Today is my 10th work anniversary which I share with Mr Prathamesh! Its been a great journey full of learning and personal growth. Can’t believe its almost a decade. After working with some awesome people across the globe, here are the few life lessons from my experiences.

• Be a learner:
  Have a Zest for learning. Learning is a lifelong course, not a 4 years degree. If there is one thing in which you want to invest, that should be your learning. It could be learning a new language or to learn cooking, but what matters is how much urge you have to gain knowledge and wisdom about it.
• Listen and Observe:
  In this era of technology and distractions, we seem to forget the Art of Listening and Observing. I believe if we spend more time listening and observing rather than talking, we could grow better as a person and as a professional. Thanks Tom for helping me uncover this wisdom.
• Have a side project, experiment:
  I always recommend people to have a side project. Something apart from their daily job. It could be or not in the same domain as your professional work, but do have it. Be curious, be experimental.
• Be a good team member:
  “None of us is as smart as all of us.” — Ken Blanchard I have had the privilege of working with some of the awesome people across the globe, I am so thankful to each and everyone, that they made me understood the strength and importance of teamwork. We can achieve so much when we come together and work as a team, at work as well as in life. A quick shout-out to everyone with whom I have worked so far. Cant mention all here.
• Spend time and money on experiences:
  One of the best and profitable and proud investments I have done is on my experiences. It could be via travel, meeting new people, visiting and exploring new places, culture, attending conferences, speaking at conferences etc. Thanks, Saahas for being my travel buddy in most of those adventures.
• Be Comfortable Being Uncomfortable:
  I was never an out of comfort zone guy, but over the years when I explored myself more and came out of comfort zone, I realised how much more we could achieve and understand. It could be taking on something that you always wanted to do but never did out of fear or insecurity.
• Be a Teacher
  Whenever you get a chance, be a teacher. Be an awesome teacher. Could be for a while or day or for a few hours. The best gift you can give someone is time and knowledge, which will never depreciate in value.
• Practice Empathy
  I believe we were bestowed with empathy by birth but forgot about it as we got older. Our civilisation needs it the most at this time of evolution. Don’t just hear people, feel them. We need this in our every action.

I hope my learning will help a few of you to shape your lives in some ways and make better decisions. Cheers.

Cover Photo by Steve Halama

Over last couple of years I have stared to embrace minimalism and every time I speak to anyone about this, they think I am tell them to not buy costly stuff, cars or rather to stop buying. But it does not mean that. Here is the best definition I have read about minimalism :

Minimalism is really about the reassessment of your priorities so that you can strip away the excess stuff – the possessions and ideas and relationships and activities – that don’t bring value to your life.

Like many others, at some point, even I was trapped in materialism. With every new version of same phone/car coming out if you get excited and crave for it, and your existing phone seems to be less useful, understand that you are in a trap. As a society, we have reached a point where we are now obsessed with excess shopping (via sale, offers, Ads), excess consumption (Model X, Xs, XXs), more junk data (updates feed, SMS, message forwards, 1000’s of unread emails), which is also a source of dissatisfaction, stress and inferiority complex feeling.

So when I started to de-clutter my belongings, getting rid of my excess stuff, I started reclaiming my time. I started to get more space, more meaningful relationship, more quality time. To start with, you can simply ask yourself two questions before you buy any new thing, is this really my need ? will this really add value to my life ? If answer to any of this is NO, you might need to re-think.

Less Stuff, less clutter, less stress leads to more time, more value and more meaningful life. Sometimes,LESS IS MORE!

There is nothing wrong in owning more, problem is when that possession becomes a source of dis-satisfaction.

Love people and use things, because the opposite never works — the minimalist

Example Model : If you are a frequent Medium reader, you should have received this before it was opened for all readers. When I received this invitation few weeks ago, I was excited to see how it was going to perform in this industry. There is still some time to go before we know how it will work for Medium after abandoning Advertising as its only revenue source.

Now-a-days the subscription model is been adopted by many businesses and brands like Starbucks, Tide Detergent, Amazon Prime, Turner Classic Movies, Dollar Shave Club etc. This is not only minimizing the gap between Brands and their loyal customers, but also helping businesses make innovative changes to their services, which is proving to be a win-win for both (as of now).

Wait, but can this model be applied to any business ?
My answer is probably not. But for sure you should evaluate if your customers visit your store / website / app for regular service consumption. Some of the example services could be : Video — Audio Streaming, Premium content delivery like Newspaper and Magazine, Fan Clubs etc. Any brand with an enthusiast-based audience could consider whether there is a subset of their customers who would be willing to put their credit card-on-file to receive continual benefits. This is the new trans-formative consumer relationship brands should strive for.

