🇺🇸 · TrepHub · Ahmed Reza
At first, I listened to the audiobook, then I bought the hard copy and find myself referring to it frequently. I find that there’s plenty of materials on how to start up. The next phase is where leaders need help and this is as good of a field guide to leadership as I’ve seen. I’ve bought the book for several executives and would prescribe it to anyone who wants to improve their business leadership skills. Hi, this is Ahmed again coming from the mountaintop or middle of the mountain. It’s been a while since I’ve recorded one of these. Mainly because I’ve been so focused on building my next venture which is Yobi . It’s a unified communication so a little bit of shameless plug in my book reviews. So, if you get a chance, check it out. It’s trying to revolutionize digital communications or actually communication for business. Today, speaking of business there is a specific book that comes to mind that I think is an iconic book and is going to become a classic someday and for business folks. It’s a book called Entrepreneurial Leadership by Joel Peterson. Now, the first time I found out about this book was when I learned that Joel Peterson was the chairman of JetBlue and I actually worked at a company that was acquired by JetBlue and I remember the culture of JetBlue just being an amazing culture where people were proud of working for JetBlue and I hope to build a company like that so I figured why not check out this book by Joel Peterson. Started reading it and I then, I started realizing this was, this was an extra ordinary work. Having been in business for a while, having learned some of the lessons the hard way, one of the things that a lot of people don’t tell you there’s a lot of advice how to start up. I can probably repeat them verbatim to you from different books that I’ve read, different courses that I’ve taken but the problem comes when you’re trying to grow a company, when you’re trying to scale, when you realize that the lead, the problem is you. I came to that point in my career as an entrepreneur when I realized it’s not a competitor that’s slowing me down it’s my lack of business knowledge or it’s my lack of leadership knowledge or you know something else that I didn’t have. So, I spent a good amount of time focusing on myself, focusing inward I started reading a lot of books because it’s lot easier to read books and learn than to fail and learn because that’s another way that you can learn and I learned by failing and learning at first and then I started reading books. So, I would highly recommend Entrepreneurial Leadership where Joel Peterson actually distills his years and years’ worth of business experience and gives you a road map on how to navigate your way around leadership such that you’re a better business person, you’re a better leader, you’re a better dad even he actually talks about his family and how he approaches the world. It was a refreshing read, it wasn’t cutthroat it was about how you could be a nice person, a good person, and win. One of my favorite parts of the book is this part called firing with compassion it’s about people you know people as people are the hardest thing in business at least for me but in people hiring people, recruiting, motivating and then firing. Firing sounds like a really terrible thing but you can fire with compassion and that and that’s when you understand the other person is. And you can be a leader who at the end of your career are not hated. You people look back at you and go that guy he was an awesome guy; he took care of me or awesome guy or gal. right? Took care of me, helped pay my rent, helped pay the bills and genuinely cared so, it’s been a very influential book for me personally, I’ve taken a lot out of it I’ve actually implemented some of the HR parts out of the book. I’ve made sure to take some advice for myself give myself time. One of the reasons I’m back on the hike again is because it shows the importance of having mental clarity as a leader. I would highly recommend this book. I’ve actually gotten about 10 copies of physical book after I listened to the audiobook because it was that good and I sent it to all of the executives that work for me or work for one of the companies that I have ownership interest in. And I recommended it to just about everybody that I meet who’s in a position of leadership and in a time like 2020 you know when there’s all this craziness happening all around I think it’s even more important book because when else did the world require leadership of us than now? Now, is the time to lead not just in business but in life and volunteering and helping our neighbors and just being a decent good person. If you are in that position in your community like take that on and I look forward to being a leader not one that feels like oh I have all these minions but rather I get to serve in this way that I understand that I know I can get people to collaborate. Again, that book is Entrepreneurial Leadership by Joel Peterson I highly recommend it one of the best business books that I have ever read. It’s not the densest books and places like there are certain chapters where you can find other books that elaborate on it you know at great length but if you wanted to go through and touch upon all the important things that you need to have to be a well-rounded leader, this book’s got it all. So check it out, let me know what you think. Until next time, bye. The post Book Review: Entrepreneurial Leadership by Joel Peterson appeared first on TrepHub .
