Everything else – Page 481 – A Learning a Day

Over the past 2 months, I’ve regularly been on a 2 hour commute to work. And yes, that’s 2 hours one way. And no, it’s not exactly 2 hours. It’s probably around 1 hour 45 minutes but 2 hours sounds a tad more heroic.

It isn’t a long term thing of course. If it was, I would have shifted closer to my new temporary place of work. But I’ve had a few meaningful lessons through this experience.

The first lesson is an understanding of the effect something can have on your mind. It took about two weeks before the commute stopped becoming a big deal in my head. Two whole weeks! The learning here was to ignore stuff my mind blows out of proportion.

The second lesson is that this is a truly wonderful time to be alive. Thanks to technology, I have enough and more to do during this time – listen to audio books, clear out my email, catch up on my google reader, make phone calls among others. Spoilt for choice really.

The third lesson is that choices are not good for happiness. They make us unhappy. This was evident in my first couple of weeks when I was toying with the idea of finding a place close to the new workplace temporarily. Every day, the debate raged – should I? should I not? There wasn’t a clear answer. So, I was wisely advised to shut down the other option and get on with it. And of course, revisit it if necessary.

The fourth lesson is the the amazing thing about making decisions. Decisions close doors. And if there’s a problem, you can make another decision to change things anyway.

The fifth lesson is the power of context. In 1 hour 45 minutes, you can take a round trip around Singapore (more or less). But, 1 hour 45 minutes only gets you from the centre to one end of London. Thanks to the average commute in London being 1 hour 15 minutes, this doesn’t feel all that bad. However, in Singapore, this would be madness.

I remember a similar experience in the middle east where driving 2 hours every day was seen as no big deal.

It’s all relative.

This final lesson is the most important one. It’s the magic of perspective. My mom told me a story in the early days when I was still struggling with the idea of the commute.

There was a monk who decided to climb a peak so he could meditate right on top. It took him 1 painful week to climb up but the experience on top was incredible. So, he did it again. And again and again until climbing up the peak was no big deal. Whether something is a mountain or molehill depends your perspective.

I think she made the story up to suit the situation. But, it turned out to be one hell of a story. Our perspective does indeed make all the difference in the world.

Oh, and finally, I also find myself smiling at the amazing story value this experience would have. Imagine telling my grandkids ‘When I was your age, I used to commute 2 hours and never complain..’

Now THAT would be fun..

Three years or so ago, I was on my way back to university by the MRT in Singapore. I met Anoj, a fellow university student who was in his final semester after a long time. We didn’t know each other too well and had had a bit of a stormy acquaintanceship in the past (haha). Luckily, that didn’t get in the way of us talking about our plans of the future.

He spoke of an idea he was working on – Microfinance to help India’s poor. They were about to begin with a pilot to see if the idea was feasible before embarking on the journey full time.

Three years later, Milaap has gone on to raise $200,000 and change 4,000 lives. All this with a 100% repayment rate. If that isn’t amazing, I don’t know what is!

The concept is simple – Nagendra, a 35 year old, needs around $1000 of capital to set up a handicraft business to manufacture bags and cushions. The capital would enable him to purchase raw materials and now, thanks to Milaap, he has access to lenders who would enable him to have the money. He expects to pay it back in monthly instalments over the next 2 years.

Or let’s take a more pressing issue – water. Milaap estimates that 500 million people, 50% of India’s population, do not have access to clean drinking water. And just a loan of $24 could help provide drinking water for a person for life.

This is of course not charity. You can choose to think of it as such but at the current moment, the loan repayment rate has been 100%.

2 friends of mine decided to take it a step further yesterday. Vikram and Shiva cycled 24 km in a campaign to raise awareness for water. Their employers have agreed to match the first $1,500 received. Here’s a video of an exhausted Vikram explaining why they did it.

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This week’s book learning is from ‘Predictable Irrationality’ by Dan Ariely.

Dan Ariely asks us to picture a scene –

You are at your Mother-in-law’s house for Thanksgiving. There’s a sumptuous spread – golden brown turkey with great stuffing, amazing potatoes and dessert. The kids love it, the whole family loves it and everyone’s sipping wine after a great meal.

Gazing fondly at your Mother-in-law you say ‘Mom, for all the love you put into this, how much should I pay you?’ and you take out your wallet and wave some notes ‘300? No, wait.. I should give you 400.’

