Think Different

While success is a relative term, I surely do believe that all the people who have been successful in their own way had the ability to think differently and challenge mainstream ideas. This has actually been the key to everything good in my life too. This isn’t a post to brag about all of that — it’s to share what I believe is a real key to life: the willingness to think differently than most people. It means you have to be willing to question what most people do and tell you. It means you have to have the courage to try something different. It means you have to be brave enough to stand out from the crowd and not take the safe route. Most people take the safe route, because they’re afraid of being different and failing. If you do nothing amazing but you go with the crowd, then you don’t look stupid. But then you miss out on the amazing. If you never stand out from the crowd, you will always be average. And that’s fine, but the people who stand out are the ones who make a mark, who innovate and discover, who learn the freedom of exploration and invention. If you stand out when you apply for a job, you’ll be more likely to be noticed. If you don’t, and you play it safe, then they’ll likely ignore you. If you stand out when you start a business, people will be curious and check you out. If you’re just one of many businesses doing the same thing, why should others care about you? Why should they choose you?


Learning to Think Differently

When you hear an idea that’s different than what you’re used to, pause. Instead of rejecting it outright, consider it — is there some merit? What are the arguments, the evidence? Let go of the emotions that come up, the defensiveness. When you are told that this is the way to do things, take a second look. Is this really the best way? Are there other possibilities? If no one has thought of them, can you?
Just because an idea is different, don’t just accept it. Look at the bulk of the evidence, and learn to spot flaws in reasoning.
Test out different ideas. Just because most people don’t do it, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. They might all be wrong, and this might be better. No better way to find out than to test it. If it’s not a good idea, drop it and move on.
Learn to be proud of your ability to test things that people traditionally believe in, and not to worry so much if you stand out. In fact, learn to see standing out as good — not just to stand out, but to forge new ground, to challenge ideas, to express your individual voice rather than blending in.

Siya and her stories...

Siya and her stories ...
Siya - Mom, now I am 7.5 years, grown up, now atleast stop writing my stories on facebook.
Purwa - I will do this till you have your facebook page and put up your own posts.
Siya - I will put up my posts not on facebook, I will put up my posts on some application that you will build it only for me... may be that is what you should do now and not post my stories. 

My kid HAS GROWN UP!

Siya and her stories...

Siya and her stories...
Siya - What do you keep on writing in this book?
Purwa - They are a collection of your stories from 2 years till now.
Siya - Why do you write and what will do with this?
Purwa - I love reading the way you have grown up and cherish those memories.
Siya - Engg/MBA se achcha aap photography kar lete toh itna likhna toh nahi padta !

Kids even get to decide their mom's careers!

What was my last week's biggest waste of time?

Unfortunately, it simply boils down to a decision of “Yes” or “No”. I lost my productivity and efficiency and ultimately happiness because of just these two words “Yes” or “No”. And actually, come to think of it, its not only me but all of us – for that matter even my daughter Siya now. Often people say “Yes” when they mean “No” or “No” when they should say “Yes”. “Yes” and “No” are a negotiation of another person’s request. Each word has to be used wisely, judiciously, and with grace, with your inner-harmony in mind as it has a direct impact on your well-being. I really don’t remember the book I read but it was about a two-headed animal with a single body. Most of us can often visualize ourselves this way where we are heading towards opposite direction at the same time. It is important to avoid such a situation because this state of unnecessary indecision lowers your energy rate and it drains away your personal power rather than strengthening it. To make a decision quickly and not vacillate or second guess oneself is a critical life-skill. It is especially important with the acceleration of the world around us today, fast decisions are asked of us minute-by-minute. People who can make decision faster without vacillating don’t hide from life but live their life.

The power behind “Yes” and “No” is when you state them truthfully. When that is the case, you tend to strengthen the relationship with yourself and moreover with others too. When me and Siya talk, I many a time tend to give Siya an illusion of a “Complicated Life” that I lead. To which she simply asks me – tell me the truth, what will make you happy. And this question completely clears the clutter for me. Being truthful to yourself and to others is actually an art of simplification which makes you more pure, more real and always approachable and lovable. Then what makes me think so much! If I say “No” people will get mad at me, if I say “Yes”, what will he think about me and so on and on. Soon I realized - When you take care of yourself, your relationships work. What I mean by this, is that if you don’t honour what is in your well-being, and come from a place of trying to please people or to try to make them like or love you more, by giving them what they want, it always backfires. Take up any incidence of your life where you followed the “please people” way and not “please me” way. I am sure you would have realized that you suffered, your relationship suffered and ultimately the other person too. Only because your heart closes the energetic reach to the person. You can always say “No” with grace because when you do that, you gain respect and you are still viewed as generous and kind.

