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Core Values / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Inspiration / Living Life Abundantly — Comments Off on Choose Your Words And Control Your Destiny
15
Feb 13

Choose Your Words And Control Your Destiny

Your words are your reality. I have been reading about the power of the words people speak. These instructions they give their subconscious mind directs their activities and ultimately creates their reality. I have been paying close attention to the words I use when I am making statements. The idea boils down to expressing independence versus dependence and shapes our reality.

We all use these subconscious words daily. I was surprised how often I use words of dependence – which was not the reality I intended to be creating or the vibe I was giving off to the world. Have you ever said “I need… (fill in the blank)?” Using the word “need” expresses to everyone and anyone who will listen that you are thinking of yourself as dependent. You are a victim. Are you attempting to convey to the world that you are a victim? More importantly, are you attempting to convince yourself that you are a dependent victim?

Wishing, wanting and hoping are more of those words of dependence and will ultimately leave you unfulfilled. Remember, your words create your reality! If you catch yourself saying I “wish” I was rich, you are expressing to the universe that you are at its mercy and a dependent being. The reality that those words will create for you will is more wishing that you were rich and not the reality of being rich. If you say instead I “intend” to be rich, you will instruct your brain to begin formulating the blueprint to make it happen. Even in its subconscious state you still control what your brain thinks.

I am going to be rich.

I will go to law school.

I intend to take vacation next month.

Using statements like those above challenges your brain to solve the problem you just posed. You will develop a plan and achieve those goals. You will also not allow yourself to spend time shuffling through your “go to” excuses for not achieving your goals. Excuses are the “outs” we give ourselves when we set our list of achievements up from the beginning with those loophole words above.

Needing yields only more needing.

Wishing yields only more wishing.

Wanting yields only more wanting.

Hoping yields only more hoping.

I challenge you to pay attention and see how much you and the people around you use words of dependence. You gain knowledge of a person’s outlook on life. Do you want to surround yourself with or do business with people with a dependent victim mentality who will have a propensity for not achieving goals and making excuses? Refuse to be the victim by not speaking like one. Be empowered!

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Creativity / Entrepreneurship — Comments Off on Sane People with Insane Ideas: Creative Thinking I
28
Jul 11

Sane People with Insane Ideas: Creative Thinking I

Humans cannot fly. Its an inarguable fact. In the present, its easy to name a few machines that can get us off the ground though. Can you imagine life in 1900? No Airplanes. No Helicopters. What was going on in the minds of the wives of Wilber and Orville Wright?

My husband is nuts?

We have three screaming babies and my husband is out tinkering in the barn again?

My mother was right, I should have married farmer John because he is practical and knows how to make a living?

I am sure they thought that their husband’s quest to allow a human being to fly was an insane idea. Our world has been shaped by sane people with insane ideas.

Everyone has the ability to be creative. Little children spend all day in fantasy land dreaming of growing up or of hitting home runs in the major league. Dolls are implements that foster creativity of young girls. They dream about being a mom and playing house. Little boys want to be sports heroes or truck drivers. They spend all day driving their trucks around and if they could move some real dirt around it makes their fantasy 1000 times more real.

Have you ever seen a child playing? She doesn’t care who sees her or what they think. Its her fantasy anyway. Somewhere along the line, we start caring what others thing of us. We want acceptance and support. Instead of surrounding ourselves with accepting and supportive people we change our thinking to what we think the people already around us want to hear. We are not true to ourselves and we lose our creativity over time.

It takes courage and conviction to be creative and imagine reality differently. We need to let our minds flow with good ideas and bad ones and have the courage to reveal our ideas to the world. Conviction is needed because you will come across people that are not open to thinking differently and knock your idea because it makes them feel uncomfortable. You cannot be discouraged.

For example, you reveal your desire to start a new business. If you’re lucky you will be met with excitement and support when you reveal your ideas to the people you surround yourself with. What you will probably receive and angry grumblings on how you will fail, lose everything and probably cause the end of the world. These people are so uncomfortable with themselves, their own fears about themselves spew out of their mouths. They are not even listening to you, your qualifications or your idea. They are voicing their thoughts about how they would feel about starting their own business.

In business, you have to think creatively. You must dream. You have to dare to believe in these dreams that you and only you understand and have bought in to. Entrepreneurship is a lonely lonely road. Not because you haven’t assembled a team yet, but because in the beginning, it is you and only that believes in the idea. Most importantly, you have to ignore the boo birds that will attempt to pull your dreams back down to their level so they feel comfortable with themselves. This may be your biggest challenge as you are pulled between letting your creative juices flow and conforming to the expectations of those around you.

