Racing to 60
“Headlights, on me, racing to 60, I’ve been a fool”
(If you get it, you get it, if you don’t you don’t)
This week we hit 60 cities across Pakistan.
It’s surreal,
It’s exhilerating,
But most importanly, it’s so humbling
Over the last decade, we’ve had the opportunity to see so many sides of Pakistan - from mega cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, to industrial hubs like Faisalabad and Sialkot to the stunning views of Buner, Dir, Mansehra, Abbottabad and Kashmir, to coastal heavens like Gwadar, to cultural hubs like Multan, Sargodha, Bahawalpur, to small towns like Burewala, Talagang, Mandi Bahauddin, Manewala and so so so much more. The experience has made me realize several things about emerging economies such as Pakistan.
IMAGES LIE
What does this mean? When I was in the US, a friend of mine googled “Lahore” in front of me because he was planning to visit and I was horrified at the images that popped up - barren land, explosions, and that one picture of an ethnic minority girl that went viral after the 2005 earthquake. It wasn’t the Lahore I knew. It was a CNN-ed version of a city so beautiful, culturally rich and carrying thousands of years of life and history blended with the warmest most hospitable people I’ve met around the world. That’s when I realized - images lie, and we must stop to see who’s presenting the image (tbh I also learnt this for my A Levels History paper, but sometimes, you gotta suffer discrimination to really internalize concepts).
On the flip side, I saw gorgeous exteriors in London and New York city, but I couldn’t help but notice the visible stark differences in income inequalities - above eye level was unattainable wealth and below eye level was homelessness, abject poverty, and between the lines of medical policies were healthcare policies so heartbreaking I am at a loss for words. So once again, while I love NYC, and London, and Shanghai and big cities, (and would always go back again and again) the dreams they sell are often just that - dreams.
Similarly, in Pakistan, my own perceptions were challenged time and time again as I met thousands of doctors from every corner of the country. So images really don’t tell you anything about a person, place, city, or country.
CHALLENGE YOUR MINDSET
Okay I know this sounds like it’s said by a bulky 50-year-old dude on yet another “podcast”, but it’s true. We are often our biggest obstacles and our mind is so powerful it will always come up with proof for our thoughts - no matter how positive or negative. Entrpreneurship is hard because often times 1 person is doing 10 peoples’ job and it is so easy to both isolate yourself and make up any kind of narrative about your business. This is where journaling or interrupting your thought pattern can be helpful in seeing a clearer picture that’s more based in reality and less in perception. Same goes for prejudice. We are all judgemental to an extent. But those of us who put our prejudice behind, or learn to outgrow it, do really really well. During the holocaust, American universities were not taking in students that were Jewish. Except one. MIT. MIT admitted people purely on merit and today, its long list of Nobel Laurates, consistently high rankings, and a billion contributions to science and advancements of humans speaks for itself. Similarly, today, the United States welcomes talent from around the world, and institutes discriminate very little once you do get in (I’m aware there are issues, but the stats are more positive than not), and as a result 23% of inventions are done by immigrants, and most billion-dollar startups are founded by immigrants. Here, in countries like Pakistan, we suffer so much as we lose our talent to the West and the UAE because we don’t learn and grow.
TEAM MEMBERS MATTER
Retaining talent is crucial. Treating your team with kindness, generosity, and allowing them career and professional growth is important. Just as important as achieving profitability, customer satisfaction, quality product/service etc. etc. etc.
THEATRICS DON’T MATTER
Okay very embarrassing story: I was an overachiever kid in high school. But in college I was extremely non-academic (I think I was still an overachiever, but in different ways, just not academia). In college, in final year, for the first time in a long time, I really wanted an award. And I worked for it, and expressed it openly, but in the end, I didn’t get it. Then I graduated, came back to Pakistan, worked in corporate and got the biggest shock ever. (Maybe for everyone experienced in corporate this isn’t a shocker at all hehe). Most of corporate awards were just PR placements (most not all, but for my fresh grad brain this was a big lesson in what to focus on in business).
It was then that I realized that there is a very big difference in public personas vs. business success, and I decided to strive to be influential, and loved by my team, my clients, and the community around me, instead of using external social validation as a gauge of measurement of my success. This was probably one of my biggest lessons in personal growth in the year 2022-2023. I learnt that if I really really wanted public accolade, I should have picked a different career.
ALL BUSINESS IS JUST PEOPLE
Every single problem I’ve had, has boiled down to 1 thing - people. Regardless of the initial nature of the problem presented, behind the scenes, it is people. Learning to upskill your people skills, is the single most important thing that one can do for themselves. There are a billion ways to say the same thing, and one of them will gain you a brand ambassador who will vouch for you, and the other will earn you a reputation so bad no PR company will be able to save you.
COLLABORATIONS HELP EVERYONE
This is a problem fairly niche to the Pakistanis. People don’t collaborate. This “I will do it all myself” mentality only works in Hollywood blockbusters, not real life. In the real world, humans go to the moon, create art, make communities, and make advancements in science together, but individually they never achieve anything substantial. In Zero to One, Peter Thiel shares how he and Elon Musk decided that competition was going to end them both, but collaboration was going to ensure they have a monopoly over digital payment acceptance (today it’s the global giant PayPal). Later on, the 6 founding PayPal members invested in each other to create Linkedin, YouTube, Twitter,
Ofcourse sometimes you’re at a stage where you don’t have a need to collaborate, in that case you obviously don’t but Pakistani founders, teams, and businesses in general should really embrace the art of collaborative working. #bettertogether (someone please make this a t shirt i will buy it).
SO BASICALLY…
As I navigate dealing with multiple different stakeholders in my very young entrepreneurial (what does this word even mean in 2023?) journey, I’m keeping an open mind to all the different perspectives I’ll see, I’m not putting too much weight on first impressions, and I’m excited to uncover more of what emerging markets have to offer to their own economies, and the rest of the world. Stay tuned to see if I outgrow my own statements above!