So use your power of choice to say “Yes” or “No” when you mean it.

You will get to your BIG THING, your most important thing, but later !

It’s amazing how many people I talk to who tell me they want to create a new blog, write a book, start a new business, change careers, make something new. But simply keep putting it off. Does it sound like your story? You want to do something different but you don't have the time (or energy) to do one right now? "My sweetheart, I love you, I miss you but I just don't have the time to meet you. A million of things in your to-do list, your schedule fully packed, meetings coming". You will get to your BIG THING, your most important thing, but later. In fact it is even my story till I learnt the art of creating time. 

I realized that I will never get to that time I want to do my BIG THING, till I learn to create one. Seize the bull by the horns, grasp it tenaciously, never let it go. Time has a habit of trampling over us, so softly we don’t even notice but so powerfully we become crushed over the course of weeks and years. And someone who have learnt to master this  art is all working women. It is beautiful to see how they manage home, office, kids, in-laws and still manage to create time for what they like (walk, dance, spa-sessions, gyms, whatever). They generally have no time to do it and yet the create one. I had no time, so I created it. Time is often said to be our most limited resource, but it’s not true. We can create time. It takes the sheer force of will to do it, but it can be created. Time doesn’t fall into your lap. It isn’t handed to you by a kindly old gentleman. You must create it, taking from the world the raw materials you need and shaping it with your bare dirty blistered hands, pushing the clay into form from its shapeless muddy glob. I created the time, taking some from television watching, some from meetings, some from saying no to the endless requests on my time by co-workers and well meaning friends, some from other important projects that I put off. I put off important things to create time for The Most Important Thing. Say no to everything else. Put off what can be held at bay for the time being. And create time for what is necessary. Make something. Bring new creative life into the world, change the lives of others, and in doing so, change yours.

Let's attempt it - its not so difficult. And as someone rightly said, if you conquer your will power, even Mount Everest will seem like a rock!

Cheers!

Siya and her Virus!

A very interesting conversation with Siya last night - she was typing a letter for me on my laptop when she saw a pop-up on some virus protection software installed on my laptop. Her inquisitive mind as usual could not resist asking me what it is. So I explained her what are viruses on the computer and how important it is to install a virus protection on it. She went to sleep after that and a thought came to my mind. We all take care of destructive viruses on the laptop but we really don't bother with destructive viruses acting on our mind. The more serious of these thoughts may lead to mental health problems such as loss in confidence, mild depression, self esteem issues and a distorted perception of ourselves (been there myself ;-) ). I think the book was "The Secret" where I read that science has proved there is a link between physical and mental well being and positive attitude in life. When you are happy and content with life and your thought processes are working correctly your brain releases endorphins which is your brains way of dealing with pain and making your feel happier. Your brain also releases something called Gamma Globulin to strengthen your immune system and another chemical called Interferon which combats viruses, infections and even cancer. But question is how? And may be the answer to that is not so simple but what has helped me is "thought awareness" that is when you recognize that the thoughts coming to your mind can lead to a downward spiral of negative emotions resulting in  physical and mental problems. 

So when I started my own business, at first I was (and still I am) really excited about the entire thought but then I soon realized my mind telling me "it is hard, it is difficult, it is not easy" so on. I recognized that I was talking to myself in a negative way. When you recognize this, it is very important to recognize for what it is. Your mind has tried to protect you from being hurt emotionally so starts talking to you in a negative way in order to protect your feelings. As soon as you recognize these thoughts are creeping in, its time to kill them and carry on with your plan. Everything you don’t know yet is difficult simply because you don’t know it, but when you take steps towards knowing, it becomes less difficult and therefore easier. When you recognize and stop the negative self talk your thoughts will then start naturally flowing to a positive mind state. Kind of like Siya where she believes she could do anything. We tend to dwell on negative events from our past in an effort to understand why they happened. This can often occur with traumatic events from our past. Just move on, what is occurred is unavoidable for us to change, spending hours on analyzing why it happened is wasting your TODAY. Use affirmations to train your mind. They could be any of the short phrases or sentences you repeat to yourself mentally in order to induce a certain state of mind. Like for me it is "Everyday in every way, I am getting better and better and better". I have been chanting this (almost like a prayer) for years and years now. I make it a point to tell myself this before a sales call, before a client meet, before handling a Siya tantrum. By stating affirmations to yourself in a mantra like way and repeatedly over weeks, months and years your mind becomes trained to think in a different way. If you don’t think this works think about your fears for a second or two. people who are afraid of going into elevators have literally used affirmations and visualization to train their mind to produce a state of panic whenever they have to enter an elevator. So it is true in reverse. People who are confident have affirmed, at every opportunity, to tell their mind they are confident in every situation and confident enough to try new situations. We all use affirmations in our lives without ever knowing that we do so why not put affirmations to good use and consciously train your brain to a better way of thinking. And I have just opened up myself to new experiences without caring for results. The very thrill of breaking the comfort zone everyday excites me. Again read this somewhere - Apathy is found within the comfort zone, greatness lives outside of it. 

