How many of you right now think that an entrepreneurial kid is much better than an employee, mindset driven kid, like, go get a job? See, everybody raises their hand. I never saw anybody raise not raise their hand. No, I want my kid to have a job. I don’t know. Not Not Not that I’ve seen this. When I talked to individuals. I said, Why can’t you start a business? They’re like, No, it’s fear. I don’t have the money. I don’t think this is going to be scary. I have lost money in the past. I don’t know where to go. Where do you know whom to and we are looking for help. I think that majority of the times, every time I’ve seen any entrepreneurial kid who has made it, it has to it always started with the parents, not the kids. Rarely that has happened.
There is data to prove now that, you know, mediocre parents create mediocre children. It’s very scary to think about that for a second. Mediocre parents great mediocre children. Actually, let me rephrase that. It says middle class produces middle class. That’s the right word. Okay, only three to 4% below the line of middle class, magically have children who are in the superior class. I don’t know how they classify all this data. By the way, I’m speaking from that. So in other words, occasionally, when you see somebody who has to come from absolute adversity, and suddenly makes it to the very top, you get to look at them, you see inspired oh my god, how did they could make that level of impact? What did they do? Very rarely, you see those people most of the times, it’s always rich, making rich, big entrepreneurs make me big entrepreneurs. Right. But then if you have to figure out how to make it work, and you are in your third in your 40s, and 50s, and 60s, when will you start putting these values into children? It is a question you have to ask. I asked that question all the time. How do I make my children entrepreneurial? It’s hard. I’ll tell you a secret I learned and maybe this will help you. Okay, maybe this will help you. There was a gentleman by name. Isaac is the door Robbie, have you have anybody heard that name? Isaac Ravi. He’s a nuclear physicist who went on to win a Nobel Prize. When he was interviewed, they asked him this question. They said, What is the secret for your success? That you won a Nobel Prize? He said my mother was a single mom or something. Really? What was the secret? Then? What did she do? Nothing. She was not as well educated either. But she did something to me that other parents do not do. She said, every time she used to drop me to school, she used to tell me make sure you ask a good question today. At the end of the day, when she used to pick, she used to say, did you ask a good question today? Usually the answer is no. That’s the best parenting tip I’ve ever received. I wish I would have gotten it before I had my first kid. I am I started applying that technique with my second kid. Every time I dropped him, I say, make sure you ask a good question. I don’t care what if it’s Mom, you worry about the grades. Dad. I just don’t. I’m worried about the conversation. Okay, did you get an ad to my wife drives all those things with the kid. I’m not worried about that. My son is enthusiastically giving me feedback. I kept on asking, Did you ask a good question today? No, no, no, no, it went on for two years. Then I gave up. I never asked me anymore. Suddenly. One day said Dad, I asked a good question today, daddy. Okay, I said, What did the good question you asked? If App Store downloads apps won’t download your app store. Good question. When you submit a question, if you think about it right. Now, I thought at that point, I realized this he started to think
Ton Of Imagination & A Pile Of Junk
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On the podcast episode today, I’m doing something that I did last week. Last Saturday, which is I went back to my blog, I took some of the posts I made a while ago, nearly 13 years ago on my site. And I took one post last week and I talked about this amazing Austrian immigrant who started a multimillion dollar chocolate business upon landing in New York, with two days of market research. Today, I’m doing the same thing, went back to the blog, pulled a post I made during the same time, this is from June 25th 2009. And this post is about inventing something with Q tip method. This post talks about an incredible inventor by named Alan Bright. Alan bright in 1949, invented a metal cleaning liquid called, copper bright. The way he did this is very funny, very interesting. Now a little bit backstory on Alan Bright. He never finished college, he enlisted in the army and went to the war while he was still in the 11th grade. During that time, he found his passion for inventing something. And along the way over the years, he invented many things. But one of his successful inventions is the corporate bright. This is what Alan bright did and this is, he’s genius.
Alan went to the library one day, and collected all the names of all the chemicals that can clean copper, he bought about 60 of them, and lined all of them in bottles on a table and started dipping Q tips in each one of them, one by one, to swap a copper coin, till he found the perfect combination that cleaned the copper the best. Then, he went on to build a multimillion dollar business from this one solution. Now in the later years, Alan modified the formula to meet several standards, but always use the Q tips approach to do that each time. Corporate bright is still around after all these years.
