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In the name of Allah, the most Gracious, the most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the honorable prophets and messengers. Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, and upon his family and companions, and upon the many and short-lived. I am walking in Meadul-e-Nakyu Park. There is a blue jay that is flying from branch to branch. The undergrowth is too thick. Not thick, but there is a lot of drinks and dry branches. What I can hear is that blue jay and the couple, other friendly bees are flying around. It’s absolutely beautiful atmosphere, which is minus seven degrees Celsius. As you can see, there is snow everywhere, except where it has been removed. It hasn’t snowed recently, so this snow is about two or three days old. But the temperatures haven’t risen at all, so it’s not melted. What fell is still there. So you can’t really walk on… I can’t walk on the paths that I usually walk on. These are the main roads inside the park, which have been plowed and cleared. So I’m walking on them. Couple of things. One is, in terms of career planning, the program that I did recently, a live role, some questions that came to me, which I want to address. One question was, I emphasized there and I always emphasize that it’s extremely important to have a main marketable, saleable skill that is yours, that you are licensed on, that you train on, that you’re licensed on, and that skill which can help you earn money. One main skill. Now it’s okay if you just have that one skill, but you might say, Well, you know, I’m also interested in something else and I’ll give you some live examples. So what about that? I said, no problem. If you’re interested in it, by all means pursue it, do it, but have that main skill with you. So the main skill is your bread and butter, and the other one that you’re doing is the jam. So you need, you can do without the jam if you need to, but you can’t do without the bread and butter. So make sure that you have your bread and butter in place before you go after the jam. To give you an example, I’m talking about America, Canada, all these places. Some of the most, some of the best skills to learn. I mean, I would learn if I wasn’t my age and if I didn’t already have my main skill, which is probably one of the only things that AI can never touch. And that is to be paid for your life experience translated into somebody else’s life, which they can use. And that’s my definition of consulting. So anyway, one of the best skills to learn is anything to do with living. So plumbing, electrical engineering, carpentry, you know, all that kind of stuff. In this country, heating systems and air conditioning systems. So I say to young people, get that skill. Now in this country, in our country, we have this very false sense of intraday with regard to these jobs. And you say, oh, bacha plumber hai kaise bholinge. Rishwas Khada so bol sakte. Plumber hai nahi bol sakte. This is the kind of garbage that got us to where we are. So there’s no infraday, there’s nothing wrong in doing a job and doing it well. So get us, get a license in any of these and there will be many out there. So I’m not telling you to restrict yourself to just these four. Plumbing, electricals, carpentry and air conditioning, heating systems. There can be many other things, but check for that. What is your criterion of assessing? Assessing. In my view, the criterion of assessing is the product that you are delivering must be a product which is essential to life. It must not be a product which is a discretionary buy for your customer. The customer has come to you and he has no choice. You are fixing his life for him. He comes to you when he has a problem and you are fixing that problem. So the benefit is that you get the benefit of fixing the problem. The customer does not grumble about paying you. The customer sees the effect immediately. I had a leak in my kitchen sink. I woke up in the morning, my whole kitchen and my god knows living room, whatever, is flooded. I call the plumber. The plumber comes and fixes it. I can see the difference it makes in my life. So I’m happy to pay the plumber. The plumber has added value to me and therefore there is no quarrel. Whether the economy is going up or down or sideways, my kitchen sink will still spring a leak. My house can still get flooded and ruined. If the economy is looking down, I can afford that even less. So I need the plumber even more. Number two, somebody is building houses. Once again, the same thing. Somebody is building houses. Once again, the same thing. High quality house, low quality house, high end house, low end house. He is building houses for princes or people who think they are princes or people who think they should be princes. Or he is building houses for people with their feet on the ground. Or he is building low income housing for people who are poor. Every single human dwelling needs plumbers, needs electricians. And at least in these countries, cold countries, it needs people who can work and fix and install heating and air conditioning systems. What adds to that in these countries is because here most of the building is with wood. Carpentry skills are also hugely in demand. So you are learning a skill which is critical, which is essential, which is not a discretionary spend for your customer. The customer does that because they have to do it. And they have and you have the satisfaction of seeing something fixed right there in front of your eyes. And you have satisfied customers. And you make money, Alhamdulillah. Right? Nothing wrong with that. So get a fundamental skill like that, which is your bread and butter. Now we come to the jam. The jam is for example, now I’m interested in photography. So ask me why I did not become a professional photographer. Why I do not think in terms of making my living doing photography. Why do I do business consultancy? Because business consulting falls into the criterion of this plumbing and so on and so forth. Because most of the people who call me, who consult with me, are people who are in trouble. So they have existing businesses which are in trouble or they are startups who need advice, these two kinds. And of course we have people who need executive advice. Who are also in trouble. Or they have aspirational goals. So all of these people come and for them again it’s not a discussion, it’s a friend. Because