What follows next is something we can all imagine. Your Mother-in-law walks out of the room. And next year’s thanksgiving is a frozen dinner in front of the TV.

What just happened though? Why does an offer for payment kill the party?

As Clark, Judson and Mills suggested long ago, we live simultaneously in 2 words – of social norms and market norms.

Social norms exist from our need for community. Instant paybacks and reciprocity are not immediately required.

Market norms is the world of wages, prices, costs etc – a world of comparable benefits and prompt payments.

When they are kept separate, life hums along. But, the moment they get mixed up, trouble sets in.

This beautifully explains why some of the toughest/most annoying situations we face in our daily lives are when social and market norms collide eg: when a friend/family member repeatedly owes us money or when our social help in making a business connection leads to big financial gain for the friend/family member we helped.

This is part I of this learning on social and market norms. More to follow next week. I’m curious to hear about your insights from the story in the comments.

And, of course, here’s to keeping a watch out for social and market norms this week!

I’ve not been well for most of the past week and I’m taking a break today from most things. So, writing a long Saturday post wasn’t quite on the cards.

It’s Oscar season and I found myself looking back at some of the best acceptance speeches from the past and I thought I’d share a couple that always make me laugh and tear up all at once.

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon for Good Will Hunting

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It’s nice to be the illiterate moron from time to time. You don’t know much and the only way to go is up.

I’m re-learning 5 valuable things as I am learning the guitar.

1. Learning doesn’t come without pain. In this case, it is literally the case. My fingers have been cut multiple times thanks to pressing down on the strings. The good news is that they seem to be getting stronger as a result.

2. There is no substitute to daily practice. None. None. None.

3. The stuff that actually helps us learn can be quite boring. A big part of being a good guitarist is developing muscle memory. Think of a chord and you get there. Think of the next chord and you switch instantly. That’s how songs are played. Getting to that however means countless switches while practicing – boring stuff but pays off.

4. Understand your learning style. This is a very fundamental question. How do you learn? Do you prefer reading loudly, softly, by yourself or with others? In guitar analogy, do you prefer reading tab, remembering them or seeing someone else play?

5. Understand your motivation. I thought I’d save the most important point for the end. It really helps understand why you are learning something.

In my case, the practice didn’t take off until 2 weeks in when we finally realized that all I wanted to learn was to become an acoustic rhythm guitar. Why? My primary motivation was to accompany songs sung by friends and family. That’s it. Period.

We threw all those funky lead pieces out of the window and started again. I compiled a song list that I wanted to learn and my enthusiasm and energy has been high ever since.

Simple test for this – How do you picture yourself using what you learn?

In my case the answer is simple – Bonfire, friends, guitar, singing, fun. And then, begin with the end in mind.

Happy Friday!

The conversation in our minds – ‘Hmm. What time is it? 10am. Okay. How long does it take to do it? 4 hours. Factor in lunch and let’s commit to 3pm.’

Right?

Wrong.

What we haven’t included is the following that will likely happen –

1. Microsoft Excel/PowerPoint will crash and we will lose unsaved work (No Mac user comments please.. :-))

2. We will have to run an ‘urgent’ errand thanks to an ‘urgent’ email that comes in

3. There will be a call asking us for our opinion for a crisis of some sorts

4. We’ll have to sit in for some emergency meeting

Or perhaps it’s all of the above.

Just because we don’t notice Murphy on a good day doesn’t mean he’s not there.

The right conversation would be – ‘Takes me 4 hours. Let’s double it and commit to 8 hours and if we finish in 4 hours, that’s great! We’d only have taken half the time anyway.’

Often, our eagerness to prove ourselves gets in the way of us doing it well and doing it right.

Under promise. Over deliver.

Easy to preach. Hard to do.

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PS: This one is written entirely as a reminder to myself.

PPS: Of course it’s contextual.

I am beginning to see a lot of humour in this situation of late.

Being Indian, I need a visa to get out of my front door. And I am generally not surprised to see an immigration officer eye me up and down before deciding to stamp my passport. Oh, and of course I better smile through the process.

I have had many bones to pick on this whole issue of visa and immigration. In fact, I was an angry young man for many months last year. Talk about visa and I’d begin fuming. That’s changed. Maybe I’ve grown up. Maybe not. I’ve just come to accept it as it is.

There are many obvious reasons to be pissed off with the system. It is not based on merit. Far from it actually. It’s probably the most legalized racist system that exists. Easy passage is directly proportional to the lightness of skin. The process is also age old, complicated and incredibly annoying. And it took me a good year or so to make peace with it and accept it.

