Abhijit (John) Singh

The addiction factor.

Last night before going to bed one thought would not leave me alone. I kept thinking that if I go out of business will I be missed? Will my customers miss me for my goods of services that I contribute or will they simply go to the next supplier and be equally happy using them without feeling the pinch of me no longer being available for them to call upon.

As simple this thought seems to be, it is indeed quite an important one in my humble opinion. Important enough to distinguish between a successful and sustainable business to a one that is a losing battle and a waste of space and energy. We all see too many businesses trying to succeed and often they simply don’t have this key ingredient of success; the addiction factor.

Some questions you can ask yourself as a business owner to know how addictive you are:

- Do your customers line up in front of your store every time you launch a new product or do they not notice or care about you at all?

- Do your customers talk and rave about your brand to all their friends or do they feel sorry that they did business with you in the first place?

- Do your customers call upon you at least once a month or do they only come to you only once and never again once they experience the average product or service you are offering?

- Is your business’s products, service and experience leaps and bounds ahead of the next alternative?

- Do your customers come to you because you have built a deep bond with them over the years you have been servicing them or do they simply come to you because they happened to just stumble upon you or have been attracted by your heavy marketing investments  and most likely won’t even remember your name one year down the track?

- Does your business make passionate love to your costumers in your every interaction with them? Do you make your customers feel very special by providing them am amazing product experience or service?

I feel that one of the secret to success in business in today’s day and age is to have enough gap in the value you provide to your customers, that they simply cannot live without a dose of you once in a while.

Some examples of remarkable vs average businesses in some popular industries:

Apple -  Every time Apple has a product launch, customers line up in front of their store from the day before and stay up all night in the excitement of being one of the first to purchase and experience the new product. Samsung just launched 7 new categories of laptops, I bet you didn’t hear about that or simply don’t care.

Google or Facebook – Just imagine Google or Facebook shuts down over night. You can’t, can you? Do you think they will be missed?

Mercedes-Benz – Is there really an alternative to a Mercedes Benz? Many have tried and keep trying, but there is simply no alternative to perfection. 86% of Mercedes Benz owners never go back to any other car once experienced it, now that’s addiction.

Disney – Imagine if Disney shuts down, will all the kids of the world miss them? Cry for them? Want them back?

Coke – Walking through the food court yesterday afternoon, I saw at least 20% of the people sipping on coke. My guess is that they have been sipping on it for many many years and they will continue to do so for many more years. With over 500 choices in soft drinks available, it’s amazing to see Coke still being the market leader.

I believe that the Addiction Factor doesn’t only apply for big businesses, but even small businesses. May it be your local take away store, coffee shop, grocery shop, tailor, bank, broker, car dealer, taxi driver, bakery, doctor, personal trainer, gardener, computer shop, jeweller or juice shop.

Today, I am going to think about my business and plan all the necessary changes so that I too can be proud of building a business which customers are totally addicted to, can’t live without and talk about me to all their friends; and I encourage you to do the same.

John Singh.

 

The theory of relativity, rethought.

I have always believed that its only when a person becomes aware of his own thoughts, his mind is ready to understand things for what they truly are. The relativity theory which was made popular by Albert Einstein, primarily dealt with Physics and Astronomy. I am no Einstein, but in my humble opinion, I believe that the relationship between our inner-self and the outer-self is perhaps the most important theory of relativity that exits which everyone should be aware of. Without understanding the content of your own thoughts, a person is simply a mirror who keeps reacting to the external world without any dept or real understanding of source.

Earlier in my life I believed that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Time has taught me that, that is not always the case; there is such a thing of having a perfect balance and timing so that good things get invited to our lives but weather we accept it and make good use of it is another story. Having been through so much in life, I am the last person to believe what I see and I rarely get excited about anything without ignoring the reality that silently simmers underneath all the excitement. The accumulation of past experiences that makes you the person you are also withers away the purity and innocence that you once had. At the end, time is the biggest teacher of all, but it also ends up killing us.

Life has taught me that wisdom comes from experience, knowledge and self awareness. If I am placed into a situation, I can only be confident that my decision is the right decision if I have had past experience in dealing with similar situation and remember the consequences of my choices or I have been educated on the topic with examples of other’s experiences and consequences and I have a very strong self awareness about my reaction and subsequent potential reactions which may lead to a certain outcome. If I have a good balance of the three, I can be confident to make a good decision fairly quickly.

The reality is that it’s impossible to have the experience, knowledge and self awareness we need to make good decision in all aspects of life, which is why we either end up making the wrong decision and suffer its consequences or we take a longer time to make a right decision as we go through the process of attaining the knowledge, experience and better self awareness that is needed to get the confident push to commit.

As my friend reminded me recently, decision making when it comes to valuable things is often more daunting and therefore it takes more time as the data of experience, knowledge and self understanding is being accumulated and processed. Fortunately or unfortunately human beings are emotional creatures, some more than others. Often the process of decision making can be counterproductive because by the time the results are in, it’s too late to take corrective action due to the amount of emotional investment that has already been made in the process. Marketers cheekily know that people always make decision based on emotions and later justify them with logic. Good companies and good people believe that it’s their responsibility to ensure that their customers and friends make the right decision, but good companies and good people are very rare and equally valuable.

