My Lessons From My Failures. #MirMak

My Lessons From My Failures. #MirMak

The biggest deficiency i have seen in the youth of Pakistan is their fear of failure. And the funny thing is that they do not admit that they are afraid of failure, rather, they come up with other psychologically impressive excuses to avoid trying, thus avoid failing but they do not understand that by avoiding failure, they are avoiding success. Their excuses are very logical ones for a common man to hear... and by the way..All of IBLEES's reasons are logical as well.

They may not be true, but they sure sound logical. I was born to a poor family. This country is not fair..There are too many corrupt people in this country. I need to look for perfect financing for my idea, I do not have an MBA degree, I need a political backing to get a job.. And the excuses can last for ten days and these young brilliant minds on top of that will defend their excuses with such tenacity and belief that sometimes i think that if they used the same tenacity and belief to convince themselves that Life is not fair in every country. some places less and some places more but life is not fair anywhere. There are corrupt people everywhere, Here may be more financially corrupt but other places they could be morally corrupt of prejudice or unethical or anything else.
You can find one million reasons to fail, you have to find that one reason to succeed. Failure is not a person, its an event. Just like any other event that you can learn from. I have yet to see any other nation where the youth is equipped with every other quality that is required to succeed, such as resilience, tenacity, positivity, belief in a higher being, thirst for financial freedom, and the list can go on.

With all the bombs blasting in the past 14 years, not a single youngster has given up on life and stayed back home or quit his education. That is resilience. Even knowing that after graduating from the best of the university, they may not find a job, yet, they keep forging ahead with their education. That is tenacity and positivity. With all the terrorism around these young people for the past decade and a half and knowing that their life can be taken away from them at any given moment..yet they still roam around their cities like they are living in some heavenly place. That is belief in a higher being that nobody can take their life but Allah. I can go on counting another 20 more qualities in these young people which the youth of the western countries would give their right arm to have them. The sad thing is not that you have talent and you failed..the saddest thing to me is that you have talent and you do not even realize that you have it. Its like having a car in your garage but you are walking to the farthest of places on foot because you refuse to learn to drive because of the fear of getting into an accident yet you keep complaining that others are driving and you have to walk.

There is no perfect time, their is no perfect business plan, there is no perfect mentor, Their is no perfect education, There is nothing perfect in this world. You have to make it all perfect. The only perfection that exists is with Allah. He is the only perfection in this world. The rest is imperfect. And the beauty of life is to come up with an imperfect idea and spend your entire life working hard and making it close to perfect one year at a time, one month at a time, one day at a time and one hour at a time.

What i learned from failures is far more than what i have learned from successes. If you want to define my life based on the success i have achieved, i am a failure to me but if you want to define my life looking at the failures that i turned into successes, then consider me successful. One thing i learned from failure is that it should never be feared. I also learned that once you face your first few failures, you automatically get confidence to try new things and succeed. I learned that if you keep your mind focused on your problems, you will magnify them and if you keep your mind focused on the solutions, you will magnify them as well. Stop repeating your problems to yourself or to others. Nobody cares. They may show you sympathy momentarily but by showing sympathy they are killing your mind because once your mind gets used to sympathy, it enjoys it like a heroine addict enjoys his highs.

Nobody gives a damn about your sad story. Stop creating one. Nobody cares about your problems, stop telling them to the world. The hardest reality of life is that nobody cares about anything unless you are successful. Nobody. So become successful or stop pretending that you want to. There is nothing grey in life. Its either black or white. So remember that failures are part of life. If you do not fail you will never learn and if you do not learn you can never change and if you never change, You will be exactly where you are 20 years from today...

ProPakistani.pk, My Article And The Incubation Mafia. #MirMak

ProPakistani.pk, My Article And The Incubation Mafia. #MirMak

3 years, thousands of positive articles, hundreds of speeches around Pakistan, thousands of meetings with the students and the young entrepreneurs from across Pakistan, encouraging them, guiding them, being involved personally in their lives and one article i write pointing out the ills of the incubation process in Pakistan, and crap hits the ceiling.

Poor Dr. Umar Saif gets dragged by people implicating him as the target of my article. How pathetic could this get ? I have immense respect for Dr. Saif. He is doing a great job. I have visited Plan9 and have met him personally. I visit Plan9 whenever i get a chance. They are doing a good job. But for every Dr. Saif, there are 99 Dr. Unsafe in the incubation business. Yes it has become a business and that is what i was pointing out in my article. Of course i must have hit a cord in the right place that 90% of the people agreed and it was shared over 3500 times on ProPakistani.Pk and another 2800 times collectively on other platforms. 

