Books

I have lived on the east coast, west coast and the mid-west, visited 48 of the 50 states and 35+ countries on 5 continents.  I have made (and lost) a lot of money, worked in a variety of roles, been married, fathered a wonderful daughter who is now an adult and I’m having a blast with what I am doing professionally…. I am sharing these insights in the hope that some of them will resonate with you and make your life a little better, make you happier, awaken you, or make you more successful. I hope that you will focus on how this will benefit you, your family, friends, and your endeavors.

I have intentionally included only quotes. I could have written stories, but I didn’t want the insight to be lost in too many words, or make the book unnecessarily long. I’ve placed only one quote on each page. There is plenty of white space around it – write your own thoughts, interpretations, and personal examples on the page.

Everybody is in business, even those in government and non-profits. If people look at business as an exchange of value (which it is), perspectives change… you can seek to provide more value so you can receive more value in return. What are some ways of looking at how to ‘succeed’ in business?

I have been an employee of Fortune 50 companies (Boeing and Lucent), midmarket companies, startups, venture capitalists, and also started 5 companies on my own (two died on the runway, one blew up, one served clients in 16 countries and the latest one is getting ready to take off…)

I have intentionally included only quotes and placed only one quote on each page. There is plenty of white space around it – write your own thoughts, interpretations, and personal examples on the page.

This book is the distillation of over 100 interviews from 40 countries, some achievers and others not (by their own definition), resulting in a playbook of the achievers. It turns out that the immigrant achievers think and act differently; and, they have a different mindset (beliefs, rules and assumptions about themselves and the world around them). If you embrace one (or more) elements from the playbook, you can become more successful.

Ram Iyer is a professional who emigrated from India to the United States and was named ‘The Comeback Kid’ by Money magazine. Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is the world’s top-ranked executive coach and leadership thinker who has published 43 books. Between Ram and Marshall, they provide first-hand insights of successful immigrant professionals and how you can embrace many aspects of their playbook for success to become more successful – whether as individuals, businesses, communities or nations; or as natives, in-country migrants or immigrants.

Some of the most successful individuals in this country are first-generation immigrants – people born outside the United States who now call America home. They range from Elon Musk to the CEOs of Google and Microsoft and numerous Nobel Prize winners. In this upcoming book, we profile 50 immigrant achievers and their personal stories, which we hope will be an inspiration to you.

The shortest path for many people to raise their standard of living is business. To succeed in business, you must think differently – you need ‘business thinking’. It is a way of evaluating interactions as an exchange of value for money. Imagine a world in which everybody is trying to figure out what people’s challenges are, how they can ‘solve’ them (add value) and ensure that they get compensated for the value provided. The problems of the world would drop and the prosperity would rise. Everybody can develop business thinking – triggered by a series of questions that one must answer to figure out how you can provide value to a person with a problem or need, and receive compensation in return, and many steps and factors in between.

I thought that the key to greater success for me were the things I was lacking and were outside me (more education, more capital, better connections, etc.). What I found was that my greater success was frequently prevented by things within and around me – the silent killers of my success. Many of them are of our own doing. Some of these silent killers of success created instant failure while others created slow and certain failure. It does not matter whether you are just starting out or consider yourself very successful, this silent killer could derail your success.

Most people spend years, or an entire lifetime figuring out how to succeed. This book identifies some key ‘silent killers of success’ – validated by a survey of 125 multi-millionaires and 300 others who were less successful (by their own definition). You will get access to a self-assessment which will help you identify your ‘silent killers’. You will also learn about how you can tackle each of them, along with insightful examples of people who faced these silent killers and how they overcame them(or not).