To understand our own self, I believe that there are 5 things that needs to be deeply assessed; our values, our emotional needs, our intellectual needs, our inherent personality and our aspirations. I believe that if our choices have alignment in all 5 of these factors, chances are that the decision will be a good decision.

What I have observed is that our outer life is often a reflection of our inner life. We arrange and manage our house, choose our profession, maintain relationships, decide how to spend our leisure time, have various beliefs, maintain certain hobbies, etc. based on our inner values, emotional & intellectual need, our aspiration and personality.

To understand the world, we need to first understand ourselves and be totally aware of how we react to the world. Once we have understood our selves, the world appears to be a piece of cake... or does it?

Abhijit.

xYzed - My humble contribution to an over choice paralysis.

I almost had a paralysis attack again this morning. On my way to work, I stopped at the local Woolworths to buy some milk and snacks to stack up the office kitchen and before I knew it, I was staring at an entire isle of choices.

For companies such as Smiths, who makes potato chips, these are mementos times. I remember when growing up, this humble snack came in just a couple of flavours; salted, salt and vinegar & chicken. Today the choice is tongue-tingling: Thai sweet chilli, balsamic vinegar, caramelised onion, Thai sheet chilli, chicken, onion chutney, mozzarella and herb, to name a few. Venture into the milk section and you feel overwhelmed with the number of options once again.

After researching the topic of 'choice' extensively over the last few months, it turns out that an average supermarket now carries approximately 40,000 items, according to the Food and Marketing institute, which is 5 times more than about a decade ago. Some supermarkets stock almost 100 different types of shampoos, toothpastes and household cleaners. It’s no wonder, I dread going to supermarkets as I often get confused with which one to choose and even if I do make a decision, I often get into an internal debate as to why I had made the choice, or have I simply 'picked' one to satisfy that task.

Choice seduces the modern consumer at every turn. Lattes come tall, short, skinny, decaf, flavoured, iced, spiced or frappe. Jeans come flared, bootlegged, skinny, cropped, straight, low-rise, bleach-rinsed, dark-washed or distressed. Moisturiser nourishes lifts, smooths, revitalises, conditions, firms, refreshes and rejuvenates.

Thanks to the mix of modern medicine, technology and social change, choice has expanded from the grocery shelf to areas that once had few or none. Faces, noses, wrinkles, breasts and bellies can be remodelled, plumped or tucked. Movies can be viewed, recorded, downloaded or streamed on all manner of screens or devices. The internet has handed huge power to the consumer to research options, whether of medical procedures, or holiday breaks. Even the choice-comparison sites that I have relied on to market some of my products are expanding and no longer giving the seeker a peace of mind.

Many of these options have improved life immeasurably in the rich world, and to a lesser extent in poorer parts. They are testimony to human ingenuity and innovation. Free choice is the basis on which markets work, driving competition and generating economic growth. It is the cornerstone of liberal democracy. The 20th century bears the scars of too many failed experiments in which people had no choice. But amid all the dizzying possibilities, a nagging question lurks: is so much extra choice a good thing?

Over the past decade psychologists have come up with some intriguing insights. In one landmark experiment, conducted in an upmarket grocery store, researchers set up a sampling table with a display of jams. In the first test they offered a tempting array of 24 different jams to taste; on a different day they displayed just six. Shoppers who took part in the sampling were rewarded with a discount voucher to buy any jam of the same brand in the store. It turned out that more shoppers stopped at the display when there were 24 jams. But when it came to buying afterwards, fully 30% of those who stopped at the six-jam table went on to purchase a pot, against merely 3% of those who were faced with the selection of 24.

The psychologist came to the conclusion that too much choice is demotivating and I couldn’t agree with them more. I have been advising my clients over the years to keep things simple and keep their product ranges to as few as possible despite the general trend of giving the customers more and more choices, which has now proven my theory to be right but, I have often felt defeated as I have not been able to influence enough of them. It took some time to realise that the choices in all things are not going to reduce and I will not achieve anything by trying to fight the system which is inevitably growing. Instead, over the last few years I have decided to embrace the system and I have been working on a new venture called xYzed, which will be launching early this year, which will help us make better choice when it comes to choosing goods and service merchants. I hope xYzed to be my humble contribution to us which will help us make better choices when it comes to buying decisions.

As options multiply, there may be a point at which the effort required to obtain enough information to be able to distinguish sensibly between alternatives outweighs the benefit to the consumer of the extra choice. Barry Schwartz in “The Paradox of Choice”, writes “choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannise.” In other words, as Mr Schwartz puts it, “the fact that some choice is good doesn’t necessarily mean that more choice is better.” Daniel McFadden, an economist says that consumers find too many options troubling because of the “risk of misperception and miscalculation, of misunderstanding the available alternatives, of misreading one’s own tastes, of yielding to a moment’s whim and regretting it afterwards”, combined with “the stress of information acquisition”. Indeed, the expectation of indecision can prompt panic and a failure to choose at all. Too many options mean too much effort to make a sensible decision: better to bury your head under a pillow, or have somebody else pick it for you. The vast majority of shoppers in the grocery store faced with 24 jam varieties simply chose not to buy any. The more expensive an item such as a car, the more daunting the decision.

