A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand”. - Vince Lombardi Life is full of ups and downs. However the way you live up to challenges and hardships will determination your success or failure. World’s most successful people in various fields faced tremendous failures and yet they emerged winners only because they saw the failures as stepping stone to success. John Rampton, our cover guest is one such hero who despite meeting with a tragic accident and unable to walk turned things in his favor and became a successful entrepreneur and internet influencer. You will learn a lot about success in personal and business life from his inspirational story.
would give to his younger self. We have some great advice from the likes of Steve Pavlina, Leo Babauta and interviews from entrepreneurs like Rahi Jain of IndiaRush.com and Krešimir Končić of NeuraLab. We also have some great deals on software and tools for your business growth. We hope that you will like the issue as much as we like it while designing and conceptualizing the Issue.
The Editor
Pete Williams
Editor-in-chief PETE WILLIAMS
Contributors LEO BABAUTA STEVE PAVLINA JOHN RAMPTON BILL GATES RAHI JAIN KREŠIMIR KONČIĆ
Image Credits freepik.com, unsplash.com
Design
THE CREATIVE CHIMNEY
(www.thecreativechimney.com)
ART DIRECTOR KANIKA GUPTA
U p Scale You will also learn from the world’s richest person Bill Gates about his views on future and the lessons he
13 small things to simplify 15 your workday
john rampton
meet
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27 How to Become More Successful
Bill Gates
on life, success and future
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Rahi Jain
on starting & scaling
IndiaRush.com
07 40 Success
Success
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small things to simplify your workday
One of the best things I did when I decided to simplify my life was to simplify my workday — first at my day job and later, by quitting my day job, in the work I do now as a writer and entrepreneur. I’ve eliminated most of the routine, boring, administrative tasks with a few simple principles. These days, I have eliminated the nonessentials, and can focus on what I truly love: creating. Not everyone can make such drastic steps toward simplicity, but if you have some control over your workday, you can do a few small things that will simplify things greatly. If you don’t have control, or if you find yourself thinking, “I can’t do these things”, I’d start to ask why not? Is it possible to change things, if not today then over the long term? I found that often I thought something wasn’t possible (working from home, for example), but in the long run they were. You don’t need to do all of these things — pick just one, and try it. Then try another and see if it works. Experiment to find what works for you. And enjoy the simple work life.
Start early.
working 6 hours today, you’ll be sure to get the important tasks done first and waste less time. Limits force you to be effective.
Make a short list.
Make a long list of all the tasks you need to do … then make a short list of 1-3 things you really want to get done. Choose so that, if you got only these tasks done, you’d be proud of what you did today. Start with the most important task, before checking email or reading online.
Batch distractions.
What are your common distractions? Perhaps things like email, reading blogs, Twitter or another social network? Set a time for these, preferably later in the day: say, from 3-4 p.m. Don’t do the distractions before then. By grouping them all into one time period, you allow yourself to do other work first, but still get in your distraction time. Another approach might be to do them for 10 minutes at the end of each hour — but stick to that 10-minute limit!
Write shorter emails.
If email takes up a lot of your day, the Going into work early was one of my simple change of limiting yourself to favorite tricks — it was quiet, before 3-4 sentences per email will make a big the phones and chatter and meetings difference. First, it’ll drastically shorten started, and I could get a lot of work done the time it takes to write or respond to in peace. By the time everyone else was emails. And second, it’ll shorten responses getting started, I’d gotten two or three to your emails, which means you’ll spend big tasks checked off. less time reading email.
Limit your hours.
“DO THE DIFFICULT THINGS WHILE THEY ARE EASY AND DO THE GREAT THINGS WHILE THEY ARE SMALL. A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES MUST BEGIN WITH A SINGLE STEP.” 03 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 9
~LAO TZU
It’s ironic, because so many people work long hours and think they’re getting more done and being more productive. But they’re throwing brute hours at the problem. Instead, cut back on your hours and set a limit — say 6 or 7 hours a day — and get your most essential work done within that limit. If you know you’re only
Limit meetings.
The fewer the better. Some top Google executives just do 5-minute meetings — anyone who attends these meetings had better be prepared, and concise. If you can get out of meetings and just get the notes, or find an alternative way to communicate, it could save you hours per week. ISSUE 9 | SCALEUP | 02
Automate.
The fewer repetitive and routine tasks you have to do, the more time you’ll free up for creating and important work. So automate wherever possible: have people fill things out electronically, or get info from your website instead of emailing or calling you, or use a service that automatically processes payments or ships your product, and so on.
desk, and take a breathing break. It could be simply walking around the office, saying hi to someone, or even better, getting outside to get some fresh air. Walk around, get your blood circulating, perhaps massage your neck and shoulders if you feel tension. Do some pushups if you want to get fitter. When you get back to work, remind yourself what you want to be working on, and clear away all distractions.
Eliminate paperwork.
Practice a focus ritual.
I used to deal with a lot of paperwork, and even then I knew it was a waste of my time. If businesses and organizations could have paperwork filled out electronically, it would save a lot of paper, copying, filing, and duplicate effort. Whenever possible, eliminate paperwork in favor of digital. This might be more of a long-term move.
Clear your desk.
