The beauty of life is realized after loosing it...

Where was I? What was I doing? When did I loose it all? Why wasn’t I given a warning? Where am I heading now? What am I up to? For whom or for what am I doing all this? What have I achieved? What have I lost ...

I see myself hopelessly lost, messed up by these questions, the more I try to solve them the more I get strangled and suffocated. I long for breathe but get no signs of air around, my clueless eyes look for water in deserts and my heart hopes for a rain in this draught ridden terrain.

You may be enjoying this as a piece of poetry, but then that is what you call “From heart to black and white” .The paradox of life is you realise the value of ”something” when you loose it. As long as this “something” is yours, you expect it do favours, you expect it to remain good after whatever you do, you look forward to it in thins of your life, but you are absconding when it’s your turn to do favours. Then comes one fine day when “something” decides to leave you and makes way for itself. From this day onwards, your life changes. You get a feeling that “something” is missing from your life. It’s not a well pronounced feeling but then you know it at the back of your mind that something is wrong in life, there is something that is destabilizing your life and what follows is “PAIN”

There is a constant prick that keeps telling that “something” is gone. Its no more there, to be by your side. Every second thing reminds you of the time spent together, the incidents and the moments associated with it. You cry, your heart shouts , you punch wall, you kick stones but all in waste and then you give up. Not the relation but faith. Faith in your capabilities, faith in what you can do to this relation and you hopelessly look up to others to help.

At this juncture, you ask few valid questions, one of them being... “Do I actually deserve this?” The answer to this depends on how your life has been all this time. As far I know about my life, I am accustomed to learning things the hard way round. I know the more I get accustomed to it, the harder it gets for me. May be it’s the sins of my previous incarnation or may be God wants to make me perfect, the Best (You see there is a positive side to everything on earth!!!)

The Sharp Curves of Life

If life is a journey, and days the road, then challenges are the Sharp blind curve. As I negotiate one such curve in my life now, the experience is heart trending and disturbing. But then I know I am not faced with choices. All I know is the blind curve has come and I need to negotiate it. Irrespective of me wanting it or no.

But then was I totally unaware of it? Did it take me by surprise? Didn’t I notice the gradual bends leading to this sharp curve? I need to ponder over this. The fact is I knew it was coming. I was also suspicious about it. But what has surprised me is my own ignorance and single mindedness that prevented me from taking actions to nip the bud. Now I know I am in a severe mess and I really have no explanation for this. I messed it up all myself and have no one to give explanation to.

At times I ponder what kept me from taking actions. The result comes with a mixed bag. In parts it was my lethargy, in parts it was inability to come out of comfort zone and in parts it I used my pseudo self belief to confirm the fact that I am doing it all right. Now I know I was wrong by all means, but then is it only my fault? Are relations just one person’s responsibility? Isn’t there anything called bilateral commitment in relation. I think at this juncture I have no rights to ask questions. I had better ask them when I get through these rough seas successfully.

Today as I stand just a shade away from the blind curve, I have my own speculations. I have however kept my fingers crossed whether I’ll be able to see through. I know the life has to go on and I am no exception, but then whether I’ll get back what I have lost or I’ll have to live with this mistake of mine for rest of my life will be decided after I negotiate the curve. I have done all the required preparations and not leaving any stone unturned. But then I really have no clue what’s gonna happen. Hey stop getting excited, Its no video game with a reset key (How I wish real life had one). Here if you loose you cannot restart the game all over again and keep playing till you have got your hands set into it. Life gives just one chance. You win or you losse, you’ll have to stay with it.

To conclude, I would quote a couplet from Enrique’s song,
“There is a storm in my head,
And its raining on my bed!!!”

Long Break for life

I usually write posts on word first and then copy it on blogger. But this time I am writing straight away on blogger, (please bear up with discrepancies). Its long time now since I wrote my last post. The reason being I was and still am caught up with some personal issues. The motive of this post is to simply share my feelings. What I have realized is life is not all about one thing. I mean you can’t say life is all about love or for that matter making money or anything else. Life is about balancing all of these and the aspects where you fail really gets messed up. To an extent that some irreversible damages are done. All this while you keep feeling when will these bad times get over. When will these rough seas calm out. That’s what I am actually going through now. All I am doing is praying day and night that I see through it soon.

