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A1 asks:

Across all your ventures, what mental model has consistently helped you make good decisions, and which one turned out to be completely wrong?

I have made mistakes, and continue making them, thats part of business. One thing I have realised is that if one supplier is offering at a cheaper price but the product is identical to what the others are selling, there is some reason to it. Maybe he is selling 2nd or 3rd grade material, maybe he is underpaying his employees. Cost cutting can prove to be expensive in the long run.

I can give couple of anecdotes that have proved this point again and again –

Anecdote #1: When I just started my avocado business, I needed to get my polyhouse repaired. I contacted a few people in Bhopal who can do the job. One contractor sent his guy (Name: Bharat Giri) to see what needed to be repaired. After having a look at the polyhouse, Bharat offered to do it at a cheaper rate than the contractor who originally sent him. I got convinced and gave him advance. He never supplied me the material nor did he ever started the work. Luckily, I had a Post dated cheque he gave to me upon giving him advance.

After not supplying the material or starting the work for months, I deposited the PDC in the bank. It bounced. I sued him since a bounced cheque is a criminal offence. He filed a false complaint against me that I physically attacked him hoping that since he was SC/ST, I will settle and withdraw the case. I didn’t. The case is still in the court. We will see what happens.

Anecdote #2: I had worked in my family’s construction business from 2017 till 2025. My uncle and my father always opt for the cheaper supplier and underpay the contractors and the employees. As a result, the work is never finished on time.

Anecdote #3: Following my uncle’s advice, I chose to make my dragon fruit rings out of PPR pipes instead of the standard practice where concrete is used. PPR was cheaper than concrete. Now my entire dragon fruit orchard is suffering because the PPR pipes can’t handle the weight of the plants.

Anecdote #4: Some time back I bought relatively cheaper planting material from Israel, for my avocado nursery. Only 60% of the plants matched the quality standards I needed and I had to discard 40% of the plants.

If a person is selling something at a higher rate than the market, despite knowing that it would reduce the number of customers he will have, and is still selling well, as well as generating good profit, then its worth getting to know why.

How do you balance creating content you love versus content that performs well?

I don’t produce content that performs well. I produce content that will genuinely help my 1000 true fans. They do the talking and get me more customers. I don’t care if a piece of content performs well or not, thats for the algorithm to decide. What I do know is that, I have to produce some content on some channel daily.

How do you decide whether an opportunity is worth pursuing or just another distraction?

Knowing what to pursue and what to quit requires education and experience. If you want to pursue something, you will have to quit a lot of other things. When I decided to pursue avoccado farming, I looked at my competitors in other countries and asked myself the following questions –

1. Are they generating enough cash?
2. Can I manage it remotely, eventually?
3. Can I consistently get clients in the long run?
4. Would I be able to diversify into different products or different geogrpahies using the same brand?
5. Is what I am doing sustainable?
6. Is there a pre-existing knowldege bank from where I can source my information from?
7. Is there a go-to market strategy?
8. Can I become the market leader and be the best in my geography?
9. Can I over-throw the competition in 20 years?
10. Would I be happy during the journey?
11. Once its all said and done, would I be proud of what I have done?
12. Is there an exit strategy?
13. Does the product market itself?
14. Are others seeing the same opportunity as I do? If yes, it might be worth pursuing, but will I be able to out compete them? How? (Hint: use the Inter-webs 😉 )
15. If others are not seeing the same opportunity, you might be too early, maybe the timing aint right.
16. Can you make luck work for you?
17. Does the work align with your values.
18. Would I get to travel?
19. Would I get to meet you new people?
20. Would I be able to apply creativity?
21. Is the idea too extreme? (its good but you would have to tone it down, not everyone wants what you want)

I hope this helps. Recommended reading –

1. Tribes by Seth Godin
2. The Dip by Seth Godin
3. Look up the concept of 1000 true fans
4. Look up the concept of the innovatoion adoption curve
5. The practice by Seth Godin

-# & Harshit

Few tactics to understand the negotiation dynamics –

Breaking the ice

People love talking about themselves, ask them what brought them to you. And how your service and guidance can help them.

Show, then Tell

Don’t expect people to believe your claims simply because you know more than they do. Expertise is far more convincing when it’s demonstrated, not declared.

Lead with proof of work, tangible results, or a compelling demonstration. Once you’ve established credibility through evidence, your sales pitch carries far greater weight. People are more likely to trust what they’ve seen than what they’ve been told.

Qualifying yourself vs showing respect

There is a fine line between showing respect and seeking the other party’s approval. Respect should be mutual. Give respect to receive respect, but avoid qualifying yourself to them, or you risk negotiating from a weaker position.

The moment you start trying to prove your worth or earn their validation, you’ve already lost control of the frame. It signals insecurity rather than confidence, and the other party is likely to sense that they have the upper hand. Strong negotiators don’t seek approval. They communicate their value confidently while treating the other side with genuine respect.

