Asim Qureshi

Two decades ago, I joined the Morgan Stanley graduate program in London, and one of my bosses gave me some blunt advice.

“Ok, Asim, so appreciate that you're no longer at university which offered you a service.

The tables are now turned. You are not paying for your time here. You're being paid. So, the question is now what can you bring to the table? What have you got to offer?

You have nothing in the way of skills because everything you know is useless.

But, I tell you what, you haven’t been through years of grind that the rest of the team have been through. You are innocent and fresh, and should be full of energy, enthusiasm and hope.

So, for now, you need to lift the entire office with an awesome attitude. You need to make everyone else’s life a little less miserable by being so excited. That's what you bring to this table. You got that?”

How do CEOs sleep for only 4-5 hours a day and manage to run multi-million dollar companies?

Listen, a lot of what is out there is exaggerated by the media, some of it fuelled by CEOs pretending to be superhuman.

Many CEOs do work damn hard (and many don’t) but it’s rare that their sleep gets hit over an extended period - it’s their social life, family life, leisure time.

I mean, yesterday, for example, a Sunday, I worked most of the day, which is pretty normal for me these days, but I was knocked out by 11pm. Hard work, full sleep, sacrifice made.

Work damn hard to achieve your dreams - whether you run your own company or work for one - but the fact is that if you're sleep-deprived you can’t do your job properly.

A few months ago, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s 43-year-old CEO, announced he was going to donate 28% of his wealth, $1B, to fund coronavirus relief.

Since then, he has already made good $87m of this $1B pledge, with funds given to organisations tackling domestic violence, refugees, HIV/AIDS, the homeless, prisoners, students with limited access to the internet, mental health - all impacted by the pandemic.

Many will say, “big deal, he still has a few billion.“

Sure, but if you donated 28% of your wealth, say, $100,000, a beggar might say “big, deal, you still have a few hundred thousand.“

Giving away 28% of whatever you have is hard for anyone - average Joe, millionaire, billionaire or trillionaire. We all want more. And more. And more.

I mean, Jeff Bezos has pledged to give away less than 0.1% of his net wealth.

Listen, this donation makes Jack Dorsey a real superstar. A legend.

And that's because giving away $1B is many times harder than making it.

“Never ever hire an MBA, they will ruin your company.“ - Peter Thiel (PayPal, Palantir Technologies, Founders Fund).

“When MBAs come to us, we have to fundamentally retrain them - nothing they learned will help them succeed at innovation.“ - Scott Cook (Intuit).

“Most MBA graduates are not useful… unless they come back from their MBA studies and forget what they’ve learned at school, then they will be useful.” - Jack Ma (Alibaba).

“As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don't teach people how to create companies... our position is that we hire someone in spite of an MBA, not because of one.“ - Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City, The Boring Company, PayPal).

I would hire MBAs. But their MBAs would be a key reason not to hire them.

Yesterday, I had dinner with a friend, a CEO of a software company, and he said something interesting.

He said, “Asim, those who work the least are the ones that will usually keep telling everyone how hard they’re working, they’ll often mention in meetings how busy they are, as they are conscious of their lack of work and insecure about the lack of value they add. And those who work the hardest will rarely mention they work hard as they’re simply focused on their work. In fact, the challenge as a manager can be to make sure they’re not working too hard as they’ll tend not to bring it up when things become unmanageable.”

This matches closely with my own experience. While many are drawn into believing talking the talk and walking the walk are correlated, they’re probably more likely inversely correlated.

Great work doesn’t need to be announced, it speaks for itself.

I once taught maths to underprivileged kids on Saturday mornings.

3 of the kids, aged 17, were very good - top 5%. I suggested they do the maths A-level (18+) in a year, not the standard two. I explained it should be easy for them, they just needed to give it a go. If they did it a year early, they could then focus on other subjects.

They were hard-working, wanted to do well, but told me they could not possibly do a two-year course in a year.

It didn't happen.

Now, fast-forward to a few years ago, my son got an A in the same exam, aged 11. He was about the same level of ability as those kids.

The difference was my son believed in himself - because his parents gave him that confidence from early on. We believed in him.

And that's privilege, or rather an aspect of it.

Listen, I’ve noticed private school kids tend to believe in themselves far more than state school ones even if they achieve the same grades.

I’ve come to the view that one of the key things holding back the underprivileged is that many don't have role models, those around them don’t believe in them, so they don't believe in themselves.