This can be done in a few minutes. Clear everything off the top of your desk. Only put back a few essential items. Everything else should be: filed, given to the appropriate person, given a permanent spot in a drawer, or trashed/recycled. Make quick decisions and then get back to work.
Get away.
If you can get out of your office, you can find a peaceful spot where you can focus on important work. Find a spot where you can work, turn off the Internet and do your work, and then turn the Internet back on so you can email or upload it to the appropriate spot. Working from home is a good option here. The more you can do this (it might be once a week, or an hour a day, or half of every workday), the better.
Take breathing breaks.
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Every hour or two, do a refocus ritual. This only takes a minute or two. You might start it by closing down your browser and maybe other open applications, and maybe even take a walk for a couple of minutes to clear your head and get your blood circulating. Then return to your list of Most Important Tasks and figure out what you need to accomplish next. Before you check email again or go back online, work on that important task for as long as you can. Repeat this refocus ritual throughout the day, to bring yourself back. It’s also nice to take some nice deep breaths to focus yourself back on the present.
Schedule big blocks of creative time.
Not everyone can do this, but when possible, put a big block of 3-4 hours in your schedule for creating or doing other important work. Make this time inviolate, and don’t allow meetings or other things to be scheduled during this time. Be ruthless about clearing distractions and doing the work you love during these blocks, taking breathing breaks as necessary. Rejoice in your creativity.
- Leo Babauta
success
How to Become More Successful
How do you feel about people who are very successful? What’s your attitude toward the movers and shakers in your field? Do you admire and respect them? Do you speak highly of them? Or are you suspicious of them? Do you criticize or attack them? What’s the true role of these people in your life? What do they represent?
Subjectively speaking, your relationship with the most successful people in your reality represents your relationship to success itself. Those people represent your potential and how you feel about it. I use the term “relationship” to mean your general attitude toward people who are ultrasuccessful. It doesn’t matter if you know them personally because your relationships are all in your mind anyway. If you don’t know any very successful people personally, but you still hold strong opinions about some of them, that is very telling as well. It indicates that you don’t have a close personal relationship with your own success potential. On the other hand, if you count highly successful people among your closest and dearest friends and family, that’s equally telling. It suggests that you have a close personal connection to your own success potential. 07 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 9
success
Birds of a feather
Objectively speaking, successful people flock together. You really don’t see highly successful people all by themselves, surrounded by those who have a negative attitude towards success. The movers and shakers in any field tend to be friends and often hang out together. Similarly, people who have a negative attitude toward success flock together as well. If you want to get a better picture of your own relationship to success, look to the people you hang out with. Do you befriend a lot of successful people? Or do you hang out with those who resent them or who are envious of them? This will give you a good picture of your relationship to success itself. It’s all too easy to say that you have a successful attitude, but if you keep company with those who shun success, you’re incongruent. Successful and unsuccessful people tend to repel each other, at least in terms of forming close friendships. One reason is that unsuccessful people are constantly complaining. They’re veritable fountains of grievances. They do it dozens of times per day, usually without being aware of it. If you ask them what they think of any random ISSUE 9 | SCALEUP | 08
success celebrity, it’s a virtual guarantee they’ll focus mainly on what they don’t like about that person.
success I’ve met people who have a lot of money, but their attitude toward successful people is so negative, they repel such people everywhere they go. I’ve also met people who are dead broke, but they easily attract highly successful mentors to help them out, and it isn’t long before their external world begins to reflect their inner truth.
Successful people, on the other hand, are constantly talking about their dreams, goals, and projects. This doesn’t mean they’re blindly optimistic about everything. They simply have a strong tendency to focus on what they want. They inspire and motivate themselves, and they inspire and When you harbor negative feelings toward motivate each other. successful people, you push success away. When you harbor positive feelings toward When you put the two different types of them, your own success draws nearer. people together, you have the unsuccessful people talking about their grievances, I’ve seen a very basic form of this advice in which annoys and disturbs the highly many books on wealth and success. You’ve successful people if overdone. Initially a probably encountered it as well. It goes successful person may try to help out by something like, “If you hate wealthy and offering advice or mentoring. But when successful people, you’ll never be one of she observes that the unsuccessful person them because you won’t allow yourself to applies none of it and comes up with become something you hate.” excuses to maintain the status quo, it’s an immediate turnoff. The successful person There’s some truth to that, but I think it’s will usually bow out and go where his/her easier to see why it works when you view it talents and skills are appreciated. through the lens of subjective reality. Since your relationships are all in your mind, your Similarly, you have the successful people relationship towards any particular class of constantly yabbering on about their goals people is a reflection of your relationship and dreams. This annoys the unsuccessful with whatever those people represent to people to no end. They can’t stand it. you. They’ll often try to “help” the successful This means that you can understand your people by cautioning them about negative relationship to success by exploring your outcomes. But successful people aren’t relationships with the most successful phased and continue to press on anyway. people in your reality. The unsuccessful person can’t keep up and ducks out. Are the most successful people in your life close to you? Do you count them among your dearest friends? Or are they way off in the distance somewhere?
