Eshaan’s normal “work” morning is as follows:

1. Wake up around 6.45am and look around his father snoring
2. Prance around on the bed to make sure atleast her mother, who is already awake ready to rush for work notices it
3. Like a father figure, I try numerous ways to get him back to sleep
4. Determined and persistent, Eshaan taps his father turns around and over his tummy
5. Finally her mom gives up and there she takes Eshaan out of the room so that I can snore

Till couple of days back Eshaan used to take the support of wall / furniture / people to move around. Am not sure if it qualifies as walking in the real sense. But my definition and that of most online parenting guides is that walking really means moving from one place to another on two legs without support by using your own balance. The definition of a toddler is also really a kid who can walk on his/her own without any external help. Much to our joy, Eshaan did this and Reshma quickly recorded to save his memories. Another thing Eshaan is fond of, rather than toys are kitchen utensils like spoons, woks, empty plastic colored bottles. This joy turned one and I must say son you’ve really had an amazing first year, and I hope that each following year is this good or even better. With you in our lives, I know your mama and I will have a better year each and every year that you are there to make us smile.

We are so head over heels in love with you, and couldn’t imagine our lives without you. Thank you for being who you are, for always making us happy, for showing us how to love the little things in life, and for making the lives of everyone around you better. You are a remarkable little man, and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for you. A year that flew past and made us think of all the things that this divine toddler has taught us. Most of all its

• live each moment spontaneously,
• when things go awry… laugh and move on,
• keep an open mind, play,
• express your feelings,
• start everyday with enthusiasm,
• pursue your curiosity and lastly
• patience.

AMEN!!!

It’s a phrase I have heard many times out of the mouth of proud and gleaming fathers: “Having a child is the most important event in my life”. Last Monday, 25th October I had the experience for the first time, when around 12:37pm my son appeared on the world’s stage and I will try to put it all into words, to the best of my ability.

During the delivery procedure in the operating room I was too preoccupied outside with various issues and worried about the health of my baby and my wife that I honestly could not tell there and then whether it was one of the best or worst experiences, especially after seeing my wife all cut open the way she was. I had my cellphone camera but too nervous and shaky to be able to handle that equipment effectively to take my sons picture then.

One of my colleagues and another fellow father had told me that when his son was born he had experienced the longest and probably most tormenting minute of silence in his life. When the baby finally cried he said he was greatly relieved; a heavy weight had been relieved from his anguished heart. Fortunately in our case, I was exempted from such heavy trial and our son cried right away, his welcoming shout, his first enunciation and sign of life, a piercing heart-warming wail.

It took me a while to grasp the full complexity of the situation. It was my son I was facing and coming eye to eye with, a breathing being that had been hidden for over nine months in the warmth of my wife’s belly. Its somewhat similar to what Tolstoy described some of those doubts and feelings in “Anna Karenina”

It takes time to digest the experience. Here suddenly there is a creature and people present it to you, waving it in front of your face and telling you that this is your son. But how is that possible, where did it really come from? Flesh of my flesh, family, somebody who shares my genes and looks like me? This is really terrifying and I am not able to comprehend it just yet, probably never will, so we call it the mystery or miracle of life.

Now many fathers claim children are part of one’s personal success story. I doubt it simply because I cannot take much credit for it. Most of the pain and difficulty, the birth pangs are on the Reshma’s part. We men are spectators who try their best to give a hand. Yet there was something that shifted and changed within myself and made me look at everything with different eyes once the baby was born.

My idea of success has endured some alterations over the past few days. Money and fame have somewhat gone to the background. One’s focus rather changes and it comes down to seeking success in the light of the new events, being able to take care of one’s child, to become a responsible father. Everything that seemed important yesterday is getting blurry and new challenges and hopes reveal themselves on the distant horizon.

In a strange sense time has seemed to stop as well. I felt that I was moving toward certain goals, but now I am living immobile in the present moment. I enjoy watching my son, talking to him and seeing how he responds to my voice, how it often calms him and how he pricks his ears and moves his eyes at the familiar voice he used to hear from the muffled inside of the womb. The fact that one day he might tell me that he loves me would be a feeling of pride and inexplicable joy.