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Education / Entrepreneurship / Movie Musings — Comments Off on The Godfather MBA
20
Jun 11

The Godfather MBA

Everything you ever needed to know about business you could learn in one movie (okay 2 movies) The Godfather I and The Godfather II. In fact, the movie(s) can be thought of as a crash MBA program if you pay close enough attention. I am not condoning crime syndicates, money laundering, murder or pretty much any other crime here. What I am condoning is the hard-working grind-it-out attitude from the movie that anyone trying to launch a business absolutely must have to grow their venture.

Chianti photo by Machu via Flickr Creative Commons

 Entrepreneurship

You do not need anyone’s permission or any level of formal education to start a business. I say formal education because some knowledge is certainly required. There are many examples of successful entrepreneurs who learn their craft from the streets and apply this education to running the business. Little Vito Andolini arrived from Sicily with only the clothes on his back and spoke no English. Vito was named after the town he came from, Corleone, by the U.S. agents at Ellis Island. He grew up learning the ways of the streets and carried this knowledge with him until he needed to take action. He was fired from Abbandando’s Grocery store because his adopted father was forced to hire a guy by the local Mafioso. Vito was left with no food, a wife and a sick baby. He was forced to take all the knowledge he acquired from the streets and from Abbandando and strike out on his own. He launched Genco Olive Oil and grew it into the most successful olive oil importer in the country. Vito didn’t invent olive oil and there were undoubtedly many other olive oil importers, but he did it better and beat them out (I am ignoring all allegations of prohibition-era rum running here).

Real Estate Investing

Being the landlord is better than being the tenant as long as you plan on owning for the long-term as I wrote in The Death of the Starter Home. If you can stomach living in apartment building that you own as Vito did in the early years, you can bank your own rental payments or better yet put that cash towards your business.

Marketing

Build a good reputation and business will come to you. Your brand IS your business. Similarly, perception IS reality. Eventually, all Vito had to do was meet with prospective business partners like The Turk which you will read about next and decide if he wanted to do business with him or not.  Spend the time to ensure your brand is of the highest quality around. Then maybe you to will carry all the politicians in your pocket like the Don. Although, I would probably steer clear of politicians in my business to keep things on the up and up!

Finance/Risk and Return

Don’t bet the farm on one high-risk project. Vito heard the proposal from The Turk and decided that getting into the drug business was too high-risk and could topple everything he has built. Always diversify your investments and your income. Starting a high-risk business is not a good idea. A low-risk business you can start part-time from your home is always preferable. It takes a long to get a business of the ground. Ensure you will have the proper cash flow to support your endeavor before you go at it full-time. Also, do your due diligence instead of taking an associate’s word for it.

Contingency Planning

Always have a contingency plan. You never know when your son will speak out of turn during a business meeting and set forth a chain of events that will get the old man shot up at the fruit stand. People fall ill. It’s part of life. Have an emergency management structure set up to avoid in-fighting with the family. Make certain that all business partners have a company life insurance policy that will pay the surviving partners enough money to buy the deceased’s estate out of his ownership interests.

Competition

Keep your friends close, but your competition closer. You should ALWAYS be shopping your competition. Your customers aredoing it and you need to view your company through their eyes. Check out their websites, stores or anything else you can. It is acceptable to perform this task under the guise of a potential business arrangement. Who knows, any contact could very well be a new business partner down the road!

Management

Don’t become complacent, clean out the bad blood every few years. Just like the five families have to do, a company needs to be dynamic. Always review your product line, methods, operations and your people to see what/who is and is not working out as planned. Don’t be afraid to make some difficult decisions and trim the fat when the situation calls for it.

Human Resources

Sometimes an associate needs to get whacked I meant let go. This goes hand in hand with not becoming complacent through the years. In the new knowledge-based economy in which the United States is now in, your people are everything. Make sure the good ones are happy and the bad ones are not working for you for very long.

A second very good point under human resources is that you should not promote by seniority, but rather skill. Fredo Corleone was passed over by Vito for Michael – the youngest and most skilled of the brothers. Choosing Michael was a tough choice for Vito, but entrepreneurship is full of tough choices and its all on your shoulders to choose correctly. It is for this reason that you should keep a competent Consigliere by your side at all times.

