Networking Success | Nozad Style

There is a great lesson Zig Ziglar taught that has always stuck with me.

Zig said, “If people like you they’ll listen to you [which is nice, but not very productive], but if they trust you, then they’ll do business with you.”

And that is the one big secret of Nozad, whom I introduced in last week’s article and in my Publisher’s letter of the December issue of SUCCESS. I also promised to pass along Nozad’s 7 networking secrets that has made him a master connector - secrets that any of us can apply.

Secrets that could make all of us as wealthy as a rug dealer.

Let me outline them for you now. I drew these from a great profile piece a fellow editor colleague, Victoria Barret from Forbes, did on Pejman Nozad.

Here is No. 1…

1. Always be willing and eager to help others with an introduction or your time. And do not expect anything in return.

Reminds me of a quote from another master networker, Harvey Mackay. He said, “My Golden Rule of Networking is simple: Don’t keep score.”

The profile of Nozad is sprinkled with names of successful entrepreneurs he has backed and advised. What’s missing is what happened in between those meetings. He is constantly having conversations with young people, some still in school, and helping them along. They may or may not end up working at startups. They may or may not raise funds in companies he could invest in. He doesn’t think about it that way. He calls this “one way love.”

 “The currency of real networking is not greed but generosity.”
Keith Ferrazzi

Also note that Nozad went to the key contacts—to the influencers’ homes and to the schools the potential entrepreneurs attended. As Scott Stratten said to me in an interview recently, “Are you going to where your customers [or key contacts] are or just sitting and hoping they come to you?”

2. Be proud of where you came from and share that with others. It shows honesty and builds trust.

Nozad doesn’t represent himself as anything but a guy who sold rugs in Palo Alto and then started investing in startups. He talks openly and eagerly about his family’s background in Iran and the remarkable story of how he got to Silicon Valley. People who Nozad sold a rug to ten years ago, and had no contact with since, still felt like they knew and were close to him.  That is the social power you gain when you are willing to be completely human and authentic.

“If people like you they’ll listen to you,
but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.”
-Zig Ziglar

3. Compliment the achievements of those around you. And do it with a smile.

We all know that awkward feeling that comes with a superficial or flat compliment. It means well, but lands with a thud. Nozad deftly avoids that by focusing on what someone has accomplished and tying it to who they are deep down.

He tells one entrepreneur, “Starting things is in your DNA.” And with that, he nails exactly what this guy is proud of, and makes him feel good about it. His phrasing has so much more genuine punch to it than if he’d just said, “You’re a great entrepreneur.”

People yearn for validation, to feel important, to be recognized for their effort and achievements. You can build great bonds by looking for those things that people are proud of and pointing it out.

4. In conversations search for a common ground. It may take a while, but there is surely something to bring you closer.

This is perhaps the trickiest area for all of us. You meet someone at a cocktail party, and you know just enough about them to know you could both benefit from connecting and then… blah. You struggle to get beyond the “Any vacations coming up?” chatter. Instead Nozad Googled his early rug clients so he knew how to guide conversations. Now his own network of friends is wide enough that usually he can quickly make a personal connection with people simply by suggesting a common friend.

5. Use your Rolodex wisely and only for the right person at the right time, for the right cause.

Several of the top venture capitalists who do deals with Nozad rarely hear from him. That’s very intentional. He knows the importance of valuing other people’s time. People notice when you waste their time. They respond to your emails when you honor their time.

6. Make sure you understand what the person you want help from has to gain from it.

Nozad understands motivations. He knew the venture capitalists he sold rugs to were always hunting for undiscovered treasures: talented entrepreneurs no one else had yet spotted. The entrepreneurs, likewise, were eager to mingle with potential backers. That was Nozad’s “in.”  He knew he could bridge both worlds.

7. Don’t create walls between your personal and professional lives. It is one big network of people.

Nozad starts most conversations very personally. How are the kids? How have you been? It is subtle, disarming, and endearing. Spend more time listening than you do talking. And you do that by asking questions and listening with genuine interest.

I’ve seen this trait in other successful networkers. They don’t exhaust themselves being slightly different personalities in work, family and social settings. They are just as personally helpful and at ease to a work colleague as they are to a family friend.