Book Review
🇺🇸 · TrepHub · Ahmed Reza
Book Review This is an intense book, despite its brevity, especially if you’re already thinking about existential issues. A Must Read for just about anyone who wants to become a better family or business leader or just get an incredible perspective on life after loss. Hi, it’s Ahmed. And I am coming to you from the mountaintop right by Mary Jane Falls at Mount Charleston. When I started on this hike, I didn’t realize it would bring me to the top of Mount Charleston. But it has been an amazing journey and it has been an amazing hike. Not being a very physical person, this is specially challenging for me but this was also mind over matter type of thing for me. And I am accompanied up here with my beautiful wife and my good friend who’s at the camera and humoring me to record another book review of all things up here. So I had to think for a while to go okay. This is a very, very special moment. You know you’re at the top of the mountain. It means a lot of things, you know. A Muslim and the Prophet Muhammad received revelation from God at the top of a mountain. Moses spoke with God at the top of a mountain, got the 40 or the sorry, top 10 commandments, not 40, after 40 days and 40 nights. So mountains, there’s something really mythical and mystical about mountains and spirituality and just making it up the mountain is, to me, it’s a spiritual journey as well as a physical one. You know the beauty is just absolutely overwhelming. The majesty of these mountains here, they’re mind-boggling and to witness the waterfall after you get up, it’s just, you know, humbling. You feel so small next to these mighty and majestic mountains. So, I want to review a very special book. It’s not going to be a business book but it is one of those books that has helped me tremendously. It is Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl . I love Viktor Frankl. The man is simply amazing. You wouldn’t believe it, he’s a very positive guy and he went through the holocaust. He lost family members and he just barely survived the holocaust. And he describes how dehumanizing it was to be in the concentration camps, to have everything taken away from you, to, I mean, you could, you start to question everything. I can’t even imagine, you know, as I was reading the book, I was trying to imagine. There are no words that I can speak to the horrors of what the holocaust was like. And he talks about the mixed feelings he has about the people who, you know, want to save themselves and they turn to the enemy, they, you know, side with the Nazis. So along with all the misery, there’s and death and too sheer evil. There is also, you know, distrust, you know. There were people that you couldn’t trust and really it, he describes how it breaks everything down, you have nothing, you know. I’m so incredibly blessed to even be able to come up here, to have the ability to come up here. There are fires in California right now, it’s smoky but here it’s absolutely beautiful. So it’s nothing to be taken for granted. So in Viktor Frankl’s book he describes what happens to you when you lose everything when you lose everything including the will to live. You know, death doesn’t seem, you know, death doesn’t seem that bad like everything is just so bad. And it’s there that he finds his philosophy. It’s there that he finds his core. And he realizes that even though he has lost control of everything, he remembers his wife, he remembers love. Because they can take away everything, they can take away his life, they can control every single aspect of his life but they don’t dominate his mind. They cannot control his mind. He is still free in his mind and if he gives that up, if he gives up focusing on love, he loses everything. And that’s how he kept control in a time when, you know, it’s you would have given up, I don’t, I can’t even imagine. I’m not even going to make a comparison. I am fluffy even by normal standards and I don’t hold a candle to Viktor Frankl but to really think that type of a negative experience helped him see the very best in humanity, the very best in himself, and to see that life is worth living, every moment is a gift and so much of that is your choice. So even though the Nazis were trying to make his life miserable, he chose not to be. He chose to not give in. I mean, what kind of incredible power is that? You have to look at the world in a whole different way. You have to re-examine everything, you have to think about your life, think about your death and come to terms with it. Come to terms with your mortality and the mortality and loss of everything around you. And there is a sense of freedom in that. Because at that moment, it pushes you to think, to decide, who are you. If you have, don’t have any control, what free will do you have? And that’s where he finds meaning. And it’s absolutely incredible. I personally am a religious person. I don’t know of Viktor Frankl’s leanings one way or another is certainly very spiritual, certainly very soft and love, you know, unfortunately, the English language is not expressive enough. Because we have only one word for love, it’s what you feel for your children, it’s what you feel for you wife, it what’s you feel for ice cream, for crying out loud, you know. I think Arabic has a nice word called “Rahma” which is, which is love, which translates to, “motherly love” or which our unconditional love. And at the end of the day, that’s, that’s the beauty. That’s what you see everywhere around you is the sense of love that you can either gravitate to, you can either choose to see that beauty, or you can see the devastation and you can see that, “oh, this, you know, hike was just ridiculous. It was really hard.”, and you know chose to focus on that or you could choose to focus on the beauty and the moment. So for me, that book it’s not a particularly long book. But Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, is probably one of the most instrumental books in shaping my cognitive frame and how I look at the world. It’s helped me as an entrepreneur, it’s helped me as a dad, it’s helped as a person. And as I grow, you know, as I climb mountains metaphorically and physically, I think about the search for meaning and the beauty in every moment that’s there. So I’m incredibly thankful, I’m thankful to you for watching and hearing me rant. I’m thankful for my friends, for all, for family. And I am, I feel truly blessed at this moment, and, I feel blessed always actually to have experienced every single thing I’ve experienced, the good and the bad. Because just like Viktor Frankl, I feel like some of the hardest moments in my life shaped me. And had those moments not happened, I probably wouldn’t have thought about life, I wouldn’t have thought about death, and I wouldn’t have thought about meaning. So, if you’re going through a tough time in your life or if you just want to, you know, get a glance at what this great man experience and how he came to his epiphany, I would highly recommend reading Viktor Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning. Thank you for watching. The post Book Review: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl appeared first on TrepHub .