I know it is not possible to control our thoughts, Alok Kejriwal had once mentioned as his status message "if spiders could see the cobwebs in peoples minds, they would step back and marvel at them...". Our aim is not to control our thoughts but to steer them in right direction!

My experience with JoyFear

I had heard this term JoyFear somewhere! I realized that the path of success is littered with doubt, fear, uncertainty and still lots of persistence, calculated risk and repeated actions. I personally think the difference between someone who fails and someone who succeeds is the courage to act repeatedly. There was a stage where I lived in a constant state of exhaustion. I lost weight, I had dark circles and the thought that always came to my mind was "I am not capable". And this feeling of "not being capable" is something that can drive one crying. And then I learned from Siya while she was growing. When she walking, she would simply focus on the step at a time. She would make sure she gets that step perfectly right, make sure she could balance it well and then only move on to the next step. If she would fall down, she would again stand up, try the same step till she got it. That is exactly what I decided to do. I will wake up in the morning, put one foot ahead of other, I am going to do it one step at a time. And that step is a forward step. Keep walking and you will reach someday to your goal. I am strong and determined and made sure I only focus on step ahead of me and I would not fail at that. And this every step is a mixture of two powerful emotions - joy and fear. Every single defining moment in my life has been filled with JoyFear, mixture of intense joy and intense fear into one ball of powerful emotions that both lift me up and make me see things clearly when I hadn’t before. What made sure that I would always propel forward?

• I would tell myself "I have to succeed and there is no two ways about it. When I started Jute, I had left a job that was paying me well, a job that was satisfying too, and still decided to plunge into Jute. All I said is "I HAVE TO MAKE IT WORK". Once you decide on success you rarely allow doubt to enter your mind. Your persistence, dedication, and resilience are strengthened. And then in my low days, I simply ping my well wishers and a meeting with them makes sure I am on track!
• I decided to take a risk. I decided to chase my fear. I decided to do what will scare me. When I would experience rejections, I would simply ask someone else. Be bold and brave and defy the odds.
• Be prepared - Unemployment is the world's fastest rising worry. Anticipate your needs but don't live in fear, create solutions in advance. In Ajit's language - What is your plan B?
• Focus on benefits of your success and not failures. That it self is a biggest motivation.
• Be with people who want to see you succeed. 
• Always see yourself as "you are enough". Accept who you are and where you are today. When you compare yourself to others, you create your own suffering. My friends were busy making their careers when I was changing diapers. I was too busy to care. What others think of you is none of your business.
• Finally calm your body, do something you like. Find a quite place and bring attention inward.

Unless you can learn how to move through your fear, you’ll continue to hold yourself back. You’ll never learn to risk, to excel, to create, to invent or to experience Joyfear.

Siya and her stories...

Siya and her stories....
Siya - Mom, I am getting bored.
Purwa - But darling, I am a little busy. Can you play with Papa.
Siya - Papa will play chess with me, and I wanna play monopoly
Purwa - Its a boring game, chess is fun - lots of strategy
Siya - Monopoly is lots of money, how can you not like it when in business ....

The next generation in making ...

Are good managers good leaders always?

It is obvious in professional life to have disagreements and different view points. You land up to arguments and arguments land up to wars at times ;-). I have gone through similar ones a lot in past and when I introspect as to why, one realizes that once you are a leader (someone whom people look up to) you own responsibilities of a lot of people within the organization and outside, you influence them but hey you might not be able to manage them well.

Management is all about numbers exercise - topline, bottom line, targets, achievements, profits, etc and you are accessed against meeting those numbers. Leadership is all about "inspiring people" and for all you know you can inspire people with your management skills. Leadership is all about who you are and management is all about how you do things. Management is more of a skill just like teaching, cooking, etc while leadership is what is within and attributes that can be "followed by". Being courageous, trust worthy, visionary are all qualities that a good leader should possess and has to be felt by others. While management is merely a skill that can be worked upon on daily basis till you get better at it. Being a good leader is more like working on yourself - self-improvement, thinking, defining and visioning. Being a a good manager is all about planning, achieving, setting company's goals.