But does that help? Will I be able to repair the damages done by my own faults? How I wish I had never ever commit such mistakes. But then life has very bad ways of making you wise. It actually punishes you to make you realize what you have done and this punitive action is really tough at times. All your nightmares start turning true. Your both hands are tied, All you can do is watch. Watch helplessly. You can’t even help it. All you can do is cry and adjust to whatever comes your way. The reason why I feel that life is severely determined by destiny and not your choices. But then the choices you take reflects your character.

Whatever is it, times with internal turmoil also help you distinguish friends from pretenders, well wishers from well talkers (the ones who only talk about your well being but do nothing for it) and finally love from dependency... You may have got an idea what is it that’s actually ailing me!!! Wish me luck. I’ll be back with GMAT Data Sufficiency section soon.

GMAT AWA: Analysis of Argument, Preparation continues

A sample question from Analysis of argument section :

The following appeared as a part of an advertisement for Adams, who is seeking reelection as governor:
“Re-elect Adams and you will be voting for proven leadership in improving the state’s economy. Over the past year alone, 70 percent of the state’s workers have had increases in their wages, 5,000 new jobs have been created, and six corporations have located their headquarters here. Most of the respondents in a recent poll said they believed that the economy is likely to continue to improve if Adams is re-elected. Adams’s opponent, Zebulon, would lead our state in the wrong direction, because Zebulon disagrees with many of Adams’s economic policies.”
Discuss how logically convincing you find this argument. In your discussion, you should analyze the argument's line of reasoning and use of evidence. It may be appropriate in your critique to call into question certain assumptions underlying the argument and/or to indicate what evidence might weaken or strengthen the argument. It may also be appropriate to discuss how you would alter the argument to make it more convincing and/or discuss what additional evidence, if any, would aid in evaluating the argument. (Taken from mba.com’s official question pool.)

The Analysis of argument section tests your ability to bring out the logical inconsistencies in the given argument, simultaneously testing your skills in three dimensions: critical, analytical and writing. The sample question above is clearly distributed in two parts, first the argument and then the directive. The argument gives you the base for analysis while the directive tells you what to do with the paragraph quoted above. Once again the structuring details discussed in Analysis of Issue post remains to be the same. Also plotting out examples continues to help here also as it did in Analysis of Issue.

There are however some differences from the Issue section, First one being you are not supposed to take sides here. You just have to examine the post in question like a “Wise” critic. Do not try to prove the author wrong or right, all you need to do is just point out the unsubstantiated facts and anecdotes plotted out by the author and then back up your arguments with examples. Don’t worry, in general the questions that appear for this section has cases where author has made some assumptions. All you need to do is feed on them.

Now Lets start preparing:

1. I hope you have set aside adequate time for preparing for this section. Anyways, follow this link to EssayEdge website. Of all the sites available I found it to be most useful. The website covers the main features to be covered for Analysis of Argument section, along with the timings. The link is as follows: Game Plan for Analysis of Argument.

2. This done, you may now find the sample essay. What’s the most striking thing here is there are hardly any conflicts between the suggestions given above and the sample here.

3. Still, analyse the essay from length perspective, example perspective, structure and itsconsistency with the suggestions given in Essay edge section. This exercise will help the suggestions sink in.

4. This done, you can goo through the official question pool. But then don’t start preparing answers for each of them. This is just to give you an idea of what to look out for while researching.

5. Yes now comes the researching part. Try to find the generic examples from Google. You will be required to fit and quote them in the essay.

6. Start practicing at least one or two essay under timed mode.

As usual, this post too is not my brainchild, rather it is a product of rigorous research work. Following are the links of the site that I rate best (Even Google does so!!!). Other than the sites linked above , I recommend Rediff page for some more tips.

Book Review: The Monk who sold his Ferrari

This one review was pending since a long time. I read this book quite sometime back. After that I read its “Counter” book “I bought the monk’s Ferrari” and just went ahead to write its review. But then there was a reason why I waited so long. Actually the review of this book should not ideally be on the blog, (why? You’ll find that out soon), but then you see I am so talkative that I just can’t stop ranting about everything I know.

First of all I rate the book five out of five for the point it makes. The protagonist Julian Mantle, who is a hotshot lawyer, is hugely successful professionally. A descends from reputed family background. A brave, intelligent and hard working lawyer who rarely looses a case, just collapses with heart seizure on one fine day. Reason? As Julian fought his way to the top, he started loosing out on personal front. The hectic hearings schedules and his drinking habits had severely taken a toll on his health.