Book Review
🇺🇸 · TrepHub · Ahmed Reza
Book Review For me it was extremely fascinating to understand the finance, to understand the investment, and to also understand the dynamics behind why some certain startups become successful with VC money and others don’t. Hi, it’s Ahmed back from the mountaintop on another hike. I’ve been doing this everyday, which is a blessing at the time of coronavirus especially with the resurgence now things have started shutting down again unfortunately. One of the things that’s been really interesting and that’s on my mind recently is a venture capital. I’ve been looking at doing some investment myself and I’ve been seeing that a lot of the seed deals have been accelerating, which has been an interesting phenomenon. There’s a lot of opportunity in times like now. So I wanted to highlight a book that I think is particularly insightful to entrepreneurs. So this video, this book review is really focused on folks who really want to understand venture capital. As an engineer that’s one of the shortcomings that I had is I didn’t really understand venture capital. There was almost like this religious aspect to all of it like you go to Y Combinator and you watch videos and you think, this is how VC’s work this is how, VC’s think and instead the best thing to do is actually just read a book by a VC. So the book today is The Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor and Eric Ries . Scott Kupor is a fellow Los Gatos resident, an amazing guy with long history in the Bay Area. A long history as a venture capitalist and in startups, and he breaks it down in a really really nice way or they break it down in a really nice way. It’s really important to understand venture math, it’s important to understand how investors think and how they look at the world right? Because if you understand the math behind it and you happen to be an engineer like me who’s becoming an entrepreneur, who’s been an entrepreneur it’s nice to understand when you’re talking to an investor on the other side what’s important to them. And also to understand if what you’re selling or what you’re building really fits that model because not all companies fit the venture model. I bootstrap my first company and it didn’t fit the venture model. And you don’t have to go the venture capital route to become wealthy to be, you know. to do okay in your life. So if you’re building something that should blitzscale then you really should find out about how VC’s think and what a seed investor looks for, what kind of risk profile they have. One of the things that was a revelation to me personally was understanding the struggles of VCs. You could think of it as a first world problem but imagine you have like two hundred million dollars, you as a VC you have to give it back meaning you have to invest it, you have to grow it, and then you have to give it back to your investors. And if you don’t give your investors more money back than you took in or significantly more than they could have made by investing it in the stock market they’re not gonna give you money again, you’re going to be a one-time VC. So there are many things that work for VCs similar to how it works for founders in a startup except like for a startup founder failure isn’t as big of a deal as if you’re a VC, even if you’re a seasoned to VC if you know one really bad fund can kill you. So a VC who’s just announced that they raised a billion dollars means they have to give a billion dollars to startup founders who then have to provide outsized returns on that billion dollar. So let’s go back to the VC math, one hundred million dollars right? Let’s say the VC investor bought like a million bucks in each company so how long it would take to just give away a hundred million dollars in a year? And if you’re still sitting on that money and you haven’t invested it and you in a fast enough time period that money is not doing anything it’s not gonna grow and you’re not gonna get investment. So it’s kind of a double-edged sword. So a lot of times people wonder why do VCs move the way they do, why do they make decisions the way they do, why is the networks so important. Well it’s important as soon as you understand the math. They’re gonna get you introduced to a VC and through their network, basically that’s you make sure that they’re not like throwing that money away well. VCs with a large fund won’t do a year’s worth of due diligence before they invest in you either. Of course as the rounds become bigger and at later stages the math works differently and Scott Kupor does a great job explaining the entire lifecycle and explaining how startups work, the ups and the downs. It can be a little bit dry if you’re not an entrepreneur, if you don’t really care about venture capital but if you do I highly recommend this book. It’ll also tell you about where VC’s get their money and it’s just fascinating. For me it was extremely fascinating to understand the finance, to understand the investment, and to also understand the dynamics behind why some certain startups become successful with VC money and others don’t. So if you’re looking for a good read I highly recommend The Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor. The post Book Review: Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It appeared first on TrepHub .
Book Review