Anyways, life has become different, has changed me within the limited period of a few days prolonging into the wide unknown future. There is one thing a Ecstasy Drug and having a child have in common. Once you cross the threshold, there is no way back. Nothing remains the same and everything will change… it changed for me, my perspective, my life, even my fears and dreams.

And yes, I also appreciate my parents much more after this.

HERE’S TO FATHERHOOD!

The statement “High Class Restaurant” in chipped paint was amusing at the outset. However, if the ambience did not live up to the statement, the food and service most certainly did. The most amazing part of the dining experience was the graciousness of the owner in insisting that he would replace the food at our table with fresh, without our even requesting this! Now this is a restaurant that definitely comes highly recommended.

Dim warm light from incandescent lightbulbs is almost a signature of the classic Parsi restaurants in Mumbai, as are the menu cards placed under the glass table top.

The fire controls my life. I think am controlling the fire, but its the other way instead. I have become unconsious of the opportunity. Become blind to possibilities – because am immersed in it and defined by.

As an unmotivated worker, even when I put the fire out, I hop back on the truck and take off across the company looking for another fire. So all I know is “fires” and all I know is how to fight with them. The funny part is, even when there is no real fire… we’ll find something we redefine as fire because am a fire-fighter and always want to be working.

Do I have to fight fire 24 / 7?  In the hindsight what occurred to me is… the only time a fire becomes relevant is when its in the way of that future goal. Also, as a leader it just takes the path around the fire to get to the desired future.

A firefighter on the other hand, will stop everything and fight every fire. That’s the basic difference an unconscious manager (letting the fire dictate activity) and a conscious leader (letting desired goals dictate activity.)

Lastly a proverb which keeps haunting me…
No one can make you change
No one can stop you from changing
No one really knows how you must change
Not even you
Not until you start

DAVID VISCOTT

First, in my diary I have a page called “The Evil Queen” that has all kinds of antiquated forms of marketing which include The Yellow Pages, The Mid-Day News Briefing, Direct Mail, Faxing and other marketing artifacts that just aren’t effective.

Furthermore, I am the first to admit that many businesses are not suited for online marketing and I’m pretty good at picking them out and suggesting more conventional marketing. What upset me about a blanket statement telling a small business owner that they need to be on Facebook and Twitter is that there was absolutely no guidance given in terms of return on investment (ROI).

Yes, these services are free and you can expose yourself to millions of people. However, success on these services requires time; time that could be spent harvesting opportunity in existing customer bases, meeting new people, or using other more proven forms of online marketing such as SEM and SEO.

ROI Advice When Testing a Facebook/Twitter Marketing Campaign

Please understand, I am not against Facebook or Twitter, at all. I just think that whenever a small business is going to embark on this venture, they need to be ready.  Social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter are absolutely changing the way that the world is marketed to.  Facebook Pages can be an excellent tool to expand your brand and connect with your network in a viral way.  Twitter is an excellent way to gain quick access to a lot of interesting people and to easily connect with people that have interest in what you are promoting.  However, without specific checks and balances in place, your small business’s efficiency and effectiveness could plummet.  Here are three critical things to consider if you decide to expand your marketing efforts to include Facebook, Twitter or another social networking website.

1. Know Your Demographic – 77% of the Facebook Community are under 34 years old, according to a recent Quantcast report.  A TIME Magazine article reported that Twitter’s “largest age demographic is 35-to-44-year-old, who make up 25.9% of its users.” If your business isn’t catering to the Facebook or Twitter demographics, then you’ll be wasting your time.
2. Define Your Strategy – As with any effective marketing campaign, networking with no defined strategy will eat away at efficiency, productivity and the bottom-line.  Remember, the goal of tools like Twitter and Facebook is to keep you online as long as possible. Appropriate guidelines must be established before the campaigns are launched.

   ROI Guidance on Facebook and Twitter:

   Setup a quantitative business goal. This could be as aggressive as, “sell Rs.x of product or services in the next 90 days” to something more realistic like, “expand my business network by x% or meet 10 new people who will be at an upcoming conference and schedule at least 5 One on One’s at the conference.”

   Keep detailed track of your time.  You have to be able to show that the man hours your company is spending on social media is paying off.

   Classify time spent as “extra hours” or detail what daily tasks took a back seat. Also, list out a wish list of “To Do” items that you would have been doing had you not been working on social media (opportunity cost).
   Talk to other business owners who are embarking on Facebook and Twitter campaigns and understand how they are hoping to improve business results.  Understand all the capabilities of Facebook Pages and Twitter Searches and use them appropriately.