However, what is common between a manager and a leader is good listening skills, thirst for knowledge and highly dependable and accountable. Both realize the importance of their contribution to the business and make sure to be committed to it.

So, lets play a game today, on the scale of 10 (where 10 is the best), rate yourself and me on Leadership and Management. (Leave a comment)

Happy Birthday Jute Networks!

The Story of Jute Networks

It is absolutely intentional to announce the website of Jute Networks on the same day as Siya's birthday. Why not have the birthdays of both my babies on the same day :-) especially when both the babies took the same amount of labor pains :-). 

Jute for me happened by chance. After I left QLC, I have been talking to a lot of people but for a job. And one fine evening, I meet Girish Nair (my mentor and a very good friend of mine) and all he tells me is "you should start up". That night I could not sleep and was thinking of what next. I have been reading a lot about entrepreneurship and always wanted to get into one but never managed to say "ok, lets just do it". All it needed is a dinner with Girish to make sure I can pass a statement like this. And then I also met Ajit Menon who has been another reason for me to ensure that I dive into Jute Networks. So, we were like best-est friends who can not agree at all with each other :-). However, the fact that he said "you should try and atleast not have regrets later" was the only agreement I guess we had till date. And then finally my husband and my dad and Siya too gave me a green flag with lots of ifs and buts too which I turned deaf ears :-). But the fact that people who matter me the most were with me, I jumped into. So, a lot of things just started in place, investments, people, place, etc and angels came to help me from every part of earth to help me out :-).

So why Jute - Traditionally jute was used in traditional textile machineries as textile fibres having cellulose (vegetable fibre content) and lignin (wood fibre content). But, the major breakthrough came when the automobile, pulp and paper, and the furniture and bedding industries started to use jute and its allied fibres with their non-woven and composite technology to manufacture nonwovens, technical textiles, and composites. Therefore, jute has changed its textile fibre outlook and steadily heading towards its newer identity, i.e., wood fibre. Jute will help business houses in defining their new identity at affordable rates. India is also the largest producer of Jute in the world and that is surely where Jute should get to. Our vision is to be India’s most customer centric company; to build a company where businesses can find and discover anything they need to fulfil their IT needs. We would like to make a rich history and look forward for a dynamic future. “We make a difference…”

There are so many other people whom I would like to thank who just were there, my clients from QLC, my colleagues from netCore, my colleagues from QLC and most of all my immediate and extended family. (it does almost sound like a Miss Universe speech after award wining ).

Happy Birthday Jute Networks and you are as special to me as Siya! Announcing the launch of the website of Jute Networks. Hope you guys like it! This is just the beginning and the game has just begun, I have a long way to go so wish me luck and most importantly energy to drive it through.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JUTE NETWORKS AND WELCOME AGAIN!!! 

Happy Birthday Siya - 7 years

Hey darling,
I just realized that you are now at a age where you are no more a kiddo for me and would prefer to be treated like a friend. But hey, you know what, I would still prefer to be a mom to you :-). Wishing you a very happy birthday my princess and lots of happiness and strength to overcome all hardships associated. Year April to 2011 to April 2012 has been for us more like a "BIG" Siya. Completely independent, completely self-sufficient,  very matured and more understanding. Tough you started treating me as a friend far earlier (http://purwajain.blogspot.in/2011/04/happy-birthday-siya-6-years.html), it took me a while to absorb you that way. I still felt the need to pamper you and may be cuddle you to sleep as yet :-)! However, it is working in your favour and you are having fun!

So what really was different this year! This year darling you came into first standard and that say it all. You were no more treated like a baby where you were told to hold teacher's hands or mom's hands. Your school made it sure that you get far more mature before even I could realize. You also started getting really more conversant with me and started having a real strong opinion for things. If you enjoy doing things, you will do it irrespective of who says a yes or a no. You have developed this strong will to make sure you get things done as per your needs and yet stay humble and kind. Your emotional side of development especially with your friends has left me shaken. Every person goes out of the way to help her best friend but you go out of your way to help a person who is in need. A few school incidences made me proud of you.

Sport field has been your passion and will continue to be till you want it to be. you have realized this year that if there is "x"amount of energy in you and if not utilized correctly - will come out in anger, frustration, crankiness, etc. you exactly know how to keep yourself busy when parent are busy and this could be a duration as long as 8 hours. You would yourself shift the furniture in the room to corners and start practising gymnastics just because you wanted to channelize it in the right direction. As usual laurels earned this year were in the field of skating, gymnastics, kathak, shaimak's, drawing and few more. But I am sure, your certificates put together versus mine till date, you have done atleast 30 times better than me. Proud of you as always!