The result is that they don't expect as much in life.

Privilege isn't just access to the best resources, a big helping hand, it's much more - it’s also a passed down mindset.

I am regularly approached for funding or co-founding 'a great idea'.

Honestly, I really don't care about the idea, and neither do most smart investors. Despite it being a cliche, it really is all about the team.

Why?

Because even if you had an A+ idea a C team would get nowhere with it. And a B team would take it to 1% of where the A team would take it to.

The idea is only a tiny part of a successful business. There is also customer service, product, pricing strategy, team culture, operations, strategy, branding, sales, marketing, funding, managing cash flow, etc… Mess a couple of these up and your A+ idea won’t go very far.

How far did Friends Reunited get? It had the idea. FOUR YEARS before Facebook. It shut down in 2016.

And one more key thing - ideas aren't static, they're constantly shaping a company - an A+ team will take a C idea and make it into an A+ one.

Take Netflix. It was in a dead-end business using technology that was clearly going to get wiped out at some point - DVD rentals by mail. But its A+ team changed the business so its ‘idea’ became an A+ one - video streaming.

Today it’s worth a blockbusting US$180B.

Which is why I’d rather invest in a toilet cleaning company with a great team than a great-sounding tech startup with an ok team.

“There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” - Jack Welch, ex CEO General Electric.

If you want your life - family, fun, long holidays - forget the fast-tracked career. If you want the fast-tracked career, forget your life.

Sure, you could be somewhere in between, which is what we call “work-life balance“.

But wherever you are in this spectrum you're making a choice and sacrificing one for the other.

Stop kidding yourself. And make your choice.

The most objective way to measure a footballer's ability relative to others in their team is their salary.

So when Arsenal's highest-paid player on $24m a year, in his prime, is dropped from the team, and subsequently squad, straight after highlighting the plight of the Uighurs in China, up to a million of whom are in concentration camps, you smell a big rat.

China shut down Özil's Weibo account with 4m followers, and the background is that China signed a deal with the English Premier League for $700m and Chinese investors have put in billions into English clubs.

Now, Özil won the German Player of the Year award a record 5x, as he left Real Madrid Christiano Ronaldo said, “I'm angry about Özil leaving“, he started in every game for Germany's World Cup win, he has the 4th most assists of any Premier League player ever.

And now he can't even get a place on the bench?

Özil isn't the first sportsman to be punished by his employer for exercising his freedom of speech - Colin Kaepernick was dropped for taking a knee.

For a start, employers have no right to punish staff for exercising their freedom of expression outside the workplace like Arsenal and the 49ers have done.

And when our leaders fail to act against injustice, we should support those who do.

My wife suggested to me early on in our daughters' lives to praise them for the things we wanted them to care about. And so in our home, our girls tend to be praised for their ethics, kindness, determination, and hard work.

We thus rarely praise them for being beautiful - although in our eyes, that's what they are - and I don't think it's a coincidence that they don't care as much as most girls about the way they look and care more about those qualities we want them to care about.

Many of us don’t realise that when we praise a young girl more for how beautiful she is than what she's achieved we're giving a very clear message of what we value most about her.

Praising girls for their appearance is pervasive, in part because it is a reflection of how we, particularly many men, see things.

There is no right or wrong here, but if we want the next generation of girls to be more focused on building something more incredible than their hairstyle, praising them for their achievements far more than their appearance is probably a great place to start.

I was once having dinner at a restaurant with a potential business partner - the waiter took his plate away thinking he had finished - it wasn't clear whether he had.

He snapped at the waiter “What do you think you’re doing? I mean can’t you see I’m not done?”.

The waiter apologised.

The guy then turned to me after the waiter had gone, but not far enough to ensure the waiter couldn't hear, and said “What an idiot, can’t he do his job properly?”

I didn't say anything.

Sure, perhaps the waiter should have asked - but to put things in context we were in Malaysia where waiters tend to be poorly trained migrants from developing countries. And it's not like we were in the Shangri-La.

Ultimately, it was the potential business partner, not the waiter, that lost my respect.

Because respect is the way you treat everyone, and not the way you treat someone you need something from.

A friend's wife did something I found amazing - she did nothing.

You see, her husband, who's a good friend of mine, recently had a great run in business - from nowhere he suddenly made in the tens of US$ millions.

They now live in a huge house, travel the world business or first class, stay at the top hotels, and he bought himself a great set of wheels.

