Dear Readers,

If you don’t remember me, I am Manoj Nayak, Check my website here. I call myself a communication specialist.

Some of you might already be receiving emails from me from Substack, which I use to tell personal stories. But I wanted to talk about business-related stuff and didn’t want to mix up and confuse my readers. Some people read me because I don’t talk about work all the time. But in this newsletter sent via the Beehive platform, I will only talk about work, productivity, frameworks, and marketing.

I had stopped this Newsletter in January, when I left Mumbai, thinking I was leaving Grihasthi life for Sanyaas. But, it seems life did not offer me the Sadhu role, though many gurus tried to enroll me as their chelas.

Maybe destiny (prarabdh) is not letting me become a Sadhu. I enjoy work, now with AI making life so exciting. Technology like blockchain didn’t excite me as much as AI has done. Blockchain was for those who had extra cash. AI is mostly free. So here I am once again starting a Business Newsletter. I am not the typical corporate guy. So don’t worry, I won’t sound like those LinkedIn influencers.

Vibe Coding is better than the no-coding movement.

There was this fad before ChatGPT hit us called “no-code” or “low-code” movement, where amateurs could use apps like Airtable and build a personal app or a directory. I didn't enjoy making those no-code apps, it felt too clunky. Vibe coding on the other hand is just talking into a chat box and building the app or a website. What matters is how good you can articulate your problem/solution statement to the AI chatbot.

I discovered the term “Vibe coding” on Instagram. Vibe coding is talking in natural language to an AI chatbot and expressing what feature, design you want your app to have. There are now many platforms which work wonders, my favorite is two platforms both by Google, as they are the only truly free platforms. Firebase Studio is an IDE and Joules. google is an AI coding agent.

I am now a proud founder of a writing app named EssayMD. The MVP was built in 5 hours with vibe coding.

I made several website prototypes and made one successful writing App MVP. This app is based on a Harvard professor Jordan Peterson’s writing workflow, which he advises his students to follow. Peterson’s son built the same essay.app, but I thought building my own app would work out cheaper than paying 50 USD per year.

What does my writing app do

1. Editor and notes panel side by side.

2. Ability to revise one sentence at a time (Core feature)

3. Annotate

4. Local Storage for now. (Built-in privacy).

5. Markdown editor.

I don’t sell myself by the hours.

My pet peeve is when a client or a boss looks at my work by the hour. Bosses or clients want to see you working every waking hour to make their dreams come true.

I have the perfect repartee, when a client asks me, How much time will you work on my project. I tell them, I will give them 30 years. This is confounding to them, and then I add after a long pause, when I work for you, I am already compressing 30 years of my experience. How can 8 or 12 hours make any difference, It won’t scale. After all, we all have only 24 hours a day. Selling yourself by time is a bad idea, unless you are Tony Robbins. A guy with 30 years of experience can work 1 hour a day will be more productive and deliver results than an intern who is working 16 hours a day. Do they even get it? Sitting at your desk for long hours is a definitive sign of incompetence.

I feel that if you are good at work, you need less time to accomplish the same. If you are not good, I bet you will be sitting at your desk for 12/16 hours. So more time at work doesn’t translate into great work, and we want great work that scales. Not really. Let me tell you why.

Most Bosses want a handyman, they don't want outstanding employees. The boss wants to be the only person who delivers, If employees start delivering results, then the boss feels small. Tomorrow the employee starts his own clone. This is Lala ji boss and we do have 90 percent small businesses which, means we are engulfed by Lala ji type.

Bosses want consistent, predictable work, cause it takes drudgery to ship. So while bosses play golf or start the day at 3pm after bird watching. Employees are working an 8am to 8pm shift.

App Recommendation - Whisper, don’t type!

I needed to 4x the speed of creating content, which means writing. Writing is the building block of all media. If you want to create video content, you need to write a script and visualise it.

This is when, I discovered an app called whisper which is available on iOS, MacOS, and Windows.

Whisper is the best voice-to-text tool, which is built into your native keyboard on the phone. Just toggle the keyword and speak into it. It will translate your voice error-free. I highly recommend the same.

OKR (Objectives and Key Results)

If you don’t have some Siddhi (Super Power) or a gun to make people in your team do what you want, you need some kind of system to see that everyone in your team is following the same objectives. If these organisational objectives align with the team individuals person objectives, then your company is as potent as the tip of the rocket. You will hit your target with high precision decimating all obstacles!

I am a big evangelist of OKR protocal developed by Andy Grove of Intel. His protege John Doer (from Kliener Perkins) went on to implement the same in more than 500 companies with google, and youtube being the most famous one’s. He also wrote a book popularising OKR’s. Intel survived going bust due to OKR’s making it clear where to head. If you want to reach Kashmir, you cannot start in the direction of Kerala.

I made this small presentation on OKRs in case you have never heard of this term. Even if you are aware, I would love some feedback on your experience with implementing OKRs in your organisation. If the presentation appeals to you and you want to know more. I am happy to consult totally free of cost. Except you need to give me lodging and boarding, yeah like I come and sleep in your office! JK! :)