So, there was 6th April, 2005 where my life had changed! You made me a mother! And today is 6th April, 2012  - exactly 7 years and all I can say is "you made a difference" to our family. You have been my reason to smile, my reason to dream and my reason to think real BIG! I have no regrets in declaring that you have been my guide in these 7 years. When I seek motivation, when I seek energy, when I seek optimism, I only and only look upto to you. While you will not even understand half of these words, you just do it in way where I realize why could I not be like her.

When you were born, I had this fear if I was capable to take care of this little angel and hope I have succeeded in these year. And today I have a similar fear when I am on a path where I am taking the next major move. And I have this fear if I can take care of the same or not. But as you always proved, "put in the best and leave the rest", the fruits will be delicious. So darling, your mom has gone into entrepreneurship - not sure if it is the right move or not, but who really cares - if I fail I will atleast know what not to do from next time. So Siya, you have made it a point to make us proud always, now its my time to make you proud. We friends have decided to make a difference and here is where I announce the launch of the new born baby - Jute Networks (www.jutenetworks.in).

Happy Birthday Siya once again and make sure you continue to inspire us. That is surely what is going to keep us going on! Love you !

Happy Birthday Siya and God Bless!

Are you tired? Are you tired of getting tired?

There have been days when I simply just crash down and don't have the energy to handle anything that matters. There were times when I had it for a good number of days and finally sat back and decided that this problem needs a solution. I can't be struggling for so long. I need my energy when I get back home so that Siya can see me far more lively and feel happy that my mom is back and not run away saying "its time to get bored now". When you are tired, nothing seems appealing, life is dull, you don't get much accomplished and then to add to the complications, you don't even have the energy to change the situation. We have just got better with ignoring our body's signal - our body needs rest but much of the time we have trained our minds to pretend that body isn't tired, so that we can be more productive. This is wrong. It ends up in burnout and less production, because we inevitably run out of energy. Listen to your body — your long-term health and sanity depend on it. Mostly we’re tired because we don’t rest enough. Yeah, I know: duh, Purwa. But if it’s so obvious, why do we ignore it? For us, waking up early, getting stuff done, attending thousand meetings, being sucked in thsi online world, watching that idiot box - all of this is important than rest. If you’re like me, you drink coffee in the morning. You might drink more later in the morning, to keep yourself energized. By the time afternoon rolls around, you’re in caffeine withdrawal. This is often why people are sapped by mid-afternoon. We also run ourselves too fast, like a sprint, when life is much longer than a sprint. Try it: go outside and sprint all-out for two minutes. Stop, breathe for a sec, then sprint again. See how long you can keep that up — most can’t go very long. Our days are like a series of sprints (I was told this by my boss Girish Nair in netCore). My first suggestion is to take a nap. If you’re too tired to take other steps, taking a nap is easy. If you can’t take a nap, at the very least disconnect from digital devices. Computers and smartphones are powerful tools, but being on them for too long tires us out. Disconnect, get outside, take a walk. Cancel an appointment or two if you can. Stretch. Massage your shoulders. Close your eyes for a few minutes. Breathe.These are small things you can do right away, and they will help you become more rested. Sleep for longer hours in the night when you are tired - trust me, internet will not miss you at all :-). Do something that you like - in my case, it would be either reading, writing or dancing. I make it sure I at least remove 30min everyday for something that I thoroughly enjoy. Take stretch breaks at work - get the blood circulating and if possible exercise regularly. Business is NOT directly proportional to productiveness. Be less busy, have more gaps between meetings - Flush and Restart.Most of us multi-tasking but the truth is we are doing mental juggling. And there is only so much you can do in a day. focus - do one thing at a time and be fully present while doing that task. This really transforms anything you do, from work tasks to conversations to chores like washing the dishes. It’s less tiring, mentally, and it can make anything you do more enjoyable. Life is less tiring when you single-task. Read somewhere that drinking more water and keeping yourself hydrated makes you less tired. For me, I like to work with interesting people and will work only on something that I am excited about. Conversations with interesting people refreshes me.


Eventually, life is not such a mess as we think. Lets not waste time getting tired. My inspiration has been Siya. Hope we maintain this child like energy and enthusiasm always!

Learnings from my first business plan presentation

The classy part about internet is that one can share their learning and make sure that the mistake done by one are not repeated by others. So last week I had my first business plan presentation to an investor. Went pretty decent but I am sure I could have done far better by just keeping in mind few things which I already knew but did not implement.

1) Back to MBA days where we were taught this 10/20/30 rule - 10 slides, 20 minutes and 30 font size. My presentation went to about 45 min and I realized that after 25min, the presentation was not required. Most of these guys are always in a hurry and guess tight on time and attention.

