Click

What makes you click? That one thing so important to you that it becomes part of your daily habit or ritual—something you dedicate every moment to without hesitation?

The masterpieces of Van Gogh’s paintings, Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Edison’s Lightbulb, and the Wright brothers’ quest for flight—all emerged from the click of their internal drive. They were broke but determined to stay on their path. It was their quest, the click they woke up to every day.

A lucky few of us find that click and build our lives around it. It becomes our second nature, a habit requiring no external motivation. 

Reject

In sales, most cases end in rejection. Does that mean we stop selling? What I have learned in my last eight years in sales is that people who like you will buy your product. And if they don’t, they will refer you to their peers.

As a founder, you must cultivate deep, lasting relationships and avoid focusing on the short term. People who don’t like you will never like you for one reason or another—you don’t need to waste time pleasing them.

Life is limited, and we must strive to make every second meaningful for our loved ones and the planet.

Grit

With the advancement in technology, particularly AI, it seems we will not be needed anymore. Does that mean we will go back to the Stone Age, premodernization, or the era of the Renaissance?

We seem to have become experts seasonally—transitioning from the pandemic to inflation, to crypto, to world war, and now to AI. What sets a few successful ones apart from the rest is grit. It’s the willingness to go against all odds, the quest to stay focused, and the burning desire to build a masterpiece.

The season of technology hype will come and go. What matters above all is flowing like water and delivering your worth to customers.

Cheer

Our world exists because we dream.
Our world exists because we believe in making it real.
Our world exists because we live in it, shaping it with every moment.

This is our world—ours to build, ours to create.
We are not here to give up so easily.
We are the ones who thrive, no matter the uncertainties.

So cheer up. The world is ahead of us, waiting to be made into something beautiful.

Success

We humans are different. Over the generations, we have evolved. We have food in abundance. We are dying less from diseases like cholera, measles, and pox. Our meaning of success also changed. It is not just about being wealthy or checking out the wishlist.

As we grow old, our priorities change. We tend to focus more on our inner self rather than externalities. For someone in their 20s, the importance of Instagram likes or attending a rock concert is more meaningful than it was in the 1980s.

Our aspirations, imagination, and hard work take us closer to what success means. At the same time, we have to be thankful for our upbringing and the opportunities we were handed in our platter.

Complain


It is easy to give up and complain about everything broken. We barely scratch the surface or take challenges. We give up easily and go bitter.

Our life is about living moment by moment and giving our best. Complaining is not the solution. Otherwise, we would be reading a complaint book, not an autobiography.

You have control over your actions and your life. Why don’t you own it instead of complaining and blaming others?

select

I know this sounds very anti-sale, especially in SaaS. But if you are building a product with a small total addressable market, be wise and picky when choosing a customer. When there is renewal happening every year and word-to-mouth boosting your product, it matters picking customers by yourself.

Line

We live in a free world. We are not in any shackles. The decisions we make are ours, and so are the repercussions. We are beaming with confidence in youth. We believe in changing the world.

Our determination and arrogance have a thin line and many fall for this trap. With time the treadmill of life brings back to reality to many. It takes years of hard work for something to succeed or make a dent in this universe.

The quick fix or my way or the highway can only take us to little far. Our life is a journey lived moment by moment.

Treadmill

Many call our life a treadmill, like a bot living in it and traversing every day’s defined societal norms. We keep living to fulfill the dreams of our dear ones, we try to make others happy. The journey of life is short, we end up running and running. The expectations of others keep on increasing, we just change the form: from a son to a student to a good father to a good husband to a good employee.

We are a beast within. We are not born to be tamed but the everyday treadmill of life and barrage of expectation leaves us no choice. A few who have circumvented it have become misfits but liberated.

loop

Our life is the moment we live in. It is the sum of every breath we take. Some of us understand this and live rational lives, knowing what we don’t want.

Other kinds of mortals spend their lives thinking about or regretting the past. What to plan for the future comes next. The journey of regret from the past and planning for the future becomes an endless loop. In short, living now and giving the best with what we have never come to them, death comes closer, and they surrender.