Hello everyone. Uh Before we start just uh a couple of housekeeping items. Um If you have any questions for me, please leave them in the Q and A uh section of this.And uh I have budgeted about 5 to 8 minutes in the end where I will be addressing the questions. Um If you want to get in touch with me at the end, I will also share my details. So I just wanted to get that out of the way before we begin. Um Hello and good morning uh or afternoon based on where you are in the world. Um Welcome to my talk today. I hope that you will find it useful and interesting. Uh My name is Mahira Hussain and I'm the CEO of Five Rivers technologies where outsourcing firm based in Whole Pakistan. But honestly, that's really just my designation, right? It doesn't tell you very much about who I am, who I am. I feel is constantly changing. Um Today, I would say I am an artist, a dreamer, a CEO, an author, a data scientist and explore it. Um Things happen so fast. I'm sorry, just one second, just wanted to move the. Right. Yeah. There we go. Sorry for that. So, um, things are moving so fast now the world is in a perpetual state of flux. Um, and I find this to be a very exciting and uh a very interesting moment to be alive because you are not just defined by your profession or your title at work.

Um, you can take on a more complex personality and don't get me wrong. I mean, people have of course, always been multifaceted, but I just feel that the age that we are living in the world today is alive to and accepting this nuance more. Um And as the boundaries of knowledge are pushed further, we are also becoming kinder, more inclusive um and just more understanding. So I believe that this is the age of ideas and action. And I say action because without action, an idea just remains an idea, something that is in your head and does not become a reality, technology is changing. Um We are growing and I feel like ideas are the currency of the future and that makes us a golden era to be alive in for anyone who wants to make, create or learn and given the current advancements in the A I and the tools that are being built as a result, we cannot rely on the skills of yesterday to be successful tomorrow or frankly, even today in my journey.

So far, I have been helped enormously by three principles. That I would like to share with you today in the hope that you also might find them useful. The first of these is to truly, truly know yourself. When is the last time when you asked yourself who you were? And I don't mean the external you, um not the rules that you fulfill or what you do at work, but who you are at your core. Uh What are your dreams? What excites you? What do you like about yourself? Write down 10 words, try this exercise. Um When you have some time, write down 10 words that you feel describing that come to your mind and and don't overthink this. Now, this is the part of you that you see, but sometimes we only see a part of ourselves, ask people who know and love you to also describe you in 3 to 5 words and just gather all these words together because this will help you see how you show up in the world and allow you to identify not only your core beliefs, but also your strengths and your weaknesses.

Now that you have the list down, you have all of these words, some that you put forward and some that other people have. Do you see a theme evolving? Um Do you feel that you are creative or organized or determined or adventurous? Any such themes? They form a part of your core values and you always have to make sure that your work is aligned with who you are at your core. The things you want to achieve will change. Uh your priorities may change, but you always have to stay in touch with your core. I feel like knowing who you are is like coming into a superpower, really the drive and willingness to keep going comes from your why. This is also a huge help in trying to figure out what you should do with your life, what career you should pursue and any decisions that you make from your core can be very empowering because they have passion and energy behind them and you feel and, and, and, and, and you will find that these are qualities that you will need to survive in the workplace of tomorrow.

I've done many things in my life. Um Some have failed, others have worked out. Uh But none of my experiences I feel are wasted because every time I have walked away with a lesson, I have learned something. I run an acclaimed national uh Ecommerce website. Um I run a kids club that didn't go so well, but it taught me more than probably an MB A word about the ground realities of actually running a business. I've created world number one apps with my team here at Five Rivers Technologies. I've written best selling books for Amazon. Um I've created and launched a product at the World Make a Fair, which was an epic fail. But uh I met so many wonderful artists there and I made so many friends and over time we uh actually came together and wrote a book. Um It was 80 artists from 22 countries uh United in one book over here. Over the years, I've also grown S RT to three times uh its current size. Uh It, it's starting size in revenue and uh personnel. I've learned so much about online marketing, data science, uh ecommerce, branding, publishing, customer service and the list just goes on and on. But the bottom line is that I've learned and I feel like this is the second principle, the ability and the willingness to learn what is needed. Any idea you have anything that you want to do, anything you want to build can be done.