By now you must have guessed it what follows. Yes Julian sells off all his belongings along with a Ferrari and goes on search of salvation to Himalayas. Julian also happens to be a lucky ones to make it the Shivanas (The holy adobe of great Indian Saints and not easily accessible to everyone). Till this part the story is narrated by his secretary. After sometime, Julian returns back from his journey to spread what he learnt.

The author makes much sense here as he talks about self improvement, self realization and goes on to give a must do for a better life. But then I was not able to make it to the end of the book. As I went ahead reading the book I kept getting a feeling that bug of ambition within me was getting starved by the thoughts imparted by the author. There is something that I am striving for, something that all Entrepreneurs are striving for and while you are into this pursuit someone comes and makes you believe that whatever you long for is worthless!!! How will you react to this? Once again the reaction depends on your determination.Once again I reiterate, the book is one of the best life improvement books available in market, but then be clear of your priorities before you get a copy for yourself. Cause the author’s persuasive style of writing is just irresistible.

I signed up for PPP (Pay Per Post), A stride towards fund raising

“You as a person are identified with the kind of Decisions you make”. You may associate this dialogue with a popular SpiderMan series, but then the sentence carries a million dollar sense. As an aspiring Entrepreneur I finally decided to go for Payperpost program that pays you for blogging. The site is a market leader in its domain and has a robust system in place.

The Type of blogger I am...

I am a blogger and not Internet marketer. My posts are not the best SEO articles. I do want to earn , but then I want to make money by blogging not just blog for making money. Making life easier for my readers remains at the top of my priorities.

Why did I decide to go with Payperpost as my Income Source?

I did monetize my blog before with advertisements, but that has restricted scope. Something most impressive about Payperpost is the multiple streams of Income that you can benefit from.

To name a few:

1. Get paid to post.

2. Affiliate Income

3. Get paid to get your article reviewed

4. Increase your income by increasing your visibility by networking with experienced fellow bloggers

5. Get the advantage of using well researched blog improvement tips and a lot more.

That “lot more” tag comes because I am a new blogger at PPP and it will take me some time to
find out about all the opportunities available.

How did I stumble upon it?

I firmly believe that if you want to blog more, you should read more and thus that makes me a blog hopper. It was just another day when I came across a blog which said you can make money blogging with PPP. The idea fired a series of queries in my mind, which I fired back at Google and after considerable amount of research I found the standings of the site.

At the end of the day what matters is your credibility and ability to create a buzz in the Blogosphere. This will come only when you associate yourself with market leaders and that is what I am precisely aiming at!!!

Book Review: Who moved my cheese?

It’s been long since I wrote on Book reviews now. One reason being my inability to read new books now. The GMAT thing has just taken the better of me. Anyways I couldn’t resist this book as I was about to make a two hour journey to my sister’s place.

“Who moved my cheese?”, I heard the name of this book for the first time when the VP of a subunit from my organization cited the relevance of this book in today’s scenario. The book is two hours read, but serves as a life time guide. What makes it different is not the story, but the review and application of the main story in question. The book follows a very curious style of narration followed by friends who actually discuss the ways how they applied the story in their real life in different scenarios.

The book is about school friends’ reunion, where one of the friend actually goes ahead to narrate the story of “Who moved my cheese?” The story is about two mice Sniffy and Scurry and two little people “Hem” and “Haw”. These creatures lived in some sort of maze land having cheese stations. Every morning they would run around in the maze to find cheese, till one day when they found a cheese station with huge cheese reserve. All four of them were excited to find it and happily started feeding on it. However one fine day the cheese got over and they had nothing to eat. Sniffy and Scurry who had already sensed this much before, moved ahead into the dark maze to find the new cheese station. How ever Hem and Haw, being little people had complex thought, stayed back to cry over the loss. The story is about how Haw, later, went ahead to find his cheese.

The book has motivating and insightful points highlighted in separate pages (A thing worth going for). What makes the book even more beautiful is the discussion that follows. First of all, the friends decide the character they resembled the most in their real life and then they discuss how they propose to apply it in their real life. The application they discussed ranged from their current Business to how they propose to improve their married life with the help of this story.

To sum up, the book weighs much more than it looks like, but then how much one imbibes from it depends on whether you are Hem, Haw, Sniffy or Scurry!!!

