Posted on Monday, August 25, 2014

Don’t Follow the Crowd, Be Yourself and Focus on What You Do Best

Most of the time, the crowd is wrong. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that everything popular is always wrong. I’m not saying that you should not do something or follow advice just because it’s a practice used by many people. I’m not saying that if a product is used by many people that its popularity means that it’s not a good product.

Here’s one example of the wrong crowd theory: Of the world’s workforce, more than 90 percent of these people are unwealthy employees; most of those people think that by following this path of work that they will become wealthy or will be able to live the way they want by having financial freedom. Less than 10 percent of the world’s workforce is considered wealthy.

Posted on Monday, August 11, 2014

The Power of Focus Makes You More Efficient

We live nowadays in a more unfocused world due to the huge technological development around us. We are surrounded by many devices, such as small laptops, smartphones, PSPs, and iPads, that help us keep connected with social media, email, and other time-consuming activities. These things make you busier and unfocused. Before these gadgets, people would get bored from doing nothing; boredom is rarely found nowadays, as we are always connected to the Internet or gaming through a device. This is putting us in an unfocused state of mind. We spend so much time entertaining ourselves, posting photos about our lives, or acting on the urgent stuff that comes through emails and ignoring the important stuff that hours, days, months, years, and decades are passing very quickly with less action taken on important things. Now generations are spending their lives watching TV and scrolling their Facebook pages just to look at successful people; instead of learning from them and taking action, we keep looking at them and feel depressed due to this lack of focus.

Posted on Monday, June 9, 2014

Employee Vs. Efficient Entrepreneur

Employee

Working for someone else is rife with disadvantages, not least of which include:

1. Waking up early in the morning at a specific time

So many people are not morning people – and having to wake up early at the same time every day brings with it feelings of grogginess, not to mention discontentment. Everyone has a peak time of day – and having the flexibility to work within that time is important to your productivity and successfully accomplishing your tasks and goals.

Posted on Saturday, June 7, 2014

Failure and the Price of a Mistake

“It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” – Bill Gates

Most people are scared of failure, especially when they make the transition to entrepreneur. Just like when they take an adventure, fear and failure are the biggest concerns of those people. But failure is the biggest tool of learning in life when you take action. When you fail, you learn – you just learn. After you fail, you start thinking, you take a break for a while, then you come back and try to correct your mistake.

If you have a certain project that you’re already working on, then usually it’s a kind of experiment. However, try as much as you can to calculate the possible failure’s reach, so you know where you’re heading and what the worst-case scenario is.

“Never test the depth of river with both feet.” – Warren Buffet

In some projects, the worst-case scenario may exceed what you have expected, especially if you don’t have certain experience. Sometimes something goes very wrong. However, trying to visualize and calculate the lowest possible point will give you some indication of where you are heading.

Sometimes when you look back at what you have done before and the challenges and failures that you have faced, you realize that it’s really what shaped you to succeed later. Failures will make you stronger with time and make you succeed in the future.

The biggest fear of most people is the fear of failing. I think that the most important thing to remember is to not quit your dream because you have failed before, because the biggest failure is quitting your dream. When you have started something, you have to either finish it or quit it after trying all the possible possibilities to make it work. Sometimes you try your best and the business still doesn’t work. However, you should know when to quit certain businesses to reduce damages when there is no hope of success so you can start over again somewhere else. Sometimes it’s good to fail fast and quit a project if you feel that it’s not going to work for you from the beginning so you can shift and focus on something else instead of wasting too much time and then quitting.

In some of my businesses, I felt the business at a certain point started declining. I tried my best to find solutions to buy time to test more methods to try and make the business work, but then I realized that there was no hope to continue based on the tools that I had at that point. In cases like this, you should shut it down and then start something totally new or try with another location for the same business idea that you tried before. But don’t forget to apply the lessons you learned from your failed project to the new project.

Most employees want to feel secure and don’t want to risk anything – I understand that. My advice to you is to minimize the risk by staying in your job while working on a part-time project. Try to dedicate one hour a day to learning something new. I assure you that if you put your mind into it, you will achieve something out of it, whether it’s a year or three years or five years from now.

