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Codex Audentia

Codex: An ancient manuscript text in book form.
Audentia: Latin for “audacity”.

This is my codex — a working notebook with my notes, experiments, and rambles in their full glory. It is raw, unpolished and unfiltered.

This is not a blog.

You can subscribe to these posts here.

I’m building a 1,000 year company, and writing about the process.

May 03

Hiring Philosophy

By Reflections No Comments

It’s been a while since I wrote in this codex. I’ve been interviewing candidates for SANPRAM, and it’s a little overwhelming. One of my core principles in recruiting is to root for their success. It has helped me receive consistently good feedback from them that it’s the best recruitment process they’ve ever been through.

But on the flip side, rooting for everyone’s success means now I have too many candidates I’d love to somehow fit into my team at SANPRAM. I’ve grown somewhat attached to them! Naturally, it’s not fair to them or to me to hire people who aren’t the best fit. They’re always welcome to apply later when the company is more mature.

So I’ll try to capture my hiring philosophy in written words, for my own sake. At some point, I need to let candidates go.

The first question is, what I’m really looking for.

First, SANPRAM needs to get on the radar of every single company in the world that’s serious about digital transformation or thinking about it, or shying away from it.

So on one hand, SANPRAM needs to become a world-class teaching machine. We’re teachers, and we teach. This means:

  1. The most thorough, informative, educational content about business and technology
  2. High-quality writing and editing.
  3. A tone that projects the heart of a teacher, confidence in being the best in the world, and a fun and approachable aura.
  4. Pleasing graphic design, video, music.

But that’s farming. It pays off well but takes time to yield a harvest. We also need to be hunting so the village can eat today:

  1. Finding out all the companies that fit our target.
  2. Hunt them.

But here’s the thing — we don’t yet know exactly who our target customers are and exactly what message will resonate with them. So I need to give BDRs room to search and seek adventure, and not force upon them a heavy quota. But still offer a good incentive to land a prospect. They need to be fairly autonomous.

Other considerations:

  • I’m not paying myself a salary. I’ll always pay employees before I pay myself.
  • I’d like teammates who are committed to the company. If they’re not, I’ll feel bad about it and may begin to resent them. Not a good place to be.
  • I’m willing to invest a lot of time into training “fresh” people. That’s how you pay it forward.
  • Every company wants people who stick around. And people are more likely to stick around when you take both hygiene factors and motivating factors into account.
  • It’s okay to say no to people, even if they’re qualified, if I’m not 100% sure I need them. And it’s okay to make hiring mistakes.
  • There’s nothing I could do to mess up my business permanently. I’ve covered enough bases.
  • What is my bar for quality? World-class. As long as they meet my bar, and are empathic, they’re in.
  • Money doesn’t change people’s standards, and doesn’t affect whether they’re students of the craft or not. You can’t get higher quality out of someone by giving them a higher salary.
What can be acquired easily:
  1. Domain knowledge
  2. Exact tactics
  3. Design skills
What cannot be taught easily:
  1. A good EYE (high standards)
  2. Good EARS (empathy)
  3. Interest, curiosity
  4. Taking ownership
  5. Ability to self-introspect, coachability
  6. Happy person — our first cultural value is “take care of each other.” If the person doesn’t show that quality, let go of them.
  7. Integrity

Unless I see a clear sign of the non-teachable stuff, I cannot move someone forward. I owe it to the company, to myself and to them.

What can’t be judged from interviewing are: Ownership and Integrity. These can only be seen through a trial period.

Decision making

  • Do not compromise the company’s core values and non-teachable stuff for any candidate or employee.
  • Pay fair and healthy compensation to talented and dedicated people. At the same time, don’t be under illusions that money solves all hiring problems.
  • Invest in your people!

Feb 06

Brainstorming Job Descriptions

By Rambles No Comments

SANPRAM needs its first recruiting page. Let’s chart out what the page will look like.

