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Newsletter for the week of March 8, 2009

By Rajesh Setty on Wed 18 Mar 2009, 8:00 AM - View Comments

Hello

This week was a special one. My book “Upbeat” was sent off to the printers on Wednesday. It will be released on May 1st 2009. That’s almost a year after I embarked on the project. About a dozen people have seen the book evolve from a concept to a complete book. Special thanks to all of them. My goal was to write a book that someone will be able to read in less than 45 minutes and get something out of it. I have given my best and will now leave the verdict to you.

You can pre-order the book at Amazon.com here:

Pre-order Upbeat at Amazon.com

A special thanks to one of my teachers
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“Upbeat” is dedicated to my teacher Mr. G. Seetharam who taught me a few courses in the classroom but a lot more life lessons outside the classroom. Mr. Seetharam was the Principal of Sarvodaya College at Tumukur in India. I met Mr. Seetharam at a time when I was ready to make a few life decisions (such as “what exactly will I be doing right after school?” ) I am really glad I met him precisely at that time. The very first meeting with him was memorable and energizing. I kept thinking what was special about that meeting and at that time I could not explain it. Every subsequent meeting with Mr. Seetharam had the same effect on me. It was like Mr. Seetharam had some sort of energy overflow and some of that excess energy was touching me in a very special way. He was full of life and he enjoyed what he was doing and we all ( the students ) benefited significantly from this. He was the candle that lighted the lives of most of us.

Here are a few lessons I learned from Mr. Seetharam. I am writing only a few lessons here. If I write about all the lessons, I might have content for another book

1. Focus on the fundamentals: He insisted EVERY time that I understand the fundamentals behind something rather than learning what is required to get good grades in the exam.

2. Be Curious: He rarely asked questions. But would trigger something in me that made me ask NEW questions.

3. Stay Hungry: Once these questions were asked, I had to have the hunger to find the answers to those NEW questions. He created the hunger in me to start this quest

4. Raise the Bar: I still remember one of those evenings when I used to be at his home having a part philosophy and part science discussions. He was teaching me a concept in Physics and I picked up my notebook to write down something. He asked me to stop and listen first. He said the only way to learn quickly it is to approach it as if you were going to teach it to someone else. At that instant, he changed the way I looked at learning.

5. Expect More: Rarely did he ask me to work hard or study more. He simply expected more from me. In all our conversations, there was never any pressure just a nudge and a reminder that he expects me to do VERY well.

There are many many more lessons and I am eternally indebted to the selfless gifts that he handed to me over the two years. Thank you Sir. I wouldn’t be who I am today without your help.

Request for you:
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I am sure you have several teachers in your life that shaped your thinking, your approach and your outlook on life. Please take a moment to thank them. It may be an email or a phone cal. I know you can do it anytime. So why not now?

All the very best!

—===(*)===—

More at:

About: http://www.rajeshsetty.com/about/
Blog: http://www.lifebeyondcode.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/upbeatnow

Posted under eBuzz.

Newsletter for the week of March 1, 2009

By Rajesh Setty on Thu 12 Mar 2009, 3:42 AM - View Comments

Hello:

This week was busy. Sometimes a week zips past so fast that it seems unfair. This week, I will talk about competence and also include a quick article titled “10 Quick Ways to Lose Credibility Online”

If you like the newsletter, kindly forward this to someone who might like it and m hope is that they will subscribe to the future issues of the newsletter here:
http://www.rajeshsetty.com/resources/books/beyond-code/

On competence:
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On a personal note, I had a photo shoot for my upcoming book “Upbeat: Having an Attitude to Thrive in Tough Times.” Actually two photo shoots – the first one didn’t go well. I thought it went OK but others didn’t. The angles were not OK in one. There was glare in the glasses in another one. There was too much light in one and there was too little light in the other. I looked at the photos and they really looked fine. That’s when I remembered a quote from Jeffrey Pfeffer – “To know your level of incompetence on a topic, you have to be reasonably competent on that topic.”

Photography is greek to me and I have to go with what the experts say. So I went for a photo shoot the second day. This time I simply followed instructions and not only was I happy, everyone else was happy too.

Now, the article:

10 Quick Ways to Lose Credibility Online
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#10 Spamming
Spam is taking someone’s precious asset – time.

#9 Cheap Viral Tricks
Virality is a happy side-effect of something that’s remarkable. While you can make something viral, it is better to work towards building something remarkable so that it’s automatically viral.

Trying to engage in cheap viral tricks will instantly make quality people run away from you now and in the future.

#8 Baseless allegations
Name calling, complaining and simply bad-mouthing about someone online won’t help you in the long run. You will not only burn bridges but also alienate a whole set of smart people.

