We’ll to quickly go over the what, when and why we are here together? The reason we are here together or the core focus of the Startup Frat Hangout is freedom, and the other is abundance; freedom from constraints, freedom from pressure, freedom from mental stress, freedom from society’s bullshit, freedom from anything that might be holding you back from where you want to be, where you need to be in life, on a personal, or professional level. And the second thing is abundance. The abundance of whether you want wealth or time or to be a better person, abundance in terms of mental peace, etc. So just a place of peacefulness and abundance and freedom from constraints. So, that is pretty much the theme of this Startup Frat group. We’ll quickly go through these points with the why, when, who and how we are here.
When
The other reason we are doing it at this particular point in time is because of timing from an economic perspective. It is very critical right now because we’ve been seeing a bunch of different slowdowns happening, and the whole thing has come to a head because of the Tipping Point of the whole coronavirus situation. Before I go ahead, if you have anyone, a friend or family member, who has suffered from this scourge, my heart goes out to you, and I take full cognizance of the pain that they might have felt, or you might have felt.
Having said that, anytime there is a deterioration of the fundamental economics of society, then there is a landscape event or a Black Swan event like the coronavirus is; it always leads to a bunch of upheavals and a lot of people are impacted. That upheaval is followed by a period of upswing. Only the fittest and the most flexible, and the most ready people can scale the peaks in that upswing that happens. Timing is everything in life and business.
How Steve Jobs made his dream come true
I’ll just give you a quick example. Steve Jobs was fired from his company in the 1980s because he had a dream of making a near-perfect computer, which would be a work of art, and it would take $3000 to make that computer. He wanted to sell that computer for $2000. The average monthly income of a family in those days in the US was $2,000 or $2,500. So, it was not economically viable. He was fired from the company because he was hell-bent on driving the company to the gutter in order to fulfil his dream. It was his own company, but the board of directors decided to fire him.
Twenty years later, when the markets had changed and things were different, they brought him back. They made him CEO, and he still had the same dream, which was to make a near-perfect computer and it will cost $2,000. That’s why it’s going to be near perfect. Thanks to the Chinese and Thailand manufacturing and American median income level rising to beyond $3500-$4000, computers suddenly became a reality, and the rest is history. That’s what made Apple what it is today. So, it was the difference in timing in which the same exact dream, the same exact company, the same exact audience were able to purchase a computer.
Why Timing in Business is Important
I’ll just give you a personal experience. In 2008 when the housing crash happened in the US. I was working with a start-up in Silicon Valley. I was on a B1 B2 Visa, so I was technically in India, but I was working in a Silicon Valley company.
When the whole show was coming to a halt and people were jumping out of windows, and the stock market was nothing, real estate had crashed. After the 2008 crash, I was incidentally working as a sales and marketing consultant in a market research company. After that crash, many companies suddenly realized that they needed to find newer markets. They needed to find whether their competitors had left the market or the competing companies had been destroyed. They wanted to go and take charge of that market and those customers.
Suddenly, they needed that advice from people like market research companies who had all the information of who’s going out of business. What are the customers doing? Where can you find this kind of business? Long story short, we doubled our revenue from 2008 to 2009, doubled our revenue again from 2009 to 2010, and doubled our revenue again from 2010 to 2011.
It taught me a very important lesson in life that timing in life and business could be everything. So you will still do the hard work, you will still do the smart work, you still have the bright ideas, but if you apply them at the wrong time, they could get you fired. If you apply them at the right time, you could be the number one company in the world, or the number one inventor in the world like Steve Jobs was. So that is where we are coming from. So we are at an interesting point in time. And my goal is to provide you with the information and the tools necessary to make this downswing and upswing of the market work for you rather than against you. So, this is the “when to apply an idea.”
Where
In India, the issue has always been that we are always willing to work very hard, usually working very hard. Most Indian people work six days a week when the whole world works five days a week. We are always willing to learn more things, but usually, the information of what will happen is always coming to us late because we are the back office for the rest of the world. I’m trying to share some information which could be useful for you.
