What I Learned About Life After Interviewing 80 Highly Successful People

"You interrupt too much," people email me. "Let your guests finish talking." But I can't help it. I get curious. I want to know! Now!

Over the past year I interviewed about 80 guests for my podcast. My only criteria: I was fascinated by some aspect of each person.

I didn't limit myself by saying "each one had to be an entrepreneur" or "had to be a success."

I just wanted to talk to anyone who made me curious about their lives. I spoke to entrepreneurs, comedians, artists, producers, astronauts, writers, rappers, and even this country's largest beer brewer.

Will I do it for the next year? Maybe. It's hard.

Sometimes I would pursue a guest for six months with no reply and then they would call and say, "Can you do right now?" and I'd change all plans with kids, Claudia, business.

I had no favorites. They were all great. I interviewed Peter Thiel, Coolio, Mark Cuban, Arianna Huffington, Amanda Palmer, Tony Robbins, and many more. I'm really grateful they all wanted to talk to me.

Podcasting, to be honest, was just an excuse for me to call up whoever I wanted to call and ask them all sorts of personal questions about their lives. If I wanted to talk about "Star Wars," I called the author of a dozen Star Wars novels.

If I wanted to talk about Twisted Sister, I called up the founder of the band. If I wanted to talk sex I called the women who ran the "Ask Women" podcast.

I wanted to know at what point were they at their worst. And how they got better. Each person created a unique life. I wanted to know how they did it. I was insanely curious.

As Coolio told me, "You got me to reveal some deep stuff I didn't want to reveal. Kudos." Tony Robbins had to literally shake himself at one point and say, "Wait, how did we end up talking about this?" I can't help it. I want to know.

Here are the most important things I learned. I can't specify which person I learned what from. It hurts my head when I think about it because many of the 80 said the exact same thing about how they ended up where they were.

Here is some of what they said:

A) A life is measured in decades.

Too many people want happiness, love, money, connections, everything yesterday. Me too. I call it "the disease." I feel often I can paint over a certain emptiness inside if only...if only...I have X.

But a good life is like the flame of a bonfire. It builds slowly, and because it's slow and warm it caresses the heart instead of destroys it.

B) A life is measured by what you did TODAY, even this moment.

This is the opposite of "A" but the same. You get success in decades by having success now.

That doesn't mean money now. It means, "Are you doing your best today?"

Everyone worked at physical health, improving their friendships and connections with others, being creative, being grateful. Every day.

For those who didn't, they quickly got sick, depressed, anxious, fearful. They had to change their lives. When they made that change, universally they all said to me, "that's when it all started."

C) Focus is not important, but Push is (reinvention).

Very few people have just one career. And for every career, it's never straight up.

When you have focus, it's like saying, "I'm just going to learn about only one thing forever." But "the push" is the ability to get up every day, open up the shades, and push through all the things that make you want to go back to sleep.

Even if it means changing careers 10 times. Or changing your life completely. Just pushing forward to create a little more life inside yourself.

Compound life is much more powerful than compound interest.

D) Give without thinking of what you will receive.

I don't think I spoke to a single person who believed in setting personal goals. But 100% of the people I spoke to wanted to solve a problem for the many.

It doesn't matter how you give each day. It doesn't even matter how much. But everyone wanted to give and eventually they were given back.

E) Solving hard problems is more important than overcoming failure.

The outside world is a mirror of what you have on the inside. If Thomas Edison viewed his 999 attempts at creating a lightbulb a failure then he would've given up. His inside was curious. His inside viewed his "attempts" as experiments. Then he did #1000. Now we can see in the dark.

Dan Ariely was burned all over his body and used that experience to research the psychology of pain and ultimately the psychology of behavior and how we can make better decisions.

Tony Robbins lost everything when his marriage ended, but he came back by coaching thousands of people.

It's how you view the life inside you that creates the life outside of you. Every day.

F) Art and success and love is about connecting all the dots.

Here are some dots: The very personal sadness sitting inside of you. The things you learn. The things you read about. The things you love. Connect the dots. Give it to someone.

Now you just gave birth to a legacy that will continue beyond you.

G) It's not business, it's personal.

Nobody succeeded with a great idea.

Everyone succeeded because they built networks within networks of connections, friends, colleagues all striving towards their own personal goals, all trusting each other, and working together to help each other succeed.

This is what happens only over time. This is why giving creates a bigger world because you can never predict what will happen years later.

Biz Markie described to me how he helped a 7-year-old kid named Jay-Z with his lyrics.

Peter Thiel's ex employees created tens of billions of dollars worth of companies.

Marcus Lemonis saves businesses every week on his show "The Profit." It doesn't come by fixing their accounting. It comes from fixing the relationships with the partners and the customers and the investors.

The best way to create a great business over time: Every day send one thank you letter to someone from your past. People (me) often say you can't look back at the past. But this is the one way you can. You create the future by thanking the past.

H) You can't predict the outcome, you can only do your best.

Hugh Howey thought he would write novels that only his family would read. So he wrote ten of them. Then he wrote "Wool," which he self-published and has sold millions of copies and Ridley Scott is making the movie.

Clayton Anderson applied to be an astronaut for 15 years in a row and was rejected each time until the 16th.

Coolio wrote lyrics down every day for 17 years before having a hit. Noah Kagan was fired from Facebook and Mint without making a dime before starting his own business. Wayne Dyer quit his secure job as a tenured professor, put a bunch of his books in car and drove across the country selling them in every bookstore. Now he's sold over 100,000,000 books.

Sometimes when I have conversations with these people they want to jump right to the successful parts but I stop them. I want to know the low points. The points where they had to start doing their best. What got them to that point.

