Category: Meetings

Introducing Open Office Hours with SG

Credits: Canva

So, Open Office Hours with SG essentially means that I will spend my free time (which is increasingly rare these days) working with young artists, entrepreneurs, students and others. On problems that YOU need help with. And if nothing else, listening to things that you may wish to talk about.

In one line, think of a me as a coach. Of course unlike coaches that have no skin in the game, I will put mine on the line.

Here are some details.

What are you doing?
I will spend 1-hour chunks with people who need a bouncing board or an advisor.

I can talk about host of things. An incomplete list include advertising, badly formatted documents, blogging, branding, communication, consumer behaviour, design thinking (not design), entertainment, events, marketing, music, growth (not growth hacking), life, philosophy, purpose, poker, relationships, travel, writing and other things.

I know its a long list. Trust me, there is nothing as cool as being able to see things from multidisciplinary lens.


Who am I? What makes you think that you can dole out advice?I am Saurabh. I run C4 Events (a corporate events agency) and AWSL (a strategy and marketing consulting agency). More about my work is at my LinkedIn.

I have a MBA from MDI, Gurgaon (class of 2006). This means that I have been working for 12 years now. My work has taken me to more than 20 countries and I have worked on some of the biggest brands in the world.

Apart from this, I am an author and a blogger. I enjoy playing poker and pool. And the three things that I will do before Jan 1, 2026 are: Climb the Mt. Everest, create a personal networth of USD 1 bn and impact a billion lives.

Oh and I am on this constant pursuit to be better. Read this post.


What makes me believe that I can give advice?
Nothing. But I want to. You know what they say? The teacher appears when the student is ready. Are you ready?

Why am I doing this?
Few reasons.

a. Working with young people helps me become better. This is thus a selfish endeavour. In fact to become a better marketer, I need to continue to practise my skills. And working on your marketing or growth problems will help me grow. Plus the sheer variety of problems that I will get to work on and the kind of people I will get to see will be an experience in itself.

b. I wish to give back. Thing is, when I was growing up, I was super lucky to have access to a lot of people that helped me without expecting anything in return. This is an attempt to emulate them and help others.

c. Like Steve Jobs said, old must give way to the new, this is my attempt to help the new usher in faster.


How does this work?
Most weekends, I have spare time that I can either spend watching the next season of Narcos or I could sit with young ones that could do with some counsel.

How much does this cost?
Zero.

Serious. This is an experiment. Lets see if I get any takers. There are no hidden costs. Promise.

How do you book my time?
Fill in this form and I will be in touch.

More details?

More about me is at Linkedin or Twitter. The best way to reach out to me is on twitter.

Questions? Thoughts? Inputs? Comments?
I am on twitter at @saurabh.

Thanks!

First published on C4E blog.

A ten hour long meeting

Day before yesterday, I started reading this book called ReWork by the founders of the famous 37 signals. There’s nothing new in the book to be honest but it had best seller written all over it. Nuggets of one page quick-read “advice”, interspersed with motivations “doodles”, counter-intuitive tips that can assure success and anecdotes that dont necessarily fit in to the context. Nothing wrong with it. There is a constant demand for self-help books for the entrepreneur types (like me) and these are the people who are living the American entrepreneurial dream. Am sure a lot of people would love this book. I do too. 

So, one of the important themes in the book is about talking less and doing more. And one of the things that, in their opinion, makes you work lesser, is meetings. They say that if you drag 8 people in one hour meeting, its not really a one hour meeting, but its a 8 man-hour meeting. So what you achieve in those 8 hours must be economically worth 8 man-hours. Today I entered a meeting at 11 and came out of it at 9. Of course we broke for lunch, dinner, coffee, pee etc. But the point is, there were seven people in the meeting, for all these 10 hours and there were atleast 5 people on the sidelines. Of course these 5 people are amongst the lesser equals, so their time is not important. But the other 7 people, I think they bill mini-fortunes per hour to their respective companies and by the time today’s meeting ended, their companies may be staring at a fiscal crisis, if not a prospect of bankruptcy.

We invested 70 man-hours of effort today in a meeting and I am not sure of the output. I am sure that in 70 hours, I could have done so much more. Here is an indicative list…

  • Drive from Delhi to Mumbai. And back. One of the things on my bucket list, since I can remember.
  • Log in a week full of ten hour days. This means, more than one fourth of my monthly work time.
  • Write a novella. I am working on one and I could easily complete it at the rate of 300 words per hour. This post, 2700 words, took 9 hours.
  • Walk 3,50,000 steps at the rate of 5000 steps per hour. Roughly about 300 KMs. Enough to reach some hill station to escape the heat in Delhi. And burn 17000 calories. Or lose 34 KGs of weight. Wow! I could actually be fit if I spent these 70 hours on myself.

I am sure there are many more amazing things that I could do if I had 70 hours to myself. But no, the job I do requires me to massage the egos and put everyone else’s time ahead of mine. And today I read this amazing piece by KK. I can tell you that these 10 hour long meetings and reading people like KK is a bad bad combination. Worse than those alcohol induced tweets about your ex.

And yes, thats it for the day. Until tomorrow…

P.S.: I have stopped using the tag 1000WADv2, because if I am going to write everyday, I dont really need the tag. However if there are times when I dont write, or there are times when I have an announcement, I shall use it.