Hiring Philosophy

  1. Trust is foremost
  2. Root for their success
  3. Look for students of their craft – the very best way to see if someone’s really fit for a role or not.
  4. Hire happy people – no complainers
  5. Be welcoming to everyone

Audience

  1. People who want to try something unique, adventurous
  2. Motivated to learn new things and succeed
  3. May be frustrated with job/internship hunting (not sure what they’re good for, ignored/ghosted by recruiters, impostor syndrome, submitting resumes etc)
  4. Want to be given a chance, responsibility
  5. Want to do great work
  6. Heart of a teacher
  7. Enjoys reading? (because I write a lot)

Job posts

  • Build empathy
  • Talk about the work itself, not the requirements you’re assuming
  • Paint a picture of what it would be like to work here
  • Describe clearly what they can expect from the process
  • Don’t make “applying” a trivial thing.
  • No resumes/CVs/cover letters. I don’t care.
  • Encourages them to share their obsessions/side projects, not what they’ve done before.
  • Send them a nice audio/video message while rejecting. Script it nicely to be encouraging and at least slightly personalized, instead of general and fake.

Messaging

  • Have a hook (catch their attention)
  • Remarkable, trustworthy, targeted

Remarkable

  1. No resumes/CVs/unrealistic experience demands
  2. Acknowledges that job hunting and career decision making is hard
  3. Be sincere
  4. Talk about them more than ourselves

JOB DESCRIPTIONS

High level sales areas:

  1. Event tickets
  2. Training programs for employees
  3. 1:1 coaching program for leaders
  4. Book sales

Action Areas

  1. Event research, generate ideas for lectures, lecture preparation, getting guest speakers, promotion (social media and cold calls), delivery, follow up with participants
  2. B2B and in-person sales: add products to website, do networking at scale, get contacts and upload to CRM, call, voicemail, email, follow up on social media and email 5x, conduct interview, keep in touch
  3. 1:1 coaching programs: find on social media and online portals, engage, produce content, do webinars, podcast outreach, record podcast, post-production, publish, make clips and promote on social media, and further growth through connecting with people on social.
  4. Book sales: write the book, keep interviewees in touch, grow an email list, reach out to appear on podcasts, make book marketing materials, promote book through affiliates in multiple countries. Engage on social media.
  5. Creating reports about the industry: doing more research and analysis, writing the report, identifying journalists who would be interested and emailing them, promoting the reports through press releases.

Doing events is the most important – that’s direct sales. SANPRAM might become a company that’s primarily known for events, interviews and reports. And the coaching/training will come through the prospecting.

Priority List of Tasks

  1. B2B leads data wrangling, email and phone follow ups – EA
  2. Relationship nurturing after interviews: email, social media – EA
  3. Podcast post production – Digital Media
  4. Reaching out to podcast hosts – Marketing/BD
  5. CEO guest research and outreach – Marketing/BD
  6. Content creation, lead generation and strategy for social media – Social Media, Creative Writer, Digital Media
  7. Events – Marketing/BD, Social Media
  8. Reports – Journalist/Writer

Structure of job descriptions

Empathy building:

  • They want to know if the job is worth applying for (what are their chances, is it a cool job, does it pay well)
  • They want to move as quickly as possible.
  • They’re tired of being rejected and of applying, and wondering “what went wrong.”
  • For an unpaid position, they’ll only do it if they think it’s great for building their resume and lead to a better job down the line.
    • Companies want you to put down REAL tangible results in your resume. They won’t take chances on someone with no experience.
  • They may not be sure about their chosen career path.

Goals:

  • It’s a company of adventurers and open-minded people.
  • Clearly answer what’s in it for them if they take the job.
    • Being able to visualize what they’ll gain on their resume.
    • Able to visualize what they’ll be doing, and how it will feel like.
    • Who the manager is and what the management style is like.
  • Say that it’s an unpaid position. Also say that it will give them a lot of responsibility and we’ll invest a lot of time into them. What our beliefs about “internships” are.
  • Put a face on the job description.

