To the moon Read online

  Did you know?

  The name ‘Google’ is derived from the mathematical term ‘googol’ which is basically 1 with 100 zeros after it.

  No part of a Google office is allowed to be more than 150 feet away from some kind of food.

  And my favourite, as part of their green initiative, Google regularly rents goats to mow the lawns of their mountain view HQ. The employees claim they find it calming to see goats outside the windows.

  H is Hesitation

  I’m sure you weren’t expecting this word to feature in my happy, shiny vocabulary, but I wanted to share an epiphany of sorts that I had some years ago. I think we’ve gotten to a place where we think of brands and consumers in this very ‘transactional’ fashion, but I urge you to zoom out for a moment and think about why people buy things. People buy things to feel good, to impress their friends, to express themselves. And on the flipside, what prevents someone from making a purchase? The fear of ridicule for an off-trend purchase, or perhaps not knowing how to use a product, even buying something that doesn’t do what it says it will. Purchase hesitation can be both frustrating and depressing for the consumer and a veritable death sentence for the brand.

  Enter your digital BFFs! Someone who can be your friendly neighbourhood guide through the messy world of on and offline shopping. Where there is so much sensory overdose and so many brands trying to peddle their wares that it is almost impossible to decide. Imagine if there was someone you could turn to for the latest fashion advice, for beauty tips and tricks they have successfully tried on their own skin. Advice ranging from the best gadgets to buy to the ultimate holiday destinations to visit but all told through the voice of a real human being. Someone who understands you and your needs and is ever so aspirational but never condescending. THAT is the secret sauce of influencer marketing and the cure for purchase hesitation.

  I is for Instagram

  Ah, the window into the world of the lives everybody wants you to think they’re living! But I love Instagram. I feel a sense of community and adventure whenever I log in. In fact, I often think about how it’s almost a waking inception of sorts. A dream within a dream? I’ll start browsing a friends feed, click into another life from there and before you know it, I’m 9 lives deep! (Sometimes watching cute cat videos by the end of it, which I admittedly find oddly calming.)

  But the story of Instagram is no less inspiring. On 6 October 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched their photo-sharing app. Just two years later they sold it to Facebook for $1 billion dollars along with its thirteen employees.

  Now how about I uncharacteristically give you a few statistics that you might find very useful in your own pursuit of tweaking your Instagram strategy and everybody’s favourite word – monetization. But mostly fun facts that I thought were just plain cool.

  Eighty per cent of Instagram users are outside the US.

  Most Instagram users are between the ages of 18-29.

  Twenty-six per cent of Instagram users make more than $75,000 per year that’s almost 49 lakhs a year!

  Of the 600 million (and counting) Instagram users 400 million are active every day.

  Sixty per cent of the top brands on Instagram use the same filter on every post

  The most popular filters are Clarendon, Gingham and Juno/Lark.

  Instagram posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6 per cent more engagement than those without.

  Posts that include another handle gain 56 per cent more engagement.

  #Love is the most popular hashtag and the most used emoji (remember E is for Emoji?) is the heart <3.

  The most widely Instagrammed food is – you guessed it – PIZZA! Right above steak and sushi.

  The world record of most Instagram followers within 12 hours of opening an account is held by Pope Francis who took half a day to get one million followers (eat your heart out, Kim Kardashian).

  The first Instagram post with the hashtag #selfie was posted on 27 January 2011 by Jennifer Lee.

  Kendall Jenner’s Instagram posts are currently valued between $125,000 and $300,000 for a single post! (Between 50 lakhs to over one crore).

  Instagram photos featuring faces get 32 per cent more likes.

  Facebook has the right to sell your Instagram photos to third-party advertisement agencies. And you’ll love this:

  Elliot Tebele (@fuckjerry – named while watching Seinfeld) makes a living purely by reposting pictures to Instagram. (I bet you want that job, right?)

  J is for Job Satisfaction

  Roshan Abbas has a great concept he shared at a panel we were on together for Insight Storm where he said every company should have a CFO – Chief Fun Officer! Someone who is constantly in charge of making sure the employees in your company are having enough fun. I think that’s brilliant and I encourage you to hire one immediately. Especially in the day and age of the millennial worker, company culture plays a huge role. Even I can tell you for a fact that three of my employees returned to the company for this reason alone (and I’m never letting them go)!

  Whether you’re working for someone or people are working for you, the things that give everyone a sense of genuine joy and contentment at the workplace are pretty much the same. I urge you to both look for these in your work and enable others to find them in theirs.

  Respect, praise, and appreciation. I cannot stress enough the value of positive reinforcement. We are all quick to criticize or blow up when mistakes are made, but are we as fast to recognize accomplishments and celebrate even the smaller victories? Unfortunately, this tends to get overlooked. Make it a point to ‘high-five’ your co-workers for a job well done. At MissMalini, we even have a special chat group on Slack called ‘high-fives’, purely for this purpose. The impact a little appreciation for hard work will make will multiply exponentially and drive others to follow suit and work harder. Plus, if you do it on a public chat group you get the added kick of dopamine for full effect.

