Poke the Box: Don’t Set a Bad Goal

Let’s Start with Safal Niveshak
Just in case you missed any of this on Safal Niveshak in the last week…

• In investing, knowledge is cumulative and the relation between effort and results is nonlinear, so focus on the process and keep practicing the art of investing.
• For investors, like airline pilots, the job entails hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. If you can stomach the stock market turbulence you’ll end up with very satisfactory results over long term.

Book Worm
Derek Sivers is the perfect example of what one might want to call as an accidental entrepreneur.

He was a musician who simply wanted to sell his music CDs online. In 1998 the internet was still picking up and e-commerce was pretty much an unknown phenomenon. So Derek started his own website to sell his music CDs online which, to his utter surprise, grew into a multi-million dollar business. He eventually sold his business, CDBaby.com, for $22 million.

Derek’s approach to business is very unconventional but makes a lot of sense. He has compiled his business philosophy in a small book called Anything You Want. It was an absolute treat to read this book. I just couldn’t put it down and ended up finishing this 100 page book in one sitting.

Sivers writes –

I realized I had accidentally started a business. But I didn’t want to start a business! I was already living my dream life as a full-time musician. I didn’t want anything to distract me from that.

So, I thought that by taking an unrealistically utopian approach, I could keep the business from growing too much. Instead of trying to make it big, I was going to make it small. It was the opposite of ambition, so I had to think in a way that was the opposite of ambitious.

The key point is that I wasn’t trying to make a big business. I was just daydreaming about how one little thing would look in a perfect world. When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws. This is your utopia. When you make it a dream come true for yourself, it’ll be a dream come true for someone else, too.

That’s a strange way to approach the idea of entrepreneurship. But I think it’s the ideal way to get started in any business. It’s should be an extension of what you’re already doing or want to do.

Sivers didn’t have any background into building website, so he bought few programming books and taught himself how to write software for an online webstore. The way he would recruit people was to ask his friends for anybody who was looking for work and then get them started immediately without even interviewing.

Ironically, the more Sivers tried to limit the business, the more it grew.

Five years after I started CD Baby, when it was a big success, the media said I had revolutionized the music business. But “revolution” is a term that people use only when you’re successful. Before that, you’re just a quirky person who does things differently.

If you think your life’s purpose needs to hit you like a lightning bolt, you’ll overlook the little day-to-day things that fascinate you. When you’re on to something great, it won’t feel like revolution. It’ll feel like uncommon sense.

I hope you too are on to something uncommon sensical. If you’re not then get started soon.

As an aside, you must watch the TED talks that Sivers has given. They are not only very thought provoking but very entertaining too.

Stimulate Your Mind
Here’s some amazing content we read in recent times…

• An interesting thought experiment to start your day – If you lost everything, would you look back or forward?
• Different ways that Ben Graham’s ideas have been used over the past 6+ decades. Ben Graham’s family tree.
• Howard Marks on 16 pieces of market wisdom and rules of thumb that aren’t true.
• How the difference between your experiencing self and your remembering self shapes your happiness.

Start something uncommon sensical.

Set the right goal and attack the present moment.

Stay happy, stay blessed and keep poking!