But you can tell my friend's wife doesn't care for the luxuries - I mean, she insists on driving the same banger she drove before they made their millions - and never brings up her new lifestyle in conversation.

Perhaps more importantly, she hasn't got a whiff of arrogance you often get with those that have made a ton of money fast - she just hasn't changed one bit.

I've never respected people for making money or having it - it's often a greedy obsession combined with luck and intelligence that gets you there. Sure, I'm happy for anyone that makes it.

But the way someone responds to making a ton of money? That's when you see real class.

Next time you're in a busy cafe alone, get your coffee and find a seat that gives you a view of people walking past - perhaps a table on the pavement outside - and observe.

You'll see hundreds of people, busily walking to their destinations. Not where they want to be, trying to get to some place that they do want to be.

And when they get there they’ll soon want to be somewhere else.

You'll see a struggle on most people's faces as they fight the elements to get to their destination in time.

Now, isn't this just a reflection of our lives and careers? We're all trying to get somewhere we're not, and when we get there we want to be somewhere else. An endless struggle - well, at least until the day it's all over.

Two weeks ago, my youngest daughter, Sabeen, found out that she achieved an A* in her Physics A-level. She’s not particularly naturally good at physics.

Last year she managed to get the highest mark in the WORLD in her Accounting A-level as well as an A* in her Mathematics A-level.

A-levels are for 18 year olds, she’s only 14!

Here’s the thing, MANY fairly smart kids could do what she did if they leveraged a simple principle we can all harness in our lives - the power of intensity. She used the flexibility homeschool allows by working with greater intensity than school kids - and by intensity, I mean the number of engaged hours in a given time period. So Sabeen focused on one subject at a time - while school kids do 3 or 4 A-levels in two years, she spent ~6 months on each.

Intensity is a REALLY powerful concept to leverage both for study and for work, and schools need to wake up to it. Intensity is why you can learn to speak a language faster by living the language for 3 months than by having four hours of classes a week for two years. Intensity is why if you have something important to do, it's often best to block your calendar and focus on it so you don't get distracted.

BTW just because Sabeen is homeschooled it doesn’t mean she’s some social recluse. In fact, she’s quite the opposite, she has plenty of friends and has won national public speaking competitions.

Anyway, with my usual defence of homeschool done, back to intensity. 10 hours in a day is better than 15 hours spread over a month. 100 hours in a month is better than 200 in a year - I’m making these numbers up but I hope you get the point. Time not learning means unlearning or forgetting so the best way for rapid results is to get in that zone and leverage the power of intensely. Learn things with intensity, or don't bother.

By not turning on your camera for a video call, you're basically saying “I can't be bothered to get dressed, the extra layer of communication video adds is not worth the effort because this meeting and you aren't important enough.“

A former boss once told me, and I disagreed with him at the time, that you don't dress for yourself, you dress for other people - your 'level' of dress is a sign of how important the person you're meeting is to you.

It's the same with your camera - turning it on so the other person can see you is a sign of respect to them.

You'd dress well for an interview, right? And you'd turn on your camera if it was on Zoom? That's because you're showing your respect, you're showing you've made the effort.

Now, sure, there are good reasons and occasions to not show your face in a video call - in particular, it can be tough at times for parents - but in general, not having your camera on for work video calls is a bit like turning up to work in your pyjamas.

Take every opportunity to connect and interact with your colleagues - and show the team you respect them and have made the effort.

One of my managers tried to trample over my career to help his own.

He placed on me unreasonable restrictions, promised me an additional bonus and then didn't give it, and he kept me out of the loop as much as he could.

And I knew exactly why. He was less smart than me, had less experience than me in our industry, yet was significantly older.

Basically, I was showing him up, and instead of raising his own game, he tried to lower mine.

I took a bit of a gamble.

I reported him to his manager, his manager’s manager and his manager’s manager’s close friend, who I knew well.

Basically, I went in all guns blazing, rather than raising the issue slowly.

I felt if I did the latter he would have adjusted only enough to appease HR or his manager.

It worked out as well as it could have. His actions were looked into fairly, he was soon effectively demoted, and pushed out a year later.

I don't have ANY regret about what I did. He was trying to ruin my career, I did what I needed to do.

The city can be very dog eat dog - no-one will look after you except you - so you have to fight for yourself to survive.

If you don't like that, don't go in.

Doing a degree as a backup is nuts.