Surely, knowing that lots of choice is out there still feels good? But not, according to psychologists, if more choice raises expectations too high, which may make even a good decision feel bad. The potential for regret about the options not taken seems to be greater in the face of multiple choices.

Expectations have been inflated to such an extent that people think the perfect choice exists. Consider relationships. Bookshops are crowded with self-help guides and self-improvement manuals with titles such as “How to Choose & Keep Your Partner” or “Love is a Choice”. Internet dating sites promise to find the perfect match with just a few clicks of the mouse. This nourishes the hope of making the ideal choice, as well as the fanciful idea that there are quick, rational solutions to the complicated questions.

Confusion, indecision, panic, regret, anxiety: choice seems to come at a price. In one episode of “The Simpsons”, Marge takes Apu shopping in a new supermarket, Monstromart, whose cheery advertising slogan is “where shopping is a baffling ordeal”.

It could be that today’s children, growing up in a world of abundant choice, will find decisions even harder to take when they grow up. Their lives may be packed with instant choices as they zap from one site to another while texting a friend and listening to music on YouTube. But much of this is reflexive activity. The digital generation is “picking”, not “choosing”, with a world of choices rushing by like a music video, all a picker can do is grab this or that and hope for the best. But they have never learned to make a choice and run with it. In adult life, they aren’t equipped to cope.

When Levis began to stitch denim jeans, brand managers have made it their business to offer shoppers an easier life. Brands simplify choices. They are a guarantee of quality or consistency in a confusing market, and a badge of trust. Companies spend heavily on marketing and legal advice to protect or reinvent their brands and keep customers loyal, exploiting customers’ aversion to choice. The more that options multiply, the more important brands become. Today, when paralysed by choice, a consumer will often turn to a brand that is cleverly marketed to appear to be one that others trust.

Some businesses have begun to wake up to the perils of excess choice. Some firms employ “choice architects” to help guide consumers’ decision-making. When Procter & Gamble thinned its range of Head & Shoulders shampoos from 26 to 15 their sales increased by 10%. The fine art of limiting yourself to the essential in business and in life suggest practical ideas for cutting down on the effort of decision-making.

Those in the business of helping people choose offer various tips. The key is taking a decision. The truth is that it doesn't matter what we choose, only that we do choose. Stick to the choices that matter and eliminate the rest. When you approach simple living, sometimes the decision is clear-cut. Sometimes it’s not. The trouble with simplifying your life these days, it turns out, is that it involves too many choices. LOL

Over the last few years I have been researching and studying the science of decision making to understand what makes people choose the products and service providers that they end up choosing. In the world of increasing choices, I hope to launch my new venture xYzed this year as an organisation which (with the help of people, technology & businesses) will create a system that gives us the best choices based on algorithm created using past experiences of people and various filtration factors, which will make decision making easy for us all in a world which is giving us a over choice paralysis every time we have to choose.

Lets face it, the end result of all choices is either disappointment or happiness. My vision with xYzed is to deliver HAPPINESS to everyone that helps me build and use this system. I hope to share a lot more insight on this topic as I launch this business and I would like to humbly invite you to support me in my quest. 

2011 - The Road Ahead.

I want to firstly THANK everyone that has graced me with their support and acquaintance in 2010. Thank you to all my family, friends, staff, partners, customers, well wishers and adversaries. I am truly grateful and humbled for all your support and lessons. For your thoughtfulness and generosity, from you I have learned much of life's philosophy - Thank you sincerely.

2010 was a very special year for me personally as I found closure in some of my most difficult adversities which I have been battling through over the last few years. I feel very relieved to have gone though it and come out ok at the other end. As the year ended and the New Year has begun, I feel very strong, motivated, focused and excited about the hope that 2011 brings personally and professionally.

Last few weeks in New Zealand has been simply bliss. It has given me the opportunity to recover from the tiredness of a tough and long year. I feel mentally prepared to work extremely hard and smart in 2011 and achieve all the things I plan to achieve.

My primary focus in 2011 will be focusing on the growth of Macquarie IT. I will be launching a new client acquisation product called xYzed which I have spent the last 4 years planning and building in my lab. I will focus a vast majority of my time in registering new businesses with Macquarie IT and building relationships with them as we continue to help them become profitable. 

At a personal level I will be more focused on my health by eating well, exercising at the gym 4 days a week, practicing yoga 1 day a week, reaching new heights in fitness and dedicating one day a week entirely to leisure & relaxation. I will focus on improving on my current friendships and form new ones as I expand my social network. I will also focus on improving my knowledge by spending a minimum of 1 hour a day on continuous education and 1 hour a day on my writing endeavours (private and blog).

Above all, in 2011 I hope to maintain a well rounded balance in all things and achieve my highest potential in all areas of my life.

I’m very excited by the promise of 2011; the new challenges I will face, the new relationships I will form, the new innovation I will deliver, the goals I will achieve, the fun I will have and most importantly the people I will deliver happiness to.