Structure of each job post:

  • Intro
    • (External) What the company does, what we’re looking for, why we’re different. We know job hunting sucks, and we care: No resumes, no cover letters, no ghosting after interviews.
    • The importance of the position in the company
  • The Role / Responsibilities
    • What they’re expected to OWN
    • What tasks would look like (what exactly I would ask them to do, and how they would be trained)
    • What are the challenges of the job – reading/writing a lot, making quick and dirty reports and presentations, (clear > beautiful)
    • Learning potential and unique benefits
    • Career growth
  • Should you apply? / How we hire
    • Empathy: they don’t need to be an expert in day one, but they HAVE to be interested.
    • Ask if they’d be okay with challenges like XYZ (to be able to visualize themselves in the role)
    • It’s an unpaid position, and it’s a lot of responsibility/ownership of results. We can’t compete on salaries anyway. If they’re crunched on money, and they don’t want a rigorous internship, they probably don’t want this. Or they should apply but keep looking.
  • How to apply
    • We want them to do some research and submit a form (should be as closely related to the job as possible)
    • Our hiring philosophy: be a student of your craft, be happy, be motivated to do a good job.

Feb 01

Brainstorming the careers page

By Rambles No Comments

Goals

  • Attract people who are students of their trade
  • People who want to try new things
  • People who are nice and honest
  • People who want to make a mark
  • Good communication skills

What we can offer to such people

  • Ownership and freedom to experiment
  • Being recognized and celebrated
  • Supportive team and clean culture
  • Variety of work
  • Ability to hone their craft

What candidates may be concerned about

  • Not knowing if they’re good or not
  • Not knowing if they’ll get selected
  • Tired of applying and not hearing back?

Structure

Build trust, be remarkable, be encouraging

What does every internship post do?

  • Show how cool the company is
  • Talk about the competitive nature
  • Promise a great career start
Dec 23

The Eccentric CEO Page

By Rambles No Comments

Goals of the page:

  1. Establish the brand of SANPRAM and myself
  2. Get guests excited about being on the podcast/show
  3. Get listeners excited about tuning in

Don’t just make it like an Anchor webpage – give it more personality!

The page should have more things than the average podcast page. Like a description and what makes it unique. Without useful stuff, nobody will remember it!

Who is the target guest/customer?

  • A true student of business
  • Enjoys discussing and sharing knowledge
  • Not very shy
  • Has a good sense of humor
  • Wants to learn and get better.
  • Willing to invest in themselves and their company.
  • A “promising” CEO

Accusation audit:

  • There are a thousand business podcasts out there
  • A lot of motivation, coaching, advice, founder stories of success and struggle
  • Or a deep dive into a single topic or industry
  • This show is Discovery Channel, Freakonomics and Business School all in one.

What someone gets out of our podcast.

  • Have you ever wondered why X, Y, Z?
  • There are so many industries, and we have no idea how they work. The world around us is a mystery.
  • Deep dive into a new industry every week – guided by none other than someone trying to disrupt it. The best tour guide of any industry, is the one trying to conquer it. Learn about different industries and markets, by the very entrepreneurs trying to disrupt them.

Oct 17

Micro Famous?

By Reflections No Comments

While researching podcasts, I accidentally came across Matt Johnson of “Pursuing Results“.

He drove home what Seth Godin has already talked about repeatedly – that the riches are in the niches. He talked about some ideas that had already been taking shape in my head, so it’s good to get validation:

  1. Using podcasting and content generation as a way to network with ultra influencers.
  2. Appearing on podcasts as a way to hack initial growth.

What he says is the backbone of such a strategy, however, is to be very clear about your messaging and value proposition, and your target customers. Without that, the “niche” effect will become very diluted.

He mentions how Gary Vaynerchuk also started out with a wine business and talked into a void for a year, with nobody watching his videos. But he took on the video platform right in the beginning, in 2006.

On a side note, I just found his very first video there:

Can’t help but admire the guy. He hasn’t changed much in 14 years – and the consistency is amazing.

