Posts Tagged ‘Business’
The Most Asked Question
We are a curious lot, we’re hungry for information & knowledge, we want to know what to do next, always looking for that nugget, that one thing to put us on the right track. We spend hours searching the Internet for a shortcut, are we join groups or businesses thinking it will shortcut success. The shortcut, should you find one, usually doesn’t have staying power, it has a short life span. It’s not because the deal, or whatever it is you decided to join is bad, the common denominator follows you every where you go, it’s why you either quit or hop aboard the next best thing.
I spent years trying to get that shortcut, thinking I could get rich, I could do something where I really didn’t have to work that hard, and make piles of money. Most of us are lazy, we want it all without having to pay the price to get it. There are two things required to succeed in business, one is to hard work, and the other is persistence. The combination of those two brings about life abundantly, growth, excitement, reward, enjoyment, and feeling of doing something special with your time, or your life.
I meet regularly with young people wanting to start their own business, they already know they don’t want to work for the man, they want to do work on their terms. The energy is overwhelming at times, but fun to be around. The conversation always starts with, I want to start a business, or I want a job, but I don’t know what I want to do. Every time, I’m dumb-founded by this, the answer to me is simple and as plain as the nose on our faces. I always say, if you don’t know, don’t worry about it, just go do something. I tell them to go and do something, anything, and they’ll find out what they like, love or hate. The problem is they haven’t done anything, so they have nothing to measure, nothing to compare. The old guard call it experience, I don’t look at that way, I want you to get used to the idea that you will have to do hard work before you discover your passion, the thing you really want to do.
The second thing I tell these young eager minds, go home and write, write down what you love doing. It could be a hobby, it could be music, it could be painting art, it doesn’t matter, just write it down. Once they figure it out, once they see something they are willing to invest their time and no money into, they always get to the most asked question. How do I do it?
This question comes from two things in my humble opinion. One, they haven’t worked for anyone else before, and they don’t learn how business might work. Two, they haven’t learned that building a business is hard work, and they don’t have that long old age thing called experience, they haven’t failed.
The younger generations have two choices to make when they decide to start a business, they can plan with a tradition business plan and funding, or they could just start. The later brings with it failure, and that is uncomfortable, and painful. Failure tends to squash that drive, that passion, that energy to build a business. The other failure is, the business isn’t profitable the first day they start telling the world about their new venture.
There are over 100 questions a business consultant would ask new business owners, and if they answered to many questions wrong, they would tell the young entrepreneur they shouldn’t start the business. I say, don’t listen to them, just go and do something and measure what’s happening as you go. I’m not saying you should ignore certain indicators, the business should be viable, not just a pipe dream.
First young entrepreneurs aren’t sure what kind of business to start, and secondly, they always ask, how do I do it. The most asked question in my business of helping business owners.
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Nobody Notices
At first when you put you and your work out there for the world to see, you hope someone will like it, but be prepared for those who don’t, it’s the nature of starting something new. This blog is one of those things I put out there, to see if someone was interested in what I’m sharing, it was a risk and it still is. I believe we are headed for a complete reset in the world of business, I believe we will give away more than we actually sell, I believe the younger generations will drive these changes. I set out to help you figure out how to take part in the new world order of business, how to use the open & free business model, how to Create, Differentiate, and Deliver.
Nobody notices at first, sometimes it takes longer than it should, but eventually….somebody notices. The like-minded do come, they’ll spread your work, they may even talk about, they may even follow you, waiting for the next thing you have to say. If you’re fortunate and you’ve built enough trust, you have true fans, and those are priceless, cherish them, even if you don’t know them personally.
Nobody Notices immediately, you do have to make it easy for people to see your work, if you’ve created good work, many will notice. If your work isn’t good, some will come, but many will go somewhere else to find the information you’re sharing. If at first your work isn’t good enough, don’t quit, keep creating it until you come to master your creation. This isn’t a new message, it’s tried true message, but for some reason we keep hoping it will change and everyone will become fans of what we do.
Consistency is a secret ingredient to success, giving up is not. Write, create, make if different, and deliver…it’s the only way you’ll know if anyone notices.