OK, so let me make this easy for you; here’s your $50 million cheat sheet summary:

1. Give.

2. Be real.

3. Compliment.

4. Find commonality.

5. Use your network sparingly.

6. Think WIIFT—What’s In It For Them.

7. Be authentically YOU, always.

“The richest people in the world look for and build networks,
everyone else looks for work.”
-Robert Kiyosaki

It’s well known that 80% of business opportunities are filled through networking. And if you eventually want to become as rich as a rug dealer… then networking is the skill you want to continually work on and master.

Cam'Ron X A-Trak X Juelz Santana X Dame Dash

What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Rockstars

“I was constantly walking into crowds where no one had never heard of me and I needed to leave them 100 percent convinced.” Is that a Silicon Valley entrepreneur talking? Actually it’s rapper G-Eazy, reflecting on his journey on the eve of his entry to the Billboard chart with his new album, These Things Happen. “It was also hustling and connecting and making an impression.”

Embarking on a career in popular music is in many ways like starting a business. You develop a brand, a distinct identity in the marketplace, and try to get people excited about it. What can entrepreneurs learn from musicians about getting a new business off the ground?

The 10-Year Journey to Overnight Success

Any musician you’ve ever heard of has worked countless hours to master his or her instrument and has endured humiliation after humiliation in the form of small and apathetic audiences, discouraging label executives, and dismissive incumbents. It takes hard work, commitment and determination to succeed as a musician.

The same goes for people who want to start a business. Entrepreneurs can get impatient when all they hear about are overnight successes and young self-made billionaires. Overnight success stories make for good headlines. But they are misleading.

In both music and entrepreneurship you need to commit fully and decisively, and then stick it out through the long haul. You have to be willing to make personal sacrifices, and you have to be persistent in your pursuit of excellence.

When I interviewed super-producer Rick Rubin for an article about meditation, I asked him why so many musicians meditate. He told me meditation is good for musicians because it reinforces the lifestyle of consistent practice and discipline. People tend to focus on the inspiration aspects of the arts (and the inspiration aspect of entrepreneurship). 

What we don’t see is the tedious disciplined practice involved in translating that inspiration into a success in the marketplace.Persistence means overcoming the deeply personal pain of failures. We all know that you need to fail to learn. But what rockers can teach entrepreneur’s is that failing is like mourning the death of a loved one. Your business, like your art, is your baby. You are personally attached to it. You love it. It is part of who you are and its success is tied into your feelings of self-worth. How must Robin Thicke feel around now that his deeply personal album about his failed relationship with his wife sold only 530 copies in the UK in its first week? That’s how entrepreneurs feel every time they fail.

Musicians have been told their entire career that their babies are ugly, stupid, and boring. Jimi Hendrix was kicked out of every band he played in until he started his own. Which doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It just means that it’s part of the deal.

The same goes in business. Starbucks founder Howard Schultz was passionate about his vision of bringing Italian coffee bar culture to the US. He approached 242 investors. 217 said, “No.” That’s 217 times that his baby was insulted. Then he couldn’t show a profit for three years. That’s rock star persistence.

Creative Adaptability

Charles Darwin said that it is not the strongest or the most intelligent who survive, but those who can best manage change.

Rockers are masters of change, flexibility, and adaptability. Madonna, one of the only women in popular music to have a consistently successful career into her fifties, has done it by constantly changing and adapting. She didn’t lose her brand of empowered sexuality, but she changed with the times. In fact, she sometimes changed ahead of the times. Now making her thirteenth album, she’s getting today’s hottest producers to give her their most exciting tracks.

When U2 transitioned from their signature sound, epitomized on The Joshua Tree, to the dark electronic sound of Achtung Baby, they proved that they were agile. Likewise, Radiohead transitioned away from guitar-based songs after their hit album OK Computer to a more electronic sound for its follow-up, Kid A. It wasn’t easy to make the changes, but it paid off. Achtung Baby was a commercial smash for U2, selling 18 million copies, while Radiohead’s Kid A topped the Billboard chart, won the Grammy award for best alternative album, and went platinum.