Why spend 3 or 4 years of your life for “in case things go wrong“. Instead, why not do what you want to do, and if it goes wrong, then do your degree?

Forget backups. If you're going to do a degree, do it with purpose.

You'll work harder, you'll do better, you'll enjoy it more - as you'll have purpose.

You want to be doctor, you want to get into investment banking, you want a job where you need a degree, you want to learn mathematics or philosophy, sure, do a degree.

But spending 3 or 4 years of your prime and taking on massive debt on a backup plan is the plan of someone with a defeated mindset.

Danyal, on the right, is my 13-year-old homeschooled son. He finished his 18+ exams, A-levels, when he was 11, and these days, he codes for around 5 hours a day - building stuff.

You're probably thinking he's at home all day, can't interact with other kids. Sure, he doesn't meet a hundred kids of his age every day like most kids do.

But so what?

He knows kids in the neighbourhood, has friends through sport - he plays competitive-level football and squash - and meets kids in other ways.

He is almost-conversant to fluent in six languages, most of them learned by talking to aunties or students over Skype. Yet he still has a ton of spare time - he loves history and cooking.

What about university? If he wants to become a historian or he just wants to enjoy university, he'd be off. But my guess is he'll never go.

He's a cocky kid who confidently describes himself as “a future billionaire“ - and I believe that's partly down to some early success in his life.

A crazy dream, he's working hard towards making it happen.

Education like this can't be for everyone. But focusing early on things kids love, learning things they'll actually use, learning without pressure, an education as cheap as chips by learning through self-study, and thinking big could be for everyone. Today.

You no longer need a degree to become a lawyer - in England and Wales.

From this year onwards, school leavers are able to get work experience, then do an apprenticeship, sit some exams, and they're done.

That’s because to become a solicitor you now need “a degree or an equivalent qualification or have gained equivalent experience.“

The legal profession is perhaps the most archaic and change-resistant of them all - and that's in part because law is backward-looking - case law means what's right or wrong is determined by what some judge said decades or centuries ago - and so the legal mind thinks backwards instead of forwards.

The fact that the wig-wearing law boffins of England and Wales have figured out that a law degree isn't needed to become a lawyer - that learning on the job is the way forward as long as professional exams are passed - is rather shocking, remarkable, and commendable.

It will open the profession to those from less affluent backgrounds and will create a legal system that is more reflective of society.

This is the biggest change in English and Welsh legal education for decades - and it is a small but important step to us becoming free from the shackles of our archaic education system.

If you start your own business and work hard, you'll eventually get there.

Trust me, I've done it. Don't give up, keep going...



...says someone who's done it.

That's like a winner of the national lottery telling you to “keep playing, don't give up, you'll get there eventually. Trust me, I did it.“

Realise that those who have succeeded have a much louder voice than those that haven't, yet the latter's lessons are just as valuable.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, in a job, or a student the not-so-secret secret to success is to try and then to keep trying, and to try different things after being knocked down again and again and again. I.e. to hustle and hustle hard.

The hustler fundamentally believes his/her efforts will pay off. Unlike the one that just works hard, the hustler keeps refining or reinventing the plan of attack - until it works.

It's just past 7am, I saw this as I looked out of the window of the guesthouse I'm staying in in Normandy, France!

Can you spot my son? He's having a remote lesson with his tutor.

In the background is one of the most significant buildings in Christian history which we visited yesterday. Absolutely stunning.


Listen, if your family can combine WFH with homeschool as we’ve done, it really is AMAZING, the freedom to live where and how you want is INCREDIBLE.

We could be in Cairo, Kolkata or Kathmandu next week.

And ensuring your kids socialise is not hard. I mean, my eldest daughter started going to uni last year, she's more social than most other students perhaps because homeschool done right gives kids tons of self-confidence.

Anyway, if you're young you should orientate your career and life to make this happen, it isn't hard.

The most important skill for your career, especially if you're non-white or from a developing country, is the ability to speak English with a western accent.

Because when you do that you're perceived to be culturally white. And in an economically white-dominated world that counts for a heck of a lot.

It completely changes the way people perceive you - whether they themselves are culturally white or not.

I was born and brought up in London, but had I had an Indian accent, which went away a few weeks into nursery, I wouldn't have got REMOTELY as far in my career as I have.

And this would have applied even more if I had worked in a developing country where anything white is almost worshipped.