Attitude
Do you love successful people? Do you Being successful or unsuccessful isn’t speak highly of them? Do you feel loved about how much money or status you’ve and appreciated by them? Or do you shun achieved. It’s an internal quality. It’s your them? Do they shun you? Do you move in attitude. totally different circles? Who do you think is responsible for that? 09 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 9
A simple exercise
represent to them, perhaps their own relationship to personal growth since that’s what I write about.
Select a person you regard as very successful. It doesn’t matter if you’ve actually met the person. I’ve noticed that people who hold a low opinion of personal development Take a few minutes to write down your thoughts will invariably hold similar thoughts about this person, including what you like and toward me. I’m lame or stupid because don’t like. Then read back what you wrote as if of what I represent to them. Those you’ve been writing about your own relationship who love personal development and to success. have a strong relationship with their own growth tend to feel good about I think you’ll find this me. I’m helpful or brilliant because of exercise very insightful. what I represent. What if you’ve never even met the other I’m just using this as a general example. person? How can you To a lot of people I represent growth possibly know what and change because that’s what I write they’re like? Where is about, so this is the role people assign your attitude really me in their reality. But of course it coming from? Your own could be something entirely different. beliefs about success It’s your reality, so you assign the roles. are filtering it. What do I represent in your reality? Can you see how your attitude toward me is a reflection of your attitude toward whatever I represent? Is it possible you’re assigning qualities to me that may be inaccurate and that Have you ever been told that someone you’ve your opinion might shift if we had a never met holds a certain attitude toward you. face-to-face conversation?
Seeing it from the other side
“Joe absolutely adores you; he talks about you all the time.” “Mary thinks you’re a loser; she talks about you behind your back.” Does it strike you as odd that people could form such strong opinions about you without actually meeting you?
I get this all the time as a blogger. Lots of people hold strong opinions about me, but the ones with the strongest opinions have never even met me. To back up their opinions, they select a few clips to support their opinion from the nearly 2 million words I’ve written. Of course they’re really selecting to match their beliefs about whatever I
How to become more successful If you wish to become more successful, then work on improving your relationship with the most successful people in your life. Forgive them. Befriend them. Love them. Do whatever it takes. ISSUE 9 | SCALEUP | 10
success Forgive, love, and befriend the part of yourself that wants to have a positive connection to success. This doesn’t mean hanging out with people whose values and morals disgust you. Just loosen your grip on some of your criticisms. Realize that successful people are human. Notice what blocks come up. What is it about highly successful people that really bugs you? For example, if you get caught up in thinking about their character and personality flaws, what does that say about you? Does it mean that in order for you to have a close relationship with success, you must be perfect? Is that realistic? Can you see that you’re always going to repel success with that attitude because you’ll never be perfect?I’ve seen this happen with some of my longterm readers. I write hundreds of articles they love, but as soon as I write about that one hot-button issue where we have a difference of opinion, they send me a nasty email and tell me I’ve lost them forever, despite numerous breakthroughs they previously thanked me profusely for helping them achieve. This often happens when they’re getting close to success in their own lives, but they aren’t ready for it. Do you expect every teacher or mentor to be perfect? Do you expect to see eye-toeye in every situation? Will you run away forever if someone challenges you in a way you don’t like? 11 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 9
success Is this how you’d like to see other people deal with your success? Do you want them to put you on a pedestal, to analyze your every action, to expect perfection from you at all times? Or would you prefer to be treated like a human being, accepted and loved as you are? Is this how you relate to the successful people in your life? What if you believe that successful people are greedy? Do you ever complain that they should donate more to charity? What does that say about you? Are you more greedy than you realize but secretly resentful of your own selfishness? Do you feel you should be donating more than you are? What do you think about enjoying the rewards of success? Can you feel good when some celebrity rewards themselves? Do you feel guilty about rewarding yourself with a treat now and then? Or do you feel good about it, knowing that rewarding yourself helps motivate you to create even more value for others?
Becoming congruent with success We all have blocks that keep us out of harmony with our great potential. The people in our lives are always reflecting that inner attitude back to us. To fix the inner attitude problem, you must at some point admit that you were wrong and forgive yourself for it. “I was wrong about so-and-so. Perhaps he isn’t such a bad guy after all. Maybe he’s just human. I will do my best to love and accept him as he is.”
You can extend what I’ve said about success to any quality or character trait. Your feelings toward sexy people reflects your relationship with your own sexiness. Your feelings toward healthy people reflects your relationship with health. Your feelings toward rich people reflects your relationship with wealth. Your feelings toward creative people reflects your relationship with your own creativity. Your feelings toward highly productive people reflects your relationship with productivity. Your feelings toward highly spiritual people reflects your relationship with spirituality.
As within, so without When you make the inner adjustment, your external world will shift to reflect the inner change.