Any team should be wary of abandoning its core strength to superficially adopt a trend. But that wasn’t the case with U2 and Radiohead. What they were doing was growing together. They were able to interrupt their habits of thought and their habits of action. They were innovating.

It’s not the strongest or most intelligent that survives but the one that is most adaptable to change. Startups need to keep changing if they are going to hold their customers’ interest, adapt to changing market, and outperform competitors.

Everyone is a Rapper

In both music and entrepreneurship you need powers of persuasion. You need to get people excited about what you’re doing so that they can give you money to keep doing it. You need to rap.

The original meaning of the word rap was talking. But it was more than that. It was your ability to talk smoothly, to talk yourself out of trouble, to use talking to get your way. It was a smart way of talking, a way of talking that impressed other people. Rapping was selling. That’s why rappers are such good entrepreneurs.

When rap started, there was no institutional support for the genre. So rappers learned salesmanship. Rap culture was about proving you were better than the rest. It was about distinguishing yourself and your originality above the crowd.

Startups need to do that. Just like rappers, they need to convince people that they are better and bolder than the rest. That they can rise to any challenge and circumstances. Entrepreneurs can learn from rappers that stepping up to the mic with confidence can go a long way.

Entrepreneurs can also learn from rockers to make an emotional connection to their audience through body language and stories. As I’ve written before, you can learn techniques that will strengthen the effectiveness of your communication.

But most importantly, rockers teach entrepreneurs the importance of finding your unique voice and expressing it. As an artist, you have to differentiate yourself from others. Doing well in business requires the same thing. To stand out, you need to put yourself on the line and express yourself with confidence and passion.

Nurture the Team

A startup company I once interviewed faced a situation where one partner wanted the company to always be small enough to all fit in an elevator. But the other partner wanted world domination. One wanted to be Zuckerburg, the other wanted to be Zingerman’s. It collapsed. Another company had a partner who didn’t feel like he got a fare share of the equity split. So he split, right as they were about to be approved for a grant on which he was the primary investigator. The grant fell through.

Partners are a major source of uncertainty. They are also the most important factor for your startup’s success. What can we learn from rockers about minimizing partner risk? Invest in the connection with your partners.

In 1995 Anthony Kiedis, singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, was in rehab for heroin addiction. He was the singer of one of the biggest bands in the world, with a new album coming out and a tour to embark on. His band mates needed Kiedis to do his job.

Part of the rehab center’s recovery process was to invite friends and family for a group session. Flea, The Chili Peppers’ bassist, showed up. When the group session began, the therapist asked Flea, “How does it make you feel when Anthony’s out there using drugs and you have no idea where he is or if he’s ever going to come back?” Kiedis cringed in his seat. He figured Flea was going to rant about how mad he is that Kiedis is ruining all of their hard work. And he would be right.

But Flea burst into tears. “I’m afraid he’s going to die on me,” he sobbed. “I don’t want him to die.” Flea cared about Kiedis as more than a means to an end.

Truly great bands such as The Red Hot Chili Peppers treat each other like family. That’s where their resilience comes from. Flea wasn’t happy about what Kiedis’s behavior was doing for the band. But first and foremost he was worried about him as his friend.

The same goes for startups. Other people are not just there to get the work done. They are not disposable parts. If they are, the team will have zero resilience for when times get tough. Without a strong relational fabric, the team will collapse at the first bump in the road.

Why does caring matter so much? Because it brings out the best in others. It facilitates others by giving them the support they need so that they can contribute at their highest level. It also creates a safe environment for making mistakes and experimenting.

Caring comes with playfulness, which helps with burnout and also opens up the team’s resources and creativity. And caring increases loyalty. When band members look out for each other, they build a reservoir of goodwill that they tap into when times get tough.

Rock stars may not be eager for us to see them as business people. They want us to see them as loose and intuitive. They sell youth, and they need to represent. But if we look beyond the myth at the work that goes into their success, we can learn valuable lessons for how to start and grow all kinds of successful businesses.

Willams Advanced Engineering | Bringing F1 To The Roads

The car tuner underworld has a new overlord. And a highly respectable one at that. About as far away as you can get from backstreet outfits selling you ‘performance’ upgrades sits F1 team Williams, which has begun offering its wide-ranging expertise to outside clients.