For a new online entrepreneur like myself, the goal is to similarly choose a vehicle that most people haven’t jumped on yet. It’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, as long as the pond is growing. You can grow with the pond.

On a side note, I think internationalization and localization are critical. Being the most famous person in only one language is not enough.

Oct 17

Film and TV business Codex Entry

By Rambles No Comments

(This is not a blog. It’s a codex – raw, unpolished and brutally frank.)

A lot of changes happening. Business models are changing, therefore lots of opportunities. The data is pointing towards starting a distribution company that also does production, instead of a production company that also does distribution. Using this codex entry to save all the ideas in my head right now.

  1. Free digital distribution has very low margin: Ads are NOT effective for monetizing online. Look at YouTube’s monetization:
  1. Margins are only in DIRECT SALES – stuff that people BUY, by opening their wallets.
    • You have to create something that an end consumer will spend their own money on. The margins in those sales only will pay for the whole movie.
  2. IDEAS:
    1. 3D/4D/VR
    2. Bandersnatch model: movies that change with viewer preferences
    3. Ecommerce store for merchandise, with partnerships to allow worldwide distribution. Will need geolocation to work.
      • Social shopping (Pinduoduo [1], [2] and Groupon) are worth pondering over.
    4. Throwing online or virtual events, meetups etc (both ticket sales and sponsorships: Airbnb Experiences model)
    5. Other add-on products and virtual goodies to sell along with the free film streaming.
      • You’ll probably make all your revenue from <1% of users (the ones who pay for stuff).
      • Extra footage and deleted scenes, buy personalized video messages from the cast, Q&A events, special mention in a future episode’s credits, and other unique experiences that you cannot purchase in general for movies.
      • Coupons (freecharge etc)
      • Lots to learn from the social gaming industry: look at Zynga and the World of Warcraft model – they sell in-game virtual items to people, and save the card details up front so that it’s easier to buy on impulse. No returns/refunds either. This requires a stable micropayments infrastructure. Look at Devrant app as well.
  3. Localization and Internationalization of the platform, for every movie, will become CRUCIAL. Get worldwide distribution rights for all assets (and characters?) from creators and do a great job, just like Webtoons does.
Oct 10

My thoughts on branding and promotion

By Reflections No Comments
Beyond Critical Thinking

This is not a blog. It’s a codex – raw, unpolished and brutally frank.

I’m using this codex post to document my perspective on all things promotion and branding, for the benefit of Future Me as well as future team members at SANPRAM.

In my view, capturing attention for an idea is about three critical things:

  1. Being remarkable: It needs to stand out, plain and simple. Something people haven’t seen before, or at least not so frequently that they can gloss it over. It needs to disrupt their regular pattern so that they notice, remember and tell others about it.
  2. Being trustworthy: If people don’t trust it, they won’t buy it. And people pay extra all the time for things that they already trust, when a cheaper/better alternative may be available.
  3. Delivering 4x the value: 4 is not a completely arbitrary number, it simply means that the new solution ideally should be so much better than whatever they have right now, that they can never look back again. Ideas have to be at least that much better, or they won’t get on like fire. People switch to things that they perceive as much better because marginally better is often not worth the adventure.

Therefore?

I firmly believe that SANPRAM’s product fulfills #3 with flying colors – our course is 10x better than any other alternative. No question about it. What we need to work on, is #1 and #2.

As for being remarkable, I’m still working on it. Our ideas are definitely unique and our product/service is unique, but it hasn’t made a ruckus yet. With time, I’m sure it will.

And then, being trustworthy is a lifelong endeavor – trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. If that baby ever makes a mess, we better clean it up immediately. So far I don’t believe we have managed to break it.

What “brand” means

I think a “brand” is the ideas, beliefs and feelings that people associate you with. An example is, could you imagine what it would look like if McDonald’s opened a shoe store? What’s the first feeling that comes to your mind, and why?