I) The same philosophy of life should work for an emperor and a slave.

Ryan Holiday told me that both Marcus Aurelius, an emperor, and Epictetus, a slave, both subscribed to the idea of stoicism. You can't predict pleasure or pain. You can only strive for knowledge and giving and fairness and health each day.

Many people write me it's easy for so-and-so to say that now that he's rich. Every single person I spoke to started off in a gutter or worse. (Well, most of them.)

Luck is certainly a component, but in chess there's a saying (and this applies to anything) "it's funny how always the best players seem to be lucky."

J) The only correct path is the path correct for you.

Scott Adams tried about 20 different careers before he settled on drawing Dilbert. Now, he's in 2000 papers, has written Dilbert books, Dilbert shows, Dilbert everything. Everyone was shocked when Judy Joo gave up a Wall St. career to go back to cooking school. Now she's on the Food Channel as an "iron chef."

Don't let other people choose your careers. Don't get locked in other people's prisons they've set up just for you. Personal freedom starts from the inside but ultimately turns you into a giant, freeing you from the chains the little people spent years tying around you.

K) Many moments of small, positive, personal interactions build an extraordinary career.

Often people think that you have to fight your way to the top. But for everyone I spoke to it was small kindnesses over a long period of time that built the ladder to success. I think I'm starting to sound like a cliche on this. But it's only a cliche because it's true.

L) Taking care of yourself comes first.

Kamal Ravikant picked himself off a suicidal bottom by constantly repeating "I love you" to himself. Charlie Hoehn cured his anxiety by using every moment he could to play.

I've written before: The average kid laughs 300 times a day. The average adult...5.

Something knifed our ability to smile. Do everything you can to laugh, to create laughter for others, and then what can possibly be bad about today? I think that's why I try to interview so many comedians are comedy writers. They make me laugh. It's totally selfish.

M) The final answer: People do end up loving what they succeed at, or they succeed at what they love.

Mark Cuban said, "My passion was to get rich!" But I don't really believe him. He loved computers so he created a software company. Then he wanted to watch Ohio basketball in Pittsburgh so he created Broadcast.com. I worked with Broadcast.com a little bit back in 1997. They were crusaders about bringing video to the Internet.

Sure, he wanted to use that to get rich. Because he knew better than anyone then how to let a good idea lead him to success.

But deep down he was a little kid who wanted to watch his favorite basketball. And now what does he do? He owns a basketball team.

N) Anybody, at any age

The ages of the people I spoke to ranged from 20 to 75. Each is still participating every day in the worldwide conversation. I asked Dick Yuengling from Yuengling beer why he even bothered to talk to me. He's 75 and runs the biggest American-owned brewery worth about $2 billion. He laughed and said, "Well, you asked me."

I just realized this list can go on for another 100 items.

The specifics of success. How to overcome hardships. How any one person can move society forward.

Down to even what are the most productive hours of the day, what's the one word most important for success, and what we can look forward to over the next century and maybe 100 other things.

Then I learned many things about myself.

Most of the people I asked to come on my podcast said, "NO!" I told Claudia the other day I haven't been rejected this much since freshman year of high school. I had to re-learn how to deal with so much rejection.

I've always been a big reader but never as much as this year. I read everything by all the guests.

Some weeks I felt like I was spending 10 hours a day preparing for podcasts. I learned to interview, to listen, to prepare, to pursue, to entertain, to educate.

Podcasting seems like it's becoming an industry, or a business idea, or something worth looking at by entrepreneurs or investors. I have no clue about that.

For me, podcasting this year was just about calling anyone I wanted to call and talking to them. I felt like a little boy interviewing his heroes.

I highly recommend finding ways to call people for almost no reason. I learned a huge amount.

But it was hard.

It's one of those things where I can say, "I don't know if I can ever do that again." But I also know I'm probably going to say the same thing next year.

(Source: James Altucher, Linkedin)

Blasphemy and our anger

Blasphemy and our anger

“...hidden in this reaction against disrespect of the Prophet is the feeling of our own contempt. This hurts the ego of Muslims, i.e., how dare you show disrespect to the personality we regard our Prophet! It is this ego that gets injured and we mix up this egotism with our selfish reactions that we wrongly assume to be the result of our love for the Prophet. This is delusion ... the one who does not care about the wishes of the beloved, keeps himself busy in meaningless gossips and does not respond to the call of the muazzin, should be honest with himself and think if his claim to be a lover of the Prophet really suits him.” Shaikhul Hind Maulana Mahmood Hasan

‘Ishq hai pyare khail nahiN hai

Ishq hai kar-e-sheesha-o-aahan’

A believer is not free to act at will. His beloved Prophet (pbuh) has left behind examples of an ideal social behaviour to be followed. In his lifetime, the Prophet (pbuh) encountered many blasphemous attacks on him, not only at Makka but even in Medina but the Almighty had provided him and his companions with a basic guidance:

“You shall most certainly be tried in your possessions and in your persons; and indeed you shall hear many hurtful things from those to whom revelation was granted before your time, as well as from those who have come to ascribe divinity to other beings beside God. But if you remain patient in adversity and conscious of Him - this, behold, is something to set one’s heart upon.” (Al-Imran 3:186)

Permission to take revenge and punish the blasphemer, should the situation so demand, may be inferred from this verse. However, ignoring such provocations has been strongly recommended.  