If you were under any illusion that making other people’s cars go faster was somehow a grubby enterprise, then Williams’ gleaming new £8 million building constructed alongside the F1 operations in an upmarket corner of Oxfordshire dispels that. Especially when, last week, David Cameron opened it in person alongside Williams boss Sir Frank Williams.

The business didn’t start off so well. Jaguar had ordered Williams to build a running prototype of the breathtaking C-X75 supercar first revealed as a concept in 2010. The result was impressive: the fully functioning all-wheel-drive hybrid car combined a highly tuned 1.6-litre engine with a battery pack and electric motors to give a power output of 850bhp. The plan was that Williams would build the limited run of 250 cars each costing upwards of a million pounds. Williams Advanced Engineering was formed in March 2012 and began laying foundations for the hi-tech factory at the firm’s base at Grove, near Wantage.

But then Jaguar cancelled the car. Complicating it all was the fact that the man who ordered the original concept, former Jaguar boss Mike O’Driscoll, was now running Williams Advanced Engineering. “I believed that such a halo car would provide a great backdrop to launch the Jaguar F-type,” he told The Telegraph. But after he left in 2011 the supercar was shelved. “Technology prove-out doesn’t necessarily mean market potential,” O’Driscoll says stoically. “We always knew that it would be a finely balanced decision. We continue to work with Jaguar Land Rover very closely.”

It wasn’t all bad. Williams now uses the car as a rolling presentation of what it can offer. “What we proved is that we can build a car with the performance of a Bugatti Veyron and the fuel economy of a Toyota Prius. The C-X75 has been an enormously positive experience.”

What Williams offers to clients is over 30 years of aerodynamic, vehicle handling, and lightweight body construction experience. After developing its own in-house hybrid system for previous Formula 1 cars, it also knows about how to apply battery technology to make cars both faster and more frugal. In fact the only thing it doesn’t do is tune engines – Cosworth was responsible for the turbocharged and supercharged 1.6-litre unit in the C-X75, and the F1 team has a long history of buying in engines, currently from Mercedes.

But in an era where the combustion engine has become just one tool to both speed up cars and bring down their fuel use, that seems a very modern omission.

Customers need to be wealthy: we’re talking car-company wealthy. For example we were told that aerodynamic programs start at £50,000-100,000 rising into the millions for full use of the company’s two wind tunnels.

One example is Nissan’s GT-R Time Attack car. Williams was drafted in to create a version of Nissan’s cut-price supercar to take the production car lap record at German’s Nurburgring track, a source of great kudos among manufacturers. Nissan plumped for the cheaper aero option of computer modeling rather than wind tunnel time, but it worked. As well as modifying the suspension, Williams created all sorts of new aerodynamic body parts, including some very fiddly items such as ‘flicks’ behind the front wheelarches, all designed to increase grip by raising the downforce but without creating too much drag. Williams engineers went to the 13-mile track with the team, modifying parts on the fly until at last it managed it: 7 mins 08 seconds.

According to Nissan, it decided to employ Williams because F1 teams traditionally work fast. Just three months elapsed between getting the gig and breaking the lap record. Williams has now handed over the data on all these parts so Nissan can incorporate them into a ‘track pack’ version of its GT-R.

That’s about the only project Williams can talk about (“Carmakers are even more secretive than F1,” one engineer told me regretfully) but currently one big client has booked out the majority of the wind tunnel time for a new racing-car project, almost certainly a Le Mans car.

Le Mans is actually becoming a Williams specialty – the firm has supplied its hybrid know-how to serial race-winner Audi for its last three Le Mans cars, and it helped BMW take its sole victory in the 24-hour race in 1999 with the V12 LMR. It also dabbled in Touring cars, building the Laguna BTCC racers for its engine partner Renault (one sits in Williams’ racing car collection, looking a little odd among a fleet of F1 cars).

Not all Williams projects are car-based – the breakdown we were told was about 50/50. Of the automotive 50 percent, only half were performance projects. For example, aside from the GT-R, Williams is working with Nissan on some of its electrification projects. That’s a big endorsement when you figure what Nissan must already know about electric cars from its all-electric - Leaf.