Regards,
John Singh.

Understanding Loyalty

Ok, so I have a confession to make. I am by nature extremely loyal, which sometimes can be perceived as a contradiction as I also have an experimental personality and never seem to settle for average. Over the many years, I feel quite content with the amount of seeking I’ve done on my quest. I feel a little surprised to be writing that over the last couple of years things have been a little different;  I seemed to have settled for many things which I have grown extremely loyal to, for example:

- I find it hard to make new friends as I feel quite connected to my old ones. (Another reason could be that I very rarely come across genuine and sincere people who don’t have any hidden agendas).

- I sometimes sneak out of the office at lunch times and drive to the city, park the cark at Hilton and run to the Lint Chocolate Cafe for a hit of their amazing iced chocolates and macarons, because they are the best in the world, in my humble opinion.

- I always travel Singapore Airlines when travelling overseas because I like the consistently good service I receive.

- I have been visiting the same doctor for the last 20 years as he’s the nicest man I know, I trust him and I feel like I’ve built a personal bond with him.

- My friends and I very often drive all the way to Auburn to a dingy little Turkish kebab joint because their dishes are totally fresh, extremely nutritious (especially after a gym workout) and very satisfying.

- I travel to Melbourne from Sydney every month for a haircut as I totally love the care I get at Man what a fuss ever since the 1^st day I visited them in October 2005. (eccentric, but true)

- I drive a Volvo as I love what they stand for and I’m totally in support of their mission to build a Crash- proof car by 2020.

- I shop at Kathmandu every month, as the clothes are made of the finest and the most comfortable material. My favourite is the Marino Wool.

- I come home early every evening to spend time with the family as they totally complete me.

- This year I signed off over $300,000 to Google, as the value and the return on investment received was totally worth it.

And the list just keeps going on....

This year I have been thinking about what it really means to be loyal and why we are more loyal towards some things as supposed to others. Why is it that we see some friends that are very happy with their long term partners whilst others are jumping from one to another like monkeys on trees. Why is it that businesses that serve basic necessities just as hairdressing and groceries, are always so focused on pitching to new customers instead of putting more focus on retaining the ones that they already serve.

As a business I believe its more valuable to offer the best quality products and services to win people’s long-term loyalty rather than spend continuous energy on pitching to new customers only to lose them to your competition once they see your substandard approach.

To understand loyalty, one also needs to understand how different types of people behave under different circumstances. A few years back I studied the works of William Marston (PHD in Psychology from Harvard University) who developed the four quadrant human behaviour model (he also invented the lie detector test). Marston’s theory is that to understand human behaviour, there are 4 areas of a person’s observable behaviour that needs to be measured; Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientious. His system of dimensions of observable behaviour has become known as the universal language of behaviour. Research has found that characteristics of behaviour can be grouped into these four major "personality styles" and they tend to exhibit specific characteristics common to that particular style. All individuals possess all four, but what differs from one to another is the extent of each. The level each people measure in these core personality styles are measured by different internal reactions that take place in various external environments which causes people to behave in certain ways.

People that are low in Steadiness and/or conscientiousness are inherently disloyal and often jumping from one fad to another as they find it naturally easy to change and adapt.

People that are high in Steadiness and/or conscientiousness are inherently the slow adapters and they tend to do a lot of research before giving anything new a shot but once they are used to something, they find it extremely difficult to change their habits and hence appear to be more loyal over the long term.

My brief conclusion on the topic of loyalty is that firstly, I believe that people always see the world as they are, rather than the way the world is. We are prisoners of our own personalities and often guided by our own limitations, strengths, insecurities and inspirations. Secondly, I believe that people are more loyal to things that provide a higher long term value, security, dept and an overall enjoyable experience.

Personally, I am always on the lookout for good things and I continually look at improving myself and my world around me, but once I have found a good thing, I tend to stick to it and grow a progressive relationship with it which is deep and long term.

What would the child I once was think of the adult I’ve become?

Having been asked this question over lunch a few weeks back by a friend, it got me thinking...

That is a difficult question, not only for me but I’m sure it’s difficult for you too. I will however try and brainstorm my thoughts here and hopefully I can find the answer to this question.

Walking up the hill next to our house in Bombay on our regular Sunday Morning climbs with dad in 1987 I remember my dad asking me, “son what do you want to be when you grow up”. It is my first memory of the question being asked to me and I vaguely remember being puzzled with the question for a little while. My first reaction to him was that, “dad, I never want to grow up. I’m quite happy the way i am”. I kept walking up the hill huffing and puffing and after thinking about it for some time; I told him that I wanted to be just like him by the time I get to his age in the sense that I would love to be talking my son for a long hill walks every Sunday morning. I remember dad asking me what I wanted to do for a living when I grew up. After him giving me one of his very serious looks, I did think about it for some time and then finally told him that either I wanted to have my own chain of restaurants in every city of the world (so I can eat yummy food and travel the world) or I wanted to become an air force pilot. I remember my dad being very angry at me as he disapproved of both those professions and he ended up giving me a lecture on how I should concentrate on my studies so I can be an engineer just like him. I was 7 years old and my dad was 31.