Recently I did some inner work on my attitude towards certain people. My block had to do with people who spend money on nonessentials, sometimes as a way of rewarding themselves. Spending money on nonessential items would usually make me How do you feel about psychics? Are you feel uncomfortable, even if I could easily skeptical? Do you feel they’re all frauds and afford it. charlatans? Do you harbor serious doubts about their so-called gifts? If so, does it surprise you that your own psychic senses are virtually nonexistent? Do you wonder why your intuition is so cloudy that you can never trust it? On the other hand, do you feel that psychics are loving people with a special gift to share? Do you accept their guidance with gratitude? Is it any wonder that you’re also able to gain much value from your own intuitive and psychic senses? Do other people comment on how gifted you are? If you hate or distrust certain people, you’re pushing away that Erin part of yourself. If you love and accept and I certain people, you’re in harmony with that had a 13part of yourself. year old couch in our home that was ripped in a couple places and You can massively accelerate your personal pretty ratty looking. One of the built-in growth by tweaking these relationships recliners was broken. She’d been talking consciously and deliberately. It’s all in your about getting a new couch for at least a mind anyway. couple years, probably longer, but I always ISSUE 9 | SCALEUP | 12
success blocked her. “This couch is fine. We don’t need to spend money on a new one.” We had plenty of money though, and a new couch wouldn’t make a serious dent in our finances. She tried to get us to go couch shopping a few times, but I rejected her choices. There was always something wrong with them.
Even working through small blocks can bring more success into your life, sometimes in unexpected ways. Around the same time I was working through this block, some new interview requests came in. Later this month Deepak Chopra will be interviewing me for his radio show, and next month Jack Canfield is scheduled to interview me as well. Did they appear on my radar as a After doing some inner work on my attitude result of my inner shift? toward spending money and enjoying the rewards of success, I was able to get past Who are the people you hate most in your this block. We went couch shopping and life? Who are the people you love most? were helped by an exceedingly gregarious Can you admit that your attitude toward and non-pushy salesman. We shopped with those people is going to have to change if an attitude of positive expectancy and soon you want to change your relationship with found the perfect couch for our space. We what they represent? also found some great recliner chairs and small tables for one of our upstairs rooms, Can you see that if you harbor ill feelings and we bought those too. toward the top performers in your field, you’ll never become a top performer When we got home, Erin posted an ad on yourself? Craigslist to offer our old couch for free to anyone who was willing to pick it up. We would have donated it to charity, but most charities wouldn’t take it. Erin got about Steve Pavlina is widely recognized as 40 replies to her ad in 24 hours, and we one of the most successful personal gave the old couch to some people who development bloggers in the world, were grateful to squeeze more life out of with his work attracting more than it. 100 million visits to StevePavlina.com.
About the Author
I’m very much enjoying the new couch and chairs. In retrospect it seems like such a silly block to have. The solution was that I had to reassess my attitude toward people who use their money to reward themselves. I went from “What a waste of money; do they really need a new X?” to “Great to see people enjoying the rewards of success; they certainly deserve it!” Once I shifted my attitude toward others, my inner relationship with that aspect of abundance also changed. And soon my external reality came into harmony with the new attitude.
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He has written more than 1300 articles and recorded many audio programs on a broad range of selfhelp topics, including productivity, relationships, and spirituality.
About
John rampton John grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah and has been an entrepreneur his whole life. In 2006 he was working at a construction site trying to pay for college when he was run over by a large skidster. It snapped his left leg in half and pretty much crushed his dreams of walking again.
Over the next 12 months, he was confined to only his bed being sponge-bathed. He had 3 surgeries and was told that he would never walk again. In 2007 he began an experimental treatment to have stem-cells injected into his leg to regrow the bone. Over the next 6 months, he learned how to walk again by walking in the deep end of the pool and moving his way to the shallow end. This is something he feared that he would never do again, but he was determined to try everything possible to beat his odds. During this time he began to learn online marketing. He had no choice but to sit in his bed all day, even worse he had no way to make money but behind his computer. He would spend 1620 hours online a day. He learned what it takes to sell products online. Since then he has purchased, started, grown and sold several companies online with his latest company quadrupling a seven-figure revenue stream in 6 months. While his leg still bothers him some days, he views that trial as the literal stepping stone into his current career and it taught him to never give up. The lessons he learned from that day forward has helped make him who he is today. Now he basically teaches people everything he did to become an influencer like how he writes for sites like Tech Crunch, Mashable, etc. He teaches why people should think about influencer marketing, becoming their own influencer in their lives.
About due.com He is also the founder and CEO of Due.com, which is a payments platform. It works with freelancers and small business owners to pay and get paid online, so they can invoice their clients and easily get paid in a very quick manner. Its goal is to create a way for people from anyone, anywhere in the world and anyone to pay anyone, anywhere in the world with little to no costs. John oversees the whole company. He has a team, but he put out a lot of content. He is the brand and attends lots of conferences, meets with people, network, talks with small business owners and try to elevate Due’s brand in the best way possible. Their team right now is 7 full-time people and then a lot of contractors and part-time people. How to build a brand online? Building a brand online is all about you and the relationships you make. For John, it’s 15 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 9
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all a numbers game. So the more content he produces, the more conferences he goes to, the more people he talks with, the more influence he has, the more of a brand he is creating. When he writes a blog post, he puts out very, very good information that people will like. It’s the same as people with a brand – if you’re putting out an actual brand, you should be focused on the top quality and the top brand that you put out there
Due.com Journey Due.com has now almost 47000 customers. They have a full development team whereby they have several different developers that are working on a product and basically they go through and just try and make the product as best as possible. And once they have perfected it, they have a design team which goes in and make it look better. John adds that it really comes down to what their customers are willing to pay for and truly needs. Not what customers say they need, but what his team sees that they need. They are also facing few challenges as they grow. They always want to be bigger, stronger, faster. That’s something of a challenge. Scaling the right product for the right people. There’s a lot they can’t do – they want to do invoicing, they want to do payments, they want to be the digital wallet, they want to do these 3-4 amazing things so they kind of have to just pick one or two and work very hard on those and not work on the other. They are doing some cool things at Dew.com like they are working on basically a way for any person anywhere in the world to pay someone else. So it may not seem that revolutionary, but some of the laws and regulations around this are very, very skewed so they are using some blockchain technology to go up into the blockchain and down into another thing, down into another currency. Those are some of the other things, that’s basically giving a preview of some of the stuff they have patented and are working very heavily on to be able to create innovatively and help the world. He shares an example, “I have several people that work for me in India. And I want to pay them. It is very, very hard to pay someone in India from the United States and I want to make that easy. I want to make it as seamless as pointing at your cell phone and say ‘I send you $30’ and it’s in your bank account OQLT the next day. That’s what I want”.