Agree & amplify

This influence tac-tic should only be used when engaging in a frame war with a gamma. When they try to disqualify you, simply agree and exaggerate what they are saying. You will either burn the deal or demolish his frame. Prepare for a prolonged silence afterwards.

Disqualify

If you sense that something is off, be willing to walk away. Disqualify the lead by simply conveying that they are not the right fit for you. If they come back to you with an intent to buy after you have disqualified them, you will be in a better position to negotiate.

Identify when the other is qualifying to you

When this happens, the sale is already made. Do not sell further and simply close the deal.

Control the Pace

The person who appears rushed usually has the weaker position. Never negotiate from a place of urgency or desperation. Speak deliberately, take your time before responding, and don’t feel compelled to fill every silence. Composure communicates confidence, while haste often signals neediness.

Sell outcomes, not features

People rarely buy a product or service because of its features alone. They buy because they believe it will solve a problem, save them time, make them money, reduce risk, or improve their status.

Keep steering the conversation back to the outcome they want. Features explain the product. Outcomes justify the purchase.

Closing thoughts

Don’t try to dominate the room. Create enough confidence, clarity, and credibility that the other party wants to do business with you. Strength isn’t about being aggressive. It’s about never negotiating from a position of need.

-#

The Strategist aims for an engaging narrative. Benefits are simply the outcomes.
The opportunist aims for the outcomes at the expense of the narrative.

The strategist knows that both negative and positive word of mouth cannot be controlled but can be managed with intent.
The opportunist thinks he can engineer positive word of mouth with brute force, and is afraid of negative word of mouth.

The strategist tests the waters.
The opportunist buys the boat before testing.

The strategist hooks and then builds the tempo.
The opportunist doesn’t know that the rhythm exists.

The strategist converts the oracle first, and then keeps playing.
The opportunist either gets the oracle and settles, or is served divorce papers by the pretend oracle.

The strategist engages in cultural diplomacy.
The opportunist engages in political diplomacy.

The strategist is an optimist.
The opportunist is a skeptic.

-#

You dont need to have the entire strategy figured out. If the compass is working you will find the next step forward.

The network will offer multiple choices at each step, and if your pattern recognition is honed, you will choose the right step to take every time.

Acknowledging and identifying competition is obvious. And understanding the competitor’s strategy and their strengths and weaknesses requires education.

Positioning is the first step, but it will only take you so far. Operational excellence is the next step and achieving that is a two fold play,

• you need to understand the business inside out yourself and
• you need to pay enough to delegate responsibility eventually.

You have to play by the rules. Yes, you have agency, but you still operate under the unspoken societal norms. If you are going to play the game, learn the rules first and then break them selectively afterwards.

When enticing the strongest audience rather than the lowest common denominator on the network, strength matters. Blood, sweat and humor have appeal, use it often to activate tribal action.

Each step compounds, and one day you will wake up far ahead of the crowd.

While they are busy tending to the needs of the network they inherit, you are busy building a new one. So when you say starting is hard, I get it. Do it anonymously if you would like. First get going, then get improving.

You have to give a lot of fucks before you can stop giving any. The prerequisite for having an attitude requires a proven track record of successful work.

Preparation improves timing. Do your research thoroughly. It takes 10 years of preparation to time the market and timing is a tell-tale sign of mastery.

-#

With hyper connectivity, seeding the network a few times in a coherent manner doesn’t work.

Scaling narrative production in a somewhat incoherent manner for years at stretch, and letting the network decide what to amplify is a more sound option.

When everyone is mass producing narratives at scale, and when nodes can craft their own network of narratives then spreading your influence is the challenge.

Hiding inside a Trojan horse shall be the go to market strategy.

Figuring out what to narrate eventually, can be a challenge. Nobody cares about your story anymore. Analysis of the narratives can itself become the topic of the narrative.

An influence strategy for nodes without acknowledging the influence of AI on them would be incomplete. Netnographic research will fail you here, you would have to employ unethical ethnographic research to truly understand the target market.

Competing with AI requires thorough research. Use pen and paper.

Retard maxxing will teach you the elements of human nature that no one else can teach. Not even netnographic research.

Have some fun while at it. Remix the narratives. Create a new genre.

Once inside the network, achieve operational excellence. Hoarding profits comes at a cost, you can distribute 49% and still maintain control. Distributing profits allows for diversification.

Always keep the nodes on the hook, and when you feel tired, give them a side quest narrative. You can always come back to the lead quest when you have been rejuvenated.

When you feel the heat around the corner, act calmly. Clean the mess, hide all the evidence. The heat will subside. But be careful next time.

You can never retire. Being a tribal double agent implies that you are the one with agency. Be the last man standing (Pro tip: You have to quit smoking for that).