Start Up Plan - Time your actions

As I mentioned in my previous post on start up that things start getting infinitely postponed once the unknown director is missing. So the first important thing in a start up is Start Up Plan. The Start Up plan requires setting up a Goal. As I have mentioned in my Entrepreneurship Basics post. Then the goal needs to be broken up into Long term, mid term and short term goals. Each short term goal has some characteristics. Find out more about them here. Having done this, now you need to map your goal to the actions. These actions will in turn be bound by plans. Now the factors that you should keep in mind for planning:
1. Your own capabilities. Do not over or underestimate yourself. Try keeping those tasks first in which you have some experience. Don’t hesitate from outsourcing or taking help from the right resources when you are not sure about something.
2. Keep flexible timelines in beginning. You can tighten up your schedule as you gain experience with the work.
3. Give time for letting learning curve develop. The better it gets the faster you become.
Now the things you will be required to do for getting a right Start Up in place:
1. As I mentioned set up a SMART goal. Chase the short term goal first. Modularize the goal into set of actions. Bind these actions into time frame, and stick to it.
2. Now comes the concept that gave birth to your start up. This needs to be effectively conveyed to masses. The media for this conveyance is your brand. Your brand represents the soul of your Start up. It’s your brand that actually needs to be promoted.
3. Know who you are selling your products or services to. Find out their purchasing capabilities, the disposable income they possess the requirement for your product or service. Armed with this fact, you can customise your product.
4. Further steps would require your budget in place. Once you have decided the upper limit, you may channelize the budgets proportionately.
5. It’s now the turn for advertisement. This part requires you to know the various media prevalent in the target audience region. You may choose any or all media based on your budget.
6. Now create the benchmarks for you progress. The parameters for success or failure of any step will be defined by these benchmarks as you go ahead
7. Create a plan keeping all the above factors in mind. But keep in mind the “Paralysis of Analysis” adage. Once the start up plan is in place, stick to it.
8. Once the modules start getting implemented, check its progress against the benchmarks you have set. Find out the variance of the actual from projected. This helps in further planning.
Last but not the least; Take all your time to put together the Start Up plan. But once outlined, stick to it against the heaviest of odds.
Note: The concept of the post is derived in parts from http://www.startups.co.uk/ site.

"Too late to go for this kinda Start up"

You said that??? You feel you have a brilliant idea backed by plan, but then there are already established players who are into the sector and that there is no part of market left for you to capture? Wait a second; you need to reconsider your view. If you are a good strategist, you can very well make out that the global market is too big for any one to capture all alone. The market is huge and you never know which section of it may lap up your product or service. Yahoo! Mail is the market leader in its section, but then that never stopped Google to join the league with Gmail and I suppose Gmail is faring well... Isn’t it? Well you may argue that Gmail was backed by Google and that you don’t have even nuts backing you (Gosh you are so pessimistic). Well then here goes a legendary story from Indian software sector, which has now made deep impressions across the world IT community.
Cognizant Technologies (CTS), which is usually termed as “Johnny-come-lately” in India’s IT sector, now features in Top four of the sector, only after Infosys, TCS and Wipro which came in market a decade before CTS. Earlier the companies that ranked with it are nowhere in the league now. There is famous story that every CTS employee loves to narrate. The story goes as... During early days of CTS, there was a lucrative project up for bidding. There were big players bidding for that along with TCS. TCS which was already an established player by then gave the presentation demonstrating it’s credentials and experience in similar kind of project. The clients looked nearly convinced and TCS was all set to take away the project, when Laxmi Narayanan, now the chairman of CTS, came in with his team for a short presentation and went on to say “I know TCS has given a great presentation and that it has demonstrated its experience in the field. But then for I am a product of TCS, my team mates are a product of TCS and the projects and tools which TCS was talking about were developed by us, who are not with CTS” The rest they say was history.
Moral of the story? Irrespective of who you are, what kind backing you have (or for that matter, you don’t have any); if you are clear with your strategy, you have right kind of expertise and experience then there is nothing stopping you. But let me reiterate the three basics... Clear strategy , experience and expertise are a must. Cause in case you venture into a new field with inexperience, you wont be sure of yourself, then how do you expect your clients to be sure of you? Do i llok like making some point here???

