Priority

We are all aspirational. The same applies to a team of developers. Most want to work on shiny things, technologies, and features. But the sad reality is that a customer gives a flying fuck happening under the hood.

They need a product which should behave/work as promised. They are paying and using it.

It creates some a challenge within the organization and the balance between teams. One team promised time to deliver a feature, another toyed with shiny language or framework, and another fought with angry customers.

As a leader, you have to make a balance and ensure everyone’s expectations and aspirations are well met.

We have to manage technical debt to runway to customer support. It is the leader’s role, and we have to do it.

But the priority should always be solving customers’ pain for which they pay.

cravings

We humans are different beasts altogether.
We crave what we don’t have.
We are rich. We will still find misery with it. We will not be grateful for it. When we have someone caring, we feel it’s suffocating. When we are loveless, we dream about ideal love. In short, our cravings never end. We are not satisfied with anything. That’s our conditioning.

phoenix

Every decade, many of us rise within. It is like a reincarnation of ourselves. It could be because of a change in personal life or profession.

These are the times when we get to rebuild ourselves. Some make the best out of it. Many others disappear from the world in solitude or die figthing within.

Rebuilding. in these schenario is like rebuilding from ashes like the phoenix.

lowball

We are living in an unequal world. Some people live with the agenda of acting superior to the rest. As a result, they will play all sorts of tricks. The most common one is lowballing. People will try to tell you how all your plans are impossible. You cannot achieve it.

In these scenarios, you should smile, listen, and relax. You don’t have to fall for their tricks. Your life and destiny are as you see it. It does not depend on what others say.

Don’t get lowballed, cheer up, belive, walk, and crawl, but work on your dreams. You have to make it happen.

problem

In building a product, we become attached to the problem. It puts us in a blind spot. We end up becoming the frog whose world is just the well. We stop seeing the world around us and recognizing the advancements.

We need new eyes and hands every now and then. We need people with a free mind who can see our product and keep a world view intact. That is how our product will get a winning.

One way to do this is by encouraging more and more interns in the team with a mentor/mentee model. This can foster those dynamics. We are still early in our journey at Taghash, but we are experimenting.

customer love

Building business requires real connection unless you are into raise burn and repeat zone. A sustainable, profitable business takes time. It requires hard work, luck, and customer love.

We have been building Taghash for the last seven years, and customers’ word of mouth has worked for us. Our customers are our evangelists.

We are honest with them. We say when we don’t know things. Most of the features we have built have come from customers’ advice.

If you want to build a sustainable, long-lasting business, listen to your customers and solve for them. There are no other shortcuts.

Aim for customer love. Aim for their support as your co-enablers in product development and journey.

I am here in Dubai for sales, and I have gotten half dozen intros via customers.

team

We keep forgetting that an organization exists because of the team. It’s the team that makes or breaks an organization. As a leader, you are not just a cheerleader but also a trendsetter. You have to act well. You want others to follow up and look upon you. The guiding principle has to be set by you.

Many companies produce write culture, mission, and vision on their website. A leader has to lead, not just paint those for PR and marketing.

Building anything requires a lot of grit, patience, and perseverance. The path is full of pain and rejection. You have to sail through it. What you need in these scenarios is a team.

connection

Things take time. Be it setting up a business, sales, or a relationship. There is no quick hack. We have to accept this reality, and it will make us calm.

We cannot force anyone to buy our product or make others love us on the point of a pistol. We can give our best, understand the world from their lens, and try to find a solution.

All those quick wins women or blitzscaling for sales are temporary. As a human, we have to make human connections first to win trust before anything else. The sooner we realize, the better we will become.

Experiment

We are all living a world within our thoughts.
It makes or breaks us.
Our experiences build it.
That is why our forefathers made us roam in the wild, learn, observe, and experience.
It helped us in building us.

In AI terms, the LLM is our thoughts and data from our life experiences to generate unsupervised learning. What will an LLM/thought result without data/experiences?

We have to experiment with ourselves and our lives to see where ultimately we are headed. The textbook knowledge and YouTube videos can only take us a little ahead if it does.