Many years went by and over the years I grew up becoming quite the humanitarian; always putting people first and helping them at every chance I got. I also ended up becoming very creative and entrepreneurial. Growing up, I found some aspects of school very easy whilst I struggled at other aspects. I was very experimental and artistic but a lot of that was suppressed by Dad’s strict single dimensional point of views and rules which despite all my efforts of holding myself back and trying my level best to please him; at times my natural self would take over and subsequently rebel.

Today, I run an web consulting firm in Sydney. I am also currently working on launching an online portal which I have invested my every bit over the last 4 years and I hope it to be my life’s legacy as I wholeheartedly  believe that it will change the game of the web industry and lead us all to a better future; if I am lucky enough to execute it in a way I have planned to over the next couple of years.

Over the last few years, my only regret has been that I found my feet in where I belong too late in my life. I very strongly believe that I could have achived a lot more both personally and professionally if I had the alignment of my natural strengths with my professional and personal endeavors earlier in life, instead of having to battle though it at every stage and learn life the hard way.

Over the last few years, one topic which has been of great interest to me is the topic of Parenting. I have grown to believe that it is a sin for parents not to educate themselves on how to best raise their children to give the children the best possible future. Its saddens me that most parents stunt the child’s natural potential to flourish and often cause a lot of damage by raising them based on their own aspirations rather than the child’s natural strengths and aspirations.

If the child from that day I was walking up the hill with Dad was to come and visit me today, I believe that he would have at least 5 things to say to me:

1) I hope you never lose the child like sense of wonder and the courage to experiment and seek until you have found.

2) I hope you’ve learnt by now that you can’t catch butterflies and keep them in your briefcase as you did when you were young and always wondered why they didn’t live for too long. Butterflies belong in the gardens and it’s about time you build your own garden.

3) I’m happy to see that you have kept your free spirit in all that you do and I’m happy that you have learnt to make your own decisions in life where you feel it to be right without being obligated to follow other’s rules which you believe to be obsolete.

4) I am sad to see that you have not yet started a family as you’ve always aspired to. I hope that you will soon think about this very seriously and find that perfect butterfly glowing from her inner beauty, that you've always been looking for.

5) You didn’t end up in the Air force and you don’t have your own chain of restaurants. I hope that once you feel settled and satisfied with your contribution and service to your IT endeavours, in the next few years, you will follow your heart and invest in a boutique restaurant just the way you’ve always wanted to. Call me a 7 year old foolish kid, but I know that it will bring you a lot of satisfaction and happiness as it was always your childhood dream.

I believe that the child that I once was would have mixed feelings about the adult that I have become and he would encourage me to follow my heart and have the courage to do things that would make me happy, as foolish as it may sound or be...

Abhijit.

Chocolates, Wrappers and the Sad Death of Innocence.

I have a small problem; actually it’s quite a big problem. I have been a victim of too wide an exposure in the short 30 years I have been alive because of which I am compelled to challenge the truth in everything I do or see. I am an absolute compulsive seeker of the truth (quite scary sometimes) and I just can’t seem to settle my mind until I seek it in my every quest. In my search I have falling deeply in love with purity that lies in simplicity and with every day moving forward, I have reorganised my thinking and life so that I try and maintain purity in all that I think, do and am.

When I was young, life was rather simple. In India our family was quite poor and my parents had me when they were still students. My dad landed his 1^st job in a different state to where the parents were settled and he decided to take my mother and me with him. His wages was equivalent to $15/month which was barely enough to feed me milk, one meal a day for the family and rent in a small studio apartment. Some evenings the meals were skipped for obvious reasons. I remember when I was around 5, once a month my dad would take me to the local markets to buy me chocolates, it was one the most exciting and anticipated events of my month, in fact the only thing I looked forward to. Chocolate was like gold to us kids, I used to talk to my friends about it in excitement the whole month and bring back the wrappers to show off to them otherwise they simply would not believe me. In those days, chocolate meant Cadbury 5star (which was a small chocolate bar). That was it, that was the only ‘Chocolate’ we knew of as it was the only chocolate on the market.

As dad progressed in his job, with his tremendous dedication and hard work, things slowly started to improve. By the time I was around 8, we could afford non-vegetarian food once a week. Every Monday, I remember running home from school knowing that dad would take me to the markets to buy chicken. Every Monday we took a trip to the chicken shop and buy 2 pieces of drumstick, one for me and one my parents would share. Some weeks, we could only buy one piece which we would all share and often the parents would give me the excuse that they didn’t feel like meat and preferred just the potatoes which was cooked with the drumstick curry so that I could eat the whole drumstick all my myself. I still remember the taste of the drumstick curry that mum made every Monday evenings and haven’t tasted anything as good for a very long time, I don’t know why?