Naming a Start Up and Branding

Sources: Kishore Biyani’s “It happened in India”, Internet and my online experiences.

I decide to play safe as I move ahead with my views and ramblings. As such whatever information you have on start ups or for that matter any other issue, you get it from some book, some site or magazine, but then if you write about them people hold you up for Intellectual property rights violation, however if you mention the source you are not offending the cause of the writer, thus this post begins with source’s list. Lest my segment on Start ups (along with the full blog) ends up even before it starts up. However as you can make out, a lot of reading has gone into creation of this article of naming and branding of a start up. (This usually is the case with my other articles too)
Coming to point... Once you have thought of going ahead with a start up, the first thing you do is think of the naming your start up. How ever what immediately crops up in our mind is “Why create so much fuss about naming a Start up and is it all that a serious issue worth a eight hundred word discussion?” I suppose yes it is. As a common man, we commit a serious mistake of ignoring the minute but obvious details of business. My personal learning of this issue comes from my experience with Google Adsense. Once you have an account approved you’ll get know that Google has gone to an extent of minimizing our eye movement as we read through an ad or an article. No wonder Google is a leader in its segment. Talking on same lines, giving a right name to a start up is one such detail. Actually a name is something with which a start up gets recognized with. Mark me when I use the word recognise. Actually the word “Recognize” not only means being known, rather it also refers to the brand that takes the onus of our product or service. Yes, that’s the point I was dying to mention, before naming your start up keep in mind a long term vision of your product or service going places and that it will be known by the brand name you keep now.
Thus a name like “sam’s cafe” or “tom dick and harry consulting” is a strict no no for any kind of start up. Rather a name should be such that it should be able to click some kind of curiosity in the prospective customer’s mind. Always remember that whenever you start up finds a new customer, it won’t be because the customer had a premonition that you have got a great product or service but it will be because of your branding and advertisement. What’s worth noticing here is that the name of your start up plays a prominent role in both brand building and advertisement.
So here are the few characteristics of good name:
1. The sole purpose of a well thought name for your start up should be creating a stir in the brains of customer and at the same time relate closely to your start up’s product or service. Just think, in one day how many advertisements do you come across? How many of them you actually remember? The names you remember would usually fall in two categories. First one, you come across a familiar name and the second one the name clicking the chemical process of thought and logic in your brain. However under any circumstances you will not even bother to recall what product or service the company named XYZ corp had to offer. So as an owner of budding start up I have just one of the two choices left, i.e. Going for a start up name that clicks logic and reasoning in a human brain. Cause becoming a familiar name for everyone is actually not possible for nascent start up.
2. The name should relate directly to product or service your start up has to offer. Don’t ever get emotional enough use your start up for carrying your family name or for that matter your kids’ name. However your name can also be used to carry forward your vision for your business, you society or country or your countrymen. Doing that will certainly endear your product to masses.
Once you have taken care of these two facts, I suppose your brand can have the potential to rename that product or service. Confused??? What the hell do I mean with renaming a product or service? Well then tell me what will you do when you want information on something on internet. Will you search it out or will you “GOOGLE” it out??? That’s what a name is!!!

The First issue with start up

This journal entry is a true narration of what I have been going through ever since I forayed into my home based business. As I continue to work with my current employer, I found the idea of home based online business as the most feasible one. But then I am severely dissatisfied by the progress I have made. Reason... Lack of discipline. All my plans in place but my discipline is not. This fact though displeasing, appears to be quite obvious. As a person I have been working under the supervision some unknown force (The unknown director). This director decided my course of action for most of the time. Some times the pressure of impending semester exams played the role of this director and sometimes it was my job, and thus most of my plans were followed. Fortunately (Rather unfortunately), this director is missing in the start up and thus I hardly have any director monitoring me. Result... A totally haphazard approach towards the business. I do set plans for the weekend (not the movie plans), but then when the weekend actually arrives , I end up doing something else and the task that was supposed to be done, either gets infinitely postponed or cancelled.
With this, I would love to share my first learning about goal setting, planning and abiding by it (of course):
1. Be very precise and a hardliner about what you want. Do not give up your plans for some other apparently lucrative opportunity, till it actually is justifiable.
2. Take a good deal of time to plan. Though that may sound funny but then the better thought the plan is, the more are the chances of it getting followed.
3. A plan doesn’t get followed only in two cases (applies only to start ups). First, the planner has got a lucrative offer or an opportunity and thus he does not find it rational to execute the preset plan. Second, the planning was done without keeping time and personal constraints in mind.
4. Be proactive instead of being reactive. Stick to the preset plans instead of reacting to every second lucrative opportunity.
5. Set a time bound goal (Entrepreneurship basics 1) for all you activities. Modularize it and take them one by one, instead of biting bigger that you can chew.
Last but not the least, at very step you’ll be faced with choice between a seducing immediate profit and a visionary long term profit. The decision here solely depends on the kind of business model followed, and thus good or bad cannot be decided in this case at least.