Sure, the world is changing thanks to a rapidly-emerging Asia - but for now you need to speak and write perfect English, like a native Brit, American or Aussie - and boost your career with a healthy dose of white privilege.

Some pretty generic advice, particularly for younger folk. Work abroad if you possibly can - if you have a remote job, it's a no-brainer. Not only will it will open up new opportunities, but you'll learn life skills, you'll learn perspective.

You'll also be different to those around you so you'll bring fresh perspectives - you will challenge things.

I just met up with a few expats in Malaysia. You know, I've noticed there is a BIG difference in mindset between those that have lived in different countries, away from home, and those that haven't. Well-travelled people are more open-minded - they're more accepting of other views and cultures - and they empathise more.

Living abroad means you'll experience being a minority with the slightly edgy fear that entails, you're the different one and will have to make changes to fit in.

When I left the UK for Malaysia, my mum thought she was losing her son, my dad didn't know what to think, my friends thought I'd never quit my job let alone migrate. I had never lived outside the UK, didn't know anyone in Malaysia.

And so the best thing it did for me was rip me out of my comfort zone.

So if you're able to, go for that job oversees, it'll change you in ways you can't imagine.

Straight after graduating, I got a job at Barclays Capital - it wasn't working out so I made a random application to Morgan Stanley's HR department. They connected me to their Securitised Products Group (SPG) team.

After several interviews, I became SPG's 15th(ish) hire in London. When I left 6 years later the team was over 100.

During those years I felt first-hand the incredible benefits of being part of a fast-growing team. There was an energy, an influx of talent, it was easy to get great bonuses.

My colleagues were on another level to those I met in my other years in IB. My annual compensation went up 5-fold in 5 years - ok, my performance played a role - but, trust me, so did my team's.

When you're looking for your next role find out to how quickly the team or group you're going into is growing, and understand the plan and its viability. Interview the team as much they interview you.

That's because your team's success is possibly a bigger influence in your career success than your own personal performance.

But joining a dream team is often about being at the right place at the right time. I mean, I didn't choose SPG - it chose me - and no-one expected its spectacular growth.

Sure, that's not meritocratic, it's unfair. But, then again, so is life.

If entrepreneurs ran schools they'd bring them into the 21st century. Entrepreneurs question things. Entrepreneurs would ask:

- ‘Why are kids grouped by age, not by aptitude and progression?’
- ‘Why are kids that are being homeschooled outperforming us academically, by miles and miles?’
- ‘Why on Earth have we not made coding and Mandarin compulsory? And why do we teach dead languages such as Latin?’
- ‘Why do we make puny kids play rugby or American Football if they hate it?’
- ‘Why don’t we teach our kids life skills such as personal finance, self-defence and cooking?’

I pulled my kids out of school to homeschool them 5 years ago which is possibly the best thing I've ever done. They're 9, 11, 13 and are now 5-7 years ahead of the UK syllabus, can speak 6 languages including Mandarin, and they're way more confident and socially outgoing than the vast majority of kids.

My homeschool journey has led me to the conclusion that schools are archaic institutions in urgent need of reform.

The crux of the problem is that nearly all school heads are part of the system, gone through 20–40 years of the system. They are the last people to question it - they’re followers, conformists - and that’s why schools remain in the late 1800’s.

#homeschooling #entrepreneurship

My wife said something to me that I thought about and completely agreed with - well, I had to, she's my wife.

She said we're willing to shut down our economies over Covid-19 yet are unwilling to even slow down our economies over something which is likely FAR more catastrophic - climate change.

Our planet is heading for a disaster, humanity is having a material and irreversible impact on Earth - for example, we've destroyed half of the world's forests and will soon wipe out most of the rest - the human and economic consequences of such rapid change will make Covid-19 look like an irrelevance of the 21st Century.

Listen, don't use disposal plastics unless you really need them, just do this, make a small change in your life. Not only will you do your bit, trust me, others will follow.

A-level results came out last week, I was delighted to find out that my daughter Sabeen, second from right, managed to get 100% in her accounting module, which is half the A-level, and 90% in her mathematics modules, which make up two-thirds.

She's heading towards getting two A*s, the kind of grades that would get an 18-year-old into any university in the UK.

Sabeen recently turned 12.

My wife taught her accounting, says she picked it up really fast. I guided her with maths, not taught her as she learned most of it herself, but frankly she's perhaps only top 30% in terms of natural mathematical ability - way behind where her elder-brother-by-two-years was two years ago.

