy, Have you test this hot shit idea of web space selling ?
Him: No, actually.
Me: Well that may lead to a fuckin' big idea in digital marketing, try it
Him: But I am afraid that it won’t work


Sound silly and contrived ? I know.


It isn’t and I have complete sympathy for this situation. So many times in my work I have fantasized about the solution to an idea, and have been too afraid to implement it because of the subliminal fear that I will be, yet again, wrong. It’s a Pavlovian response to the track record of being repeatedly disappointed. Meanwhile, I delight in having new ideas, and enjoy brainstorming them. But without implementing them, the process is worthless.


The point is to be aware. If you find yourself resisting an obvious step due to an irrational fear, step back and force yourself to push onward i.e. the of religion of entrepreneurship and my thought canvas of real life Zen Buddhism.


You only need to be right ..... just 1% of the time.

The joy of this 'obsessive madness' lies in that 99%

.

To mock or not to mock

Last to last week I was invited by one of the colleges in G. Noida - to conduct 'Mock Interview' for their MCA 2nd year students. My interview partner was the HR Head of a Software Firm, i have worked with for a very short stint. 

More than doing a mock interview session, I had a great time advising and motivating the students...

These are my observations/ views :

1. Other than for 1 or 2 exceptions, all of them did BCA as their grad and joined for MCA - "just to do a PG"!  When ask why - they just don't know why, no one ever asked them!

2. Someone felt that going for MCA will help then learn C++ better, because they learn on C for BCA. Lucky we don't have a C+++, otherwise these colleges will start DCA also

3. Most of the girls think that they will have a better positioning in marriage market.

4. Most of the boys think that they will have a better positioning in marriage market.

5. Most of them seems to have read in a leading local daily that doing MCA will fetch them a better job.

6. All of them don't have any idea of the job they are going to do when they join a company - even after spending 4.5 years of their peak youth.

7. They don't know anything about the industry they are entering into - companies, jobs, market, future, education options, academics etc...

8. They just don't consider companies other than Wipro, TCS, Infosys etc as their prospective employers - the reason here is also primarily the marriage market, not their career growth or not even money!.

9. Majority of them don't know how to communicate. I'm not commenting on their English - they don't know how to communicate in any of the languages.

10. All of them have C/C++ in their CVs as their only language and just don't know who is K&R and don't know how to write a program, compile and make it unless then have Turbo C in front.  They don't know whats #include is all about. Most of them have never seen an executable made by their C/C++ programs.

11. They don't have any programming skills (and all relevant skills), basic knowledge about data structure, algorithms etc.

12. Most of their decision are influenced by ignorant teachers, parents, friends and media - event if they think otherwise. They don't have an opinion of their own - even after becoming adults!

My Advice was mostly around:

1. You wasted the most precious 4.5 years of your life

2. You have 3 more semesters to correct what all you are missing

3. Its your life, you are in charge - you make decisions - not your parents, uncle/aunts, teachers, friends, relatives etc...

4. Work on your skills. Skills are different from knowledge - you need to develop it - whereas you can acquire knowledge in various ways.

5. Read/Listen/Speak/Watch Movies etc., so that you gain exposure and attain the right mind-set/attitude

6. Support your peers - collectively you can work on your shortcoming in the coming 3 semesters.

I really felt pity seeing most of them (happens during taking interviews as well) - victims of 'excel to get a degree - not knowledge' mentality, most of them are going to become slaves with some IT companies. Some of them will endup in teaching - circle of life!

But found few originals among them with a sense of direction, entrepreneurship and purpose for life!

Want "Cake" for the budget of "Egg" ?

Communication works in sync with our "relationship" and "Interest" of the client into the project apart from various factors.

There are client who spends money, a big organization, has budget and is willing to spend money, every web designer's dream. Then, there is another breed of client, a primer of sorts. Its worth it and interesting to go an extra mile and standard formal communication of superlative degree even when I am not sure if he has budget, but will do best efforts of sales and professionalism.

How ever, nothing like this works with the client who has very tight budget, i repeat ..NOTHING. and I refer to them as the "Shoe String Budget" client. This breed of client wants a super high speed, with all fixings, changes they ask but is not willing to pay the price. The shit gets whipped with cream when they also want wire frame in HTML and jquery at very initial stage with in this "egg budget"

In other words , they want to low -ball you. They want CAKE for their shoe string budget, but only have a budget for EGG. You do any thing like standard communication, 24 hours instant reply, chat/phone feedback, FSD/Site Map, Standard proposal or anything...nothing guarantees.

Shoe string budget clients ( aka cheapskates), will constantly try to talk you down from your price. They make feel like walking into shopping mall and tell what they are willing to pay, expecting us to accept their offer.

Yes, the project still needs to be done in a professional way since it ultimately has my name/brand on it but then, universally, there is a tendency of disinterest, so perfectly legitimate communications gets tedious when :

....they will either :

    * Constantly try to talk you down from your rate
    * Offer you less than you charge
    * Offer you cute anecdotes or sob stories in hopes of you lowering your rates

PS: Keep yourself away from these clients.

Should every business have a blog?

How about rephrasing the question: Should every business have a blog?

No, not every business should blog. Should every business have a strategy behind how they produce, curate, aggregate and distribute content?

Yes.

Because pretty much every business already generates some form of content. Most have brochures or reports of some kind. But increasingly content is becoming the doorway to being found through what's commonly known as "organic search" which is a leading way people find information on the web. The content your business touches can also influence your online reputation. Content can be a blog post—and it can also be a response on a third party website.

Move the conversation beyond blogging and into all forms of content and how it affects metrics such as page rank, views, shares, and money made/saved and the answer is that every business should re-evaluate the thinking behind the content associated with them.

Steal the Deal

Its old enough and common now to relate to clients, clients must be satisfied with conversation to be able to do business with us and to build a relationship with mutual trust.

Still, there is always a considerable challenge in the game (i.e. deal) with some the most dangerous moments in deals, especially when everything is moving according to client’s wishes. It scares me, as on client side interaction, I can’t refuse, I can’t contradict, have to disagree without being disagreeable. The deal often contains some razzle-dazzle and hocus-pocus. It’s either losing a great deal or to make a great deal.

Some deals take months of negotiations (with silence), some I have sealed in one phone call (that’s the best feeling). I can’t directly refuse and can’t contradict otherwise it breaks down ….completely …. most of the time.

Its interesting :)