It would be absolute ignorance to say that "All" incubation centers are producing nothing. But we are not at a stage where we can take the hit or miss approach when it comes to the Startups. One: because the youngsters need clear direction to fulfill their business dreams. Two: Quality is needed instead of quantity. Yes 7 out of 10 startups fail but we can not take that approach in Pakistan because even after 7 out 10 fail in the west there is still "Risk Capital" available that chases after the 11th deal. We do not have that risk capital in Pakistan. Here we are a culture where gold, real estate and fixed deposits are the mantra for investments. Three: Not every company is going to be bought out like Whatsapp for $18 billion. It does not even happen in America. We need to create businesses that generate EMPLOYMENT and REVENUES not just silly VALUATIONS that no investment banker or the VC will attest to.

Pakistan is a land of opportunities. Pakistan eCommerce landscape has ample room to grow but eCommerce and "Technological Innovations" are absolutely two different things. We are hardly producing technologically innovative companies that can scale up. We are mostly producing eCommerce websites. We need to do both and not just one. We need to do more. The world is watching us. Due Diligence, R&D, Legal Help, Risk Capital, Road Shows, Bridging The Gap Between The Technology Industry And The Capital Markets, a lot needs to be done and i shall write an article with my humble views as to what needs to be done in a suggestive manner in the coming days, Insha Allah

Confusions While You Struggle...#MirMak

Confusions While You Struggle...#MirMak

Never confuse your journey with the destination that you are seeking. Your journey and your destination are absolutely two different things. Your journey will almost always seem confusing, difficult, painful, fruitless and dejecting but it is this period of your life that will decide if you will reach your destiny or not. People do not reach their destiny because they concentrate on the difficulties of their path instead of visualizing the fruits of their destiny. 

Eventually all the confusion fades away. eventually all the difficulties pass. Eventually all the pieces of the puzzle fall into their right places. Do not ever be confused about the struggles that you are going through today. Stop pretending that it does not hurt or it should not hurt. Let it hurt. Let it hurt to its best because the hurt of today will mold you into an icon of tomorrow. It hurts more when we start to fight the pain instead of accepting and moving on with the pain. Pain is there to make you stronger. Pain is there to teach you about life. Pain is there to make you wise. Pain is not your enemy. Pain is your teacher. You can make that teacher your friend or you can make that teacher your foe, its entirely up to you. There is no confusion in life, we make it confusing.

Laugh at your confusion. Smile at your pain. Remind yourself that Allah has chosen you to succeed because you are being taught and being prepared for the future. Your present may look confusing but your future is clear. Even if it seems foggy at present, believe me its clear enough once you forge ahead through the fog. If you want to learn to transform yourself then first learn to rid yourself of confusion. Stay focused on the destiny and let life shape you for your future.

Confusion comes from uncertainty and everything about life is uncertain except death. Death is the only certainty of life so until that certainty and its eventuality raises its head, enjoy every moment of life by embracing it. You are a mountain of energy within yourself. Dig into it. Dig deep. Smile at your difficulties. Focus on your future. And embrace confusion because by embracing confusion you will defeat it. And once you learn to defeat confusion, your future will become absolutely clear to you.

How I Fired My First Employee...#MirMak

How I Fired My First Employee...#MirMak

He was a young ambitious man. Full of dreams and aspirations. He wanted to make it big in his life but deep down inside he was afraid to take the risks. He wanted sureties in life but life offered none. His parents were the only support system for him while others put doubts in his minds about accomplishing what he wanted to accomplish. He was just 22 and was working for the world's largest financial services company at that time, The Prudential Financial Services. He was making a cozy salary plus commission on sales and at that tender age of 22, it was coming out to about $63,000 a year. A basic salary of $28,000 a year plus the rest in commissions. That was more than enough to support himself and give back to his parents. But it was not the money, it was his dream of working on Wall Street in the capital markets. But working in capital markets offered no salary. It was just a commission job.

And to let go off the comfort of a salary was extremely difficult and an enormously risky move as well. Some would even call it an outright madness to let go off a guaranteed salary in return for chasing a dream of making it big without any guarantees. He would think day and night about this. Every person he consulted told him not to make such a move. He was told repeatedly that such a good employment would never come again. He was getting more confused day by day. He went for a few interdepartmental interviews within The Prudential to move from Estate Planning Division where he was working at to stock brokerage division on Wall Street but again he was told there would be no salary. Wall Street, he was told is a place for people with an entrepreneurial mindset. For people who believe in themselves. For people who are not looking for a comfort of a salary but have the courage to earn according to their performance. Specially in the field of stock brokerage.