Your Secret Weapon To Success
Spending countless hours reading business blogs, books, going to seminars, and hearing a TED Talks of one of the brightest minds in the world, they might bring you closer to finding the secret weapon, or what it is. But you’re looking in the wrong place, like looking for love in all the wrong places. The secret weapon has one characteristic that most over look, and that’s the problem, we’re over thinking, over analyzing,. The book Think & Grow Rich is telling you what that characteristic is, the first time you read it, you miss it, you think the secret is still in the book. You read the book again thinking it’s still in there, it just hasn’t shown itself just yet.
The secret weapon is a scarcity, are you ready to learn what it is? It’s something no one in the world has:
IT’S YOU!
Now go show the world your secret weapon.
If You Could Teach The World One Thing
What would you like to teach the world today? The old song that used the line, “If I could teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony”. The idea had the right motive, we would love to collectively get along with everyone, and using the universal language of music seemed like the perfect way to start that movement.
If you ask yourself this question today, what would it be? Is about your work, what you do? Would you try to use this opportunity to talk about your business, and why everyone should do business with you. Does everyone need to do business with you, is it realistic, no they don’t, and you couldn’t handle the work load.
Setting an unrealistic goal doesn’t really move you closer to your objectives and desires, it does generate anxiety. If you could teach the world one thing, what would that be?
For me, it would be, to help you understand how special you are, and that you should dare to believe in yourself. So we could have the privilege of experiencing your passion.
Security Is A Dream Stealer
It’s easy to look back, to remember what it was like when you were a teenager, wishing somethings never changed. It’s easy to wish and wonder, but it’s much harder to look ahead and see what you must do to prepare, I know it’s harder, because most of us didn’t give the future a second thought when we were 17 – 20 years old. We might have thought, I wonder what I’ll be like when I’m 30, 40 or 50 years old, but that’s about it. I know, because I did it. The numbers are low for those who knew what they wanted to be when they grow up, and the numbers are even lower for those who aren’t in the profession they went to school to learn how to do. So it’s comfortable to look back, to reminisce about what might have been, or what you miss as a fully grown adult years removed from your youth.
One thing I’ve discovered about looking back, it has yet to move me forward, and it has yet to solve anything but bring about a sadness within. So why do we do it? It goes back to our collective human behavior, we love to be comfortable, where everything feels good, and is in its proper place. We say, I remember when…and it takes us back to a warm feeling, and puts a smile on our faces. I’m generalizing, but that’s most of us, some revert to unhappy places, but most of us want to remember happier times.
Looking ahead is much harder work, because we have trouble seeing the world in front of us, what it’s really like, and what it will be like 10, 20,30 years from now. Most of us can’t see next week let alone 30 years down the road. When looking ahead, it gets uncomfortable, and then it begins, the resistance, and the reason why we tend to get ready to get ready and never actually do anything. Because we are addicted to being comfortable, we can’t see, we can’t look ahead because what we fear is the unknown, and that makes us very uncomfortable.
You’ve heard of people being called change agents, they love change, they love making new things happen. The majority don’t like these people, because they set fear into their hearts of the comfortable, because they know something uncomfortable is coming. To embrace change agents, or the future, takes courage, and we all have courage, we tend use it when it’s safe to do so. When looking into the future, we tend to look with the wrong filter, we look for a preferred future over the one we don’t have control over. Control is the root issue. If we can’t control our future’s, we don’t want to think about it, we don’t want to open our eyes.
Building a business that will be a legacy, requires giving up control at some point on the journey. We have to see the world differently to design this business that last 30 years or more. Maybe you’re not building a lifetime long business, but if you are, you need to use the right filter, and see the world differently. The comfort zone we love holds us back, it prevents us from creating, differentiating, and delivering. Embrace the unknown future, and break the comfort zone pattern.
The comfort zone was built by the Industrial Age work and school system, it conditioned us into believing it feels like security, and we are seriously addicted to the feeling of being secure. That security is wrapped in money, which misleads us and takes us off course when our journey’s get difficult. That security immobilizes us, and it’s a dream stealer to.