Similarly, try to imagine Nike opening a restaurant. Does the first thing in your mind look like a McDonald’s? Why?

Through this thought exercise, you can grasp the idea of what “brand” means. The key to branding is the consistent projection of the same personality in how you conduct yourself. It is your character.

Where does this leave SANPRAM’s brand?

Honestly, I don’t want to put a branding slogan on SANPRAM. It also honestly doesn’t matter what I say. It is something fluid, that you can’t put into words.

Everything from the name and the logo, to the way we write our emails, to the kind of humour we use reflects our brand.

But as an education company, there are definitely some crucial components that our brand must evoke; the non-negotiables.

  1. We have our students’ very best interests at heart.
  2. We are the experts at what we do. Nobody on the planet can do our job better than we can.
  3. We are fun to be with.

Okay, that’s all for my musings today.

 

Oct 02

Where should the money go?

By Rambles No Comments

(This is not a blog. This is a codex – raw, unpolished and brutally frank.)

In this codex entry, I’m exploring my thought process around how my company should spend its money at this particular stage – what I can delegate or outsource, what I can’t.

For a recap, I’m running a services company with one employee (myself). At this time, I don’t even have enough in profits to pay myself a salary.

Right now, I’m doing every single thing myself. Here are all the things that need to get done:

  1. Accounting / bookkeeping
  2. Sales and direct outreach (emails, phone)
  3. Marketing: content creation (writing, audio, video, graphics)
  4. Web development
  5. Providing the service (teaching)

Out of these, let’s remove the ones I CANNOT outsource anytime soon, even if I had the money:

  1. Accounting / bookkeeping
  2. Sales and direct outreach (emails, phone)
  3. Marketing: content creation (writing, audio, video)
  4. Web development
  5. Providing the service (teaching)

That leaves us with accounting, direct sales and web development.

Finance Philosophy

I look at the “three shoeboxes” picture. There’s money coming in, money going out, and then whatever’s left. Dead simple.

If the third box has no cash in it, something’s wrong – the company will die soon.

Now, cash represents two things: growth, and safety.

If invested in the right things at the right time, it can free up my time and lead to faster growth. At the same time, simply by sitting in the box, it is a buffer against unforeseen events.

To think about the whole thing, I’ve made some fundamental decisions about how SANPRAM will be run.

Decision Number 1: If we ever have to shut down, furlough or lay off people at SANPRAM, we’ll give them at least 2 months pay to act as a buffer. Therefore, the company must ALWAYS have that much “emergency money” stashed away. No exceptions.

Decision Number 2: A business needs a trusted ‘system’, to make money in a fairly predictable manner – we need to know what works. Until this system is figured out, we don’t have a business, and all actions of the company must be directed towards figuring it out.

Current Situation

In light of these 2 decisions, I ask myself the two corresponding questions:

Q1: Do you have enough money in the bank, to lay off a person after 3 months and be able to give them 2 months of buffer?

Q2: Do you have a line of sight on where your next few customers will come from?

At the moment, my answer to both questions is NO. I’m still figuring out my market, and don’t have enough data to be confident about my marketing plans.

Therefore, I cannot afford to hire anybody or outsource anything. I will need to continue to grind and do everything that I can by myself.

Planning Ahead

As soon as I make a few more sales and test my marketing funnel, I’ll be able to hire people to help set that funnel on fire and GROW at all costs. I’ll hire a VA, an accountant, and also outsource web development.

Until then, just gotta keep grinding? If I’m not confident about where my business will be in 3 months, how can I expect someone else to be?

The money I have in the bank right now should be set aside as the emergency fund – don’t want to touch it. But of course, I could be completely wrong about how I’m thinking.

Oct 01

The urge is real. What can I do?

By Reflections No Comments

(A splash page that pops up at 10 PM every night, to help me go to sleep early)

I want to keep watching the video at night, keep scrolling the social media site, or keep browsing that website. The urge and inertial are too great. I want to indulge because I’m in the mood – after all, what is life without some joy?