Nothing could be dearer to the Prophet (pbuh) than the pleasure of Allah (SWT) and the good of Islam and Muslims.  He saw it in the interest of Islam and Muslims to treat everyone in the best possible manner. So sublime were his morals that after the death of the chief of hypocrites, Abdullah ibn Ubai, who did not spare the Prophet (pbuh) during his life in Medina, that the Prophet gave his blessed shirt to be put inside his coffin and led his funeral prayer notwithstanding the fact that the revelation relating to hypocrites had come, “[And] whether you do pray [to God] that they be forgiven or do not pray for them - [it will all be the same: for even] if you were to pray seventy times that they be forgiven, God will not forgive them...” (Tauba, 9:80). When reminded by Umar (RA), known for his temper, about this Qur’anic verse, the Prophet (pbuh) replied that he had not been forbidden from doing so and whether or not to pray for the deceased had been left on his discretion. He then emphasised that if he was sure that the dead person would be forgiven after being prayed for, for more than 70 times, he would have prayed even more.

Such was the practice of the Prophet (pbuh) for whom our love is being discussed here. On several occasions Abdullah ibn Ubai committed acts that made him deserve execution so much so that at times it appeared to the companions that order to end his life would surely be issued. But in the interest of the Ummah, the Prophet (pbuh) thought it more appropriate to ignore his provocations.  How magnificent and how great were the manners and practices of the Messenger of Allah (pbuh)!

Our anger against the blasphemy against the Prophet (pbuh), as is being repeatedly committed for the last few years by the enemies of humanity, is a sign of our strong faith. But in our reaction to such incitements we need to bear in mind the interest of the Ummah and Islam and should follow the example set by our beloved Prophet (pbuh), if we are true followers and true lovers of the Prophet. Otherwise, we will merely be satisfying our personal egos and will be defaming the true spirit of love for Rasool Allah (pbuh).

We have seen how a young Muslim man risked his life and killed the Dutch film maker of the blasphemous film. But it has done no good and has had no effect upon the soldiers of Satan not to mention our slogans and daily demonstrations. Each day some cursed person in the west appears and tries to supersede the previous blasphemer in his incivility, rowdiness, blatant dishonesty and mischie.  

Is there any sense then in continuing to use these methods, witnessing their ineffectiveness and interpreting our outbursts as the display and requirement of the love for the Prophet? This is nothing but a show of our helplessness. Through such demonstrations we are encouraging and telling the devils that they can get away with any crime and that, as far as we are concerned, we cannot do anything more than beating our chests.

Why do we like to display, again and again, our shameful weakness?  Regardless of the ineffectiveness of our methods, one wonders if we have come to believe that our protests are virtuous deeds. God forbid, if this is the case then neither we have been able to understand the stature of the Last Prophet (pbuh) nor are we realising the dignity that we, as the slaves of Allah’s Prophet, have been blessed with by the Almighty. How sad and how shameful is this display of our weakness, coupled with our fallacy that this is a virtue, through these ineffective demonstrations, organised in the Prophet’s name!

What do we do then? This is a difficult question. This scribe tries to answer, from experience, according to his best ability and understanding. I invite others to ponder over it.  

There would be very few in Britain who would not remember the active role of Islamic Defence Council (IDC) in the campaign against Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses.

As the convenor of IDC, this scribe felt honoured in actively participating, with his best abilities, in that campaign. As part of its campaign, the IDC organised, on 28 January 1989, in front of the publisher, Penguin, a demonstration in which at least 25,000 Muslims from all over the country participated. In view of the fruitlessness of our conventional protests and bearing in mind the culture of the new world in the west in which we had settled, a method was suggested that was different from the protests in the Indian subcontinent: instead of angry and provocative slogans, community’s emotional and spiritual anguish was expressed through placards. This was a moral appeal to win support from the British public. We were under the impression that some noble souls would come to our support and would pressurise the publisher and the government to take steps regarding this issue.

No doubt our protest was appreciated (especially because, in contrast, two weeks earlier at Bradford, demonstrators had burnt a copy of Satanic Verses) but we failed to achieve what we had aimed for. Two weeks later, Ayatullah Khomeini issued the fatwa to kill the author and the publishers. The Government, that was unwilling to hear our moral and civilised appeal, displayed such eagerness in providing protection to the author that it seemed that the cursed author was its agent.  This experience convinced us that western world had a different temperament and different mindset and that only when we have the power we could make them feel our feelings.

After America-Taliban episode, an unending series of mischiefvous acts has started. And each mischief is far more outrageous than the previous one.  The degradation and contempt in the latest film has reportedly crossed all the limits of decency and no government wants to take notice of our woes. Efforts are being made at the UN since 1999 by the Muslim World umbrella body Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to limit the scope of the shameful western culture of “Free speech” but western governments are not listening.  (Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US Ms Maleeha Lodhi has detailed these painful failures in The News of 25 September 2012).

Are the senseless methods adopted by the blasphemers part of a strategy to create hatred in the West against Holy Prophet (pbuh) and his deen? The answer is NO. There is a method in this madness. Behind these acts is the fear created by the signs of the Islamic world’s renaissance. United States launched this campaign, now in its twelfth year after 9/11, through what it calls “War on Terror”. This crusade has been waged to destroy, using most powerful weapons, all those forces that, in US’s view, are working for this renaissance. The production of the series of sacrilegious films and cartoons is part of this American crusade.

Unfortunately in the demonstrations against this latest western crusade we are witnessing as tragic and as painful incidents as took place in Pakistani cities on 20th September 2012: destruction of our own properties, worth billion of rupees, at our own hands and, as a result, our own brothers being killed by our own police. Such incidents widen even further the gulf and increase lack of confidence between our governments and the public. Who can think of an Islamic renaissance in such a situation? Further, this intensifies the anti-west, specially anti-US, feelings in Muslim youths who then do not hesitate in resorting to any available method through which, they think, they can take the revenge of this indignation. And the US looks upon them as “new terrorists”.