Some action on cards now!!!

Views you can use:

Going forward from now, I will try coming up with more interesting issues through my blog, to my readers delight. With this in mind I have decided to come up with new topics, information and internet research. I also welcome suggestions on this front. As usual my mail remains saurav.craze@gmail.com. The new topics that I propose to come up with are

Writing business plans and business start ups ideas

My reviews on online business

Internet evolution

Extracts from books, newspaper and journals pertaining to Business, Life of some great business leaders

News and views on latest business developments

Online resources and links to sites relating to entrepreneurship, start ups and business

Entrepreneurship within organization, etc

What will continue to stay unaltered will be my book reviews (I love books, you see), the
Entrepreneurship “GYAN” (The extracts from my training), The trivia thing may slow down a bit, as it already has.
In the nutshell, I propose to make this blog a one stop destination for all those who aspire to make it big in their life. Standing true to the name ... Spectrum, from ambitions to observations.
One more promise... I’ll be far more regular than one article a month :D.

Note: The views you can use articles will be tagged with “VYU” tag on the top left.

The Unknown Director

The books of psychology bear it as a fact that at any moment nearly 2000 forces act on us and that the most dominant of them determine our course of action for that day. The forces can be categorized as Physical forces, mental forces, emotional forces and spiritual forces. These forces can be further classified as professional forces, relational forces i.e. the forces exerted by relations, financial forces and so on. How I define life is a combination of these forces. But then what hurts most here is the fact that our life is controlled by something external to us. The concept is quite simple, those who break out of these forces to follow the force internal to them wins. The world out there is extremely competitive, but then when you take the road less travelled, you don’t find many competitors. This competition wanes into a group of elite few trying to carve out their own destiny. I may be sounding quite philosophical, but then that’s the reality.

Keeping the achievers aside for some time, let us talk about our lives. Few may not concede with me. Lets take an example, every morning when you wake up, you have a dominant professional force acting on you. Thus you quickly dress up and make it to office on time. But what about your weekends? Can you figure out what you are going to do this weekend. Why? What went wrong rather say missing? It’s your most hated professional force, and thus you have a severely directionless day. Is this all we are worth? At this point I strongly recommend that we pause for a while and ponder, which direction are we taking our life in?
The motive of this post is to sow a seed of thought can incite you to view your life from a different perspective, a different view and with refined aspirations. Even if this post helps one person to redirect life in a more meaningful direction, I’ll consider my purpose served.

Switching a Job as a form of self employment

So the buzz is about, "Attrition". Now my perspective on it may be quite different and premature (as you may think) according to you. But then I am going to put forward my priorities that I’ll look into before actually changing the job. Go ahead and find them out, who knows, it may help!!!

So getting right on the topic, switching job can be a form of self employment. Where in, you are actually able to rate yourself in the market of your specializations. Moreover, you may have an opportunity to choose between couple of offers (This is the factor which I feel is a notch above being just an employee, it’s near to getting self employed).Ok, but before actually jumping into a totally new environment, following issues may crop up: (that's strictly what I feel, no impositions)

1. In case you are changing for job satisfaction .Then there is no point in changing. You are not going to get it anywhere. Because the nature of job will essentially remain same and if you are not enjoying your present job, then you probably won’t enjoy new job too! A suggestion in this case is to actually reflect upon yourself to find out what is it that you are looking for!!!

2. If money is the issue, then wait a minute. Simply running behind higher pay packet doesn’t help. Why? See... when you join at a higher pay than the people working in that organization (and of course your current pay), then it’s highly unlikely that you'll get raises in the same frequency, as the employees working in the organization from before. So at some point of time things level off. Worse even is you may get a news from your former colleagues that they have crossed your present pay continuing in the organization you left couple of years back.