A year later, dad decided to buy a television for the house. He had tricked us by telling us that he had to go to the office one Sunday and sent us to Juhu beach for a day out, when he secretly   stayed back to buy a 9 inch black and white TV. I still remember the excitement I went felt on my return. I remember running around the neighbourhood collecting all my friends and bringing them back home to watch a show of ‘Chitrahar’ (equivalent to an hour of MTV). Once a month, we rented a video cassette player and the latest bollywood blockbuster and gathered up a whole heap of people and sit on the floor and enjoy the movie on our new TV. My memory of those days are of very happy days as we really did enjoy the simple life, giving value to all things and maintaining a very deep relationship with everyone around.

We were only allowed to watch TV on the weekends and the condition for that was that we had to study two hours every evening and do well at school. Dad was very highly educated, topping his school in his state and receiving scholarship into IIT which is still recognised as one of the best universities in the world and then receiving further scholarship to complete his masters in Engineering at the Asian Institute of Technology - Thailand before returning back to India to land his first job where he took us with him to start his journey. Dad’s thinking was always that in a country like India, if you came from a poor background without any support from the parents, it was only though education a man could rise and succeed to a level where he could provide a high living standard for his family; his journey has been a perfect example of his theory.

A year later, dad broke the news to us that he was made assistant manager of the IT department of India’s leading motorcycle manufacturing company ‘Bajaj’ which also meant that along with the position came a driver, but we didn’t have a car. After much convincing from my mom and myself, dad finally decided to buy a car. In those days there were just 2 options, either a Fiat Premier which was the common man’s car or an Ambassador which was often used by government officials. My dad was not a fan of Indian politics, so the choice was quite obvious. I remember shopping around with dad and finding the perfect car which was light green in colour. I remember the whole neighbourhood joining us in the prayer of the new car after which we cranked up the loud music and had a small party around the new car. I still remember one of the songs we had played were the latest hit from the movie Dil; “Humne ghar choda hai, sapne ko tora hai”. The only problem was that none of my parents knew how to drive and the new driver was given the task to teach them and often he secretly taught me also. Mum was the quickest to learn how to drive the manual car, I remember dad taking a few months to get comfortable with it.

The last 2 years we spent in India, were quite a ball. Our living standard had slightly improved and we could afford to go shopping to our general bazaar for clothes one a month. Our non veg shopping increased to a whole chicken once a week and a trip to the fish market once a month for fresh fish. I was given 2 Rupees pocket money every week which I used to buy a cricket ball every week. I was a fan of playing cricket and I always managed to lose my ball hitting sixes over the factory compound wall which we had no access to. It was hard to hold myself back from hitting sixes whenever I saw the opportunity, even if my ball was only one day old. I always knew that I would have to forgo my turn in batting for the whole week if I was to lose the ball. But that never seem to stop me, as the excitement I got in hitting the perfect shot was well worth it.

It was a simple life and it consists of some of my best memories. We really did enjoy the value in the little things and appreciating everything that came our way. Everything was a novelty as we truly came from humble beginnings and personally I found a lot of happiness in the simplicity life had to offer us growing up.

When dad broke the news that his application for skilled migration visa to Australia was approved, we were ecstatic. It was our first taste of success and real progression in our life and I simply cannot do justice to the excitement we felt by describing it here in a few words. Little did we know that with success often comes the death of innocence, and we most definitely were not ready for the dynamic change we were inviting into our lives.

Despite the trouble we had adjusting here in Australia, the experience started to open our eyes to a much diverse life than we were used to or had imagined. I personally had a lot of trouble adjusting to the change in culture, going from a place where everyone knows everyone, to a place where we don’t even know our neighbours despite years of living next door to them. What I had most difficulty with was the level of choices that was offered in everything. Even to this date, I get extremely dizzy going to the supermarket to buy groceries. Walking through the aisles trying to select simple items such as breakfast cereal is quite a challenge for me. I still miss running to the grocery shop in India and telling ‘Mittal’ the shop keeper or his son (who was a school friend of mine) that our cereal had finished and he would hand me a box and as I would leave I would shout at him, “don’t forget to add it to our bill”. I never even realised the brand of cereal it was. All I remember is the very pure corn taste that I used to enjoy when eating it with milk every morning. 

Over the years here in Australia we slowly started to merge into the foreign lifestyle to the extent that after ten years had gone passed we never ever felt that we were anything other than Australians. Our family was quite well balanced with mum maintaining strong Indian traditions and dad a complete foreigner who never looked back to his Indian roots as he continued to rise the heights of his professional endeavours.

 Being a very simple person at heart, I was quite confused for many years and found it quite difficult to adjust to all the noise and choices and change that I was going though. I often found peace in my dreams thinking about living on the farmhouse back in India where everyone knew everyone; I still have those dreams sometimes.  I found myself drifting for years without being well grounded to anything.  At school I slowly grew up from being extremely quiet to being quite the popular kid, the kind other kids would come to for help for other than academic reasons.  Being dyslectic, I struggled through school although I managed to pass with reasonably ok grades, mostly with my very hard work and some creative persuasions with my teachers. 