  Motivation. For people to feel charged about a dream, you need to take the time to remind them what that dream is. Do it and do it often. Whenever there is a new development in company growth or expansion plans share those with your team so they feel energized and part of the plan. This is also a great time to ask for input and suggestions and bank ideas for future growth.

  A creative workspace. In the age of the millennial this is an extremely compelling factor. People spend 8-10 hours of their day at the office. Do not make them sit facing a wall! Gone are the days of the office cubicle cutting people off from personal interaction and putting them in an invisible cubicle cage. Drop the barriers, try to have an open plan, malleable office space that lets people walk around when they need a break. There will be times in this environment where getting a little peace and quiet to think alone becomes tricky, but try to have enough quiet corners where people can retire for solo time when needed. (I swear team, I’m working on it!)

  Developing skill and potential. One of the things I always try to do is understand what an employee’s ultimate dream goal is. Is it to write a book? Make a movie? Become a badass CEO or something just as passionate? As I’ve said before, once you understand someone’s motivation you can help them hone the skills they need to reach their full potential. Chances are that on the road to their passion they will light up your way. Very often it could even be about nurturing a hobby that excites them (shout-out to my travel-grammers, I’m excited @thetrippintoes!) and you will see boundless energy emitting from them which will find its ways in to everything they do.

  KRAs (key responsibility areas). In an age where we have invented all sorts of new job roles and titles it can become a little hazy what an employee’s actual job is. This can lead to a lot of dissatisfaction and confusion. Assigning KRAs gives you and them a concise picture, of not only what is expected of them but also a clear understanding of their goals. That makes it much easier to perform an annual assessment, provide feedback and decide the milestones upon which a reward or raise should be based. Creating a complim
entary collective of KRAs (sorry too much alliteration there!) will also help shape the company’s long term vision and road map of success. And finally,

  Just ask. You’ll never know how satisfied someone is unless you ask them. No amount of corporate statistics can teach you what a one-on-one, in person conversation can. Be prepared to not always have the solution or the answer, but you’ll be surprised how much difference just listening to the question can make.

  K is for Knowledge

  ‘The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.’

  – Socrates

  While I wouldn’t be as hard on yourself as Socrates suggests, I do caution you against ever assuming you know everything or more importantly, that you know better than everyone else. That is just simply not true.

  Learning is a huge part of the entrepreneurial process. Your company’s greatest asset will always be the intellectual capabilities of your team. Again, this doesn’t mean you all must be a bunch of rocket scientists (although I could use one for my rocket ship to the moon, if you’re looking), it means that the more ideas and knowledge that flow through your enterprise, the bigger and better the business will become.

  So, learn. Learn from your team, learn from your peers, learn from your competition and learn from your mistakes. (I’ll tell you mine in a blog up ahead. Oh, you better believe I’ve made my share of mistakes, but at least I can say I learned something from them.)

  A couple of years ago I met this fascinating twenty-something Prakash Ranjan and if you were to ask me what his super power is I would say its curiosity. At such a young age, he knows so much about all sorts of things. From people to politics, @monsterprak is a sponge. He soaks up the human experience and has taught me that curiosity is the currency of evolution.

  There’s a fascinating book by James T. Mangan called You can Do Anything, in which he highlights fourteen ways to acquire knowledge. Practice, ask, desire, get it from yourself, walk around it, experiment, teach, read, write, listen, observe, put in order, define and reason.

  And this is my favourite part, ‘There are only two kinds of experience: the experience of ourselves and the experience of others. Our own experience is slow, laboured, costly, and often hard to bear. The experience of others is a ready-made set of directions on knowledge and life. Their experience is free; we need suffer none of their hardships; we may collect on all their good deeds. All we have to do is observe!’

  Ergo, watch and learn from everything!

  L is for Leadership

  Being a leader is one of the most difficult but rewarding experiences. Make it count. Over the years, I have learned that being a good leader isn’t about telling everyone what to do. It’s more about inspiring people with your ideas and saying, ‘now follow me!’ before bounding in the direction of your dreams.

  I like to think of leadership for millennials as more of a Peter Pan project. They’re not interested in being told what to do, they’ll do it, but they won’t care why they’re doing it if you don’t inspire them and that’s no good at all. Try it this way:

  Practice what you preach. If you want your team to exude positivity and enthusiasm, be the first enthu-cutlet out the door! Especially if you have a young team, they will mimic their management and follow your lead assuming it is the best way to get ahead.

  Be someone they admire. It is only ever exciting to follow someone who has accomplished so much that you want to grow up to be like them.

  Be clear. Be friendly with your team but make your rules and expectations crystal clear.

  Be open. Be open to input, be open to feedback, be so open you don’t just have an ‘open door policy’, don’t even have a door!