It’s completely fine. I accept these urges. These sensations in my mind and body want me to feel happy, and I am grateful.

  • Think about how you’d feel the next morning.
  • Think about the books you could read.
  • Think about drawing practice.
  • Think about your journal.
Aug 26

The Cure for Impatience

By Reflections 2 Comments
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/07/28/sports/28-Y-AROD/28-Y-AROD-superJumbo.jpg
(This is not a blog. It’s a codex – raw, unpolished and brutally frank)

I try hard to resist comparing my business with others and feeling ashamed of my accomplishments. It still sometimes gets me whenever I’m reminded of someone younger than me doing 100x better – or whatever “doing better” means nowadays.

As you can see, this impatience comes tightly packed in a box that also includes envy, low self-esteem and other assorted chocolates.

So, how do you deal with it? How do you truly internalize the idea that “it’s about the journey, not the destination”?

As human beings, we are sticklers for PERFECTION. We’re used to Googling “how long does it take to get six pack abs”, “how long does it take to become fluent in Chinese”, “how long to get a black belt in Judo”.

For the small percentage of people able to get over that, the next trap is PROGRESS. “I’ve been working out for 3 weeks, don’t think I’m any closer to abs.” “I’ve written 5 articles, but my follower count hasn’t increased.” “I’m supposed to be 1% better every day, but today’s practice session feels worse than last week!”

Well, calm the fuck down. It’s next to impossible for the human body and brain to get better or stronger in a linear manner, and it’s very unlikely that you can manipulate the universe into giving you steadily improving results. It’s not completely in your control. You are clinging to an outcome that may not exist in reality – a false hope.

So am I saying that we shouldn’t use progress as a metric?! To a large extent, YES. Using progress as the key metric builds frustration over time, exhausting our willpower and destroying motivation. Sooner or later, you break. You give up because you didn’t see enough progress.

So what’s the solution? Enter the first missing piece: PROCESS.

‘Process’ is the daily reps. The actual work you have to put in day after day. If you’re a baseball player, it may be swinging the bat 100 times at the nets every day. If you’re a sales guy, it may be making 50 calls every day. Practicing calligraphy for 30 minutes every day.

You get the idea – whatever your undertaking may be, you know that there’s a process – if only you followed it day after day after day and just did the best you could, you know it in your heart that progress will come – and in future, it may grow into perfection. Of course, getting feedback and pivoting is part of the process, and it also depends on how much grit there is in you. But you can tell when you’re addicted to progress.

We’re not done yet. There’s a second critical missing piece, and it’s CELEBRATION. You have to celebrate the small wins you stack up every day. Every time you show up to the field and swing the bat 100 times as best as you can, or finish making those 50 phone calls, or writing those 200 words – lift your hands in the air and be proud of yourself. You did the work, now give yourself the credit you’re due. Far too many people neglect this step – I know I used to.

When you celebrate something and compliment yourself for doing it, you prod your brain to do it again. And as you get more and more comfortable putting in the work, the progress will come faster.

Celebrate the daily small wins, and stack them up – the stacks will grow into big wins before you know it. But this is why it’s important to have a routine. If you have to decide your way into working every day, you’ll again be relying on willpower. It has to be an automatic habit, or you won’t do it for very long.

By the way, this is not just something I say. This is the same thing I heard from Alex Rodriguez, a baseball player with 3 Guiness World Records: the most grand slams in MLB history (25), the youngest person to hit 500 career homers (32 years, 8 days), and most home runs in a season by a third baseman (54).

He says that his proudest accomplishment is not his world records and success, but that he never once missed a pre-game practice session in his entire career.

I hope to develop the same respect for my work ethic as he did, and I wish the same for you.

PROCESS over PROGRESS over PERFECTION.

– Aman

I challenged myself to get a black belt in Judo in 12 months, training at the Kodokan in Tokyo.

I challenged myself to achieve fluency in Japanese in 12 months. The result blew me away.

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