I have even gone through the whole process intellectualizing what the right immigration system should be. That phase has gone too.

Right now, I look at my 17 point check list to get myself a Schengen business visa and grin from ear to ear. Of course, there’s the voice in my head that laughs out loud and says ‘Here we go again.’

There are some things we control and some things we don’t control. For things we control, it’s best we think and act. For things we don’t control, finding humour is probably the best thing we can do.

You always bring something to the table.

You bring the best and worst of you. The worst being a flipside of the best of you.

In a world where input, information and discussions seem to have every instant, word of mouth is more important than ever before. And, whether you like it or not, whenever you are mentioned, what you bring to the table is mentioned in the same breath.

This means you are not invited into tables where what you bring to the table is not seen as welcome, and, what you think you bring to the table is not necessarily what you bring to the table.

The important question, of course, is what do you bring to the table?

And if you have space for more questions, are you saying No to tables that wouldn’t match your offering?

One more while we are at it. Does it make you someone of value in the tables you’d like to be invited to?

Regulars here have heard of Aaron Klein before. He has been an inspiration of late for a few things (the most visible of which has been a change on font on this blog).

Aaron and I met via Disqus at AVC.com a few months back and we’ve been in touch thanks to commenting on each other’s blogs since. Aaron is one of those full of energy and inspiration. He is the CEO of a start up, a Trustee at a college, leading charity projects to help educate kids in Ethiopia and most importantly, a husband and father of 2 wonderful kids Casey and himself brought home from South Korea and Ethiopia – 2 kids who have changed their lives. Oh, and he also has a wonderful daily blog.

In short, a great guy and someone I’ve been looking forward to meet for a long while. I am sure you will enjoy this interview..

About Aaron:

Aaron Klein is the co-founder and CEO of Riskalyze, a technology startup that is revolutionizing how we make risk/reward decisions with our investments.

He’s also been elected twice as a Sierra College Trustee, and advocates for adoption and ending the global orphan crisis as a co-founder of Hope Takes Root.

Most importantly, he’s a husband and a father who believes in Isaiah 1:17’s radical mandate for changing the world.

One of our goals with Real Leader interviews it to keep it to short 15 minute interview. With Aaron, that was simply impossible. It was a laughter fest from the first minute as he rolled out one funny comment after another.

Please note that the internet connection in the Sierra foothills (the beautiful area where Aaron lives) is not the most predictable – so the video is not the clearest at all times. Our champion editor has worked hard to make it seamless. Our apologies for any part that may not be all that clear!

Rohan: Hi Aaron! Would be great to hear your story. How did it all begin?

Aaron: I have a rather interesting background! I started working for my dad when I was 12. He had a wholesale distribution business for security equipment like automatic gates. I literally started with packing boxes. I wanted to work with my dad and he thought ‘what else can this 12 year old kid do anyway’! I was gradually learning though. I started doing inventory and then operations. Later, I got into marketing for his products. At one point, I had to do slow down on college work because his industry had taken a dive. Suddenly they needed all hands on deck and there was no time for anyone to leave. Especially an 18-year-old low paid college kid like me! That was some experience.

In 2000, one of my good friends, my dad and I decided we should start something new with the internet. I was very excited about it! I have been on the computer from 1994 and I got network in 1995 in my dad’s office. My dad would often ask me to shut it down because he had to send a fax! Coming back to 2000, we started off with a web-consulting group. Towards the end of 2001, dad’s industry was getting tougher to stick to. I was trying to sell the company to a bigger competitor at that time. And in December 2001 we did sell it!

It was a bunch of different and varied experiences for me! And so, by the time I was in my 20s, I had moved from packing boxes to selling a company. My dad started working for the company we’d sold his business to, while my friend and I worked with the web-consulting firm. We later figured out that real value was in building a product. So we sold the web consulting company in 2005 and launched a business operation software for wholesale distribution companies. Our first client was the one we sold my dad’s company to! We got funding from that contract because we built it to suit their needs.

We made a boatload of mistakes with that company! It was good to learn from the mistakes though. Our biggest mistake was that we did a sort of exclusive-for-that-industry product. So we made the best business operation software for them, but we could not sell it to anyone else! Nevertheless, we were doing quite well. We had established contacts.