  Be liked. Now this is where you walk a fine line between being who you are and trying too hard. One is how you genuinely develop kinship and the other is how you end up as the boss they roll their eyes at over after-work drinks! I believe the secret to being liked as a boss is a combination of having their backs when required and trying to having normal human interactions that you would when nurturing any real-life relationship or friendship. A lot of ‘leaders’ forget to be human at the workplace and end up feeling like some machine that just gives you orders and pays your bills.

  Take a lesson out of Salman Khan’s muscle-tee and remember it’s all about Being Human.

  M is for Mission

  A mission and a mission statement tells everyone what is the core purpose of your organization. Why do you exist and what are you hoping to achieve?

  Over the years I have learned that it is very important to have a mission statement. Whether it’s for your personal resume or for the business you’re planning to begin. The purpose of your mission statement is to define the ‘what and why’ of your business (or in the case of your resume, your personal goals), in one concise sentence that serves as an ‘elevator pitch’. While it is easy to just come up with a generic throwaway sentence, I urge you to spend some time and effort putting this one together, otherwise you might find it to be useless. If done well, your mission statement could very well define your business so accurately, it could serve as an effective strategy.

  When it comes to a mission statement you’d be surprised how important every word and its placement in the sentence can be, so here are a few tips on how to come up with yours.

  Make sure that your mission statement answers these five questions:

  What do I do?

  How do I do it?

  Who do I do it for?

  What’s my value proposition? (What value do I or my business bring?)

  What image do I want people to have of me/my business? (What defines my character?)

  PS. I love that when I was doing my research Google threw up, ‘use radiant words’ as one of the things to do. I love that, radiant words.

  I also came across a great article by Jim Berry1 in which he suggests a great way to test your statement once you’re ready, ‘Test it by asking yourself, honestly, whether your competitors could use exactly the same statement. Does it distinguish you from all other businesses? If you gave an employee or customer a blind screening test, asking them to read your mission statement and four others without identifying which is which, would they be able to tell which mission statement was yours?’

  Now strike a pose and let’s get to it!

  Here are ours:

  What do we do? Create all kinds of entertainment content.

  How do we do it? Using multi-media.

  Who do we do it for? The global Indian millennial.

  What’s our value proposition? Dynamic, high quality, trust-worthy content.

  What image do I want people to have of me/my business? Human, friendly and happy shiny!

  MissMalini’s Mission Statement: Building India’s most positive and dynamic millennial media network.

  N is for Networking

  In all my experience of being an entrepreneur, I have found the one thing that has garnered insurmountable value for my business, especially when building one in India, is network. Cultivating, nurturing and refining an ecosystem of a wide variety of people; entrepreneurs, friends, colleagues, and in my case celebrity relationships, has created immense value for MissMalini and been incredibly rewarding at a personal level.

  The only way to do this though is by investing genuine heart and a whole lot of time. There is no shortcut to creating these relationships. Just like any personal connection in your life requires the values of trust and mutual respect, so do those in the business world. Take the time to get to know people at a human level, find out what inspires them; listen. Remember they’re on the same ride as you are and have their own mission in life. Identifying the best way to complement each other on your mission to the moon will not only benefit both of you, but you’ll be uplifting the overall energy in the universe.

  In world of six billion people, there is more than enough room for everyone to grow together. And enough eyeballs and demand for products and services to go around. At least I think so! Aside fro
m that, respect your competition. Everyone brings some value to the world and it is far better to learn from them than disregard their effort. Follow this golden rule: think of others the way you would like them to think of you.

  Now, go play!

  O is for Opportunity

  In today’s digital landscape the opportunities are endless. As I’ve said before, you can literally make almost anything you love to do into your career. I mean, you can even eat or play videos games for a living! #TrueStory

  But identifying the right opportunity for yourself and continuing to evolve as you grow are equally important. Your job does not stop at picking a career. You must continue to follow the yellow brick road and in fact pave your own new path sometimes. Just look at how the opportunities online have changed and grown. A few years ago, there was no concept of ‘influencer marketing’, now some digital superstars are taking over the world. In some case even eclipsing traditional influencers in their wake. Who knows what tomorrow holds?

  Be prepared and on the lookout for new opportunities that your brand can benefit from. Is it time to prepare yourself for the immersive world of virtual reality? Is there a new social media app bubbling up on the millennial radar that you can get to first? How do you find the densest population of your consumers and penetrate their sub-conscious? Simple. You learn to adapt to your digital ecosystem and go to where the party is. It’s basically the theory of Darwinism 2.0.

  ‘In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.’ – Charles Darwin

  What stands out to me the most from what he said and how I believe it can be applied to the virtual world today is this: The brands and business that will survive the evolution of technology are the ones that will learn to adapt and improvise in their ever-changing environment on and off the internet. The ones who also learn to effectively collaborate with each other will eventually rule the world.