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Scaling Businesses
erent, but in some ff di t bi e tl lit a e ar in every company kly. For example, ic qu ry ve , ry Growth and scalability ve ed al nies, they have sc t from 0 to 250 en w ey th , st of his previous compa pa e th e right used to work out in est thing is having th one company that he gg bi e th , m hi to g in t and Accord have the right produc employees in 2 years. to ve ha u Yo g. in th its aling a ers and revenue/prof om team when you’re sc st cu of am re st nt ial a consta , the team is very cruc have customers and gs in th o tw e os th ve est you ha ggests that the hard coming in. As long as su he So . ss ne si bu r of your k well with each othe or towards the scaling w at th rs be em m ht team thing is finding the rig product. and complement the
Finding Right Team Members “Finding the right people for me is about working together right”, says John. They find people typically through other people. People who work for them have friends or people they met online that they enjoy working with previous companies. They have found that those are the best out there and that we have the most success with those types of people.
Finding initial customers For John, it was actually pretty easy. He has a very strong reputation online so he can connect with customers. He sent out an email and they had like 1200 signups in one day. And then it cascaded from them. Their average customer drives 1.5 customers back every single month, so it’s exponentially growing which helps. “I think the key to it comes down to, you know, we’re trying to help out our customers be better at what they’re doing and as long as we’re doing that, they want to refer other people to us”, says John
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“Finding the right people for me is about working together right” ISSUE 9 | SCALEUP | 18
Thoughts on How to do more in a day? competition Just start doing it, start delegating. Delegate the easiest task first. “I like to think of my time as worth gold and I delegate things that other people can do, that they give me more time is worth more gold to me and it allows me to expand my time. So the things that make us the most amount of money, I spend the most amount of time on.”, advises John. If things aren’t making him money and someone else can easily do them, he typically delegates those on to other people. “Over time you just really have to learn that you can do it, you can give people work – you can delegate. But start small and then go big.”
How would you start from scratch? Start. You’re never going to have those business relationships if you don’t start. So start networking, start going to conferences, start blogging and start writing expert content out there and talking about the amazing people out there. Eventually, it will get to those people and they’ll be like oh my word, thank you! And reach back, a lot of people like helping other people out. “Get started today because you’ll never get to success if you don’t start” 19 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 9
The competition is always going to be there no matter what. And once you start becoming big, there will be a 1000 people trying to duplicate what you’re doing. He suggests not to worry too much about the competition. Worry about your customers and that they’re having the best experience possible because if they’re having the best experience possible they’re going to promote your product to other people and they’re going to disregard the competition.
That being said, pay attention. Sign up for all your competitors, know how they work, play around with their systems, get to know them so if they’re doing something amazing that you should be doing, then you can jump on that opportunity and take advantage of that. But know that they’re going to be doing the exact same thing with you. So, it really boils down to your customers and having the best relationship possible.
How to measure the success of your product? Revenue or signups, some type of numerical number behind that, whether it be revenue, signups, profit, engagement, it’s going to be different for every single business. They measure on signups, invoices sent and payment sent. And behemoths received. So the number of people that are signing up on the website, enabling payments and processing credit cards on their system.
How to focus? Prioritize your time better. Get off Facebook, stop tweeting and do other things before you. Prioritize the things you have to do before you even open your email. Just prioritize, prioritize, prioritize the things that are most important to you. And if something isn’t important to you, deprioritize it, put it at the very end of the list. Checking your Instagram or Facebook is not making you money and not very high on your priority list, and yet you’re checking it 2-3 times a day and it’s not providing you any value. So really evaluate what provides you value and revenue or money or whatever it is that’s important to you. Maybe keeping up with social and finding out what your friends are tweeting about is important to you, so you should prioritize that. But again, it comes down to prioritizing what’s most important to you.
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Secrets to being productive John blocks out schedules and blocks out times in his schedule. He also to be more productive. For him getting up and getting ready and going to the gym helps him be a lot more productive than doing it at the end of the day where he always finds an excuse not to go to the gym.
helps people block out his schedule. He also uses WordPress, Buffer to schedule all his social posts.