2) My presentation included brief introduction of the company, team, description about me, Comprehensive project description: what I plan doing, what is my product/service, what are your major competitive advantages, my customer profile, how much investment and what is the proposed funding structure like own capital, direct investments, etc and other topics like all business plan have. What I conveniently missed is is the payback period. That was a real disaster on my part. I knew it but forgot to include in my presentation.

3) Apart from the negatives stated above, I think I was very good at the visual element of the presentation. Good creativity and the graphics communicated the same ideas and values as the bullet points. A pat on the back for that :-).

4) It took to a while to tell the marketing personality in me to shut up! This was consciously decided because I really did not want to sound to boastful. One of the slides had the word "game-changing". Not that the investor complained but when I just saw it right now, I did smile at myself. How funny I could have been to include this!

5) I could have done far better in my "Call to Action" section slides. A lot of things came up in the discussion which I realized they were there but not organized well. So make sure you put in 80% of the time for this final section. This is only what your investors are interested to know.

All the best guys and hope you guys learn from this too :-) !

Oh God, I am just so busy!

When I look back today, I almost feel like laughing on myself on how busy I use to be. I think I was just serious about my ability to be a superwoman :-). I could work for 16 hours per day in office, raise Siya, cook, dance, choreograph shows, exercise, travel, clean, network, facebook, blog and on and on. I could do it all and then some. I would always think that everyone is doing it all and so can I. But if I look back, I didn't want to really do it all. Doing it all made me exhausted, it cost me friendships, it cost me my health. My busyness wasn't even a bit silly. To get less busy was not an accident but a decision I made on purpose. This surely does not mean you compromise on your career or on your family or anything of that sort. I realized that by even being less busy, I was moving ahead, reaching closer to my goal. I made the decision that a busy life wasn’t a life for me. Being a good person, loving wife, mother, an inspiration for my sub-ordinates and friend…that was the life I wanted.More than that, I wanted freedom to do things that made made my heart sing instead of things that weighed me down. And most of the times it is because you are overwhelmed that you can't figure out how to change. Do you also have one these symptoms that I suffered from:

- People would ask me "how are you?" and my answer would be "very busy", "lots of work", etc
- I can only talk to family or friends in car because I have no time otherwise
- I forget that I am hungry and its lunch time
- I would check emails, facebook, linkedin several times a day.
- Prepare lists after lists so that you dont forget anything
- Would volunteer for almost everything just to make sure I am in good books of everyone
and so on and on.

All it needed me to do is (which I learned from my boss sometime back but implemented now):
- Be unproductive for 1 day in a week.
- check mails only x times a day
- delete all unwanted mails, do not feel that if you get lots of emails (which are really unwanted), you have lots of work.
- turn off your computer when you not working
- turn everything off in the car (except the car :-) )
- help someone
- do less, be more
- Delegate and give ownership at work place to your team and peers - Don't believe that you you are the only one who can do this best, be a mentor and a guide to help them achieve their best.

And I soon realized that I could still be as productive as before without being overwhelmed about my task list.

Chaos!

As my close friends tell about me, I do generally a lot of planning. Planning the year, planning the expenses, planning the career, planning Siya's career, plan cooking, plan, plan and plan. After I have left my current job, I took a conscious decision of not planning anything for roughly 6 months especially for myself. Of course, everyday was a big chaos. But I soon realized Chaos is creativity, and creativity is chaos. They are the same thing. Creative work doesn’t happen by plan and control. I do know a good number of people who are detail freaks and who are genuises too, but I am sure they did not have a plan to come up with a creative genius idea. It came to them because they were open to random thoughts, explored paths no one else had thought to look down, took an idea they saw from someone else and twisted it in a new way. Creativity comes from a place of chaos, and it’s only when you open yourself to this lack of control that you can come up with your best creativity.

How to create a email campaign calendar

Based on feedback from the first blog post, I am covering up this topic. Ya, I am sure each one of you think that it is very simple to do this but trust me when I say that if email marketing does not work out for you, one of the few primary reasons for failure could be email calendar.


I go back to my MBA days where in Marketing I had a very interesting chapter called Integrated Marketing Communication - Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is defined as customer centric, data driven method of communicating with the customers. IMC is the coordination and integration of all marketing communication tools, avenues, functions and sources within a company into a seamless program that maximizes the impact on consumers and other end users at a minimal cost.This management concept is designed to make all aspects of marketing communication such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing work together as a unified force, rather than permitting each to work in isolation.(source)

Email Marketing is generally a part of the same and hence we need to make sure that all our communication channels like blogs, online newsrooms, social media, events, print media, promotions and sweepstakes, web pages, etc are at all times in sync. The purpose of the calendar is to bridge together content and themes for all of them.