Ever since my teenage years I was always very popular attracting girls, although I never had much interest in them. I found it very hard to deal with most of them as I could clearly see the shallowness in most of them. Over the years, I didn’t end up dating girls primarily because most girls that I was attracting were the typical very beautiful model types who lacked depth, substance and purity which I have always been attracted to and ironically enough the real girls seemed intimidated by me. Being a compulsive seeker of purity, I just could never show any interest in any of them, often to my friend’s disappointment. Lately I'm very lucky to have found a lady who has become my best fried as she shares the same background, vision and values. We married last year and hope to live a life of happiness as we both sail together towards our endeavours; living one day at a time, overcoming one obstacle at a time, moving forward into the unknow with the pride of having each other's love and support.

Studies finished and instead of taking the conventional root of working my way though the corporate ladder, I decided to follow my heart and natural strengths and go into business. It took me 9 years of successes and failures in business to understand and learn what a business really is and how businesses feed our economy and what is needed to run a successful business. I admit I have always been a slow learner but always quite persistent. I took a natural liking in marketing, psychology and the Internet and self educated myself though to a level where I can call myself a qualified consultant in some niche areas of business consulting. I have spent the last 9 years understanding myself at great length and injecting a whole range of experiences with dealing with people from all walks of life. I have been through some of the most adverse and extremes of situations and I have met the best of people and some of the worst of people. One thing experience has taught me is that to truly experience life, our experiences need to be very diverse. My personal experience in all walks of my life has also taught me that it is only when we have been through the deepest valleys; we know how magnificent it is standing on the highest mountains. My dad often tells me that I have lived more of a life in experience in the last 30 years than he has lived in the last 50 years.

I have made a lot of money at times and I have lost a lot of money at times. Over the years, what has kept me going is my constant quest of self improvement, one step at a time, one day at a time especially knowing the humble beginnings I have come from and my own intellectual and other shortcomings. Nothings has ever come easy to me and I have accepted to view all things with a clean set of lens and if I am convinced of it, I work very hard in learning it and persistently achieving it. I have learnt to take one topic every year and try and study it to the best of my ability. I have self taught everything I know by very closely observing every fabric of life and relationships. Over the years I have learned to have a very good relationship with myself and others around. I recently came to a realisation that I will never be an expert in all things, but if I can focus on being an expert in the only thing that really matters which is PEOPLE and understand the very dept of people, I can have a very realistic outlook in life and it can help me find the truth that I seek. I am deeply connected to nature and appreciate every aspect of it. I also believe that everything apart from nature is the product of our though and I have made it my personal interest in understanding the man behind the thought which shapes our world.

Along with the awareness, knowledge and experience business life has given me; it has also exposed me to brutal realities which are often hidden from everyday people. As an expert in marketing, it took away my innocence to learn that in today’s day and age the wrapper was more valued than the chocolate inside it. It deeply hurts me that we often judge people by the way they look or dress. It puzzled me for a very long time me why people are attracted towards very expensive cars, when a simple car did the job equally well.  And it totally confuses me to see the choices we have in everything ranging from cars to shoes. I miss the days where we valued people for their thinking and purity rather than their bicep or breast size and I totally miss the day we had a choice of just 1 chocolate and 2 cars rather than the choice of 4000 new models of cars that were released this year.

It saddens me to see people so brainwashed with the challenges of the modern day life and I often crave inspiration that I receive when I see a person who have an objective outlook on life and its values and hasn’t been affected by the insecurity our modern life instils. I always find myself walking left when people are walking right, not because I crave to be different, but because I often see though the flaws in things that attract the masses. I don’t get attracted to extremely beautiful women who try to be overly fashionable and trendy because I see the shallowness in their personalities and quite clearly understand what they are tying to hide, which makes me genuinely feel sad to see them infected with the insecurities which are eating their purity. I have always been very attracted to pure and passionate women that glow from the inside, not oil paintings as I have always been attracted to athletes or movie starts who focus on their game as supposed to attracting feel good attention.

There are many ways to live life and I do feel happy to see that in recent years, marketers have jumped on the health and wisdom bandwagon and made it a trendy thing. Fashion influences us far more than many things and I hope to see fashion leaders taking the responsibility of leading us all in a direction that we need to be taken, rather than the direction they have been leading us so far. I have always tried to maintain a reasonably healthy lifestyle every since my early teenage years with regular weekly visits to the gym and other sports. I have over time learned to place value in working towards the core body strengths as supposed to the show pony exercises that we often see people do at the gym. I have also over time learnt to see the value in building core strength in all areas of my life, may it be my business or personal relationships.

I believe that every person despite their title is a leader and we all need to take the responsibility as leaders to seek the reality underneath all the noise and understand and improve our selves and the world around us. We all need to find our passions in life and surrender ourselves completely to it by giving it our best. We all need to understand our family and friends better and grow deep rooted unconditional relationships with each other and help each other become better people. We all have the responsibility to help and guide the ones in need so that our society can collectively prosper and we all need to dig a little deeper within ourselves with the help of peaceful surroundings. 

One of my most favourite things in the last 3 years has been stillness. I have been in love with peace and quiet as it has helped me understand the content of my own mind which I have untangled through and learnt to bring it to complete stillness so I can see the clarity in all things. It is my humble suggestion that we all take a little break, rejuvenate and reset and start the next chapter of our lives moving a step closer towards purity leading towards fulfilment and sustained happiness.

Abhijit.

Do you offer Loyalty Card ?