Does this situation not demand that, in spite of our deep emotional pain, we ignore western provocations in the same manner as we see in the life of the Prophet (pbuh)? When we are unable to do anything to stop these devils then is it not more dignified to follow the guidance shown in the aforementioned verse of chapter Aal Imran? If we think seriously, this Qur’anic guidance is particularly for a situation presently confronting us. In the given circumstances, the only solution to solve the problem is to ignore their mischief mongering, fail their plans and thus put an end to their ongoing devilish campaign.

What justification is there in expecting western nations to understand your pain and anguish? What makes you think that they will support OIC’s efforts to introduce in international law a provision to bridle these hooligans? They are even against Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law. What sense is there in expecting the nations, which oppose laws providing for the sanctity of holy personalities and places in your own countries, that they will take such measures on their own lands?

Wait for the day when we shape our lives according to the wishes of Allah and His Prophet (pbuh) and, thus, become able to bring Muslim World’s renaissance. This will not happen by carrying banners in demonstrations with proclamations of Ishq-e-Rasool. This will come by surrendering to the dictates and desires of Allah and His apostle. Without doubt, at present we are not in this state, a fact that we may be unaware of or may be deluding ourselves into believing that we love the Prophet. In order to explain this point further, listen to the following story:

In the last century among the great ulama was Maulana Syed Munazir Ahsan Geelani (1892-1975) who had been blessed by Allah (SWT) with the wealth of ‘Ilm as well as love of the Prophet (pbuh). Writing about his student days in Darul Uloom Deoband and his teacher Shaikhul Hind Maulana Mahmood Hasan, (1851-1920) he narrates, “Bukhari was being taught. The well-known hadith came: ‘None of you can be a momin until I become dearer to you than your wealth, children, and every human being.’ This faqeer submitted: ‘Alhmdulillah, even a common Muslim is blessed with the wealth of love for the Prophet (pbuh) the proof of which is that to an extent he can tolerate the insult of his parents... but slightest disrespect for the Prophet (pbuh) enrages him and he loses self-control. We have seen it many times that on this issue they have put their lives in danger.’ Upon this, Hazrat Shaikhul Hind said: ‘No doubt what you have said is true. But why does it happen? You have not reached to its depth. Love demands that each and everything is sacrificed to please the beloved. But the general behaviour of Muslims regarding the wishes of the Prophet (pbuh) is before you and me to see. What did the Prophet desire and what is that we are doing? Who is there who does not know this fact? Then surely love cannot be the reason of Muslims not tolerating disrespect for the Prophet.’

“This humble self then submitted: ‘Please tell us what the exact reason is?’ Hazrat Shaikhul Hind, a great expert of human psychology, explained: ‘If you think about it, hidden in this reaction against disrespect of the Prophet is the feeling of our own contempt. This hurts the ego of Muslims, i.e., how dare you show disrespect to the personality we regard our Prophet! It is this ego that gets injured and we mix up this egotism with our selfish reactions that we wrongly assume to be the result of our love for the Prophet. This is delusion ... the one who does not care about the wishes of the beloved, keeps himself busy in meaningless gossips and does not respond to the call of the muazzin, should be honest with himself and think if his claim to be a lover of the Prophet really suits him.’”  (Ihata-e-Darul Uloom mein beete huwai din, pp 15f).

(Source: By Atiqur Rahman Sambhli

The writer is London-based Islamic scholar of Indian origin.

For feedback, please email at atiquesambhli@talktalk.net

obaidur.rahman@gmail.com)

Yes We Khan

Muslims must not let Hindutva hotheads push them into perpetual victimhood 

Hindutva activists may want to tear Muslims and Hindus apart through love jihad and ghar wapsi campaigns, but metropolitan middle-class Hindus thronged to see Haider, some even silently shed a tear for the Kashmiri Muslim hero. Jingoists may propagate violent rhetoric against Pakistan as a dog whistle for majoritarian nationalism, but PK, Raju Hirani’s clever comic caper lampooning Hindu godmen, is reportedly the biggest grosser in the history of Bollywood, and wild-eyed agitators for a ban on the film have been roundly outvoted by the vast majority of moviegoers.

Sadhvi Niranjan and Yogi Adityanath may conjure up hatred in the quest for votes, Muzaffarnagar riots may bring poll dividends, but from the ‘Khanate’ of Bollywood to the Hamid Ansari-led Rajya Sabha to India’s tennis torch-bearer Sania Mirza to business legends Yusuf Hamied and Azim Premji to the cricketing quicksilver of Zaheer Khan and the Pathan brothers, India’s exceptional Muslim citizens are icons whose achievements are proudly, subliminally claimed by Indian nationalism even if the ‘Muslim’ is apparently antithetical to it.

Yet today with Hindutva forces on overdrive, by inevitable reflex action, Muslim victimhood and permanent sense of injury once again threaten to bury Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s dream of a Hindu-Muslim rainbow nation.

The rising star of ‘Muslim’ politics is now the rumbustious Asaduddin Owaisi, leader of MIM, the Hyderabad city MP, once dismissed as a ‘fringe’ element, but now positioning himself as a ‘national’ leader whose party rather impressively won two seats in the Maharashtra assembly elections, one more than Raj Thackeray’s MNS.

Owaisi plans to contest the Delhi and Bihar elections this year, both state elections where the Muslim vote can make a difference. In a sort of counter to ghar wapsi and to RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat saying every Indian’s cultural identity is Hindutva, Owaisi has roared that every Indian — or person — is born a Muslim.