Be fit. Follow the bro split. Having a functional physique generates influence by default. Make sure to celebrate Eid once in a while.

Build the A-Team and don’t let them down. They are your new family.

Brute force is applicable only in a funk, not always. Use it selectively.

When the network offers a deal that aligns with the narrative, take it.

Respect time when seeking advice from another double agent. He has his own problems to deal with.

-#

Times have changed and attention has become scarce. In the old days, there wasn’t a lot of competition, so spreading the narrative was somewhat simpler, not easy though.

There weren’t a lot of points for distribution, and seeding the networks usually worked.

Narratives got upgrades according to the needs of that particular time in history by a network of architects.

Narratives spread faster across different geographies in the network than products. Thus arrived contradiction and incoherence because one geography could be technologically behind the pioneering geography.

A more advanced narrative could challenge the identity of nodes operating from a frame of reference of an archaic version of the narrative or a different narrative. These nodes didn’t like to see their loved ones subscribe to a different perspective, as that could mean they would have fewer people to source confirmation from for their confirmation bias.

The result was an ongoing influence war because tribes sourced their code of conduct from networked narratives (and still do). Different tribes, different sources of influence.

Network architects had faced the dilemma of controlling the narrative without bloodshed since the dawn of civilization.

All eventually realised that peace was the solution, but only a few realised that the capacity for violence was necessary. Because network architecture could be hacked by a subpar architect who hadn’t researched thoroughly.

Unfortunately, these sub par architects had to be taken down by coercion or the threat of coercion.

Of course, there was another way: awareness democratization. If the majority was aware and could analyze the narratives they borrowed from the network, and the options available to them from different networks, they wouldn’t care about subscribing to one perspective and would be more open to change. Efficient market hypothesis could have been proven true if stratification economics wasn’t at play.

-#

Turning a narrative networked, involves 3 simple steps – engagement, imagination and alignment.

Engagement begins when the architect takes the responsibility of owning his narrative. His narrative should offer a solution to a specific problem.

Imagination happens when the others with a similar discourse accept the offer and buy into the narrative. Dialogues ensue and reciprocity happens. The others start finding meaning through the architect’s narrative. Some will start crafting their own narratives because they see the architect getting all the benefits and want some piece of the action.

The architect’s job is to align different narratives under one strategy. Contradiction and diversity of thought should be welcomed. A networked narrative can be made coherent when packaging and positioning are geared towards a common goal.

Social capital alone shouldn’t be the sole incentive. When the narrative buyers and narrative crafters start receiving monetary benefits along with social benefits, network effects accelerate.

Questions for further research –

How to craft an engaging narrative?

-#

Narratives can have more than one interpretation.

Each node will interpret it differently, add their filter and present their lens.

This creates diversity and contradiction of thought.

Resulting in a networked narrative.

Its through this networked narrative that programming happens.

Because diversity of thought presented within a networked narrative allows the new nodes to tackle modern problems which a lone architect might not have encountered.

Its the architects job to present the artwork in a manner, which opens the room for discussion.

Incentivising lens distribution is how the architect motivates nodes to partake in pro-sumption.

-#

You will usually have to start twice, maybe more but I can only speak from my experience.

Once for the identity assigned to you by society.
And once for your shadow.

Blend the two and you are golden. I haven’t done it yet (June, 2026), but thats what Naruto did. And I hold him in high regard.

For the Social Identity
This is the easier option to be honest. You just have to master a trade and become an industry expert.
Pro tip – Demonstrating what you know on the internet gets you clients.

Most people stop here.

For The Shadow
This is tough. The shadow is dark, I get it. But you don’t have to share everything. If you do, the lens you present won’t be accepted by the masses.
You have to filter and use creativity. The lens you present after the filter is what makes you, individually you. You can still get the shadow to the masses but there are three prerequisites –

1. The social self is established.
2. The shadow is integrated into the self.
3. The Narratives become networked.

-#

Do you own the narrative?
Owning the narrative opens options. Steering your ship towards any direction becomes easier. Just keep the compass handy.

Are you omni-present?
Building on rented platforms is inherently risky. You have to do it initially because thats where the tribe is at. An omni channel strategy reduces the risk.

How long have you been doing it?
Early majority doesn’t like to buy from a rookie. They want to work with seasoned players. The best time to start was 10 years ago. The second best time is now.

Do people like them trust you?
Demonstrating that you have previously worked with early adopters will help you cross the chasm.

Would you trust the persona you have created?
Lying to yourself rarely works in the long run. People with money are often clever, and can sense cognitive dissonance from miles away. The best way to get good clients is to project the truth. Although, you do have some freedom to experiment with the truth.

Is your price justified?
Pricing is signaling. Premium pricing demands exceptional service and an emotional value offering that helps your clients carve an identity. If these two are locked in, you wont have trouble finding good clients.

-#