Usually, when people talk like this, they typically have something to promote. They have an idea to promote. They have a product to promote. I have nothing to promote. In fact, I will give you 100 different ideas on how you can make this stuff happen for yourself. We’ll discuss what you can do regardless of whether you’re a business owner, a professional, a corporate professional, or an individual to get synced with the new market.
What are the basic blocks? There are some industries which are going to go down. There are some Industries which are going to go up. We don’t know what’s going to happen to manufacturing. Some people say all that manufacturers are going to move from China to India. We hope so, but we don’t know. Some Industries are guaranteed to grow, and that comes from the way humans feel. The human situation is changed during the slowdown. A lot of people are thinking differently. They’re feeling differently. They realize there’s a lot of waste in our life that we don’t need. A lot of people are getting back to the basics.
The basic premise is do not be wasteful in things that won’t keep you grounded. They’re not going to add any value to your wealth. The second premise is to conserve your resources because you will need firepower when you need to ascend the market curve. If you don’t have that firepower and are tied up in the real estate, the stock market with stocks is just going down and not going up. All of that, then basically, you’re losing your firepower in the wrong thing. Even if the whole thing comes up, two years or three years from now, you would have lost the opportunity where you could have made huge, significant changes in your positioning or finances.
Business growth and development
The first area is Business growth and development. If you are a person who’s into consulting companies on how to grow their business and maximize their profits. If you are a person who works in this kind of an area, then this is a great area to be in. And this is the area that’s going to grow after the slowdown is over because I have seen that happen first, and I’ve been in it. So this is one thing. I’m very sure about the other team.
Healthcare
The other area is healthcare. Health Care means something over and above the sickness care industry. Health Care is more of a self-help industry. So things like yoga and how to get your immunity up because the medical industry is probably not going to be able to help you if you have coronavirus. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But if you have your immunity up, that is a much bigger asset than knowing a good doctor. So the healthcare which is more from a self-help standpoint, how to be healthier, how to have better immunity, how to have lower fat, how to avoid blood sugar, is going to be big because, during this time, there’s a lot of scent self-introspection that has happened in the mind of the individual. They realize that they love their families. They would like to live longer and be around them more. Their focus will shift from their professional pursuits to their health, which brings me to the next point.
Personal Development
The next point is personal development. If you are in any shape or form connected to, or if you can hit your wagon to it, it doesn’t matter whether your current business is related to any of these areas or not, but if you can hit your wagon to personal development, then things like minimalism and meditation, and how to appreciate things better in mindfulness and how to be a better parent, and how to be a better human being etc. is going to be hugely important.
Career and Finances
Career is for businesses. Finance is for individuals; at an individual level. What can you do if your career is not going well? If your company lost a lot of revenue because of this whole situation. And now your job is in danger. If you are a corporate professional, then Career & Finance will be very important for you. If you are a person who can help other corporate professionals, who may be feeling this heat, then this is an excellent opportunity for you to help other people and also benefit yourself, probably build a business or a brand around it.
Make money Niche
Make money Niche, where people have a huge market for business opportunities, and things like multi-level marketing, insurance, and financial advisory. So people who want to set up businesses or their individual consultancy in advising people about insurance and, how to grow their money, about how to make money financial advisors, even people who are into business opportunities and multi-level marketing, and think this is going to be a huge going forward at least for the next five years.
Entertainment
Now, this is not about big-ticket entertainment. It is not about setting up your cinema hall or your restaurant. That industry is probably going to suffer a little bit. But this is what small ticket entertainment is. If you’re into gaming, if you’re great at gaming, and if you can create some products around to help other people on how to become like a Hotshot in PUBG or something, this is going to be big because a lot of entertainment is shifted from big-ticket entertainment, cinema halls, bars and clubs over to entertainment in the house, which is playing random games and doing TikTok stuff. So if you’re in this industry or have any idea of how you can create some products or services or content in this industry to help other people enjoy more from their smartphones. Then this industry is going to be big for you.