Reading as a hobby
John listens to audio books during his morning walks. Some of the books that he has read recently are the biography of Elon Musk, How to Win at the Sport of Business by Marc Cuban. Tony Robins – Money Mastery Mind, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, The Third Wave That helps him be more productive. He by Steve Case, Total Money Makeover by goes on daily walks, that helps him be more productive. But really when it comes David Ramsay, Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. He read or listen to one audiobook down to it, he schedules out his day to a week using iTunes. prioritize the things that are important to him. This helps him get more work done. He even schedules out breakfast for 15 minutes, lunch for 30 minutes and dinner with his family every night from 6-8 o’clock. If he does not do that, things come in the way of that. “So if you want to be more productive with being an influencer at your job, you need to block out and schedule times and silo different things. So go after the most important things first, the least important things after. Being an influencer is the exact same thing: block out time to start that journey”, says John.
Advice to entrepreneurs looking for growth Be true to yourself and really listen to your customer and work with your customer because they will grow your company 10 times faster than you could ever grow it.
“Get started today because you’ll never get to success if you don’t start”
-John rampton
Tools used John admits being an old-fashioned. He uses his iPhone and his Calendar. He recently started using Calendly app which is basically a calendar app that lets people schedule out things with him and also 21 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 9
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book recommendation
Deep Work:
Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you’ll achieve extraordinary results. Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way. In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four “rules,” for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill. A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, DEEP WORK takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. DEEP WORK is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.
Cal Newport is a writer and a professor of computer science at Georgetown University. He is the author of five books and runs the popular advice blog, Study Hacks, which attempts to decode “patterns of success” in both school and the working world. His contrarian ideas on building a successful, meaningful life have been featured on TV, radio, and in many major publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York Post. ISSUE 9 | SCALEUP | 26
meet
Krešimir Končić Tell us about your professional journey so far.
I went through all possible web development jobs - from design, development, PM, QA and now working with a team of 20 creative people as a Neuralab director. My background is mostly technical and i have worked during studies on Neural Networks and AI. Hence the name of the company - Neuralab.
Tell us about your company. What challenges you faced while growing your company and what you did to fix them.
Neuralab is a team of multidisciplinary people (content, design and development) that focuses it’s projects around big eCommerce web applications. We are a WooCommerce Gold expert, Mailchimp and Google partner and we provide enterprise clients with a means for them to sell their products online. Our biggest challenge is finding quality team members. We are tackling this by providing all team members with high grade projects, mentorship, working hours and location flexibility, compensation based on skill set and overall stress-free comparadrie working zone.
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Your Successes/ failures in life.
My failures are connected with projects that i wanted to produce outside of our agreed way of working. Also, playing with technologies outside of our focus and scope (and without clear vision) have always been failures. My success is that we are now 9 years into web development business, never slowed down and have pretty high rating in eCommerce world - we are awarded as Top 3 eCommerce team in the whole world
How do you keep yourself productive and motivated?
Trello. Our design flow includes working with feedback on InVision and producing interactive prototypes on Figma
Gym is my number one source of productiveness. Without it i’m feeling sluggish, slow and pretty bad. I’m not into hardcore training program (probably should), but i am always up to the any business challenge when i am going regularly to the gym. Reading books and high quality magazines like Wired or Monocle always keeps me pumped up about the industry and trends.
We have a multi step process where we get to know the person in a one week payed mini project work. We are looking first for a team fit; then communication and overall people skill and only then; core technical skill such as level of PHP or SQL. Our team can work from our Zagreb HQ location or through remote work. Generally, we are seeking people that are not afraid to explore and to communicate early and often.
What choices you made What do you do to keep in your life which made a yourself on growth significant difference path? in your life? I am always seeking new challenges for I learned that “showing up” is 80% of all the difference. Never backing down from challenge and always doing hard (but smart) work is a key that made the most difference in my life.
Walk us through your work day?
Writing, writing and writing is my first task for the day (articles, content marketing, blog posts, projects documentation, emails to clients etc.). I try to keep writing for several hours while i am fresh and inspired. We have lunch together in the company around noon were i eat just some smallish thing to keep me going. After that i have several hours of mentorship work, project and finance management. This second part of the day is focused around team and working directly with people. Around 6 pm i go home to dinner, gym, reading book, going out with friends and girlfriend. Anything that is not-related to business as i need to clear my head and juice up with other sorts of energy. 29 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 9
the team and myself. For instance, when new Neuralab teamster arrives, we work together on a new software module or new plugin that will be live on GitHub. We chose some new tech and functions that we have never worked before and try to code it to maximum perfection. We always incorporate interactive design and content / copywriting work into our software development process so it’s interesting and fresh. Growing team is also my personal growth path as it’s pretty different to manage juniors and seniors. They both have their own needs and wishes.
What tools/apps do you use for managing work and life?
Our main office tool is Google apps (everything from Google). Development is based around JIRA for project management, Harvest for time tracking and BitBucket for handling code deploys. Content marketing production is based around
How do you hire your team? What traits you look for while hiring?
Your favorite books?
what advice did you get which changed your life?
Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott), On writing I pretty much had to experience advices in (Stephen King), A Short History of Nearly both positive and negative way. I think you Everything (Bill Bryson) need to live it for yourself and that advices are too subjective to be implemented in real life. You can listen to them, but most People who have of our problems basically boil down to inspired you and made working hard and stepping outside of your comfort zone. No advice will be needed if a difference in your you are constantly doing these two things.
life.
