I don’t limit my knowledge source to a specific country or group of people. However, in the last couple of years, I got so much wisdom & inspiration from a handful of people. When I look at them, I found a very interesting commonality: They are all Canadian

Let me start with my very first Canadian: Shane Perrish. I discovered Farnam Street in early 2017 with his podcast with Naval. After that, I became an avid reader of his blog and followed anything related to him. I enrolled in the “Art of Reading and Decision by Design” courses. And The Great Mental Models Series are phenomenal work. Everything they do with Farnam Streets helps people like me learn from people who already figured it out. Also, paying forward to the Farnam Street crowd, I am actively participating in their learning community.

Chamath Phalihatpiya. I tried to write something about him in this blog and following all his SPACs activities as much as I can since early this year. A couple of months ago, I tried to reach out to his firm Social Capital to help them make a better investment decision through my companies and expertise. I had a couple of meetings with his partner. I really believe in his mission. But, the most important thing in my case I like his simple, clear statements. Those really resonate with me.

Neil Pasricha. I read his “You are Awesome” book and started my daily blog literally a year ago. Before his very first book, he wrote 1000 consecutive days his blog to find “Awesomeness” in his life and share his experience. Later I read all his books and try to understand him well. Now, I’m a huge fan of his 3books podcast. Almost every book (Guests are sharing their top 3 the most formative books in their life) mentioned that podcasts I either purchased or added my own wish list. I dream myself to be a guest one day on his podcast. The problem is my most formative books were already mentioned, so he should not hurry up to invite me till I found new formative books:)

Andrew Wilkinson. His early career with his design agency is pretty much similar to how I started MobileAction. Later he stayed in that business as a cash generator and either invest or acquired related business he wanted to grow. He started Tiny Capital( Berkshire Hathaway for Tech companies). I picked a different route, raised capital, and scale my agency business as a SaaS company. I think he and I can be a good friend. We have so many common experiences as far as I think that way. Lately, with Wecommerce (start, buy, and invest in the world’s top Shopify businesses), it is definitely something I am thinking a lot for the same model for the App Store ecosystem.

These four Canadians are really has a huge impact on my last couple of years. I didn’t meet any of them in person. We exchanged a couple of tweets and emails with some of them. Still, Canada is a compelling spot for me. Maybe their European values and North American drive something else. I love my Canadians and love to explore opportunities in Canada near future.

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Moai is a Japanese word for a lifelong friendship. Friends for good and bad times. Those are the friend you meet periodically and be YOU. Nothing needs to be hidden or be pretend to someone else. They accept You without question. No judgment.

Especially this ancient tradition is still going on in Okinawa. That is the place for well-known people who live a very long & healthy life. Okinawa is a beautiful island, and food (seafood) is the most important secret factor. I figured Moai friendship matching starts when the kids are very young. They pretty much take care of their social group for lifelong. When they are taking care of them, actually, they are taking care of themselves.

Vivek Murphy shares his Moai in 3books.co Podcast. Listen if you interest in learning more.

Some days, you feel your responsibilities are heavier. There is nothing wrong with you,

or you can not make it lighter. You have to live it up. You can’t accelerate the process.

This is the nature of life.

The best person to talk to the one who has experience with the same topic.

If you raising capital, talk to the founders who raised it.

If you are buying a house, talk to someone who recently bought a house

If you are going to get a TESLA, find your friends who have a Tesla.

I value relationships rather than transactions at the beginning of a relationship. For healthy and happy relationships are the ones, both parties are winning.

On the other hand, we are so impatient with our winning portion because of the environment we are in.

Yes, you will WIN. Big time! But, Why are you rushing it?

Because we tend to get it done and move on to the next hunt, our short and small transactions make us hallucinate. We can’t think bigger than that.

My suggestion is to value relationships first. Then, think about how we can grow together. If the partner or friend doesn’t want to take the relationship next level, that is alright. Maybe, their plate is full and they don’t want to replace it with the bigger one. You can’t change anybody’s perception, but you can change the value relationship circle.

Go as deep as you can to find very specific of your audience. Don’t guess it!

If you know your audience very well then check out where are they located?

Maybe you are so close to them. Or, you might even have them in your circle. Test with them and learn. Then try to increase that audience by either buying traffic or sharing free stuff.

Appreciate means recognize the full worth of something or someone.

Be make sure to surround yourself with a circle that appreciates you. That is pretty much a mutual feeling. Don’t fake it. Work for it.

I like Dale Carnegie’s true appreciation definition. The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere, and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned.

The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand. (Wikipedia)

We assume everyone has the same level of knowledge. When they don’t get what you are explaining, we believe either something wrong with them or us.

Especially, we experience this when you are onboarding a new feature for users or customers. We are assuming they will choose whatever paths we designed for them.

I think before doing anything else, you should start to ask questions from basic to advance in order to understand their background.

According to Robin Dunbar (professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford), human has a capacity of up to 150 people to have meaningful relationships.

5 people: Your inner circle. Your family, (They consume 40% of the total available social time)

15 people: Your close friend group

50 people: Your friends. You hang out occasionally.

150 people: Your community. You know them and have some personal history.

I was curious about social media’s effect on Dunbar’s number (Dunbar did this research in the early 90s). Found his latest podcast (2017-13minutes), he says actually, when we are connected thousands of people on our social network sites. Still, we are, on average, talking to 150 people privately all the time.

If you have a compass, you never get lost. If you don’t have a compass, go up the sky and find “North Star.” You can adjust your route based on that simple direction.

Southwest Airlines has a core & simple metric: THE low-fare airline.

“Let’s think about the ideas driving Southwest Airlines as concentric circles. The central circle, the core, is “THE low-fare airline.” But the very next circle might be “Have fun at work.” Southwest’s employees know that it’s okay to have fun so long as it doesn’t jeopardize the company’s status as THE low-fare airline. A new employee can easily put these ideas together to realize how to act in unscripted situations. For instance, is it all right to joke about a flight attendant’s birthday over the P.A.? Sure. Is it equally okay to throw confetti in her honor? Probably not—the confetti would create extra work for cleanup crews, and extra clean-up time means higher fares. (Made to Stick, Chip Heath)”

Simple direction transforms your entire organization to be self-managed individuals. They have a simple direction to follow.