Williams parlayed its early F1 work with so-called KERS hybrids that stored electric power in a spinning flywheel into a business that this year it sold to Britain’s largest automotive engineering company GKN, which is targeting makers of buses and other commercial vehicles to use the fuel-saving tech. According to O’Driscoll, it was sold because Williams didn’t have the capacity to build them on a commercial scale, but it retains the patents.

What it now wants to concentrate on is becoming a car fettler of global repute, comparable with other renowned British car engineering consultancies such as Lotus Engineering and Ricardo. Given how secretive car markers are about the outside help they get, we may never know how influential they become, especially given how Williams Advanced Engineering lumps its accounts in with Williams the F1 team.

But if you do happen to spot a small Williams logo in the next car you drive, you’ll know it’s taken the best of British engineering talent to make that car faster, more frugal or just plain better.

Guitar Gods

Foo Fighters - Letterman Live

Foo Fighters showcasing "Wasting Light" on Letterman

The End Of The Hipster?

Meet Josh. 

Josh is a 30-year-old artist/chef who lives in a converted warehouse in Hackney, east London. Josh has a beard, glasses and cares about the provenance of his coffee. He pays his tax, doesn't have a 9-to-5 job and, along with his five polymathic flatmates, shuns public transport, preferring to ride a bike.
On paper, Josh is the archetypal hipster – just don't call him one: "I don't hate the word hipster, and I don't hate hipsters, but being a hipster doesn't mean anything any more. So God forbid anyone calls me one."

At some point in the last few years, the hipster changed. Or at least its definition did. What was once an umbrella term for a counter-culture tribe of young creative types in (mostly) New York's Williamsburg and London's Hackney morphed into a pejorative term for people who looked, lived and acted a certain way. The Urban Dictionary defines hipsters as "a subculture of men and women, typically in their 20s and 30s, that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics". In reality, the word is now tantamount to an insult.

So what happened? Chris Sanderson, futurologist and co-founder of trend forecasting agency The Future Laboratory, thinks it's simple: "The hipster died the minute we called him a hipster. The word no longer had the same meaning."

Fuelling this was a report last month from researchers at the University of New South Wales who discovered that the hipster look was no longer "hip". In short: the more commonplace a trend – in one instance, beards – the less attractive they are perceived to be. And in 2014 we may have reached "peak beard". Could it be that the flat-white-drinking, flat-cap-wearing hipster will soon cease to exist?
Sanderson thinks it's more a case of evolving than dying. Talking to The Observer last week, he suggested there are now two types of hipster: "Contemporary hipsters – the ones with the beards we love to hate – and proto-hipsters, the real deal." And herein lies the confusion.

"Historically, proto-hipsters have been connoisseurs – people who deviate from the norm. Like hippies. Over the years, though, they inspired a new generation of young urban types who turned the notion of a hipster into a grossly commercial parody. These new hipsters want to appear a certain way, to be seen to be doing certain things, but without doing the research. So they appropriated the lifestyle and mindset of a proto-hipster."

It's a definition neatly summarised in the song Sunday, by Los Angeles rapper Earl Sweatshirt: "You're just not passionate about half the shit that you're into."

The problem is that it is now almost impossible to differentiate between the two. "Hipsters are more interested in following; proto-hipsters are more interested in leading. Yet they look the same, so how are people to know the difference?"

This lack of visual disparity has probably led to society's fondness for hipster-bashing. As Alex Miller, UK editor-in-chief of Vice, explains: "I couldn't define a hipster. I guess it's 'The Other'. But as a general term it's blown up because people finally realised they had a word to mock something cool and young which they didn't understand."

It's an age-old scenario. In Distinction, his 1979 report on the social logic of taste, French academic Pierre Bourdieu wrote that "social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat". So our inability to define a hipster merely fuels the enigma.