3. Evaluate – After 90 days of connecting, tweeting, and doing your thing, sit down and run your numbers. As with any sales oriented process, meetings, introductions, and information exchanges are nice, but any ROI calculation must be made on cheques that cleared the bank

Am a true meal eaters i.e. a  good scrumptious and filling meal is what I crave for… Nevertheless you will find such places in galli’s of Mumbai where there will be a couple of tables put in and you will find friends (mostly men..) sitting enjoying a cup of tea with vada, pav or bhajiya (fritters) you will also find a pulse curry (not in the picture) which can be had with pav or bread… (Devashish, remember Anna next to Crystal…)

How i love the look of that vintage glass cupboard which holds the goodies to be eaten with a hot cup of  coffee yummy!!!! Fresh bread just out of the oven here in the tray (doesn’t look hygienic , but thats Mumbai life), but one bite and you wont look at the blue basket Hahha….fresh and fragrant bread….Hmm…..

BATA VADA OR POTATO FRITTERS

• Twitter is half mini-blog, half conversation. Read what others are writing and respond…or retweet (“RT”) inspiring/useful comments.
• Dive in by creating a personal account and following at least 50 people (you need at least that many to get a decent volume of content.)
• TweetDeck (a free app) transforms the Twitter experience by making it easy to follow conversations.
• Find people to follow via MrTweet. It suggests people to follow based on who you’re already following.
• Find hot conversations and hashtag topics on Twitscoop. It’s a great place to start finding people to follow.
• Search from tweetdeck helps you find who is writing about you, your industry or your customers.
• Follow other businesses to see how they are using Twitter. Learn from your competitors, and from forward-thinking companies in other fields.
• Follow your clients or potential clients. What problems are they working on? Offer to help, or develop services to address their needs.
• Use multiple Twitter accounts for different purposes.   Use @yourcompanyname for business promotions, @yourpersonalname for networking.
• Do more than brag. Share insights and useful tidbits that create value or build your reputation.  Generous and helpful beats self-absorbed.
• Give people a reason to follow your company updates. Special promotions, contests and news updates (not too many!) provide tangible value.
• Get your customers to do your marketing for you! Run a contest people enter by sending a tweet about your product to @yourcompanyname
• Post updates when you write a new blog post, and include a shortened URL. You can set your blog to do this automatically.
• Loosen up. Let people get to know your personality and interests…but keep it interesting. Nobody cares what you’re eating for lunch.

Facebook’s popularity is skyrocketing, drawing more than 400 million people to this combination online village green, personal website creator, and souped-up address book. But one thing you won’t get when signing up is a printed manual. Enter Facebook: The Missing Manual, Second Edition — the witty, authoritative guide you need, now revised and updated to include all of Facebook’s latest features.

Coverage includes:

* Getting started, getting connected. Signing up is easy, but the real payoff comes when you tap into networks of coworkers, classmates, and friends. This book explains it all-including how to pick and choose who gets to see what, and how to steer clear of people you want to avoid.
* Adding applications. Ranging from silly (fortune cookies and video games) to serious (goal tracking), thousands of mini-programs can transform your Facebook account into an addictive, one-stop resource. Learn how to find and install your favorites.
* Facebook for grownups and businesspeople. Facebook isn’t just for Junior anymore. Thousands of companies and business professionals use the site for everything from project collaboration and advertising to filling (and finding) jobs. This book is written for adults of all ages.
* Protecting your privacy. Creeps are everywhere online, but on Facebook you can feel especially exposed with so much personal info on display. This book offers an easy-to-follow, multi-pronged approach to staying safe.

 Download link: http://www.file2box.net/tjffa53pco98

At the same time, CEOs agree that they aren’t getting enough activity at the top of the sales funnel. Thus marketers are constantly reminded that more leads are required right now!

When the revenue doesn’t immediately materialize, CEOs will lament, why I can’t see ROI from marketing?

This is what CEOs should be asking?

• What effect are the marketing investments having on sales productivity?
• What can marketing do to lower the combined expense to revenue ratio of sales & marketing?

As marketers, I believe the key is to look at why are we measuring our marketing in the first place?