My parents. They are very different so they both influenced my in different ways. What advice would you My mother is really productive by nature give to people looking and she “gets shit done”. I learned from her that grit beats talent all the time. for success and My father is a skilled orator and a really growth in personal excellent communicator. I learned from him that communication is the essence and professional life? of all the mutual work that our team fall Go to gym and read books. The rest will follow. apart without it. ISSUE 9 | SCALEUP | 30
Bill Gates on life, success and future
success
success Bill Gates is a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist. He grew up in Seattle, Washington, with an amazing and supportive family who encouraged his interest in computers at an early age. He dropped out of college to start Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. He married Melinda French in 1994 and they have three children. Today, Bill and Melinda Gates co-chair the charitable foundation bearing their names and are working together to give their wealth back to society. Bill grew up in Seattle with his two sisters. His dad, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney and one of the co-chairs of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International. In a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) chat, he interacted with people around the world. People asked him all kinds of questions. We compiled some of the best answers which will help you learn a lot about life and success from him. For a more detailed view of his thoughts visit https:// redd.it/5whpqs
Advice to 19 year old self
Smartness is not single dimensional and not quite as important as I thought it was back then. I would say you might explore the developing world before you get into your forties. I wasn’t very good socially back then but I am not sure there is advice that would fix that - maybe I had to be awkward and just grow up.
His greatest achievement
Although the Gates Foundation work is super promising and will be the biggest thing over the decades ahead I still think the chance to be part of the software revolution empowering people was the biggest thing I have gotten to do. Right now I am very focused on making sure we successfully eradicate polio that will be amazing if we do it - as good as shipping even the best software product.
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success
His idea of success
Warren Buffett has always said the measure is whether the people close to you are happy and love you. It is also nice to feel like you made a difference - inventing something or raising kids or helping people in need.
Where does he see himself in 15 years
I will be 76 at that time. Hopefully a grandfather. The Gates Foundation with its partners will have eradicated a number of diseases and health in poor countries will be a lot better - specifically instead of 5% of children under 5 dying it should be at 2.5% which is still a lot.
Favorite vacation spot
Australia is particularly nice. It is summer there when it is winter here so going there in December and January is especially nice. I spent Thanksgiving there last year. I have gotten to travel to a lot of great places like the Amazon in Brazil which I recommend.
Future technological advancement he wishes to see
The big milestone is when computers can read and understand information like humans do. There is a lot of work going on in this field - Google, Microsoft, Facebook, academia. Right now computers don’t know how to represent knowledge so they can’t read a text book and pass a test. Another whole area is vaccines. We need a vaccine for HIV, Malaria and TB and I hope we have them in the next 10-15 years.
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success Book Description: A groundbreaking look at why our interactions with others hold the key to success, from the bestselling author of Originals For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But in today’s dramatically reconfigured world, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. In Give and Take, Adam Grant, an awardwinning researcher and Wharton’s highest-rated professor, examines the surprising forces that shape why some people rise to the top of the success ladder while others sink to the bottom. Praised by social scientists, business theorists, and corporate leaders, Give and Take opens up an approach to work, interactions, and productivity that is nothing short of revolutionary.
About Author: Adam Grant has been Wharton’s top-rated teacher for four straight years. He has been recognized as one of the world’s 25 most influential management thinkers and the world’s top 40 business professors under 40. Adam is the author of two New York Times bestselling books translated into 34 languages. Originals explores how individuals champion new ideas and leaders fight groupthink; it is a #1 national bestseller and one of Amazon’s best books of February 2016. Give and Take examines why helping others drives our success, and was named one of the best books of 2013 by Amazon, Apple, the Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal—as well as one of Oprah’s riveting reads and Harvard Business Review’s ideas that shaped management. 37 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 9
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Rahi Jain on starting & scaling IndiaRush.com
In an email interview, He talks about his company’s growth and its various challenges.
“If you stick your ground and keep exploring options, things always work out” 03 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 9
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1. Describe your company, products, and customers
3. How did you overcome those challenges?
5. How do you attract, hire and retain talent?
with right mind space in the customer’s mind. We are working on it. Hopefully, you will see results in next six months.
We are a fashion e-commerce IndiaRush. com since 2012. We endeavor to create trendiest fashion destination for our customers. We believe in idea to make fashion reachable to masses and benefiting from the online shopping experience. Online shopping is a rage now, and everexpanding field with limitless possibilities in India. Also, we cater to audiences outside India, who need Indian ethnic wear. We are now a team of 40+ strong and growing. We are still small in the big ocean considering our competition, but we are in for the long run and happy with our growth.
As we two co-founders, we split the work between us to take care of each major challenges. Good backend takes a lot of processes and technology support to run smoothly. Sometimes, we fail to provide the best service to the customer, but then we look at the feedback and solve the root cause of issue either by technology or better communication between parties involved. It’s an iterative process, as you need to keep evolving your metrics.
