Mirza Yawar Baig – Excellence is a choice
AI: Summary ©
The concept of differentiation is discussed, with emphasis on how it differentiates oneself from others and is essential for customers to be valued and liked. Examples include car ownership, joint educational exams, and the importance of consistency in achieving success. The segment also touches on the need for students to build their own strengths.
AI: Summary ©
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious,
the Most Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, Lord of
the worlds.
And peace and blessings be upon the most
honoured of Prophets and Messengers, Muhammad, the Messenger
of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him
and upon his family and companions.
Peace and blessings be upon you.
My brothers and sisters, one of the courses
I teach is called the elevator speech.
Now, the scenario of the elevator speech is
that we say, we tell the people, imagine
you are CEO or imagine some very powerful
person who has the ability to do something
that can change your life positively, right?
Now, imagine that you are in the Trump
Tower and on the 80th floor and as
you are in the elevator and as the
doors are about to close, you hear a
shout, hold the door, and you hold the
door and Mr Donald Trump walks into the
elevator.
The door shuts and the elevator is going
down, right?
You can change the name of Donald Trump
to whoever you want to change, meaning this
powerful person who can do something for you.
Now, those elevators, they travel pretty fast, right?
It's not a slow train to Kokomo.
So, you have maybe, I would say, 20
seconds or so, or 25 seconds, before you
come to the first floor, doors open, the
man is gone.
So, you have this person with you exclusively
for 20 seconds.
The question I ask people is, what will
you say to that person which has the
potential to change your life, obviously positively?
What will you say?
Most people will say, my name is so
and so.
Now, your name might be the most interesting
thing for you, maybe it was for your
mom, but for anybody else, makes no sense.
Why is he interested in your name?
Now, you've got 20 seconds.
Out of the 20 seconds, my name is
so and so is how much time?
And obviously, you can't ask the man, what
is your name?
Because if you didn't even know who he
is, then what are you talking about?
So, you are supposed to know his name.
Then most people will say, I'm a businessman.
So, you are a businessman.
We are in the United States of America.
They are like three and a half zillion
businessmen and you are one of them.
Very nice.
I'm an IT programmer.
That's fantastic.
80% of the IT companies in the
world are Indian IT programmers.
I'm a doctor, or even better.
So, what will you say that sticks in
the mind of the person?
That's the question.
So, I'm not going to give you any
answer.
Answer it for yourself.
The point I want to make here is
this.
The principle I'm talking about here is what
I call differentiation.
What differentiates you?
What makes you different from everybody else?
What makes you stand out?
Because differentiation creates brand.
Brand inspires loyalty.
Loyalty enables influence.
Memorise this.
Differentiation creates brand.
Brand inspires loyalty.
Loyalty enables influence.
When you go to a grocery store to
buy toothpaste, you don't say, give me toothpaste.
You name a brand that you use.
Right?
If I tell you I'm going to go
out of here and I'm going to buy
a car, what's the first question you're going
to ask me?
What's the question?
Which car?
Exactly.
I say, Nabeel, what do you mean which
car?
I'm going to buy a car.
You tell me, Sheikh, what is a car?
There's no such thing as a car.
Is there something called a car in the
market?
Tell me seriously, is there something called a
car in the market?
There's no car.
There is a Mercedes, there is a BMW,
there is a Tesla if your brain has
fried.
There is, you know...
There is a Maserati, there is a Bugatti,
there is a this and that.
What's a car?
What's the thing in the car?
Differentiation.
Branding is all about differentiation.
What makes you different in a positive way,
which touches the heart of your customer.
Without brand, you are one grain of rice
in a sack.
You're still rice, but you're one grain in
a sack.
Nobody knows you lived, nobody knows you died,
nobody cares.
Differentiate.
How do you differentiate?
You differentiate by surrounding yourself with people who
are better than you.
Who will push you, who will stretch you.
In whose company you will be uncomfortable because
you are trying to catch up with them.
Which means that if you are in a
group of friends with whom you are very
comfortable, run like *.
Get out.
If you are in a group of friends
who make you feel that you are God's
gift to mankind, run like *.
Because the only person who believes that you
are God's gift to mankind is your mom.
For almost everyone else in the world, you
are a pain in the universe.
But what's the normal tendency of people?
We like to be with people who we
are very comfortable with.
We like to be with people who never
ask us any uncomfortable question.
We like to be with people who make
us feel great.
Oh, fantastic, you are the best.
You are not the best.
You are a nice person.
You are not the best.
You are not even close to the best.
Because the best, what is the best?
If I think I'm an Aaliyah, I don't.
I've said this in a million places in
the world.
But supposing I say, people like to tell
me, people like to call me, oh, Sheykh,
you are a good...
I tell them, look, a man came to
me, Muhammad bin Hanbal, Muhammadullah Ali.
And he asked him to do, to make
istambadul hakam, to be able to extract a
ruling, how many ahadith should a person know?
And no meaning by heart, not, you know.
Imam Ahmed didn't say anything.
So the man was persistent, so he started.
Guess what number he started with?
Did he say ten ahadith?
A hundred?
Five hundred?
One thousand?
No.
He said ten thousand ahadith.
Is it enough?
Ten thousand ahadith memorized with the chain of
narrators.
Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal said, no.
He said twenty, he said no.
He said thirty, he said no.
He went all the way to one hundred
thousand ahadith.
Imam Ahmed said, maybe.
Maybe.
