I had a meeting with Ninad Tipnis (Founder at JTCPL) last week that I am still turning over in my head, days later.

He said two things in that one meeting that I have not been able to shake since. The first was a line he dropped almost in passing - the way wise people who have actually sat with something for years tend to say it.

I heard it the second he said it and I have not really stopped hearing it since.

The second thing landed just as sharply, in a completely different way though. At some point I was describing something and reached (as I always do) for two or three adjectives to do it. Big words and big feelings and all that. He pointed out, not unkindly, that I use adjectives very freely. I laughed it off in the moment - mostly because it's true and mostly because describing things precisely and persuasively is quite literally what nuja does for a living. I have spent years building the exact vocabulary for making something sound as good as it actually is (or occasionally slightly better).

Which is what makes the milestones line sit so strangely next to it. Because I can describe a milestone beautifully: ask me about a revenue target and I will give you the number, the context, why it matters, and three different ways to build towards it based on the sixteenth scaling-up book someone has recommended. Milestones are the thing I have the most fluent, rehearsed, adjective-rich language for in my entire vocabulary. I have known nuja's numbers, properly known them, for a while now.

Ask me what I'm actually dreaming towards, underneath the targets and the launches and the plans and for possibly the first time in a long time, I don't have a single adjective handy. Nothing rehearsed, nothing ready, nothing crystal.

I think that's actually the whole point buried deep in what he said. Milestones get so much airtime because they arrive already defined for you: a number, a date, a thing everyone in the industry has already agreed counts as success this year. That makes them wonderfully easy to talk about, endlessly repeatable, something you can return to in a hundred conversations without ever running short of language for it. It's also exactly why they're overrated, not because they don't matter (of course, they do as guides), but because anyone else can walk up and hit the same number you did. The milestone actually doesn't care who gets there first.

But a dream on the other hand. Nobody hands it to you already defined and nobody can walk up and take it from you either. No, they can’t. It's the one thing that's entirely, purely yours. You are the only person who can actually dream your specific dream and work it in your own particular way, and if you choose to invite other people into it, it doesn't get smaller for the sharing. It just means more people are now dreaming alongside you, which is nothing like someone quietly matching your milestone and claiming half the win.

So here I am, extremely fluent about where nuja is going this year, and completely wordless about where I actually want it to go. There’s work to be done in my dreamland because I think it's just proof of how much practice one gets, and how little the other does.

Now waiting for someone (Ninad?) to write a book on that.

M.

A small thing I loved this week: no structure or theme, just sharing some favourites.

Beauty: My workday make-up routine cannot take more than 5 minutes so I LOVE products which are easy and effective. Enter the Skintific Powder Foundation and my combination skin and lazy beauty skills couldn’t be happier. 5 stars all the way!

xx

Manuja

Not for everyone. Never was.