Teamwork is essential for any startup to grow. To keep learning phase short, we generally attract talent from our competitors. Referral is the best way to go about it. Earlier we used to hire only industry experienced people, but now we have started hiring fresh talent also, as they bring a new perspective to the table. To build healthy culture we follow the open culture of sharing. We even share our most figures with everyone in the organization, not just with higher management. Also, we have open discussions about processes, so anyone can pitch in with suggestions. We try to bring everyone on the same page about future of the organization.
9. How do you see your competition? is it a threat?
6. What are your values?
10. How do you make your people (employees, customers, stakeholders) happy?
2. What are some of the challenges you faced while growing your company?
As for marketing, we explored many options to reach our best audience which helps us to grow our business. To sustain for the long run, we always placed a high emphasis on ROI driven marketing. Everything in marketing was measured and changed if it’s not suiting our parameters of being a successful campaign. We stopped us from getting into the high-risk bleeding game of selling at loss and focused on right audiences. Even we stopped targeting on price-conscious customers, as price should not be only deciding factor for purchase. (Although it’s a major part, which we drive from our operations)
I believe we are still in growing phase. As we see e-commerce, it’s a middle layer between suppliers and end consumers. Currently, due to unorganized retail being a major chunk of Indian retail, backend needed a lot of work from our end to organize the retail sector. Backend supply of products in a seamless fashion in good quality at 4. How important technology best price with reaching the customer on time is a major challenge for us, as with all plays a role in your growth? marketplaces. We continue to evolve our Technology plays a big role in our industry. processes to make it more seamless. Everything which can be automated Secondly, being in online space reaching should be automated. Being a startup, we consumers was a big challenge (and still is) use technology to keep our costs down at least at starting phase of business. We and provide better service to consumers. needed to invest a lot of energy and time We don’t go overboard with technology in learning best way to reach consumers usage, as human touch is very important keeping our marketing ROI (which is very (say like in customer care) but automation really helps. Being from IT background, important for startups like us) in check. Plus, being not from management we understand the role of technology and positions in our past job profiles, we are have to build it as a major pillar of our organization. always exploring right company culture. 41 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 9
We see competition as healthy currently. As online retail is a small part of the overall retail market in India, we need some big movers and shakers in the industry to disrupt the whole eco-system. Many big players like Flipkart, Snapdeal are making people shop online. Once we have more awareness about online shopping, it will indirectly benefit us in long run. Currently, we have a very small market for online shoppers, big players are helping to expand the pool.
We believe in fair values with all stakeholders involved. We are mainly here for our customers. We are here for the long run, so we avoid taking any shortcuts The happiness of all stakeholders is to success. necessary to build a healthy business and survival. We cannot make someone 7. What keeps you awake at for happy at expense of others. We tend to night? give customers and employees preference over others in that order, but for sustaining Many things actually. Currently at this you have to be fair to everyone involved. stage, taking our organization to next level by establishing our brand in the market 11. What do you do to reach is a major concern. Building right work culture is also very important for us, as a your customers? How do right team can only take us to next level. you market your product?
8. What keeps you from growing further? To be frank, we believe right customer recall is missing currently. We are getting mixed in a long list of e-commerce companies. We need to create our niche in the market
For our business marketing plays a major role. We have learned the ropes of trade in marketing via hit and trial keeping focus on bottom line. For startups like us, exploring new platform to market is very important. As in start, many big players might not be using that platform aggressively for you to have a good run. We had that experience ISSUE 9 | SCALEUP | 42
with Google product listing ads, Facebook ads and now mobile ads. You need to reach a platform quicker than most big guys, and exploit them for the long run.
ourselves different from them. As we see, there is still room for other players in the market and due to loss-making business practices of current market/players, we see the scope of things getting better in Also, every customer is not right. I mean future. In even playing field (as its even a right for your business. So in our case, we possibility) we definitely have an edge over have stayed away from deal/coupon sites, other in a way we run our operations. as they might not be fit for our business currently. In meanwhile, we are looking to expand globally, venture into the western section, tapping tier 2-3 audiences and more. 12. How would you define
growth in your business context?
Earlier we were obsessed with headcount and the top line of our business. As we mature, we realize, creating a nimble team is more important than the big team. So currently we measure our growth with top line and profitability. (along with our traffic ranking :) )
15. How do you make sure your team is productive?
Work is not always tangible :). For productivity, we use Dropbox, Evernote and google apps services like calendar a-lot. We have tried using some product management tool like Podio, asana in the past, but its best to keep things simple. Also, general tools like Dropbox / Evernote Also, you measure growth by processes does not require a learning curve which you make, numbers you pull and building a is required by other project management tools. robust team for future.
13. What would you do first if you have infinite resources? To build a cool company culture. As a startup, we cut few corners for perks given to our team. We will definitely try to make them more happy to work with us.
14. How do you plan your growth? As we see ourselves, we have decent experience in running e-commerce. We would like to scale our business model for taking on giants in our industry. We have to build our brand in the market to position 43 | SCALEUP | ISSUE 9
16. Any advice for business/ startup owners? We have limited experience to give advice. For us it’s mostly two things which got us through an initial phase Courage and Ignorance. Or you can say courage of ignorance. But if you stick your ground and keep exploring options, things always work out. Also, we would advise not to make your plan around external factors like raising funding or over-reliance over single partner (client/account). ISSUE 9 | SCALEUP | 04
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