You have an education and now is the time to fly and to learn on your own. There is nothing you cannot learn online if you need to augment your skills. Um I feel even if you need to pivot, uh for instance, if you started off in finance and now you feel like you want to go into Cryptocurrency, you, you, you can uh there is enough online that you can learn to make the pivot learn what you need to. I have always held on to my job at five diverse technologies. But on the side, I've always been trying new things and that has been a constant in my life. Just the experiments and everything that I learned from it. So online courses are a great way and there are so so many ways for you to learn online. So many different platforms, there are books, obviously. But another way to learn is just to jump into, say a job or an internship or a project or a consultancy and learn on the job. Um really throw yourself in it because I feel that the experience that you get from being part of a work environment, uh being part of a team and the passion that you will feel and just the energy that is not something that you can recreate on your own.

So um do that, go out uh get an internship, get a job, uh be a part of a team, learn to take feedback, uh learn discipline and learn how to do a job. There are so many things that you will learn when you are part of a team, both your strengths and your weaknesses and you will be exposed to them and then you can choose what you want to do. Do you want to work on them? Do you want to harness some of them? And do you just want to ignore others? I'll give you a very small example. I'm uh known to be um very headstrong, I guess would be one of the words uh but quick to jump into things also. And I know that about myself, I get very excited about projects and um I just tend to want to jump in and because I know that this is both a strength and a weakness of mine frankly, because I feel like the can do attitude with attitude is great. But you should also, you know, stop to think. I always have a few of my trusted colleagues, you know, look over the project and I try and listen to their point of view so that I can make sure that I'm not jumping into something in a hasty manner. Now, I wouldn't be able to do this if I didn't know that this was a weakness of mine. So it really, really helps to get to know yourself like that. And also to be part of a team and to be part of a workspace environment.

The third and I feel this would be the most difficult skill that you have to build if you want to survive in the workplace of tomorrow or just the age that we are living in and um coming upon is staying power. As the saying goes, people don't fail but they give up perseverance commands and success. This is far far from easy, but it is a skill that you can build. If you work on it, problems arise no matter what you do, no matter what you choose to do. And success is never ever guaranteed, but there will be no success if you don't try. So you do have to try build up your stamina for pushing through resistance and persisting. One of the most wonderful things that you can do for yourself in order to help you persevere is to build a tribe, just friends who will encourage, who will give you advice and sometimes who will just listen because I feel like pursuing ideas or um doing something out of the box can sometimes be very lonely.

But if you're part of a tribe, um it becomes easier because you have some support and you have some help. Um, you have a shoulder to cry on when you need it. And you also have other perspectives which are very, very important because sometimes you're looking at a problem and you run up against a wall, but maybe someone else is looking at it in a totally different way and they will be able to advise you. It is very, very easy, especially in the age of social media to look from the outside into the life of a successful person and you wish that you had what they do. But rest assured, um, their success has come after a lot of hard work and a lot of self doubt, all of which is invisible to you. So never compare your inside with someone else's outside, right? Don't allow it to detail. You keep true to yourself to who you are. And this goes back to skill number one, you need to know your, why someone else's why is theirs, their journey is theirs and you have to travel on the road that you want to travel on, take little steps every day and you will be surprised how it will all add up in a nut.