45-year-old Owaisi is fast becoming the Muslim opposite number to saffron politics, a claimant to being the sole spokesman who once warned of a ‘third wave of Muslim radicalisation’ after the Assam riots and whose intolerant cadres attacked Taslima Nasreen. Owaisi appeals massively to the young Muslim’s rage and victimhood, by projecting himself as the tough-talking saviour of his community.

In the emergence of Owaisi as sole spokesperson of the Indian Muslim lies a dilemma of the community: if the so-called mainstream ‘secular’ parties will not address their concerns, if BJP will be seen to deny them representation, then why not turn to a politician who is openly promising to promote ‘Muslim’ interests?

It is no surprise that the spectacular rise of Narendra Modi and BJP has coincided with the growing clout of MIM in Muslim-dominated areas. Parties like Congress and the Janata parivar have responded to the Modi phenomenon by spreading fear, whispering to their constituencies lines from the film Sholay: ‘So jao, nahin to Gabbar Singh aa jayega’.

The ‘secular blackmail’ of Muslims by making Modi out to be a Gabbar Singh-like ogre has only been matched by the pernicious ideology of the Sadhvis and the Yogis who have looked to demonise the Muslim as inherently anti-national. A leaderless community is now seeking refuge in their own demagogues, in the belief that they alone can offer an effective counterpoint to both majoritarian and flawed secular politics.

The 16th Lok Sabha has the lowest number of Muslims ever since the first general elections of 1952. There are just 24 Muslim MPs, down from 30 in the previous Lok Sabha, who constitute just 4.4% of the House. For the first time in an Indian Parliament there’s not a single Muslim MP from UP, as BJP did not field a single Muslim candidate across the vast swathes of north and west India except for the sole exception of Shahnawaz Hussain.

Disappearing from politics, under siege in society, the wrongful incarceration of several Muslim youth in the Mecca Masjid blast case only reinforcing perceptions of injustice and discrimination at the hands of the law courts and police, the Muslim is being pushed into a rejection of ‘secular’ truisms even as the ghetto remains a refuge.

Which is why the community is in desperate need of a leadership that will encourage it to push for its due space in the national mainstream. It won’t happen with Lalu, Nitish and Mamata who seek votes in return for ‘protection’; it won’t happen with the Congress which promises equal opportunity but in reality offers only sops; it almost certainly won’t happen with the BJP which offers no guarantee of equal citizenship while Owaisi’s present ‘Islam khatre mein hai’ message may breed a worrying separateness.

Today if the challenge of saffron majoritarianism is to be countered there needs to be an Indian Muslim leadership which doesn’t prey on fear, but offers hope: hope of a social and economic transformation, a modern yet rooted identity that can challenge the narrative of the extremists within.

An eminent writer once said that after Maulana Azad and Sheikh Abdullah, the Muslims have never had leaders, only satraps who have nursed narrow constituencies. Yet in the land of Sania Mirza and Shah Rukh Khan, why can there not emerge a Muslim leader who will cast out fear, sidestep the clergy and stride briskly into India’s centre?

Beyond the yelling bigots, there’s a silent more welcoming truth: Indian Muslims would not be the second largest community in the world, if the true Hindu was anti-Muslim.

(Source: TOI Blog, Sagarika)

SEO in 2015 (and Why You Should Care)

If your business is healthy, you can always find plenty of reasons to leave SEO on your to-do list in perpetuity. After all, SEO is technical, complicated, time-consuming and potentially dangerous. The SEO industry is full of self-proclaimed gurus whose lack of knowledge can be deadly. There’s the terrifying fact that even if you dabble in SEO in the most gentle and innocent way, you might actually end up in a worse state than you were to begin with.

To make matters worse, Google keeps changing the rules. There have been a bewildering number of major updates, which despite their cuddly names have had a horrific impact on website owners worldwide.

Fear aside, there’s also the issue of time. It’s probably tricky enough to find the time to read this article. Setting up, planning and executing an SEO campaign might well seem like an insurmountable obstacle.

So why should you care enough about SEO to do it anyway?

The main reason is that you probably already see between 30% and 60% of your website traffic come from the search engines. That might make you think that you don’t need to bother, because you’re already doing so well. But you’re almost certainly wrong.

If you have a look through the keyword data in your Google Webmaster Tools account, you’ll probably see that around 30–50% of the keywords used to find your website are brand names – the names of your products or companies. These are searches carried out by people who already know about you. But the people who don’t know who you are but are searching for what you sell aren’t finding you right now. This is your opportunity.

If a person goes looking for a company or product by name, Google will steer them towards what they’re looking for. Their intelligence does have limits, however, and even though they know your name they won’t be completely clear about what you sell. That’s where SEO would come in.

Still need more convincing? How about the fact that the seeming complexities of SEO mean that your competition are almost certainly neglecting it too. They have the same reservations as you about complexity, time and danger, and hopefully they aren’t reading this article and so are none the wiser of the well-kept secret: that 70% of SEO is easy.

I’m going to lead you through what you need to do to tap into that stream of people looking for what you sell right now.

WHAT IS REAL SEO?

Real SEO is all about helping Google understand the content of your website. It’s about steering, guiding and assisting Google. Not manipulating it.

It’s easy to assume that Google already understands the content and relevance of each and every page on your website, but the fact is that it needs a fair amount of hand-holding. Fortunately, helping Google along really isn’t very difficult at all.