3. The new environment may not necessarily be friendly. You may be taken as an outsider and avoided or (in case you are lucky) you may be welcomed as a new comer, and people will be anxious to help you (yawns!!!).

So before jumping keep following points in mind:

1. Jump only when you know you'll get a band or a role change in new organization. (Like if currently you are SE, in the new org. you'll be PL, etc)

2. Know your field. You may not be in the hottest field. Today Business intelligence is hot, Testing field is hot. Development has slowed down a bit. So in case you are going into a "Hotter" field, change is recommended. Other way round, in case you are in a hot field now, but you aren't sure of what you are going to work on at your new organization, Do Not Jump!!! 3. Pay package should be considerably higher than your current one.

4. The Organization you are going for should be close to your home (I mean your Native place where your parents live, that does save some bucks).

5. Suppose you are working in Pune, and you get job in Mumbai based company at say 20% more salary. Then the moral of the story remains same. Mumbai is distinctly costlier than Pune. (There are many more such examples).


Thus, what I recommend is, before jumping first plot out your priorities, and then rate them according to importance you attach to them. That done you may go ahead and rate your current job and the job you propose to join, against these points. The one that wins will of course be your choice.

But at the end of the day, do what your instincts say!!!(Sorry for confusing you here...)

Note: An extract from this blog was rated 4 out 5 and featured as "Best Response"
at Ammas.com Advisors website

Book Review : I Bought the Monk's Ferrari

After a huge success of "If God was a Banker", Ravi Subramanian has cooked another food for thought, "I bought the Monk's Ferrari". What amused me the most was the coincidence of me reading Robin Sharma's "Monk who sold his Ferrari" just a a couple of days before i came across this book. I knew one thing for sure, that even the author has gone through the book before writing his version of it, and that even he had got a blatant feeling of the fact that "To sold a Ferrari you need to have one", and thus began a story of how a young man dreams of a Ferrari and achieves it.
The book is divided into well organized sections. First to come is, the author's close brush off with his dream car. What comes next is the Ten Commandments for success (Owning a Ferrari).Finally the author talks about what a Ferrari actually is, (His perception of Ferrari). The book is quite engaging right from the first page where the author dedicates his book to all those for whom "Any car other than Ferrari is a shame". With first few chapters, the Author seamlessly breathes life into the masterpiece by FIAT Company. Then the ten commandants’ section leaves no aspect of being successful untouched. Though at times the reader feels like too much of pious thought to take, but then the author successfully avoids the pit by quoting right examples at right occasions. Rather, for all commandments, the author has plotted convincing examples which actually keep the readers bound to the book.

To sum up, what’s most convincing in the whole book is the methodology adopted by author, “Explain it by examples”. The methodology not only convinces you about the fact that success is achievable, but also helps you make role models for success, which I suppose is very important in today’s scenario. However I should point at a fact that the book fails to touch a larger crossection of Indian society, and that it skims through the society of elites… Notwithstanding, the book does well to lay down a general guideline for success. The ground work is off course up to you sir!!!

Book Review: The Alchemist

An account of an entrepreneurial journey of a young boy named “Santiago”. A boy who believes in his recurrent dreams, who knows how to read Omens, who has given up a cozy life of priests for being a shepherd and travel far and wide… The above description may sound as yet another story, written on achieving dreams, living up destiny and blah blah. But I’ll rate that thought of yours as a sheer misjudgment. The value enhancing effect of the book can't be expressed in words, and thus my blog gives you an incomplete picture on the whole story (which of course I am not going to say, lest i break out all the suspense in the story). But yes there are surely few things i would love to talk about, First one being the quote "When you want something, the whole world conspires to help you achieve it". You'll love to believe, that this is true. But as you go through the story, you'll find how seamlessly the author, Paulo Coelho successfully proves this to be a truth.
Next is the discussion of "Omens", which forms a decisive factor at many points in the story.
Finally what comes is the phrase "The whole universe speaks one language” what the author calls as "The Language of universe". I am yet to delve deeper into this one.

To sum up, I would say, that what makes the book outstanding is its ability to connect to our daily life and aspirations; to top it up Paulo Coelho is a legend, right??