"And as you can imagine, this is greatly exasperating to proto-hipsters," says Sanderson.
It hasn't always been like this. While the definition of hipster hasn't altered vastly over the years, there was a time when it was considered to be something both meaningful and specific.
The word was coined in the 1940s to define someone who rejected societal norms – such as middle-class white people who listened to jazz. Then came a reactive literary subculture, realised through the work of beatniks such as Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. It was Norman Mailer who attempted to define hipsters in his essay The White Negro as postwar American white generation of rebels, disillusioned by war, who chose to "divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self".

A decade later, we had the counter-culture movement – hippies who carried their torch in a fairly self-explanatory fashion, divorced from the mainstream. The word mostly vanished until the 1990s, when it was redefined so as to describe middle-class youths with an interest in "the alternative".
In the "noughties", hipsters became the stuff of parody, via Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker's satire Nathan Barley, which earmarked the "twats of Shoreditch". Nowadays, though, anyone can appear to be a hipster provided they buy the right jeans. From the twee Match.com adverts featuring hipster-style couples to the cocktails served in jam jars at the trendy incomer bar the Albert in EastEnders, "the idea of the hipster has been swallowed up by the mainstream", says Sanderson.

Luke O'Neil, a Boston-based culture writer for the online magazine Slate,says it is the same in the US. "I've even noticed what I call the meta-hipster: a person who sidesteps the traditional requirements and just wants to skip ahead to the status. Like putting on glasses and getting a tattoo somehow makes you a hipster," he says.

But while Miller agrees that hipster has morphed into a negative term, it is less about the word and more about what it represents: "Growing up, we just used other words – 'scenester' at university, 'trendies' at school – and they mean the same. Hipster has simply become a word which means the opposite of authentic."

Not everyone agrees. At Hoxton Bar and Grill in east London, 24-year-old graduate Milly identifies with hipsters: "I mean, that's why we all live in east London. It just feels so real, like something creative and cool is happening."

Manny, a 28-year-old singer who has lived in Dalston for more than five years, likes the sense of community: "Young people haven't got jobs or work and they need it. It's like a tribe, like goths. I hope hipsters aren't dead, because I just signed a year lease on my flat."

Miller adds: "We've never written about hipsters as a subculture at Vice because I don't think hipsters are a subculture. However, I do appreciate that people like the idea of belonging to something, so I suppose on that level the idea exists." As O'Neil explains: "Whoever said [hipsters] wanted to be unique? I think it's more about wanting to belong."

So what next? "I think hipsters will have an overhaul. There will be a downturn in this skinny-jean, long-haired feminised look over the next few years owing to the rise of the stronger female role model," says Chris Sanderson." And in its place? "A more macho look, almost to the point of caricature, in a bid for men to reinforce their identity."

Perhaps this explains the phenomenon of "normcore", a term coined by New York trend agency K-Hole in their Youth Mode report last autumn. Though widely derided by the fashion world, this plain, super-normal style is arguably a reaction to the commodification of individuality, the idea that you can buy uniqueness off the peg in Topshop. "Normcore doesn't want the freedom to become someone," they say. "Normcore moves away from a coolness that relies on difference to a post-authenticity that opts into sameness."

It sounds like a joke but, says Sanderson, it might actually might be a thing: "It's the opposite of what people think is hip now, but it's also very masculine – which ties in to the return to blokeiness."
But for many, including Josh, the desire to categorise people is infuriating. Arvida Byström is a Swedish-born, London-based artist, photographer and model. Though sometimes identified as a hipster aesthetically speaking, her work, which focuses on sexuality, self-identity and contemporary feminism, would suggest she is much more than that. Sanderson would describe her as "someone who leads not follows".

She balks at the idea of being a hipster: "I haven't been aware of people calling me a hipster. I certainly don't identify as one. What is a hipster, anyway? It is such a general term. I don't even know if they exist any more."

But as Josh says: "I don't see why you can't just be a guy in east London liking the stuff that's around without being branded as something."

10 Signs You’re Meant For Something Bigger On Earth

Do you ever feel like you’re destined for something bigger? That you’re not making the most of your time here? That you’re stuck in a rut despite trying your damnedest to find your way out?

You’re not alone.

Most of us yearn for something bigger and better in our lives. It’s part of being human. And if the following signs describe you, there’s a good chance you have great things to look forward to in your future.