Well some of you will say, “I don’t care. I work 9 to 5 and I drive 1-2 hours to come back home very tired and then I spend some time with my family and watch some TV.” That’s also completely fine, and I understand that, but still you can find 1-2 hours a day to work on something that will materialize in the future if you focus on it. If you are completely against investing 1-2 hours a day in something, then when you get fired from your job when you are 40 or 50 and you do not know what to do next, face the moment of truth and don’t nag about it.

You need to be responsible from the beginning and plan and think about what will happen in the future if you’re going to continue doing what you are doing now. Most people ignore everything; they don’t care. They just watch “American Idol” in the evening, sleep, and go to work. They keep nagging about the rat race that they are in, and for sure there is no solution for that unless you do something about it. And then they face the moment of truth when they lose their job and they don’t know what to do, because they have spent all their life just doing one thing and building only one column of income.

So you need to keep trying and understand that failure is the biggest teacher in life and business. It’s part of the game, part of the equation of success and of any business. When you approach any project or challenge in your life with this mindset that failure is an opportunity and it’s part of the game, then you will feel comfortable.

Share with us the story of your biggest failure in the comment section below?

Posted on Sunday, May 25, 2014

Don’t Let Your Idea Die

Recently, I was sitting at a café with a friend discussing some business ideas and my friend began to tell me about an idea that he had. At first, he was hesitant to say anything about it. It was not so crowded at the café but still there some people sitting around us. Finally, my friend decided he would go ahead and share the idea with me, but as he was talking, I noticed that he kept turning his head to make sure that no one was listening. He kept repeating that he wanted this idea to stay just between the two of us.

This is just one example of a situation in which someone has a great business idea, but they never take action. As a result, the idea just dies with them. The key to succeeding is to make sure that if you have an idea for a business that you take the next step and implement it.

Far too often, many people have an idea for a business and then they see that someone else has implemented the same idea. The difference is that one person acted upon their idea and the other person did not. Don’t allow yourself to fall into the trip. There is no need to try and reinvent the wheel.

Facebook, as we all know, is wildly successful. Even so, it was hardly the first social media site. Long before Facebook, there was MySpace. After Facebook, there was Instagram. Both sites have enjoyed wild success. They are both built on the same idea of social media.

There is no need to be afraid to share your idea. If you do not take action and share your idea with investors and others, nothing will ever come of it. There are many great services out there available for consulting that can help you to get your business off the ground, including Clarity.fm. With this service, you can chat with experts from a wide variety of different fields. You are charged per minute, but it is a very valuable service. You can also begin to attend startup events for entrepreneurs where you can network with others. Another option is to take advantage of the Internet. The Internet has significantly changed the way in which we communicate and now you can find out practically anything you want at the speed of light, through sites such as Google and YouTube.

Never just hide your idea and sleep on it; otherwise, it will simply die with you. Go ahead and bring it to light. Take the initiative to understand the investment process, what is involved in raising capital for your idea, such as how of your share you stand to lose with various investment options. For example, if you have a $10,000 idea and you raise capital from friends and family or angel investors, find out what type of share you may need to pay out and how much you will keep. Too many people never take action on an idea because they are afraid they will lose some of the profit. As a result, they never realize anything from their idea.

Do not let yourself be afraid to share your idea because you are afraid of sharing the profits with certain partners or even afraid that someone else has already implemented the idea before you. Bring your idea to light and share your success with others. Don’t be afraid that someone else will steal your idea. In reality, this only rarely happens. Of course, you could have people sign a NDA or non-disclosure agreement when you talk them about your idea, but be aware that investors may just ignore your idea if you do this. In the end, the key is not the idea itself as in general the idea does not represent more than 5-10% from the success of any venture, but whoever is willing to implement it is the major part that’s affecting the success of any venture. Be willing to take action, share your idea, and embrace success. Do your best and hope for the best.

For the successful ventures that you have how much weight as percentage you give for the idea of the venture vs. the implementation, Please share with us your story and/or thoughts?