Now, the reason why I wrote this blog post back then, and I’m also giving a voice to that blog post today is I want you to think how you can apply this method in your own business or anything that you are doing today. Is there any way that you can line up different possibilities, different permutations, different combinations, to somehow juggle and mix and you find the right combination that can solve your problem, but can also make a huge impact in the society in a good way.
Thomas Edison said, “To invent you need a good imagination, and a pile of junk.” That’s all for now, on today’s podcast, I just had the idea of bringing some of these old blog posts and give them life in the form of my voice. You enjoy your weekend. I’ll be back again tomorrow with another incredible maybe a success tip maybe a story maybe an insight maybe a solution. We’ll see. Please rate please rate review and share it with whoever you think will benefit from this podcast. That’s my simple ask. Talk soon. Bye now.
Motivation Is Overrated
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Motivation is overrated environment matters more. Welcome, or welcome back to Success with Srini. Today’s podcast episode is based on a book that I’ve read at 17,500 feet above sea level for nearly six weeks. Everything that I’m sharing today is based from this book. I’m going to give you the name of the author, and the name of the book towards the end of this podcast episode. But then, let me give you the backstory of how all this happened.
In 2019, I made an attempt to climb Mount Everest, the idea was to go all the way to the summit. And this was a dream that I was fostering for nearly 20 years. The first time I saw Mount Everest was 1999 and then 2019 is when I made a full attempt. The way you climb Mount Everest is you kind of hike up to about 17,500 feet, you stay there for nearly six weeks. And from there, in during those six weeks, you kind of go up to camp one, camp two, you come down, then you go to camp three, maybe you come down one more time. And then eventually, when the weather window opens, you go all the way from the base camp, all the way to the summit. Camp one, camp two, camp three, camp four into the summit. So there is a lot of waiting time involved, waiting for the weather to open and kind of getting the body acclimate and all that, a lot of time goes at the base camp.
Now while you are in the base camp, a lot of activity going on. Because you’re waiting for everything to happen, things to come together, though, the way we spend our time at the basec amp is by talking to other people, maybe listening to music or some talks, and reading. Now if you have your books on your portable devices, on your phone, or your iPad and things like that, now you are draining energy. If you read books on your phone, then you’re draining the battery charging, battery is expensive. Because you’re depending on solar energy, so solar panels to charge your batteries. And if you have cloudy days, then sometimes you are unlucky. And because there are a lot of people, nearly 4,000 people at the base camp, everybody is going through the same Wi Fi line even though there is internet, so there is not much you can do on the internet either. So given these two restrictions, what I decided to do was I decided to carry some books, physical books.
And while in Kathmandu right before the start of the expedition, I went around to different bookstores there. And I picked up this book that I heard about this book before. But then I saw the book and I said Ah okay, glad I found it. I bought the book. And the downside of this is because I wanted to read this book along the way, right, there are multiple days that go by before you start kind of hiking from the south side. If you want to climb Everest, you have to start from local and then you keep on going. You hike up a day you stay a day, and then you hike up, you stay kind of stay in one of this tea houses. So I wanted to carry this book with me because I wanted to read the book as I was hiking up to the base camp. Now every time you add a book or anything of has some weight, you are adding weight to your backpack. So there is also some physical stress involved with it because you raise the the weight of your backpack now you may get tired and all that. So I did get tired reading this book because I was carrying this book in my backpack all the way to the base camp. So I had to read it, I read it. That’s the backstory, you see almost four minutes gone, telling you the backstory.
In this book, the author talks about how motivation is overrated, and environment is everything. It gives an example of a doctor by the name Annie Thorndyke at the General Hospital in Boston, she along with her team decided that she wanted to change the eating and drinking habits of all the visitors and the staff of the hospital without asking them to do anything. All she did was she studied the layout of the cafeteria and she made some changes. She rearranged the drinks in the cafeteria. So the sorta vent to the refrigerator that was next to the cashier that was behind the cafeteria and she placed multiple water stations in different locations inside the cafeteria. At the end of three or six months, there was a drop of 11.4% in soda sales, and there was an increase of 25.8% in water sales.
People choice of products is not what they are but where they are.