It was starting to get tougher though. In 2005, I could not make any venture capitalist believe that small businesses were going to buy their software over the Internet. No one bought that idea! They said small businesses buy their software off the shelves and this is never going to work. We started wondering what we were going to do. We needed about 25 million dollars of capital in this project.

We raised the first million and I sunk way more of my money than fit my risk tolerance into that company. (This is going to be funny in just a moment!) We were doing okay but about 2 weeks before the deal was going to close, the lead investor expired. And we hit the wall at 90 miles/hour. It was a huge life lesson. I don’t want to go through that ever again.

I learned a lot about risk tolerance, that’s for sure! I am not involved in the old company now, but that software is still running today with a couple of clients.

Then, a financial services company came calling as they needed to build a product developing team. They had a great marketing team but needed the ability to build technology products. So I went to work with them for about 4 years. That was the first time I was working in financial services. I explored a lot of areas there. I think it is a very interesting industry. It’s both dynamic and static in its own way.

One of the things I saw there was the huge holes that exist for individual investors. There are probably 14000 stocks in the ETFC that you can invest in and 269 million web pages where you can get ideas for investing. On the flipside there are all kinds of places you can go to execute these investments. There is no shortage of ideas and no shortage of execution. An investing decision involves figuring out the execution.

There is this great technology that quantifies risk tolerance. An old friend of mine invented it. He has a PhD in complex computer systems. He started to invest his money and he saw the way financial services assess risk in portfolios and he felt it was total baloney! He decided to come up with his own way of doing it and patented it. We started off with that.

And that’s our company – it’s called Riskalyze and it’s going very well. It looks at the investments and finds the one that fits the user. It’s helping people understand investments better and take decisions better.

Rohan: It’s been very interesting so far. It would be great to hear about some of the defining moments in the journey so far?

Aaron: It sounds funny but I’ve had a 21-year-old career by the age of 33! (My dad clearly had no idea about child labor laws!) The business operations software experience was a big learning. There was a team working for me, there was money involved and it was a very painful experience. In the learning process, sometimes you cant avoid that.

However, I feel it’s my job as a CEO to make sure that we are always headed in the right direction; that we are not stuck on the wrong trajectory. That’s one of the biggest learnings. Assessing the trajectory you are on in a startup is quite important because running a start up is a bit like taking a leap off a cliff. And they don’t allow parachutes!

You have to figure it out and make sure you are aware!

Rohan: It would nice to hear about things you do apart from your work life. Your kids and the projects with Africa..

Aaron: My wife and I decided to adopt in 2006. My son Spencer was born in South Korea. We flew to Seoul and brought him home. We did that again in October 2008. Our daughter Emma was born in Ethiopia. We met her Christmas morning in 2009. We flew home with her on New Years Eve 2010!

They have changed our lives! It’s hard to explain. A lot of people meet us and go ‘Thank you for what you are doing for these kids’. I don’t really see it that way. These kids are bringing more richness into our lives than what we could ever do for them.

Adoption is really about finding families for kids and not the other way around!

Rohan: You had a two-day trip to the South of Ethiopia as well right?

Aaron: When we went to adopt, we didn’t really travel throughout the country and left with a limited view. It’s like going to Central London and thinking that’s all there is to the UK!

There are a lot of core issues behind the situation there. It has to do with poverty in the developing world and how a lot of aid has not reached where it has to go. One part of the world cannot adopt another part of the world’s kids. That is not really a solution to the issue. We have to go deeper than that.

We thought we should solve the problem by preventing kids from becoming orphans in the first place. It starts with food and education. If you can ensure this and make them self-sufficient, we can break the cycle of dependency and ultimately poverty.

I took another trip in September 2010 and travelled throughout the country. I walked into Adami Tulu, this tiny village of 3000 people and it hit me. The kids were there and at one point I played a video for them on my phone. About 80 kids just piled around and the sky closed in! It was amazing. There is a school in the nearby village of Ziway. We have invested there too.

The biggest industry that region of Ethiopia, is made up of 22 acres of greenhouses. And they supply roses for the entire country of Denmark! Remarkable right? So, outside these greenhouses there are people sitting and hoping that someone inside falls sick and leaves because, that way they get to work. There was very little hope in the area.

We have built a couple of classroom buildings there. It was amazing to see it all come together. Some more buildings are under construction now. We have launched a sponsor program for the kids at the school. $19 a month is giving a kid food and education. That feels amazing!