Sabeen's results are, in reality, the product of belief. In Sabeen's belief, and trust, in her parents and her parents belief in her.

Now, I get that many parents don't want this for their kids, I understand that. But most children can do just as well as Sabeen, many could do much better. They do, however, need parents who believe they can.

And the same applies at work - but only when managers and their staff both believe in each other and themselves.

Listen, the older I get, the more I see it - belief more than anything, and within teams it's a lot to do about belief in each other, that drives outcome.

There's a lot of hatred out there, it seems to be increasing, perhaps it is fuelled by social media.

The root cause of most hatred, in my view, is dissatisfaction with one's own achievements, career or life.

I've come to the view that we basically hate others when we hate ourselves.

Getting far in the corporate world is less about your output than it is about the relationships you build.

In fact, the smartest investment banker I ever worked with - off-the-scale intelligent - was highly passionate about his work - but he was obnoxious - and has had a less than mediocre career. I know others like him, and yet I know some that have done phenomenally well without being particularly smart - they've built great relationships.

Being a guy that people like, that people get on with, that brings a team together, that doesn't make their seniors feel threatened, will, nine times out of ten, do better than someone who's output is fantastic but doesn't tick those boxes.

The iPhone was released in 2007, by 2009 Android had got going. This was the beginning of the end for BlackBerry, but it shouldn't have been.

Many believe the iPhone and Android succeeded, and BlackBerry didn’t, because BlackBerry had an outdated keyboard.

But they're wrong.

According to surveys consumers loved the physical keyboard. In one survey taken as late as 2012, physical keyboards were still by far the preferred interface for smartphones (49% vs 35% for touchscreens).

So, if the keyboard was BlackBerry’s strength, where did it all go wrong?

It was dead easy to buy apps on iPhones and Androids, and so users bought them, and so developers made even more of them. iPhones and Androids soon became complete business and entertainment systems.

BlackBerry did make a push with apps in 2009, but it was way too clumsy.

And so we all switched over to touchscreen phones at some point. I switched in 2012 even though, at the time, I had a strong preference for physical keyboards over touchscreens.

BlackBerry didn't fail because it had the weaker, outdated 'idea'. In fact, it had the better idea all along. Like countless great ideas before it, BlackBerry failed on execution.

I get asked a lot what triggered me to homeschool my kids.

Our 3 kids, aged 5 to 9, were going to a school we were actually very happy with.

Now, to make their 8 minute drive to school constructive I used to teach them maths on the way there. No whiteboard, no textbook, no pen and paper, all 3 kids learning at a different pace, my head turned away from them and I was often preoccupied with driving. It wasn't ideal.

It was when I realised that they were learning more maths in those 8 minutes than they were during the entire day at school did I become concerned.

There was no reason to believe the problem was isolated to maths.

A few months later, and after much thought and planning, we pulled the kids from school.

Just over 4 years on and the 11 and 13 year old have finished their 18+ exams, are close to conversant in 6 languages (English, Mandarin, French, Bahasa Malaysia, Hindi/Urdu, Arabic), and they're learning Python (coding).

For the most part, we don't teach them - they learn mostly by Googling stuff or are taught by teachers over Skype - one of whom they hired themselves.

And, in case you're worried, they do plenty of sport and have plenty of friends.

#education

Many of my friends have hit their 40s. Most have enviable city jobs.

But, and it is big but, I'm seeing a fairly common theme with the ones that open up to me - many, possibly most, absolutely hate their jobs.

When they were in their 20s and 30s their pursuit of money consumed them.

But it just isn't doing it for them any more as they've made it, well almost - the problem is often they're trapped by their big mortgage and kids' school fees.

Only when you have enough money does the soul seek something beyond it.

Just make sure that in pursuit of getting your 'enough' your life doesn't end up becoming one long wait to retirement.

Living in a fat house and driving a flash car will unlikely make up for being the living dead.

There is only one business culture in the world that truly recognises that failure is the foundation of success.

That's the US, where failure is openly talked about without shame, and directors of failed businesses are allowed to quickly move on. And not just in business.

You gain so much from failure. I mean, I can so feel that my failures are massive assets - motivating me and steering me to make better decisions.

Now sure, failing is depressing but it makes you question everything including yourself far more than when you succeed.

The rest of the world doesn't value business failure nearly enough.

“Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” - Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter.

Oyo.