Imam Ahmed himself, Rahmatullah Ali, is reputed to
have in memory a hundred and twenty thousand
ahadith.
Or more, Allah knows.
Now, that is an alim.
But if you are in a group of
people who tell you, mashallah, sheikh, anta baharul
uloom, and you feel nice, ah, mashallah, very
nice.
In India, there is an exam called UPSC
exam, United Public Service Commission, which is the
exam for our cream of the bureaucrats, the
IPS, IAS and IFS, Indian Police Service, Indian
Administrative Service and Indian Foreign Service.
This exam, every year, one million people sit
for the exam.
And it has a pass rate of 0
.2 percent out of one million.
0.2 percent.
That's only the exam.
After that, there's an interview in which that
0.2 percent is also slushed mercilessly, and
only then whoever comes, comes.
There is a joint examination for the top
MBA schools, business schools in India, which are
called the IIMs, Indian Institutes of Management.
I went to the best of them, Indian
Institutes of Management, Andhra Pradesh.
When I went in 1985, there were only
four.
Now there are more.
Now, that joint exam, 200,000 students sit
for that every year.
Now I think there are 5,000 seats,
so 5,000 out of 200,000.
When I went in 1985, there were probably
about 1,000 seats.
So it's five times more difficult.
We have another set of colleges in India
called the Indian Institutes of Technology, which are
engineering colleges.
They say people who fail the IIT exam
join MIT.
That's how difficult it is.
1.2 million students sit for the IIT
joint examination.
There are 10,000 seats in the whole
country.
Now, I was on the board of a
trust which gives scholarships, which belongs to the
Islamic Bank in Jeddah.
And I was in Delhi, so I went
to see a place which is a place
where students go to prepare for the UPSC
exam.
So when I went there, I expected to
see a fantastic library and a guest list
of professors from top universities and so on
who are coming to coach these people.
Nothing.
It was a hostel.
There were study rooms.
That's it.
So I said, where is the library?
They said, no library.
They bring their own books.
So I said, does anybody come to give
them?
Yeah, we have once a week, you know,
somebody comes.
So I said, how then do you have
students who come here and that particular institution
had the highest rate of students who pass
the exam?
They said, what are you doing?
What are you doing here?
How are the students passing the exam when
there's nothing here to see?
They say the students are their own boosters.
He said, all the students here, they are
here with one focus, which is to pass
the exam.
So he says, the atmosphere of competition, of
stretching is so huge, they sleep in that
whole period.
He said, they sleep for maybe two hours
in the night.
That's it.
So when you are in that, it stretches
you.
It makes you hugely uncomfortable, which is very
good for you.
That's how you grow.
When you go to the gym, what do
you do?
You lift teaspoons?
No, you lift heavy weights.
When you lift heavy weights, what's the first
thing that happens?
Your whole body pains.
Suppose you say, no, no, no, don't do
that.
Like most people say today, no, no, no,
keep everything short, five minutes, because our youth,
they cannot, they have no attention spans.
Attention span is only five minutes.
So I said, that attention span is only
for the word of Allah.
What about when they are watching basketball?
Do you have a five-minute basketball match?
Have you ever seen a five-minute soccer
match?
So what happens to the attention span there?
I sometimes tell my young friends, people look
down on you, man.
You should counter these arguments.
Tell people, excuse me, uncle, I'm not so
stupid.
Don't keep saying we have no attention span.
Who told you?
Maybe you don't have an attention span.
I have an attention span.
Because the world goes to the people who
have concentration.
The world goes to the people who are
consistent, because consistency beats brilliance every single time.
You need concentration.
You need attention spans.
You need consistency.
You need to push yourself.
That's how you build strength.
That's how you build intelligence.
So if you are with a bunch of
people who are asking you uncomfortable questions, whose
level of intellectual...
their understanding, their reading, their knowledge is way
above yours, what will happen?
You will be hugely uncomfortable and you will
try to catch up with them.
That's how you grow.
That is how you grow.
You don't grow by hanging out with people
who are just like you, who make you
feel very comfortable.
Whole bunch of mediocre people who will go
nowhere.
Who will go nowhere.
Take my word for it.
Take a photograph.
And 20 years from now, by then I
will be in my grave, inshallah.
Look at the same photograph and see where
those people are.
They'll go nowhere.
Because when you're just coasting along, it means
you have no engine.
You have no drive.
You will coast along as long as there
is a gradient in the road and then
you come to a dead end.
The moment you see a little bit of
an incline, you're dead.
You start going backwards.
The world is full of people like that.
That's a choice.
I won't end with this.
The world is full of people like that.
They did a study in the 12th century
in 1999.
They did a study in the United States.
They said, what is the number of people
who reach a level of excellence?
They marked a level of excellence as an
Olympic gold medal.
How many people reach a level of excellence
in their field?
Two percent.
Ninety-eight percent are sheep.
That's the choice you have.
You want to be part of the two
percent?
You can be.
You want to feel comfortable and relax and
have a great time and hang out with
all your friends?
That's your choice.
Don't complain.
You will be part of the 98 percent.
That is the majority of the world.
Sheep.
The two percent around the world.
That also is your choice.
So choose wisely because it is your life.
We ask Allah to help us to make
the choices and then give us the grit
and the determination and the consistency to stay
with the choice.
And we ask Allah for barakah and His
help in reaching levels never reached before so
that when they look, they will see a
Muslim standing in that top place.