In email marketing, if you aren’t planning a week or two ahead, you’re too late. If you really want to plan a successful campaign, and avoid “blasting”, you need to give your self some time to create content, creative, landing pages and most importantly the segmentation of the list. 

What I generally advice is in the first week of every month, plan the next month. When doing this, remember the following:

1) Make the calendar transparent - Make sure it is published where everyone can see it, understand it and live it.

2) Get the accountability in place - Identify who from the marketing team owns this calendar.

3) Planning - Streamline the people who will be involved in planning of dates, content, creative and finally sign-off

4) Measure, measure and measure - Effectiveness of the campaign has to be measured so that the next one can be tuned up. Identify the person for the same.

Now what exactly do you want to send in an email? This will generally have two broad level goals:

1) Sending direct promotional emails to try and acquire new customers or persuade existing customers to buy again e.g. schemes, promotions, etc

2) Sending emails designed to encourage customer loyalty and enhance the customer relationship e.g. newsletters, new feature promotion, downtime mailers, etc

Given that you would like to accomplish these goals month on month, identify the topics or themes each month into broad categories that can be broken down into sub-categories or if the company has many products or services, dedicate each month to a different product focus or service of your company and design a collage of content ideas centered around that product or service. 

Co-relate the topic to be sent out with the business. e.g. Schemes and Promotions are best announced mid-month closer to month end so that your target gets accomplished, if a very aggressive scheme then move it closer to the month-end, feature announcements are best announced in a clutter free week for maximum attention, etc.

One more thing that I generally advice is co-relate your communication to that of your competition's communication if you have the information. This is important especially in the goal is acquisition and that is where the timings matter.

Put the topic up on the calendar and withing the remaining three weeks, get the content, the creative and the list to be targeted in place. (Please note: List segmentation is one of the very important factor to determine the success and I will blog about it in this week)

Sending emails on regular basis

Now, since I have been conducting workshops all over India on "Good practices of Email Marketing", I do come across a lot of questions related to the same. The best I thought to address them is by writing about them :-). So, here is my first post on "Easy tips to make sure you stick to your schedule!".

The question is what is the correct frequency of sending emails? Most of the times this question is simply answered by saying "don't send too frequently or too in-frequently". But the way I look at it is the frequency of the email campaign should be aligned with your business and more importantly should address the basic concept of consistency. In other words,  not sending on a regular basis is the same as sending too frequently or infrequently. Think of email marketing as a beginning of a new relationship. The more you see the person, the more will there be bonding build and more there will be trust. Now imagine that in a new relationship, you show up thrice in the first week and then just not show up at all for 3 months, what happens? Did you not just dig grave for yourself? This is exactly what happens to your recipients too in an email marketing campaign. 

I had a friend of mine who was working with a magazine and she was just sharing her working style with me. She had a calendar that was shared between all editors and writers keeping a track of all the things they are doing months or weeks ahead of time. I think this is just such a classy idea for email marketing too. Create a calendar, it need not be absolutely accurate but can simply be a guesstimate of your campaigns so that you know how much time you'll need to get specific emails together.

One more very weird and funny thing that organizations do which either causes delay or irregularity in sending emails is by not giving the creation of the email to the same person everytime. This almost like rolling out a different product each time. Simply appoint one person who own the calendar and make him accountable forthe design as well as delivery. Let the person be a shepherd from start to finish. To my surprise, this came as one of the primary reasons why there is irregularities in emails being sent out.

As a manager, I have always been taught to break up a big task into small manageable sub-tasks. Similarly, why do we try doing that with our newsletters. What does a newsletter include - new features, industry news, good news, tips, etc. Once you have a good idea on what you need to include, templatize it. Then all you will need to do is drop in the appropriate section-focused text or images every single time. The key to this exercise is not to reinvent the wheel, but rather come up with a system that helps you easily stick with a schedule.

As a business owner or even a email marketer, you don't want to compromise with your routine and would like to stick to it all the time, even during the busiest parts of the year. By putting these measures into place, you'll know well ahead of time how much time you'll need to dedicate to every single newsletter, and exactly what's needed both text and art-wise to keep your campaigns on schedule.

Prepare our kids for a unpredictable world!

