week 80: here's how you decide when to work in or out of the box

everyone likes to break through but the best know when to do that

thank you to over 11,000 of you who read this weekly and share with your friends and family for behind the scenes on building a million dollar business from scratch and beyond.

i also include a personal note in the end so i am grateful that you let me do that without judgement.

---

if you know me, you know that I am all about out of the box thinking and doing.

let me give you three examples of working OUT of the box:

• i graduated from Alabama with scholarship not because I was an A student but bcos i found out a way to teach a foreign language (Hindi) that paid for my entire masters program. 

• i got into marketing even though my entire education is in computer science because i genuinely love observing people and behaviors and tailor everything from that lens. this led me to run marketing at Pardot (got acquired by Salesforce), co-founder Terminus and now GTM Partners. not a straight path by any means.

• i wrote 3 books on go-to-market (ABM, ABM is B2B, and MOVE) not because i am a writer but because i learned that in order to change the world around me, i need to have the authority to do it and authorship does that. so i simply hired people to help me write my books with my ideas while running a business so i don’t have to hold the pen. 

while all this is true, it’s also true that sometimes we have to stay in the box to do what’s needed at times.

let me give you three examples of working IN the box:

• while i love innovating, i have spent majority of my time on founder-led sales. is that that a box yes, but that the box i needed to be in to get the business going

• while i love days with no meeting to help me think i let that go for a period of time. did that burn me out, of course it did, but it was a calculated risk for a period of time to get over the hump

• while i love to do podcast (have done over 1000 episodes), i didn’t do a single one in the last 2 years. while podcast is fun and i love it immensely, right now there is very little value to doing it compared to revenue and cash flow of the business.

the point is not about worry about IN or OUT of the box.

the point is to know WHEN you need to operate in which box.

---

on personal note, my daughter (9 years) has finally finished her 15 chapter book called “real heroes” and I am trying to figure out how to publish her book on Amazon and have copies for her on Christmas.

if you have any ideas, let me know (comment or DM me)

the sparkle in her eye knowing that she can dream, then write, and then see it out in the wild is so amazing, that i would do anything to help her make her dreams come true as a father.

Kaira asked me yesterday - “how many books would you write?”

i said, - “may be 10.”

she said, “no way, "you should write 50 books and i want to see your books out there.”

wow! well that gave me goosebumps.

i never thought me writing business books would have any affect on my kids but there it is…

is writing a book and publishing a simple fun kids book at the age of 9, OUT of the box thinking?

of course it is.

and now Kiara is talking about her next book…. ha!!!

sometimes you simple have to make the box bigger.

curious… how do you think about IN and OUT of the box?

leader point: in business and in life, it’s not about if you are IN or OUT of the box, but rather to decide to operate with peace when you decide to work IN or OUT of the box.