I would say that you should get to know yourself by acting on the ideas that you have, take the risk, learn something new, try different things and stick with your idea even when it feels slightly impossible. Um Because most of the times when you push hard enough, something will give, you will be able to make some uh headway and if not then be willing to pivot, be willing to change. We are living in very exciting times and I hope uh that you will embrace the unprecedented promise of this era and all the opportunities that it has for all of us and that you will create a happy and a wonderful life for yourself and others. Thank you very, very much. Uh You can get in touch with me over here through this information and uh if you have any questions or answers, please do type them in the Q and A. Uh I believe you will be able to share uh see it either on the bottom uh in the task bar or in my case, it's showing up at the top. You're very welcome, Marina. Thank you so much for being part of this talk. And so as you guys send your questions in, I'll just answer them live. Thank you. So much. I really hope that you people were able to take away um some little thoughts from here that um will help you tomorrow.

I am just so excited because I am in the field of A I. Um and uh due to the advent of chart GP T which I'm sure you've all heard of new tools are popping up every day. And you know, there are copywriters A I that will do copywriting for you A I that will do art for you that I feel that we are evolving um very, very quickly and we have to come up with ways in which to harness this energy to actually go uh forward more. Um hmm When we do upscale or show expertise in some areas, sometimes we don't get heard, what should we do in that case? Um We are, we, are you talking about being in a workplace? And um I mean, your team is not uh listening to you. Is that what it is? Because I feel like that is a conversation you should definitely have with your manager because any team lead these days who is not um listening to all their team members and listening to all ideas, they're setting themselves up for failure. Because um if you have a good idea and wherever it comes from as a leader, you should be able to uh hear all your team members. Oh my gosh, I love this. How do you think we can stay focused on one thing amidst of everything. I recently read this book. It's called the 12 Week Year. And uh I uh have been looking for a productivity system that can help me because as you can see in the slides before I, uh I covered quite a lot of stuff that I love to do.

I love to paint. I write creative books on Amazon. I'm running a software company. Uh We create products and it is very, very hard. II I suffer from the Shiny object syndrome and um what I've tried to do and I would really uh recommend that you read the 12 week here. If you have a problem with focusing is I have started um creating little um it's basically called a 12 week year because they're saying that a year you should look at a year is 12 weeks. So I've picked three or four things that I want to focus on in every 12 weeks print. So that has really helped me and I've actually made some good progress um over the past six months because I have tried this system. Uh Anytime another thought comes in my head, I just bring myself back to my focus. Like these are my three goals. This is my focus and I write whatever else was, you know, popping up in my brain and I look at it at the end of like my 12 weeks print. So that's what I've done. Um that has worked uh for me very well.

Um So, um where did I learn about A I, I am from uh software development. That's my field. Uh We have two minutes to go. So if we're cut off abruptly, please uh know that that's what it is. So, but I'll try and answer as many questions as I can. Um So my, that's my field. I am a data scientist. I'm a mathematician by profession. Uh That is how I learned about it. And uh what is a good starting point? I would say look up a basic course on either course Sarah or Udemy. Uh And there are so many wonderful youtube videos as well. Just literally, you have to Google A beginner's guide to A I and you will come up with a lot of stuff. Um I think it would be very beneficial also to Google A I in your field because a lot of tools are popping up that are going to make your job easier, whether you're a copywriter or you're a graphic designer uh or you want to plan marketing uh strategies, uh brainstorming business plans, chat GP T can help with everything.

So uh another thing that you can do is sign up for chart GP T at the open A I website. Uh Because I feel like that would uh be a very, very big help. Uh There, Bobby, I uh I'm sorry that you are part of a team where the lead is, you know, not open to listening to you. Um I think maybe you should have a conversation with him or her uh and let them know that you are interested in other things and you are constantly learning and you have a point of view and see how it goes from there because I feel like communication is key sometimes what we are keeping inside us um needs to come out in a respectful way, but we need to have those conversations.

Thank you so much. Um It's just uh called the 12 Week Year. That's what the book uh is called. Just the 12 week year. If you Google it, you'll find it. So I believe we'll be cut off very soon. Thank you all for being part of this talk and I am so so honored to have been able to share all of this with you.