it’s a question of in a corporate sense, in an organizational sense, it’s a question of life and death. It’s a question of development or not. So they come. And they come to me and I say, I’m interested in photography. So they come. But photography homie, I love it. I mean those of you who know me, you know how much I love photography. So you might say, well this is good. But why don’t you become a professional photographer? For two good reasons. Which I alluded to earlier. Number one, to buy, see it from the customer’s angle because that’s where the money is coming from, right? To buy a photograph. Is never an essential expense. To buy a photograph is always discretionary spent. Which means that no matter how fantastic the photograph is. No matter that people tell you, wow, this is a world class photograph. This is a world class photograph. This is a world class photograph. This is a photograph which should be on the front cover of this or that photographic or nature magazine. So I said to myself internally, of course I’m polite. So I said to myself internally, may I love and bless this person. I said my brother, I love you. Thank you so much for the feedback. But I know my photograph will not even be thrown into the trash can. If it goes into a place where they are judging photographs based on global standards. The only photograph of mine which made some way was a photograph of tigers I took. Which made it on the cover of the International Tigers Day in India. But that is one photograph in my whole life. So if I’m talking about photography as a profession and to make money out of it. It’s not a great idea. The reason why is first of all as I said because buying photographs is discretionary spent. And the second reason is because photography requires enormous investment in cameras. Good morning, how are you? Thank you very much. Enormous equipment and cameras. Now one of my favorite photographers who I follow on Twitter and whose photographs I thoroughly enjoy is a guy called Mark Spitz. He takes photographs mainly of ospreys and golden eagles fishing. And he has a tag line that says, I’m glad I’m not a fish. Now if you see Mark Spitz’s photographs, he’s now also taking photographs of pelicans. He’s taking photographs also of other animals, mammals. You’ll be amazed. Absolutely fabulous quality. And he does a slo-mo of that and so you have this slow shot of this eagle coming down and picking up a fish from the sea or from the river or lake. As if you pick up something from a buffet table. The key thing to understand is Mark Smith’s photography and the photography of anybody like that is 80% camera and 20% or less the photographer. The photographer has to be in the right place at the right time which is obviously he’s doing. But I can go and sit there in the right place at the right time. I will be seeing exactly the same thing which Mark Smith is seeing. But if I don’t have a Mark Smith level camera, I will never get a Mark Smith level photograph. And if I’m talking about selling, then whether I have a camera or not, I’m competing with Mark Smith at his cameras. I’m just using his name. He’s one of my favorite photographers. So call it what you want. People, you know, one of the things I recommend you both see the BBC series done by David Attenborough. It’s called Blue Planet and a whole stuff series of films of nature associated with that. Absolutely incredible, fascinating. But then that David Attenborough’s narrative and the photographers are using state of the art world class equipment which costs more than an apartment building. It costs more than a flat, it costs more than a house, it costs more than a car. I’m not talking about some trashy car. I’m talking about a higher end car, a hundred thousand dollar car, it won’t buy you even a lens that some of those photographers are using. So you’re talking about photography as a profession to sell and make a living from? Well, if you have that kind of money, then you can make a living from it. So you’re talking about photography as a profession to sell and make a living from? Well, if you have that kind of money, you want to put it into photography, I would take that kind of money and invest it somewhere else and get a regular return on that rather than test my luck with photography. I am walking in this park for example. It is a beautiful sunny day. As I mentioned to you, if I didn’t mention to you, I’m mentioning now the temperature is minus seven, snow everywhere. This park has bears, this park has tomcats, coyotes, deer. It has in terms of birds, it has the orange-tailed hawk, hawk eagles. I haven’t seen one of any of these. So if this were a professional photography walk for me, which it isn’t, but if it was, then I would go home hungry. So dicey game. So in conclusion, just to wrap up, in conclusion, the thing I want to leave you with is this, that get yourself a marketable, saleable skill doing something which is an essential for your buyers. Focus on this from the perspective of your customer. Learn something which is essential for the customer to buy. You know, this is why schools, primary, secondary schools, primary, secondary schools, child care facilities, all of these work so well because they are essentials. Parents have no choice. No matter what you tell parents about how much time they need to spend with their children and so on and so forth, for most people that is not a choice. They would like, they would love to do it, but they can’t because they got to go out there and earn a living. And as the children grow older and older, their needs and their expenses increase. So people have to send them, send them away somewhere where they can be out of trouble without having to look after them themselves. And what’s that place called? It’s called a school. Essential services. So get a skill which targets essential services and then work with that. And second thing is that once you have that skill, for your interest, as I said, bread and butter you have, for the jam, do whatever else you want. Whether it’s art, whether it’s photography, whether it’s this, that, what not. As long as it’s not illegal, not immoral and doesn’t add calories to your diet, just do it. I wish you the best. Keep your questions coming, inshallah. We’ll try and answer them. I wish you the best. Keep your questions coming, inshallah. We’ll try and answer them.
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