It's letting go of a sixth of its staff, its losses are growing much faster than its revenue, it's been trying to expand everywhere - and making a hash of it - for example, in Japan it has less than ten thousand rooms vs a target of a million set in March 2019.

And all of this while still losing a ton of money in its home market, India.

SoftBank's going cold, the whole world is catching a cold.

Oyo is the next WeWork.

Just over two decades ago I sat my university finals.

5 consecutive workdays, each with a 3 hour paper in which we had to answer 4 structured questions.

The entire outcome of my 3-year degree depended on these 20 questions.

It was the most stressful period in my life - a few weeks before the exams, I promised myself that after these exams I'd never do any again.

Up to nearly two decades on, I'd occasionally wake up in a cold sweat panicking as to whether I had prepared for my finals around the corner. And soon I'd figure that, heck, I'm middle-aged now. No exams. Phew.

I'm not the only one. I found out a couple of years ago a good friend of mine who studied law has had this same nightmare several times.

There must be millions like us.

But why did we have to go through this? Hardly any of us apply anything we've learned at school or university except basic maths, literacy and social skills.

If exams are to test intelligence, why not just make 13-year-olds do them once, and be done with?

But they're there to test which kid is most obedient, which kid is most prepared to sacrifice their childhood for grades, which kid questions the system the least, which kid most wants society to not look upon them as a failure.

And then we wonder why kids don't want to study.

Should you take the biggest risk of your life and go for that startup idea you have?

To answer that for yourself, you need to answer another question honestly.

What kind of person are you?

You see, there are two types of people.

There are people that are generally content.

And there are people who always want more. Whatever they have, they want more. These guys tend to achieve the most, but even when they do they’re still not content - as after achieving a goal they'll just set a new one.

Which kind of person is it better to be? I don't know.

But what I do know is that you should forget doing your own startup if you’re anywhere near that first personality type.

Starting your own business is tough, really really tough. If you do dive in, and you are in that first group, you just won't last the course - you'll be too content with the status quo to grit it out.

Discontentment, not dreams, is the dark driver of entrepreneurship.

Jason Lemkin, the best-known expert in SaaS (=software), once said that the best SaaS companies get to $100m of revenue in 5 stages, each taking ~2 years, so ~10 years in total.

In my view, his model only works for low-churn SaaS businesses with some kind of compounding effect, like ours, i.e. the ones that are painful to grow in the early stages.

Lemkin breaks down those stages, i.e. after 2 years the revenue should be X, after 4, it should be Y, etc... until year 10 where it's $100m. Those stages are not linear.

At the end of year 2, we achieved his target. As we approach the end of year 4, we will just hit his 4 year target. So we have just 3 more targets to go.

Instead of spending on advertising we've invested in building a product that customers love - and it's powering our growth today. I'm really proud of the fact that we have done this without a cent of VC money, which has meant over 60% of the company is owned by the co-founding team.

Now, yesterday was the biggest day in Jibble's history. We launched a completely new version of Jibble, rewritten from the ground up. We were already the highest-rated time clock on the planet based on customer-reviews, we're going next level, with a very API and integration centric growth strategy.

The journey has not been easy, it never is, built on hard work, sweat, and tears. A massive thanks to the team at Jibble, our customers, and our investors for making Jibble possible. 🙏

5 years ago a guy, in his early 40s, put his life savings into his first business.

He didn't come across to me as ambitious, he didn't sell himself well, he didn't have industry knowledge in the space his startup was in.

And initially, he struggled.

I recently reconnected with him and he told me that he is making more money he could have ever imagined.

His business is comfortably profitable with revenues of several million US$s.

Now, I know many entrepreneurs who have seemed 5x as impressive, had 5x more going for them, with more than 5x as much funding, yet failed.

But this guy's story reinforces my view that most entrepreneurs will likely achieve success if they can somehow sustain themselves for long enough and grit it out.

We all know about the impossibly low chances of success in business. But I know very few that have worked hard at it for 5-10 years, and not achieved it.

The first goal in business shouldn't be to make millions, but to survive. Hang in there long enough, somehow - which very few do - and you're most of the way there.

As an investment banker many years ago, I felt shackled to my desk, and so when I quit and walked out of Credit Suisse's building in Canary Wharf for the last time I honestly felt like I'd bought back my freedom, like a prisoner let out after years of incarceration.

BTW I was a banker for 8 years - that's called sacrifice - that's NOT doing what you want to do - and to get somewhere you often need that.