Rest assured that real SEO has nothing to do with keyword stuffing, keyword density, hacks, tricks or cunning techniques. If you hear any of these terms from your SEO advisor, run away from them as quickly as you can.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR CURRENT SITUATION – GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Before you can do anything to improve your SEO status, you need to get an idea of how you’re already doing. Below is a very quick and easy way of doing so.

1. Open up your Google Analytics account.

2. Click on the date range selector on the top-right of the interface and change the year of the first date to last year. So 12 Dec 2014 will become 12 Dec 2013. Then click on Apply.

3. Click on the All Sessions rectangle towards the top-left, click once on Organic Traffic and click Apply.

4. Click the little black-and-white squares icon that has now appeared under the date selector on the top-right, and drag the slider all the way over to Higher Precision.

5. Change the interval buttons on the top-right of the graph to Week to make this easier to digest.

At this point your graph should look something like this:

Graph showing all sessions per week.

It’s worth noting the approximate proportion of your visitors that currently come from organic sources.

6. Click the little downwards arrow to the right of the All Sessions rectangle and choose Remove, so that we’re only looking at the organic traffic on its own.

7. Click on Select a metric next to the Sessions button above the graph and select Pages / Session. You should then see something like this:

Graph showing pages per session.

In the example above we can see that the quantity of traffic has been increasing since the middle of August, but the quality of the traffic (as measured by the number of pages per session) has fallen significantly.

How you choose to view this is down to your own graph, recent history and interpretation of events, but this should give you an indication of how things stand at the present time. Trends are often much more revealing than a snapshot of a brief moment in time.

YOUR GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS DATA

If you’re not very familiar with your Google Webmaster Tools account, it’s really worth taking ten to fifteen minutes to see what’s on offer. I can’t recommend this enough. From the point of view of an SEO health check, I’d advise you to look into the HTML Improvements, Crawl Errors and Crawl Stats, and most importantly the Search Queries.

From what you see here and the trends shown in your Analytics data, you should now have a good idea of your current status. If you want to explore further, I recommend Screaming Frog as a good diagnostics tool, or Botify if your website is large or unusually complex.

COMBINING THE DATA INTO SOMETHING USEFUL

Your Google Analytics session will have shown you how you’re doing from an SEO point of view in terms of the quantity and, to some extent, the quality of your visitors. But it’s only showing you what is already working. In other words: the people who are finding you on the search engines, and clicking on your links.

The Google Webmaster Tools search query data, on the other hand, will give you a better idea of what isn’t working. It will show you the keyword searches that are getting you listed in the results, but which aren’t necessarily getting clicked. And it doesn’t take much by the way of expertise to see why.

For example, if you see your targeted keyword, which you feel is extremely relevant, has generated over 2,000 impressions in the last month but produced only two clicks, you’ll probably find a very low average position. Bear in mind that an average position of fourteen will mean being around halfway down the second page of results. Think about how rarely you go beyond the first two or three listings, never mind to the second page of results, and you’ll understand why the click-through rate is so low.

So now you have an idea of what you’re being found for at the present time. But what about the other terms?

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE FOUND FOR?

This is one of the more common SEO mistakes, on a number of different levels.

Many businesses assume that they don’t need to worry about keyword research. They think they know what terms people use to find what they sell, and they also assume that Google understands the content on their website. This is incorrect on all counts.

A better starting point is to brainstorm a small number of your most obvious keywords, then run them through Google’s Keyword Planner. Ignore the information in the Ad group ideas tab, and instead go straight to the Keyword ideas tab. Rather than wade through the very unfriendly interface, I recommend downloading the data as a spreadsheet, in which not only is more detail included, but you can also slice, dice, sort and report the data as required.

From there you can delete all the irrelevant columns, and start working your way through the list, deleting any irrelevant keywords as you go along.

It’s around this stage that you may hit a problem in terms of where to focus your efforts. The number of reported searches for a given keyword is of course important, but so is the level of competition. Ideally, you’d like keywords with plenty of searches but not too much competition.

I personally like to factor both together by adding a column that simply divides the number of searches squared by the level of competition:

(number of searches × number of searches) ÷ competition

There are plenty of alternatives to this basic formula, but I like it for ease of use and simplicity. Once I’ve added this column, I then sort the data by this value (largest to smallest) and I then only usually need ten to fifteen keywords at most to give me plenty of ideas to work with.

This is a slightly involved but effective methodology for keyword research, as what you’re left with is a list of keywords that both Google and you consider to be relevant to the content of your website. And relevance is an important concept in SEO.

Real SEO keyword research is about making sure that your customers, website and Google are all in agreement and alignment over the content of your website. Other sources of inspiration and ideas include having a look at what terms your competition are targeting, Google Trends and, of course, Google Suggest. If you’re not sure where to find these things, you can probably work out where to search for them!

If you want to dive further into understanding your current search engine status, search for some of the better keywords that you just discovered and see where you rank compared to your competition. Note that it’s vital to avoid Google serving up personalised results, so either use the privacy, incognito or anonymous mode of your browser for the searches, or use a browser that you don’t normally use. I hope this is Internet Explorer. If what you find isn’t great, don’t despair: everything in SEO is fixable (terms and conditions may apply).

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

You should now have a good idea of where things stand with your current search engine traffic, and a solid list of keywords that you’re not getting visitors for but very much want.

All that’s left now is to work out how to use these keywords. But before we do, let’s take a quick step back.

If you have in any way kept up with what’s been happening in SEO over the last couple of years, you’ll have probably heard about Google updates with names like Panda, Hummingbird, Phantom, Pirate and more.