Wall Street in today's terminology would be an incubation center where people were the startups and their courage was their product, their belief in themselves was their marketing department, their self discipline was the administration department, and working 18 hours a day would be their revenue model. This sounded more like an entrepreneurial journey than an employment. But Wall Street he thought was all about just walking in the first day and making millions the next day. Reality was different. Absolutely different. It was not about a cozy environment. It was not about having doubts about yourself. It was the survival of the fittest. It was like swimming with the sharks. It was like starting his own business. And to start his own business at the age of 22 leaving the comfort of a huge salary was nothing but a disastrous move in the eyes of many.
He needed to decide to either be an entrepreneur without any guarantees of the future or to be an employee with the guarantee of a salary but with the death of his dreams. He realized that he could only learn to swim by jumping into the pool. He realized that he would have to fire the employee within him who wants guarantees. He realized that until the FIRST EMPLOYEE within him, himself, is not fired he could never pursue his dreams. That first employee was Mir Mohammad Alikhan and Mir Mohammad Alikhan fired him without thinking twice. And that was the best move he ever made in his life.

I Love Our Political Parties...#MirMak

I Love Our Political Parties...#MirMak

If you listen to PTI it seems that Nawaz Shareef will be ousted from power within the next few seconds.
If you listen to PPP it seems that Sindh is progressing better than Switzerland.

If you listen to PML-N it seems that Panama Leaks is a conspiracy against them.
If you listen to MQM it seems there is a SAAZISH against every Urdu speaking person in Karachi.
If you listen to ANP it seems that every Karachiite is an enemy of KPK.
If you listen to PSP it seems that they were the most innocent people in MQM and everything was done wrong only and only by Altaf Hussain while they performing Umrah for 30 years everyday.
And if you listen to the anchors, it seems that Qayamat will be happening in Pakistan tomorrow morning. Lol.

Recording Of The Program. PSX HOTLINE With Rohail Intekhab. Topic. Pakistan Markets In The Coming Months. #MirMak.

Recording Of The Program. PSX HOTLINE With Rohail Intekhab. Topic. Pakistan Markets In The Coming Months. #MirMak.

PSX Hotline Host Rohail Intikhab (10th January 2017)

Even The TOUGHEST OF PAIN Is Your Training To Appreciate PLEASURE..#MirMak

Even The TOUGHEST OF PAIN Is Your Training To Appreciate PLEASURE..#MirMak

Just like you can never be a soldier without going through a boot camp training... You can never become a person who completely appreciates the pleasures of life unless you have felt the pains of life as well. Even a General has to go through his initial boot camp training. Life has the same boot camp training..its called pain. Without learning to cope with pain you can never develop tolerance, appreciation, endurance, tenacity, resilience and a million other qualities that a successful person must have. Boot Camps are temporary...And so is pain. But while it is happening, it may seem like it will break you into pieces. Well, that is the idea. Let it try to break you.. because it can not. It can never break you..never. It may seem like it is about to break you every second while you are going through it but it will not because human endurance is much stronger than wordly pain. Worldly pain is no match for your god gifted tenacity. So in actuality the pain is a test for you to show your belief in your God instead of bowing down to the World.
The best tool you can use while you are facing a painful situation..Any painful situation is to exercise patience and positivity. Both patience and positivity are the instructions given to you by ALLAH SWT in times of pain. It is HE who has repeatedly said that 'I am with the ones who have Patience"..and secondly, you need positivity because it is HE who has declared the opposite of positivity, which is MAAYOOSI..a sin. So how could you not win against pain when your creator has given you a PERFECT solution in advance as o how to handle pain. And after every painful situation and after you have followed ALLAH's instructions while in pain.. you will be rewarded by pleasure.
Your pain of today is your strength of tomorrow...Always remember that. So be happy and optimistic when in pain that Allah has chosen you to train you for future strength. And Allah only chooses to train someone for the future whom he chooses to get big things one by. So if he has chosen to put you in a boot camp of life..it means that your future is great... He has already planned to use your abilities to get something great done by you, for yourself and for the greater benefit of humanity. This is what i have learned practically after having gone through pain of the highest order. Where could i have gathered the wisdom to write even two words of encouragement for you if he had not chosen me to go through years of pain. I thank him every moment of my life to have chosen me to inject doses of positivity, Belief, and all the other things into my fellow Pakistanis. My Boot Camp was America and other countries, My Battle Ground was to be Pakistan and i did not even know that. It was all his planning that i sit in front of my laptop and write articles for you. I am the happiest i have ever been. Yes i still go through pain..but i have my belief so strong that i smile when pain even tries to creep into my direction. Because i know.. I will have pleasure coming into my life if pain is walking in my direction. Just like clouds come before rain, Pain comes before pleasure. Its a heavenly sign that pleasure is about to show up in your life..whenever pain is showing up in your life.
Patience and belief will take you intro the land of pleasure, while you are facing pain. Pain is just like a bad patch on the highway of pleasure. Nothing more. So hold on to your steering wheel..Keep driving..drive over the bumps with patience and total control of the vehicle of your life and keep your eyes on the highway of life, you are driving towards good times.