#7 Arguing for no reason:
One way to attract attention is to disagree with something being said. Nothing is black and white and you can always start an argument in the gray area. Unless you have s strong position and are qualified to make an intelligent statement on the topic, it is not worth pulling someone into an argument. It will simply leave a bad taste with everyone.

#6 Free-riding
You send an email to someone influential and out of courtesy they reply to you and now you start trying to get personal coaching and advice for free without respecting their time and investment.

#5 Stage-capturing:
Use someone else’s blog, Facebook or twitter account to toot your horn. Their stage is theirs, create your own stage to act on your show.

#4Automatic opt-ins
Get an email address and you add them to your mailing list. If someone gives you their business card, they didn’t sign up to get email updates from you or any of your associates. Opt-ins are never automatic unless it’s your family members (even then, may be )

#3 Posting unrelated comments:
Some smart person advocates that you need to be participating in the community and you start posting comments – unrelated to what the blog post is about. Yes, you will get links to your website along with those comments and probably some traffic from curious people. But that’s not going to be long-lasting. In fact, once people know what your “trick” is, they will “mentally blacklist” you and start ignoring you.

#2 Advertising under the disguise of participation:
When I see some questions on LinkedIn, I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. They are advertisements for their services disguised in the form of “intelligent” questions. Not only this is funny, it is also insulting to people who are receiving the questions

#1 Stating the obvious:
The sun rises in the east. The sun sets in the west. It’s cold in the winter. These are all true and it may be interesting for kindergarten people. Packaging it to make it look profound won’t make it profound. Hollow blog posts, hollow comments, hollow tweets that state the obvious are a sure-fire way of losing credibility.

That’s it for this edition.

Have a great weekend!

—–===(*)===—–

More at:

About: http://www.rajeshsetty.com/about/
Blog: http://www.lifebeyondcode.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/upbeatnow

—–===(*)===—–

Posted under eBuzz.

Newsletter for week of Feb 22

By Rajesh Setty on Sat 07 Mar 2009, 4:17 AM - View Comments

This was the first newsletter sent out to a few hundred subscribers:

You can subscribe to the newsletter here:

Subscribe to Life Beyond Code Newsletter

Life Beyond Code Newsletter
Issue for the week of Feb 22, 2009

—–===(*)===—–

Hello All,

Hope you had a great start for this year.

Honestly, I have been struggling with what to share in the newsletter.

Now, that’s not a great way to start a newsletter relationship, isn’t it?

Thinking about it, even if I spend a few more weeks deciding on the topic, I might not be satisfied with the answer. The best way is to start somewhere.

I will keep this newsletter part personal and part education. I know some of you on this list but I probably don’t know hundreds of you. Over the next few weeks and months, my goal is to get to know you and start building a relationship.

This week let me share a few lessons with examples from my own life.

1. No threat, no action:

Yes, if there is no threat, there is no trigger to take action. over the last few months, we have been trying to negotiate a deal (let’s say with a company A) at in one of my portfolio companies. Discussions seem to move forward but they would vaporize into thin air every now and then. Last week was different. One of the investors in this portfolio company talked to us and mentioned that he would be able to connect us to the competitor of company A.

Long story short, things started moving swiftly with Company A when they learned about the potential competition. There was a clear threat for Company A and that was clear to them

What didn’t move for weeks started moving in a matter of few hours. That is the power of a threat.

Of course, this is hindsight 20-20. We didn’t plan this but it happened in a way to provide us an advantage.

Now, what’s the lesson: In your own situations, think about what is the threat for people to NOT accept what you are offering. If there is none, either re-create what you are offering or go to some other customers.

2. Unreasonable deadlines spark creativity

I am involved in another business that had literally NOTHING a few months ago – except a plan in the back of the napkin.

Since this was a bootstrapped project, there was no way it could have had the momentum of a funded project. So it was going on at a slower pace.

Last week, I talked to a VC friend to validate the idea. I had clarified to the VC friend that I was not interested in raising money now as we were not ready. The day before the call with the VC, magically an overview document was ready. One week ago, there was no document – most of the stuff was in our heads. And the day before the call, it appeared from nowhere

Then something else happened. The VC friend said, this is interesting enough to warrant a meeting with his partner two days later. Obviously we were not ready to have that conversation so pushed the meeting back by one week.

Now, from that day onwards things are “magically” happening at a breathtaking speed. We only have a week to put several things on paper. So we are asking for more HELP, reaching out to more people and just simply “walking the extra mile.” Without that deadline, things would not have moved this fast.

Now, whatever may happen in the funding situation, the amount of work that will get done before the next meeting will be HUGE for us.

Here is the quick lesson: Set an unreasonable deadline for one of your projects and watch miracles happen.

That’s it for this edition.

All of you have a great week ahead.

Best,

Rajesh

About: http://www.rajeshsetty.com/about/

Blog: http://www.lifebeyondcode.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/upbeatnow

Posted under eBuzz.