I somehow feel that kids in today's school system are not being prepared for tomorrow. The school system is still the same as it was at my time when things around have moved ahead. I have myself been in the corporate world and then the ever changing online world and realize how the world of yesterday is just so irrelevant. But hey, to make them children of tomorrow, we will need to predict the future. And here’s the thing: we still don’t. We have never been good at predicting the future, and so raising and educating our kids as if we have any idea what the future will hold is not the smartest notion. So the question still arises - how do we prepare our kids (for that matter even ourselves) for the world that is unpredictable, unknown? This requires an entirely different approach to child-rearing and education. It means leaving our old ideas at the door, and reinventing everything.
I have written about few of these skills in the past on what I do with Siya but re-insist them here with respect to this context.
Encourage your child to ask questions -  My boss in netCore once said "The best thing that you can give Siya is learning how to learn". What we want most for our kids, as learners, is to be able to learn on their own. To teach themselves anything. Because if they can, then we don’t need to teach them everything - whatever they need to learn in the future, they can do on their own. Luckily, kids ask questions naturally - all we need to do is simply encourage it. A great way to do this is by modeling it. When you and your child encounter something new, ask questions, and explore the possible answers with your child. When he does ask questions, reward the child instead of punishing him (you might be surprised how many adults discourage questioning).What I have also figured out over a period of time is that anything new be it new environment, new people, new office, new industry - all of it is nothing but solving new problems. Make sure you teach your child how to solve problems. I have seen mothers, when a child encounters a problem, they run themselves to solve it even without allowing their child to even try solving it. Don’t immediately solve all your child’s problems — let her fiddle with them and try various possible solutions, and reward such efforts. Eventually, your child will develop confidence in her problem-solving abilities. I would re-insist everyone to read the blog post Ignite your Passion - How? and Effortless Parenting where I talk a lot about being passionate about something. When I’m so excited that I can’t stop thinking about something, I will inevitably dive into it fully committed, and most times I’ll complete the project and love doing it. Help your kid find things she’s passionate about - it’s a matter of trying a bunch of things, finding ones that excite her the most, helping her really enjoy them. Don’t discourage any interest - encourage them. Don’t suck the fun out of them either - make them rewarding.One thing that has made me the way I am and thanks to my parents for it is Independence. Kids should be taught to increasingly stand on their own. A little at a time, of course. Slowly encourage them to do things on their own. Teach them how to do it, model it, help them do it, help less, then let them make their own mistakes. Give them confidence in themselves by letting them have a bunch of successes, and letting them solve the failures. Once they learn to be independent, they learn that they don’t need a teacher, a parent, or a boss to tell them what to do. They can manage themselves, and be free, and figure out the direction they need to take on their own.Siya also is a kid who is happy by herself. And this is without TV or video games or any other gadgets. She can spend time just reading or writing letters (recently started this new thing) to mom and dad or setting up her room or arranging her cupboard or simply just imagining. This is a valuable skill because it takes a while to have children being happy without parents. And because she finds happiness in making others happy, she has also become very compassionate. Show them empathy by asking how they think others might feel, and thinking aloud about how you think others might feel. Demonstrate at every opportunity how to ease the suffering of others when you’re able, how to make others happier with small kindnesses, how that can make you happier in return. And then finally, teach them how to deal with the change. I believe this will be one of the most essential skills as our kids grow up, as the world is always changing and being able to accept the change, to deal with the change, to navigate the flow of change, will be a competitive advantage. This is a skill I’m still learning myself, but I find that it helps me tremendously, especially compared to those who resist and fear change. Life is a adventure and things will go wrong, turn out differently than you expected and also break all the plans that you had made - but so be it. Life did not come to me with a instruction set - that's all a part of excitement.

We can’t give our children a set of data to learn, a career to prepare for, when we don’t know what the future will bring. But we can prepare them to adapt to anything, to learn anything, to solve anything, and in about 20 years, to thank us for it :-).

Siya and her stories...

Siya - I want to eat something yummy today?
Purwa - yummy like what, tell me and I will cook.
Siya - something new, something that I have not had before
Purwa - ok let me think
Siya - simpler solution is have papa cook today. It will be something that I have never had before and something that I might not want to have ever.

Siya and her stories...

Purwa - Siya, there is a new school that has come up in Pune. I have basically assessed the school from all perspective. There is only one problem
Siya - and that is?
Purwa - you will have to stay away from mom and dad :(
Siya - the correct statement is "you will have to stay away from me" and that is the true problem.

I really had no clue how to react to that!

Siya and her stories...

Siya and her stories....
Siya - Mom, why are you leaving office?
Purwa - So that I can take care of you.
Siya - But you said boss uncle is like your father!
Purwa - Ya, he is but u need me right?
Siya - Why do daughters have to always leave their fathers !

:-) Siya darling, everything does not have to be so much in literal sense!