Roach Mentality

I go to Roach Mafia retreat every six months and come back with the best business lessons, which are in many ways career-accelerating.

This June, I was in Lonavala with 41 independent builders, picking their brains on how they run their businesses.

I have many many learnings from the retreat, but I have picked the most relevant lessons for marketers.

PS: I will take many names (Example, Ayush asked me to…). You don’t need to know the person yet to understand the value they share. Continue reading, you will be fine.

I started presenting in 2016 during my first year of engineering. I always thought PPTs are a waste of time because “If you are a good speaker, you can hold and retain attention. Why would you even need a PPT?”

I have been presenting frequently, both in community webinars and for clients, as well as at in-person events like Roach Mafia retreats.

My opinions changed after spending time with great presenters. Now PPTs are a must in my presentations because:

It’s weird how I’ve always admired visual notes but never thought I could make them myself. Aravind and Riten are the most artistic yet effective sketchnoters I know.

Thanks to Arvindh (different guy), I had learned the basics of sketchnoting. You can’t learn the skill in a forty-minute session, but it changed the way I look at learning and content.

I am a wannabe visual thinker now, always finding ways to visualise ideas.

As most of us marketers here, Sketchnoting is one of the most valuable skills for communicating ideas. Plus you kinda look cool, ngl.

I love how Gaurav approaches this on his Twitter. He condenses all his knowledge on a topic into a single picture.

If not for Arvindh, I wouldn’t have presented an idea visually in a webinar:

Magesh dropped this banger when we were playing “what is one thing you wish you had known earlier?”

When you don’t make any money from your business, you know it’s not working. You either shut down or pivot. But slow money keeps you in the game longer than you should, and you don’t really know if it’s working out or not.

Slow money is almost an illusion if you’re not self-aware about where you stand with skills and progress in comparison to the market.

No kidding; made me question many of my work choices.

The smartest people, Ayush, Gaurav, Shyam, Bhanu, Agnel, to name a few, don’t voice their opinions as often. It doesn’t mean they don’t have better things to share than you do.

They probably have a thousand times your knowledge and experience, and even stronger arguments against your thesis, but they still choose to listen and understand your perspective.

Spending time with them made me realise how bad a listener I am. With groups like these, there is more of an unsaid learning from observation than asking for advice.

I see freelancers join freelancing communities, writers writing communities, and so on. That’s good, but there is a higher value exchange in diverse communities with similar personalities.

In Roach Mafia, we have diversity in ages, cities, businesses, experiences, backgrounds, etc. The multiple perspectives on the same topic are insane.

Not only that, all the cliches like “You are an average of five people around you” are true.

I wrote a basic essay on developing taste in January. When I had to present it to Mafia, I knew my essay wouldn’t cut it. It was way below the average smartness in the room, and I need to make many upgrades during the trip to make it worthy of listening.

The thought of “I am presenting to a smart group” elevated my reasoning to a level I didn’t think was possible.

Over three days, the masks will be off.

There’s hardly any “presenting of your best self.” You share your business vulnerabilities, personal lives, cultures, families, hobbies, health, etc.

End of the day, we’re just humans happy to have found our tribe.

…and I want you to find yours. The goal of this newsletter is to share my learnings and make you search for your tribe.

Twitter is a great place. Don’t use Twitter to gain thousands of followers or millions of views. Look at it as a platform to connect with people you admire. Message them, give them a reason to talk to you. It will be messy at the start, but you will get better.

About Roach Mafia, it’s an invite-only retreat. I am not a host; I have no say in who gets in. Just a happy member.

If you think Roach Mafia is the place for you, Ayush is the best person to connect with. He’s the host.

Roaches: Vidhaya | Poonam | Prakruti | Sanat | Nikhil | Prasanna | Sathya | Arvindh | Vikash | Sai Teja | Rainar | Pradeep | Shivam Sandilya | Atharva | Bhanu | Dheeraj | Sujith | Gaurav | Parth | Shyam | Akshay | Shivam Vyas | Punit | Manish | Swapnil | Ashutosh | Saurabh | Ajmal | Magesh | Krishna Kumar | Radha Krishnan | Aditya Chaturvedi | Prasad | Adithya Shreshti | Alok | Ayush Garg | Kartik | Agnel | Epaphra | Ayush Chaturvedi | Aditi | Gautham | Aravind Balla