How should an existing traditional business model get into this ?
Define your various value proposition with a clear indication of savings via tiered plans for your customers. One rule of thumb, make sure there is a plan for everyone - small — medium — big customer. It’s okay if a plan is simply free, while others paid. Every customer audience has different levels of fanaticism and/or need for a brand’s benefits.
Additionally, it is recommended that everyone is getting a trial period to taste your offerings to evaluate if that plan / offer serves their needs along with an appropriate price cost.

Things to know about this model?

Listening to Customers :
Based on your workflows, business processes and offerings you will likely need to service customer support requests. The feedback loop from your customers (subscribers or otherwise) is the most important way to constantly improve your value proposition.

Automation and Audience Management:
If you have established credit card payments, you will likely need to find a platform to establish a credit card- on- file to automate the recurring billing processes to provide a friction-less financial relationship with your customers. Identifying a customer audience management platform will save you hours of custom development time, mitigate substantial risk, and both save on costs and drive significant new revenues.

Engaging Customers :
One more important thing to consider is keeping in touch with your customers via every possible medium (without irritating them with junk emails), to make sure they are making the most of their subscription. This should be automated where possible, and consist of multi-channel communications that create awareness, and track engagement.

Service Impact :
With all of these potentially lucrative features of a subscription model, there is one potential catch to ensure the core essence of your brand remains intact.
While this model will allow you to identify and engage your loyal customer base, it will also highlight the quality of your service/offering because both expenses and revenues are so easily quantifiable. Be prepared to measure your unit-based economics (cost per acquisition, average revenue per user, churn, etc).

Platform Services to get started in the subscription and membership economies :
While there are many promising SaaS products that can help you to get started, they typically require significant “stitching together.” This requires development and the inherent risk that comes with it.

Fullcube is the first enterprise-level platform created to solve this problem. It is a turnkey API-based platform that enables proper integration of services needed to manage your customer audience, and maximize customer lifetime value through subscription and membership.

If you want to know more about Fullcube, feel free to drop an email to info@fullcube.com.

I have had people (myself too) telling me for how long they have been chasing something. But most of those fail to answer my follow-up question that, ‘Are you doing everything it takes to get you there?’.

We all set goals, milestones and plans, but we tend to excuse our-self for not observing those as planned. I have list of failures and disappointment, which I might never finish counting, but I still cherish those. One of my takeaway from those is that, those were essentially reason for my next move.

On this journey, the question still remained was, “Will I ever reach there ?”

Where was this “there” pointing to ? The only answer I get, “there” was the better version of me. No matter what you do, there is going to be only one person better than you; only one person more awesome than you; only one person who can challenge you, and that is your future self. That is you after few more seconds, hours, days and years.

So question is not, “Will I ever reach there ?”, but the question is: “Will I do everything it takes for me to reach there”

Without commitment, you’ll never start, but more importantly, without consistency, you’ll never finish — Denzel Washington

Most of time when we are going through a problem, we tend to be sad and stressed about it. At times, one problem give rise to another problem. But the moment your overcome the problems, you feel so good about it. You are more stronger than you were before tackling that problem.

What if we could perceive problems, as “Opportunities” ? Will we still feel sad or stressed about it ?

If you observe, problems are nothing but something that just puts us out of our comfort zone. So we are left with only two options, either accept it as problem and be sad about it, OR to welcome it as opportunity and deal with it.

I believe, problems in real sense are the hidden opportunities that are there to make us more strong, more bold and more wise. Its a just a matter of the way we look at it. The virtual reality we create surrounding the problem.

Problems are Opportunities

“Life is not easy. We all have problems-even tragedies-to deal with, and luck has nothing to do with it. Bad luck is only the superstitious excuse for those who don’t have the wit to deal with the problems of life. ” ― Joan Lowery Nixon, In The Face of Danger

Was it worth? Yes, definitely. (was free too, no charges for stay/food)
Will I do it again? Probably, No. (I have tasted the nectar)

Life was rebooted
I have been a curious child (though not that good in exam scores). And after this journey, I felt that it was a hard reset or reboot to my life. I continued to be curious, but this time the questions were different. It was time to look at the things the way they are.

Life was dismantled
I never had such a huge disruption of thoughts in my mind. Most of my unanswered questions were answered and there was also a huge set of newly born questions too. When you understand the law of impermanence, you know exactly what matters in life. This also helped me to be more productive at work after coming back.

It gave me nothing
It technically gave me nothing, but had taken away my stress, anger, hatred and agitation. Now when I look back, I realise how the 10 day journey have impacted my actions over the years and helped me develop my thought process, and helped being more wise at decision making.