You’re never satisfied with “good enough.”

If you think you’re meant for something bigger, chances are you’re the type of person who goes above and beyond. You don’t settle for mediocrity. You don’t accept the status quo. And you definitely want to be the best in everything you do.

You’re not afraid to take risks.

Great leaders, thinkers, entrepreneurs, and game-changers embrace failure and learn from their mistakes. It’s a harsh truth, but if you don’t take risks in life, you’ll never reach great heights.

You take action when you feel inspired.

It’s okay if you tend to put things off until you’re really inspired. People who are meant for something bigger know when to make calculated decisions and when to take action. They let a combination of intuition and analysis guide their decision-making. And most of the time it results in good decisions.

You love what you do so much you’d do it for free.

People who accomplish great things in life do what they love and love what they do … so much so that they would do it for free. That’s because they know they’ll get paid to do what they love eventually, which leads to our next sign …

You’re an entrepreneur at heart.

People who are meant for something bigger find ways to work for themselves. They often feel constrained while working for someone else. Even if they work for a company they don’t love, they find ways to do work on the side that helps them get closer to their goals.

You’re a true optimist.

Are you filled with hope and optimism about the future? People who are meant for something bigger are. Choose to look on the bright side and see the glass as half full.

You’re able to focus your efforts on your best ideas.

Highly successful people have a lot of ideas but they don’t get bogged down by them. If you think you’re meant for something bigger, honestly evaluate which ideas you spend the most time on. If you find you’re wasting time on trivial tasks that aren’t getting you anywhere, ask yourself one important question: will doing this get me closer to finding my purpose?

You dream big.

Do you aspire to do great things? Do you want to change the world? If so, this is one of the biggest signs you’re meant to do great things. Harness that energy and take action every day to make it happen. You don’t have to be perfect. Focus on repetition and making small progress.

You seek new knowledge every day.

People who are destined for greatness are lifelong learners. They seek knowledge in books, on the Internet, and through conversation with intelligent people. The fact that you’re reading this article is testament to the fact that you’re a knowledge-seeker.

You go out of your way to help others, even when it’s inconvenient to you.

Want to know the surest sign you’re meant for something bigger on this planet? It’s having the courage to go out of your way to help other people … without expecting anything in return. Do good deeds and help people less fortunate than you. When you give, you get. That’s what life is all about: putting your stamp on the world by making a difference in the lives of others.

Bangalore Rap Cypher

Hmmm... Pretty impressive local talent huh...

Infectious beat and great flows...

 

I AM WHAT I THINK.

MY THOUGHTS DICTATE MY ACTIONS AND MY ACTIONS CREATE MY LIFE.

AS WITHIN, AS WITHOUT.

THE THEATRE OF MY LIFE IS WHERE THE RED CARPET PREMIER BE.

METAMORPHOSIS AVANT GARDE.

I WIN AT ANYTHING I CHOOSE TO.

"LE MANS OR ANY MAJOR CHALLENGE REQUIRES SOME TEST, SOME TRAINING AND SOME DEDICATION. I AM A PERSON WHO IF I DECIDE TO DO SOMETHING I DO IT 100%; I DON'T DO IT 50-50." - FERNANDO ALONSO

What (I Think) Bangalore Needs To Make It A Global City - 1 Of Many

I came across this amazing e-mag site this morning "Toronto Life" and spent quite a bit of time browsing through and getting infused with how life in the city of Toronto flows. I've always heard a lot about Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver through a significant portion of my family who had boarded the Canada Immigration bandwagon eons ago and have very happily nestled into the high life of their respected micro geographies and what always amazed me was that these places are a bustling cauldron of ethnicities, cultures, customs and ways of life which have blended and flavoured in with the original demography and thrown out a brilliant infusion of arts and culture and music and movies and design and food and just a wonderful collage of a big city experience.

So, why can't we have the same thing in Bangalore?