Case in point, people choice of products is not what they are but where they are. Take that statement into your life right now. You’ll see you’re buying things because of where you found them not because what they are. There was a discussion I had the other day with a friend of mine. He said, “Srini, many people listen to your podcast, because they are from the radio.” True. In fact, you know the environment, right? So you majority of the listeners of this podcast will maybe you yourself, too. You heard me on the radio, because I was there and you were there listening and I was there speaking, I told you to listen to this podcast. So the environment suggested you would I gave you a cue to come to this podcast. Otherwise, let me tell you there are incredible speakers. There are zillion podcasts. I’m nowhere. And I don’t think that I’m anywhere. It so happens that because I was in along with you in the same environment and I gave you a cue to come here you are here. So our habits are based on the cues of the environment within which we are in environment plays a hand in shaping our behavior.
In 1936, Kurt Lenin came up with a simple formula. He said behavior equals the function of the person in the environment, B = F or P comma E. In 1952, economist Hawkins Stern came up with a phenomenon suggestive impulse buying. What it means is a shopper sees a product and imagines the need for it. I personally remember a story. Back in the day when Borders was still around, you to step into the border store right at the entrance. You see this rack with beautiful magazines and primarily the one or two three magazines in the front. Were all bikes like Harley Davidson or Honda bikes, and on the bikes are this beautiful models. And as I started going deep into marketing back then, I started to understand you know, people are buying these magazines or buying because this magazines and the pictures on this magazines, the cover design and all. They all speak to some unconscious needs they have, which is if I get this bike, maybe I can have this beautiful life and maybe this beautiful girl. All these are unconscious patterns. Now interestingly, people who do buy these magazines will never end up buying a bike. Even for example, the Ferrari magazine, people who buy this Ferrari magazine for expensive car magazines or bike magazines, they will never ever end up buying those bikes. It’s all in their imagination or the cars all in the imagination. Been a shopper cease products at the line of sight. That means products are placed to the height at their eye level. Those products move faster from the aisles than the products that are placed below the aisles.
Our actions are not shaped by purposeful drive and choice but by the most obvious option.
So you want to move a product quickly in the store, place them at the eyeline. Coca Cola sales are up 45% more because they are placed at the end of the aisle racks. Interesting. People drink more Bud Light because it’s widely available in all the bars. People drink more Starbucks because it’s available at every corner of the state. Many of our actions are not shaped by purposeful drive and choice but by the most obvious option. We are talking about our perceptions. We are talking about what we are seeing eagles. They have long distance vision. Snakes taste air with their tongue and move in the environment. Sharks detect electricity in the water and other vibrations from other fish. Bacteria have chemo receptors that detect toxic chemicals. We humans our senses. We have five obvious senses, which is touch, sight, smell, sound and taste but there are many unconscious senses that are activated in our system. For example, if my blood pressure goes down and I fall down, chances are my body automatically moves towards eating salt. If I feel less energy than my body automatically moves towards eating sugar. If I feel thirsty, my body automatically moves towards drinking water, need for salt need for sugar need for water. They’re all unconscious functions of the body.
What we see is what we do.
Most of our senses are in our vision, there are 11 million sensory receptors in the human body, out of which 10 million or two sight, the brain spends most of its energy processing what it sees. visual cues are greater cues of our behavior. What we see is what we do. You see if queues are making us productive, or unproductive, or defining our behavior and our character, why not we have productive queues. And why not we identify those which are unproductive and get rid of them. If you are a listener of this podcast, many many days ago, I talked about how to create tiny habits. And one example I was sharing in one of those podcast episodes was if you want to go hike on you want to go run in the morning, then why not have your running close next to the bed. If you want to drink water more often, why not fill the place your house or the area where you’re operating with multiple water bottles.
The entire content from today’s podcast comes from this book called Atomic Habits. And Atomic Habits is written by James Clear, profound writing, profound observations, incredible book. I read this book multiple times. Specifically, everything that I shared on this podcast comes from Chapter Six of this book, titled Motivation is Overrated, Environment Often Matters More. Get this book, not from the library, but buy this book. Read it and I promising you your life is gonna change. Thank you for being a subscriber. Thank you for being a listener. If you’d like to this podcast, give a rating write a review. And I’ll be back here again tomorrow with an interesting story. Stay tuned. Bye now.