Secure your loved ones after you

What is it that you are most afraid of? Most of us will say ‘DEATH’. Not many of us love thinking or talking about it, but then lets face it, Death is the most inevitable truth of our life. The moment we think about it, the first thing that comes to our mind is who is going to look after our loved ones and the most obvious answer is… No one. No one in this world can substitute your presence in their life, however you can make your absence less painful for them by securing the future of loved ones.

The first thing that comes to our mind is getting our self insured. That is precisely something for which the site http://www.advantagetermlife.com/ has come up. Now you can find the plan that suits you and your pocket. You can Save Money on Insurance and also find an array of options personalized to your needs, for example Key man Coverage, Employee Benefit Package, Family Insurance, etc.

The website provides you with a list insurance companies you can invest in. Also there is a provision for you to compare the premium rates, gives you Insurance Plans Pros and Cons, the cheapest rates , and what no. Go get your Insurance Plans Pros and Cons now :-)

Setting up and processing credit card payments

At a certain level, quality of a product from any organization tends to be the same. What acts as a major differentiator is the customer service. The ease with which your customer can access your products, the ease with which they can purchase it and your responsiveness to issues faced by customer once a product is purchased and is in use. Of these three major aspects of customer service, The issue of receiving payment from customer is successfully taken care by only a few organizations. Keeping this problem in mind, http://www.aplusmerchant.com/ has come up with a definitive solution for all the new companies and entrepreneurs who are fairly new to the concept of Visa & Mastercard Payment Solutions . The website offers a dummies guide to Visa & Mastercard Payment Solutions, and to add to it, the website also gives you an array of facilities and you can opt for a solution that best suits your business

If you are offering your products or services on internet, through a website, receiving credit card payment from the customers is a 'must follow' rule. Researches on online behavior of customers more than approve this fact. However, Accepting Credit Cards on Website requires some amount of speculation based on the products and services sold, where in high risk contents can be charged higher than others. You can apply at Website Billing Service to set up an online payment account for your website.

But there is much more to this kind of payment than it appears to the common eyes. There are several security issues and hassles involved in accepting payments. Right from setting up machines to swipe a card till actually ensuring that your phone connection is working is a demanding task; however there are always work around solutions to all problems. You can find out more on how to Setup Credit Card Processing at www.aplusmerchant.com. To apply for this service Merchant Account Application Form on the website can be used.

Miss it or use it is your call, but keep in mind the edge you may lose by not paying attention to customer convenience.

MEntrepreneurship- Becoming Entrepreneur Mentally

The first step:

Are you divided on how to steer your future … You have plans that aren't materializing? Or for that matter you aren't working on it? Hey you started working on it and suddenly midway you dropped the idea (That's cool :-)). You aren't happy with you are today or you aren't sure what you are going to be a couple of years down the line and feel that you are simply driven by flow of time, just like another dead fish flowing along the stream of river…
Chill dude you are in same band as me. But then if you say yes to all the questions above, then wait a minute, I am better placed than you are, cause I have plans and I am working on it.(To add to it , I haven't dropped the idea as of yet). Ok, my plans are a different issue at all. Let's talk about what your plans are!!! I know that's a tough question to answer, but believe me it's not all that tough.
Now let me help you do some planning. All you need to do is answer my few questions to yourself and then what you'll have at the end will be a right kind of plan.
So your first question is: Are you happy and content with the kind of lifestyle you have? Are you sure that you are well prepared to take you problems by horns every time they come (I mean something like mid life crisis, child upbringing, ageing parents, etc). If your answer is yes, then let me congratulate you for being the luckiest person on earth and I would advise you not to read further. If you say 'No', then keep reading…
Now, you said you aren't happy. So what is it that's ailing you? Just give it a thought… Vivekananda once said that "Whatever you are today is a result of what you did 5 years back". So that means you had at some point of time decided to be, what you are today! So what are you unhappy with??? It means that you were double minded when you took a decision 5 years back. Correct? No, I am wrong when I say that, because you never knew how life is going to be once you reach your destination. In nutshell your present is the result of the decision you took in past and unfortunately that decision was taken in ignorance and without thorough knowledge of facts. So now take a deep breath, and try to recall a person whom you admire most. Found him? Take my word, the lifestyle of the person, his profession (if no profession exactly, then at least the income from it) and his image is your dream. But once again, before making this dream your GOAL, do a thorough research on the kind of problems that person is facing, in case you are ready to take it, you are well on your way.

Articles to follow:
2. Convert your dreams to goal
3. MEntrepreneurship