Our city is a mash up of all kinds of peoples. We're 10 million and growing and we have immigrants rushing in for our way of life by the hour. I can walk around and apart from bumping into (quite literally when you think of our traffic woes) a person from every nook and corner of our beautiful country, I can see Americans from both sides of the hemisphere; Europeans from both the new and the old - Italians, French, Danes, Czechs, Bosnians; Africans - Nigerians, Kenyans, Ethiopians, and our continental bretheren - Japs, Chinese, Koreans, Thais, etc. etc. etc. etc. - you get the picture but yet we are no where on the global city map. Nor do we make it into the list of rapidly growing cities. We may just about be listed amongst the top 40 global cities by 2000 and twenty/ thirty something.

You and I will be 40 something then, brother. Forty something and unless your going to eternally young and kicking it, we need to step out now and make a grasp in calling this city our own and moulding it to what we think it should become - a global destination - a place where dreams can metamorphose into reality - something like how New York was in the late 20th/ early 21st century (am I too much of a dreamer?) .

Yes - our roads and all other related and supporting infrastructure are under various stages of development (finally!) and apart from the IT/ ITeS and its tertiary rooted off shoots which is driving our economic engine on a world scale, we need something more. Bangalore has a model IT growth footprint which other countries like Australia, England and China want to replicate and if they can be inspired by our IT business model and its economic benefits, why can't we reach out and look at their culture and how they bring everything together. It's not just economic growth which makes a city an envy of our boundary neighbours, its the people and their way of life - now that's what makes it truly and wholly wanting. Looking through the lenses of a global city trotter, we have up and coming (sub) culture - music across all genres; dance forms; a flummox of restaurants, pubs, bars and clubs; theatre and now movies; arts; architecture and design to a certain extent; photography; spirituality; (fill in whatever I've missed).

But. What am I getting at or trying to get at here?

What I want to state is that, all these little beautiful pieces of Bangalore's art and culture are strewn all across the city and place; and like one of those beautiful silk and wool patchwork quilts, some form of medium has to be the thread that brings all these pieces together and make it an enviable masterpiece.

How can we do that?

Something on the lines of Toronto Life. Check it out and let's create a mastermind group to make something like this happen - a platform to put out what Bangalore has to offer to its inhabitants and an experience for its tourists.             

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Nick Wooster | Five's

Nickelson Wooster is a retailer, street style hero and brand ambassador for the Lardini Group. Here are his answers to his five most recent purchases, which designers are on his radar and what are his go to-items.

Five Most Recent Purchases
1. A carton of cigarettes in duty free.
2. A hemp jacket by Layer-0 that I found at Maxfield, in Los Angeles. It has the most amazing cut, sort of couture but very butch at the same time.
3. A new iPad. I bought a Mini last year, but miss the drama of the gigantic screen. And it has 128 GB.
4. A pair of Kolor shorts that are probably the most comfortable and unflattering thing I own. The construction is a work of art. They are basically a pair of size 42-waist pants that have been given a master cut-and-sew. They are the coolest thing from this season.
5. Twenty pair of J.Crew no-show socks for my trip to Italy.

Five Designers I Am Feeling Right Now
1. Ganryu, a new brand in the Comme des Garçons stable. This stuff is completely amazing, sort of sport and very well-engineered. My favorite gray pants from the spring season are from them.
2. Kolor is another amazing Japanese brand — the jackets, the pants, all so amazingly conceived.
3.Thom Browne is, in my opinion, one of the great minds in men’s wear. I always want something (or many things) of his, every single season.
4. RTH. Rene Holguin started RTH about five years ago. He is one of the most inspiring people I have ever met. His two stores in L.A. are always my first stop once I get off the plane.
5. Comme des Garçons. For me, Rei Kawakubo and all in her orbit are the masters. For me, she is untouchable.

Five Go-To Items
1. White button-down shirts. Period. The end.
2. Blue button-down shirts. Ditto.
3. J.Crew no-show socks. The gray-and-white micro-polka dot are my favorites. I think I have spent $250 on them this spring alone.
4. The Triple Welt collection from Grenson. I now have their shoes in black, brown and my newest favorite, white. They are made in Northamptonshire, England, and are shockingly comfortable right out of the box.
5. Stan Smith Adidas sneakers, white with green. And the newest addition, the Raf Simons Adidas collaboration in both white and navy blue. I am crazy about the stripe across the shoe.

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