Anyway, that one hour commute each way was soul-destroying. Jeez, I remember being in Stanmore Station at 6.15am, often when it was still pitch black, and I remember the stench of miserable sweaty commuters on the way back from Canary Wharf. “Mind the closing doors“ was like being told the prison doors were being shut for me to serve a little more time.

WFH is beautiful, it's close to the level of freedom humans want without having too much where you'd waste your whole life watching Netflix.

For those that have not experienced working in an office, get into an industry and role where WFH, including work from a beach resort, is pretty normal.

You know, looking back, if WFH was an option when I was in banking, I doubt I would've quit. One of the most valuable things in the world is freedom.

It's amazing how so many who are early in their careers think their managers, who have been there, done that, played the game, actually believe their bull$**t.

Experienced managers know all the tricks, and tend to be HIGHLY suspicious because they've seen it all before. But they rarely confront, especially if there is some doubt.

Honestly, don't assume that just because your manager doesn't argue it means he or she doesn't know, or at least suspect, that the bull$**t you've told them is just that.

Be honest, earn trust, built a reputation for integrity - not many do. Over the long term it'll become a key differentiator between yourself and your peers, and will pay off big time.

It's 4.56am in Malaysia, I've been up for twenty minutes, I didn't wake up to an alarm, it's a pretty normal morning for me.

Getting up early, and that means going to sleep early, is, in my view, one of the most effective ways to boost productivity. It worked for me at university, it's been phenomenal for me as an entrepreneur where I've been more extreme with it.

This quiet period in the morning is insanely efficient. Fresh, energised, sharp and free from distractions, you just get so much sh*t done.

Last month, Airbnb announced that it planned to give temporary accommodation to 20,000 Afghan refugees around the world for free in Airbnb residences that hosts have agreed to.

Well, it has just announced that “if demand for housing aligns with supply in communities where refugees are resettling, these new resources could help provide housing for an additional 20,000 Afghan refugees”.

So now we're talking 40,000 refugees being given temporary accommodation - incredible stuff, great to see big businesses giving back! ❤️

Wow, this new government in Malaysia means business.

It's exactly 2 weeks after Malaysia's historic election and I just got a call asking me to gather a small group of 'highly talented' expats who are willing to have an informal chat with MPs to help the Malaysian government understand what it needs to do to attract the world's best talent.

I have a few people in mind, but if any of you can introduce me to any expats in Malaysia that are world-class talents I'd greatly appreciate it.

”I know being a cop is hard. I know that shit’s dangerous. But some jobs can’t have bad apples. Some jobs, everybody gotta be good. Like pilots. Ya know, American Airlines can’t be like, “Most of our pilots like to land. We just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains. Please bear with us.“”
- Chris Rock

How do CEOs sleep for only 4-5 hours a day and manage to run multi-million dollar companies?

Ok, so a lot of what is out there is massively exaggerated by the media, some of it fuelled by CEOs pretending to be superhuman.

Many CEOs do work damn hard (and many owner-CEOs don’t, especially in the later years of a business) but it’s rare that our sleep gets hit over an extended period. It's our social lives, family lives, leisure time which are impacted - because we know you can't think straight when you're lacking sleep.

Listen, lack of sleep adversely affects memory, concentration, mood and health - if you're sleep-deprived, CEO or not, you just can’t do your job properly.

The only thing in the world Sachin Tendulkar has ever been really good at is re-directing a fast-approaching cricket ball with a slab of wood.

But the Indian cricketer did it so well, he became arguably the greatest sportsperson that has ever lived and it made him almost US$200m.

His ability to bowl or field never mattered much, although he was pretty good at both. His success came from his ability to bat.

What I'm saying is that you just need to be damn good at one thing - and it is why a specialist doctor, lawyer, investor, accountant, coder, gardener, designer or whatever nearly always does better than a generalist.

I know people that have become experts in a single business app - like HubSpot or Google Ads - and are paid more than computer science graduates with a decade of work experience.

I mean, this applies to F&B too - the highly-successful chains focus:
KFC - fried chicken
McDonald's - burgers
Nando's - grilled chicken
Starbucks - disgusting coffee
Pizza Hut - pizza
Dunkin' Donuts - doughnuts

You'll struggle to name a successful generalist F&B chain.

That's the power of focus, of being a specialist - don't underestimate it.

Listen, just make sure you're phenomenal at one in-demand thing. Live it, breathe it, dream it.