I won’t go into the technical details of what Google is doing, but it is important to understand why they’re trying to do it. At the most basic level, Google understands that there’s a very real problem with people who are trying manipulate its index. In response to this, Google is trying to clean up its results. They don’t want people getting fed up with bad results and considering other options – have you even tried Bing?

This is extremely important. Remember earlier when I said that 70% of SEO was easy? That rule still applies. So, for example, if you have a list of keywords that you know are relevant to what you sell, then all you need to do is create great content for them. Incredibly, that’s all there is to it (terms and conditions apply again, unfortunately – see below).

There is, however, one simple rule to be consistently followed without exception: that the content you create should not only be good quality and completely original, but it should also be written primarily for the human visitor and not the search engine spider.

In other words, if you create some fantastic content for a keyword like “choosing a small business HR service”, then the article should not only make perfect sense if read out loud (as opposed to the same phrase being repeated fifteen times), but also provide real value to the person reading it.

So the process is simple:

1. Choose your keywords

2. Create spectacular content

WAIT. IS IT REALLY THAT SIMPLE?

Unfortunately there’s a lot more to the other 30% of SEO than just creating great content and waiting for the visitors. There are issues like helping Google understand the content on your pages and website, incoming links, page authority, domain authority, usage patterns, spam factors, canonical issues and much more.

But there’s the often overlooked fact about Google: it actually does a reasonable job of working out what’s on your website and (to some extent) understanding the gist of it. If you’ve never done any SEO on your website but still get some traffic from Google, this is why.

Even without dabbling in the other 30% of SEO, by creating the right content for the right visitors using the precise language and terminology that your potential customers are using, you’re significantly better off than your competition. And you can only gain from this.

When you’ve checked this off your to-do list and made it an ingrained part of your content creation process, then you’re ready to delve into the other 30% of SEO. The not-so-easy side.

Until then, work on understanding your current situation, exploring the opportunities, creating a list of good keywords, creating the right content for them, and starting 2015 with a little bit of smart, safe and real SEO.

(Source: Dave Collins, 24ways)

Ways to Use LinkedIn to Market Yourself

When it comes to business networking; LinkedIn has won the social media battle when it attracted 259 million professionals from over 200 countries with 178.4 million visitors monthly.With the various features it provides for business networking and marketing,an increased number of professionals use LinkedIn everyday to make important connections that help them and their companies grow.

So what can you do to market yourself and your work using LinkedIn?

1.Have a %100 completed profile

You can follow LinkedIn’s Profile Completion Tips when editing your profile. Add a profile picture of your face looking professional. A smile is a plus but stay away from Facebook-like profile pictures. Make sure your title is how you present yourself to people and not your current job title. For example, your title could be “Professional Business Writer” while your job is a content manager at Xycompany. The title is the 1st thing that people see so it’s really important that it tells your story. You can use it to tell everyone that you’re seeking opportunities but be careful not to actually state that you’re looking for a job. This might upset your current employer as well as make you sound desperate.

Complete all the fields on your profile as this will help you appear in search results when someone or some company is looking for skills, experience or keywords used in your profile.

2.Endorsements are important

This feature allows anyone who is viewing your profile to quickly see your top skills based on how many endorsements you have for each. While a single endorsement taken in isolation may not provide a ton of insight, if someone is endorsed for a single skill 99 times, that becomes a very powerful way to understand their key strengths and the strength of their network.

Another benefit is that LinkedIn’s algorithms actually take your skills and endorsements into account. Let’s say you’re a computer engineer living in Saudi Arabia and have been endorsed for your communications skills 140 times; LinkedIn algorithm will use that combination of factors to show you jobs you might be interested in.

Remember, the more people you endorse, the more you will be endorsed.

3.Ask for recommendations

The best way to get a recommendation on LinkedIn is to ask for one. Make sure you personalize your recommendation request to each person specifically and refrain from asking people that can’t directly speak to your work ethic. Never send a mass message asking all of your connections to take some time to rate your work. No appreciates that.

Likewise, recommending others in return is a great way to get them to recommend you in return.

4.Make great connections

You can make as many connections as you want on LinkedIn but it will get you no where; unless you’re interested in viewership of the links you share or the posts you write. Search for people you have already met and re-introduce yourself. LinkedIn also has a “People You May Already Know” tool that’s great for making meaningful connections, but use it sparingly and do a little research on your own.

Likewise, it’s important to keep up with the LinkedIn contacts you already have by updating your contact page and consistently updating your business page as well. Once your LinkedIn connections increase, you’ll have to search for laptop deals because your business will grow so fast you’ll need computers for all your new employees.

5.Join and Create Groups

Within LinkedIn’s like-minded professional bubble, there are specific interest groups for certain areas of focus within the business arena. Joining a LinkedIn group is an effective way to network and demonstrate your expertise within your field of interest by posting and commenting.

Likewise, taking the time to create your own interest group will boost your LinkedIn presence as one of the leaders in your industry or at least someone the group members will turn to for help and advice. It will also help keep your name and your picture remembered. But before you start a new group, search groups to see if a similar one already exist and join it.

Linkedin is the number one social network used by employers and job seekers alike. Even if you’re not yet looking LinkedIn is a great tool to build your personal brand and connect with other professionals.

(Source: Arab News)

7 Simple Ways To Be Much Happier Than You Already Are

Want to be happier? I have good news and bad news. First, the bad news: Research shows that approximately 33-50% of your level of happiness is hereditary. Your genes dictate your “happiness set point.”

Now, the good news. According to psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, 10% of your happiness is due to life circumstances and 40% is the result of your own choices and personal outlook: your career, your relationships, your friends, your activities, your level of health and fitness…

So even if you have a relatively low happiness set point, you still have significant control over how happy you feel. The key is to exercise that control by making choices and developing habits that make you happier.