I was ordering my daily dose of iced mocha at the much celebrated Lint cafe next to our office in Martin Place Sydney when the waiter serving asked me if I had a loyalty card. He mentioned that he sees me visit their cafe religiously every morning before work and he was surprised that I didn’t yet have a loyalty card which would entitled me to a free macarons (a biscuit) after every 5 cups of coffee. I thought about it for a second and I realised something....

I realised that I was visiting the Lint cafe daily because their products were remarkable; simply the best in the chocolate cafe industry and my daily dose was giving me the perfect start to my day. I didn’t need a loyalty card to keep coming back to their store. I tried to explain my theory to the waiter that only average cafes need loyalty Cards which is used as bait to try and have repeat business from their customers; remarkable businesses use the quality of their products and services as bait and hence don’t need to participate in cheap marketing schemes like loyalty cards. The waiter offcourse was speechless and I’m sure he would have thought about it when I had left.

Remarkable businesses don’t need cheap strategies such as ‘Loyalty Cards’ to have repeat customers, the customers choose to be loyal because they offer remarkable product, service and experience. The fact that they are remarkable makes people come back over and over again and they go and tell their friends who also get addicted to the experience and tell their friends and the success of the business spreads like a virus, I call this the remarkable virus and in my 10 years experience in studying successful businesses, this is the common DNA that all successful business share; they are simply remarkable.

The same is true for online businesses. Successful online businesses know their business is not for everyone but it is for someone. The most successful online businesses very brilliantly bring together a community of people with shared interest and give them something that they want; they don’t try and be all things to everyone. Deals Direct did it well by gathering a community of bargain hunters when they were only trading on ebay and switched that community to their ecommerce shop and continued to grow by providing discounted products to their community, who spread their word to other likeminded people and their community grew big enough to make deals direct one of the most successful ecommerce businesses in Australia. Zazz did the same thing, they were remarkable because they had a unique business model (just 1 product offered at a heavily discounted price per day) and they very successfully gathered a community who because raving fans and spread the word of Zazz and made them successful. Facebook is another perfect example of this and so is Gumtree or UniqueCarSales.

The secret to success offline or online today is simple but not necessarily easy:

Step 1:  Don’t try to be all things to everybody but rather be remarkable to somebody. Only focus on what you can do best and be the best at that.

Step 2: Gather a community around your product and service. If your product or service is remarkable, people will find you and they will get addicted to you and they will talk to their friends about you who will also find you and get addicted to you and your business will grow like a virus.

Step 3: Repeat.

Talk to Macquarie IT today and ask us how your business can become remarkable, I am certain it has the potential to be a lot better than what it is night now. All that is missing is your initiative and our partnership.

Kind Regards
John Singh.

Marketing Illusions - Is perception really a Reality?

A few months ago as I came outside the Four Seasons Hotel on George Street in Sydney, a hair-dressing saloon caught my eye as it had the words TRUMP written over the saloon. It was a nicely decorated saloon on George Street next to the hotel and was filled with men and women getting their hair done. One interesting observation I made was that there were hundreds of hair saloons on and around George Street but this saloon was defiantly the most vibrant and filled with people at any given time.

Obviously the name TRUMP rang a few bells and automatically I started believing that this business was part of the empire of the celebrity billionaire Donald Trump whom I have admired for many years, as I’m sure you have too.

I couldn’t help myself and I went straight into the saloon where I was greeted with professionalism and despite my efforts of booking an appointment I was told that the saloon was booked for another 3 days so I made an appointment for a hair cut in a week’s time and I was handed a slick business card with the details of the appointment. A week later I did attend my hair appointment where I felt treated like royalty and the hair stylist gave me one of the best haircuts I have ever received (no exaggerations).

Over the last 4 months I have visited the TRUMPS hair saloon once a month and it was only yesterday when I found out that this saloon was not part of Donald Trump’s empire and infact it is owned and managed by a local Sydney lady who had simply leveraged off an already established brand name to achieve a level of success with her saloon. With the exceptional level of customer service and an already established brand name, the TRUMPS Hair Saloon has become one of Sydney’s most succesful  small businesses winning various awards including the 2005 City of Sydney Business Award and the Small Business Champions award.

The success of TRUMPS made me think of other such small to medium businesses that have levered of the names of already established brand names and reached a level of success. I started researching companies from many different industries and was quite amazed to find that there were at least a handful businesses in various industries I had researched who were leveraging off the already established names of successful companies and many of these small business were reasonably successful. I even had the opportunity to talk to a lawyer friend of mine who happens to specialize in Trademark Law who confirmed to me that this was a common practice of small businesses and the law has many loopholes and majority of such businesses were covered by law as they were operating under independent registered businesses and approved trademarks.

Most people take perception to be the reality and get fooled by the intelligent marketers and get persuaded into illusions and rarely come to know the truth. Some may say that truth itself is an illusion whilst others may be happy and satisfied with believing illusions to be the truth. I think a person must be aware of everything so that they can make better choices in life but sometimes your awareness can fool you as it did in my case and other times your awareness can work in your benefit as it did it the saloon owner’s case.

John Singh