We want to start some self-sustaining business ventures to fund the operation of the school. The goal is that 50% of the school’s operating costs will be covered by the business ventures in 5 years. At that point we will be able to cut the cost of the sponsorship or redirect the funds to other places of need!

Rohan: What a great story! Could you sum up Riskalyze for us in a few words?

Aaron: Riskalyze is all about quantifying your investment decisions. Making your decisions should be captured into an equation. And really, half of this equation comes from the risk tolerance. So, it goes back into the Internet and finds the investments that fit you! If you go to Google to do this, you’ll find investments that were hot in the past and a bunch of ads from companies that ask you to pick them. These are not ideal.

When you go to the software and tell it that these are your ideas and this is your risk tolerance, it calculates an optimum portfolio that fits you!

Rohan: What are your words of advice for the leaders (and aspiring ones!) out there reading this?

Aaron: The most important lesson is that every moment counts! We have to be purposeful and very intentional. I don’t think people spend a lot of time thinking about the kind of life they want to have and about the things they want to do. We don’t spend nearly as much time building the structure and the systems to achieve that.

I have a good example on that. 12 hours ago, I received an email from you saying ‘Aaron, let’s chat directly on Skype. I don’t check emails for 24 hours on Saturday.’ You do that to help yourself achieve what you want to do and that’s a good example.

Build a routine that works for you! In my case, I work on my start up on the weekdays and often do a 6 hour day on Saturdays. That’s life! On Sunday morning, we go to church and on Sunday afternoon, we always do something as a family! I make sure that I do as much as I can on Saturdays so I can keep Sunday focused for family. That’s not going to work for everybody but it’s up to you to build systems that work for yourself. If you are intentional in how you plan your life, you are going to be a lot more successful!

My dad taught me a lot about business and about life. He and I are still fantastic friends and we get along great. He was always dedicated to his family. I learnt all this from him. I remember this song called ‘This moment’ which talks about living in the moment and not in the future. A lot of that thinking has led me to be more intentional about things..

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It’s interviews like that make me thankful for the many who have worked hard to make this ‘Interview Real Leaders’ idea a reality. I had so much fun and have taken away an immense amount of positive energy going forward.

Thank you so much, Aaron for your time. As I’ve told you multiple times after our chat, I cannot wait to meet you – hopefully in California this year!

Over the last month, 3 of us have been working on getting these Real interviews out to you. This was the first one that was entirely a team effort. I did the interviewing, our talented iPad artist EB did the editing and talented artist and blogger Dhanya did the transcription. We hope to make steady incremental improvements to our efforts.

And we look forward to all your thoughts and feedback on what we could do better.

Happy Monday! And have a great week!

This week’s book learning is from ‘Screw It, Let’s Do it’ by Richard Branson.

When Richard Branson was a young entrepreneur getting started with Virgin Music, he flew to Japan and set up numerous meetings with the big shots in the media industry. He had some vague ideas of a joint venture but really, he was just a broke man with some outrageous ideas. Yet, he found himself being listened to and being treated very courteously and patiently.

That experience had a deep impact on him and he decided that he would be as polite and courteous to all those around him. This resolution was tested when he was on his way to a meeting in a taxi with a very chatty taxi driver.

‘Oy I know you. You’re that Dick Branson who runs that record label.’

Branson smiled, hoping he would shut up. But he went on and said he was also a drummer in a band and asked if he could play a demo tape. Branson’s heart sank but he didn’t want to be rude so he replied with a ‘That will be lovely’.

And just as they were getting to the end of the trip, the cabbie put on the tape and Branson then heard the words ‘I can feel it coming in the air tonight.’

That’s when the cabbie got out laughing like mad. He was the one and only Phil Collins..

A bad mood, a bad day, work, busy-ness and other things seem to get in the way of us being the best we can be.

‘You meet the same people on the way down as you met on your way up. So, treat them well’ is a quote I really like.

Branson’s story reminded me of that wise quote..

Here’s to being polite and kind to everyone we meet this week!

Category: Everything else

Life Lessons from the 2 Hour Commute

Cycling for Water with Milaap – Loan a Little, Change a Lot

On Thanksgiving dinner and the Two Kinds of Norms

Oscar Acceptance Speeches

5 Things I’m Re-Learning from Learning the Guitar

When will it get done?

Visa Matters

What You Bring to the Table

Aaron Klein: Interview XII – Real Leader Interviews

On Richard Branson and the Musical Cabbie

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