“The problem with introspection is that it has no end.” ― Philip K. Dick

I have great strength and power to start something, and at same time to stop it.

I have great strength and power to achieve something, and at same time to renounce it.

I have great strength and power to believe in something, and at same time to dis-believe in it

I have made myself so strong to accept everything, and at same time do deny everything.

I am creator of my thoughts and reality, and at same time I can be a destroyer.

I may be very much proud of my actions, and at times I am ashamed for the failure of my intention.

I acknowledged the impermanence of everything, and at same time I know the immortality of all.

I am part of everything in this universe, and at same time whole universe is just in Me.

I am the ultimate truth

Have you ever thought of what makes you really happy ? Recently I did a survey in which I asked,

“ What is happiness and what makes you really happy ?”.

I received many interesting responses and it was awesome reading those. Each one had their own definition and reason of happiness. Some of the responses were like :

• Spending time with friends and family
• Following their hobby and passion
• Spending time with self or travelling
• Helping other people achieve their dreams .. and so on.

It’s good to see that people know what makes them really happy. But at the same time I have observed a bit discrepancy between what they said makes them happy and the amount of time they spend doing the same. There could be many reasons for this and even some challenges to follow the path that makes us really happy, but this is what I believe, really matters.

“Doing the things you really want to do, no matter what.”

This doesn’t mean leave everything that you are doing right now, and get going to do what you always wanted to do. But with this I mean, asking yourself every-time, while doing anything : does this really matters to me ? Is this what makes me really happy ? Will this make my world a better place ?

You could get happiness doing any sort of job/work/activity, but only when you really know why you are doing it. And only when that why matters to you and your life. Reconnect with your life, work, inner you and find your real reason to be happy. Find your “why?”.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

PS : Special thanks to all those who have helped me in this survey and shared their thoughts. Highly appreciated.

Other interesting piece :

It took me almost 30 years to realize this !
Advice to my younger self, on my 30th birthday

Dear 25 year old me,

Happy Birthday !

When was the last time you took a week off to go out and explore yourself on your own ? Go !! Run !! Go into the wild and look within nature and yourself, you will get all the answers to the question which are haunting you over the years. The answers to them are not yet on Google, are they? — Go TRAVEL often my boy !

While commuting to office today, something crossed your mind. Didn’t it ? You thought you can build something that will solve a real life problem and make this world, a more better place. What’s holding you back? — Stay back, BUILD it !

Have some extra funds? Why not pay for the a course or buy one more book?-INVEST in yourself !

No one ever did it themselves, this world is a result of continuous efforts and innovation of each and every one. So make sure to be thankful to all for giving you an environment / situations you grew in. — Be GRATEFUL !

This world is an awesome place to be, and humanity is blessed with tremendous power and only inch of it has yet been discovered, so never stop experimenting, never stop questioning, observe situations and your actions very carefully. — Stay CURIOUS !

You have been fascinated by People, Nature & Love,from your childhood. There is a reason for that, and very soon you are going to learn few lessons of life which will change your world totally — Be Open for CHANGE!

Have a great day and a health year ahead. Happy Birthday to me.

NOTE : My birthday is on 9th Oct

1. See and understand the things as they are, not the way you want them to be.

2. Its important to be good, but more important is to be righteous.

3. Relationships is important aspect of human life, sense the relationship we have with everything. Other living beings, nature, our inner self.

4. Compassion and Empathy will set us free.

5. Travel will teach you how to look at life from different perspective.

6. Regret is thing that will hurt more than anything else at the end. So follow your heart now.

7. We exists in years, but live only in moment.

8. We cannot walk ahead holding the hands of our past. Let go it and cherish for life time.

9. Our mind and thoughts we generate are the most powerful things and have tremendous healing power.

10. All the living beings have one thing in common, we all need and seek, peace and love.

11. Everything in life is illusion : One day we all are going to die. Get out of this materialistic lifestyle mindset now !!

12. Success, Fame, Money, Comfort and even Death is not the ultimate truth.

15. If we have never faced failure, we will not be able to handle success for a long time.

16. If you think other people matters nothing to your life, you are on wrong way my boy.

17. Wherever you go, the fact from where you belong will always be with you and will make all the difference.

18. One day you will sit back and only talk about the opportunities you missed, so keep your eyes opened wide.

19. When on top of the ladder, don’t forget to look back and you will find few people on the place where you left them. Be okay to go back.

20. Reading a book from end will never satisfy our thrust.

21. Look to understand not to judge. Makes you more wise.

22. How will I truly accept it, if I don’t believe in it.

Life is understood alone, but lived with all around.

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