Easier said than done?

Actually, no:

Surround yourself with positive people.

Like Jim Rohn says, we’re the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Spend time with negative people and your outlook will become more negative. Spend time with a chronic devil’s advocate and your attitude will go all to hell. .

Good friends encourage you, support you, and lift you up when you’re down. They see the best in you, and that helps you see the best in yourself. (That’s also true for our co-workers, and is why it's so important to have great colleagues at work. It's not just that we spend a lot of time with them, we essentially become them.

You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends. Choose people who make your life better – and happier.

See perfection as the enemy of happiness.

Your career doesn’t have to be perfect before you can be happy. Your marriage doesn’t have to be perfect before you can be happy. Your kids, your home, your car, your clothes… nothing has to be perfect.

And that’s a good thing because nothing can ever be perfect. Setting a bar you’ll never reach only ensures you’ll never be satisfied, fulfilled, or happy.

Instead think about what you already have. Think about what you’ve already accomplished. See where you are today not in terms of where you think you should be…. but as a great platform for achieving even more.

Then focus on doing well. Focus on doing great. Focus on excellence – not perfection, but excellence.

And know when to smell the roses – because you have a much bigger garden than you let yourself think.

Focus on now, not later.

“What if?” is like kryptonite to happiness. “What if I get fired? What if my business fails? What if something happens to my family? What if....”

“What if?” thinking is great if it results in a plan.

“What if?” thinking that only results in worry and stress and distraction is a waste of time.

If you can’t control tomorrow, don’t worry about tomorrow. Just worry about making today great, because the best way to be happier is to enjoy every moment as it comes.

Compare yourself to yourself, not to other people.

Comparisons are a zero-sum game you will always lose: no matter who you are, there will always be someone smarter, or richer, or more attractive, or more successful. Someone will always have “more.”

(But no one will have what you have.)

So stop comparing yourself to other people and start comparing yourself to yourself. Work to be a better version of you than you were last week, last month, and last year; that way when you look back you’ll love seeing how far you’ve come.

And you’ll feel a lot happier with, and about, yourself.

Do unto others.

“It is better to give than to receive” has a scientific basis: studies show providing social support can be more beneficial to the giver than the receiver.

Not only is helping a person in need gratifying, the act is also an explicit reminder of how comparatively fortunate we are… and that’s a wonderful reminder of how thankful we should be for what we already have.

You can’t control whether other people help you. But you can control whether you help other people – and that means you can control how happy you are, since giving always makes you feel happier.

Live your life.

The most common regret of people that only had a few months to live?

"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

What other people think -- especially people who aren’t important in your life -- doesn't matter. What other people – especially people who aren’t important in your life – want you to do doesn't mater.

You have hopes. You have dreams. You have goals. Regardless of what other people might think or say, make the choices that support those hopes and dreams and goals.

Don’t look back and wish you’d done things differently. Decide what you want, decide how you want to live, decide what is best for you, your family, and the people you love… look forward and live your life in the way that supports what you truly want.

Have the courage to be who you are. You’ll be much happier now… and much happier later.

(Source: Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot)

Google's Very Rough Transition

Google's stock price hit a 52-week low yesterday.

This is not surprising news.

This has been a year of major change for Google, and it hasn't always been pretty.

CEO Larry Page, frustrated with the pace of innovation at the company, took a big step back from day-to-day operations, turning over control to Sundar Pichai.

Google's core business, search advertising, is looking shakier than it has in years. The problem is the rise of mobile. Search advertising is the best way to make money on the web. But people aren't using the web as much on their mobile phones as they did on their desktops. Last quarter, Google's advertising business grew at its slowest rate in six years.

People are searching for products on Amazon, rather than using Google. The only reason search makes money for Google is that people use it to search for products they would like to buy on the internet, and Google shows ads for those products. Increasingly, however, people are going straight to Amazon to search for products. Desktop search queries on Amazon increased 47% between September 2013 and September 2014, according to ComScore.

The executive in charge of running the moneymaking side of Google, Nikesh Arora, quit for a new job at Softbank. Internally, Arora's departure has been the source of some tension and disappointment. Before he left, Arora was planning to throw a huge conference for Google sales employees in Las Vegas. Now that Arora is gone, the event has been canceled in favor of more regional meetings, and we've heard some Googlers are bummed. These same Googlers are under the impression that the whole company is in the middle of a hiring freeze. After speaking to several more sources, we're pretty sure there is not actually a hiring freeze at Google. But it is interesting that some people inside the company think there is. Clearly, there are pockets of pessimism.

Google is getting knocked around overseas. Google just pulled its engineers out of Russia. It shut down its news aggregator in Spain. The EU wants to break up the company. The situation isn't looking great in Brazil, either.

Facebook has decided to compete with YouTube for video-advertising dollars, and Facebook may win. Facebook is working on bringing YouTube-like video to its News Feed. It's also rolling out video ads. Many in the industry believe that Facebook is in a better position than YouTube to eat into the advertising dollars that are leaving TV. Anmuth writes, "Facebook appears better positioned to capture new dollars coming online given its 21% share of mobile time spent, strong leverage to news feed ads, and nascent opportunities in video and Instagram."

Add it all together, and there are some serious worries about Google in the industry.

Says a former Googler: "I think 2015 is going to be disastrous."

"Mobile has been eating away [at them] for years, but they've been able to pull rabbits out of the hat to increase revenue."

"[That] has to end somewhere."

(source: Business Insider)