Accounting and Legal

Have competent support personnel to take care of the specialized tasks. Tom Hagen was Vito’s Consigliere or legal advisor. Tom was German-Irish and not Sicilian as the Consigliere typically is. This fact should let you know just how important having good legal and accounting advisors is. You need to through convention out the window as it is of paramount importance to retain the absolute best lawyers and CPAs available for your business. You are probably not an expert an laws or accounting regulations so having great advisors will free you up to run the operations end.

Statistics

Don’t become one by keeping your mouth shut when expected to. Operate with honesty and integrity in all your business affairs. See my article on the downfall of Jim Tressel for more on this.

So, now you have the quick rundown of the Godfather MBA. Now go out and get the DVDs and take diligent notes for the next 7 or 8 hours and watch these films again! You can get them here if  you would like.

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Entrepreneurship / Living Life Abundantly — Comments Off on Improvise, Adapt and Overcome – What Works for the Marines Will Work for You Too
19
Apr 11

Improvise, Adapt and Overcome – What Works for the Marines Will Work for You Too

The United States Marine Corps was founded in 1775 to provide offensive and defensive support to U.S. sailors. Spending for this new effort was close to zero.  Therefore, much of the equipment including the field manual were Army hand-me-downs.  The Marines took this ill-suited equipment and adapted it to suit their particular needs at sea.  Born out of necessity to function and survive, “improvise, adapt and overcome” has become the mantra of the Marines and a framework which fuels creative thinking and unyielding perseverance.

Improvise, adapt and overcome is a way of thinking for any survivor – be he a Marine, an entrepreneur or any person faced with a roadblock in life.  It is necessary to train your mind through a mental boot camp to think, solve, recalculate, think again, develop a plan B, execute plan B and think more and not stop until the mission is accomplished.  If “improvise, adapt and overcome” is the framework of success, then “vision, understanding and perseverance” are the flesh to those bones and the fuel for the process of success. 

You need to have a clear vision and an understanding of what the mission or objective is.  What are we trying to accomplish here?  Once a clear objective is established, it’s much easier to clear away the clutter in the process and eliminate seemingly necessary tasks that are impossible to accomplish and not a requirement to meeting the objective successfully. 

For example, say your original objective is to go to Harvard Law School and to realize your life’s dream to be able to practice law.  You just got denied admission.  Is going to Harvard Law School your dream or is practicing law your dream?  Not everyone gets in to Harvard, but you can still realize your dream and accomplish your objective of practicing law by going to a different law school.  You will have successfully completed your mission or objective if you didn’t get deterred by the setback of one of the tasks along the way.  Life is full of setbacks and the person with the focus to visualize clear objectives and the perseverance to continue with alternative plans to accomplish their goals is the person that completes the mission.    

One of the most interesting lesions that I took away from business school was that 50% of new businesses fail in the first year and only 25% of all business last five years.  Any entrepreneur who has done any research on what it takes to establish a business has come across these statistics.  Everyone always thinks that they are different and their business will be different, but the statistics are the statistics.  There is a 50% chance your business will fail in 1 year and a whopping 75% chance your business will fail in 5 years. 

Entrepreneurs are sort of anomalies.  A real entrepreneur grew up thinking differently than the other kids.  Many entrepreneurs were out-of-the-box thinkers and didn’t fit in well in the formal school setting.  There is more that goes into the entrepreneur mindset than an out-of-the-box methodology and a burning desire to control their own destiny.  Entrepreneurs are fully responsible for their own successes and failures.

Success is easy to deal with.  Handling failure and the fear of failure are main factors contributing to whether or not an entrepreneur can bring his dreams to fruition.  Most likely your business is going to fail.  Have you failed as an entrepreneur?  Only if you quit at that point.  If you can use the failure as a lesson you will emerge a more powerful and successful business owner in the future. 

For Marines in the theater of war, their decisions can result in life and death of the individual and/or the unit.  Improvise, adapt and overcome is a simple way to remind them that nothing goes as planned and you need to keep your head in the game and systematically move on to the next option until they complete the mission.  Professionals and entrepreneurs have the luxury to build on this framework with a more cerebral approach and implement vision, understanding and perseverance to their own mission.  Success is a process and a journey.  There will be setbacks along the way.  Keep focused and keep working towards your objectives.

Accomplish the mission.

 

 

 

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Education / Entrepreneurship / Investments — Comments Off on Why Failing Will Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You
20
Jan 11

Why Failing Will Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You

Winners always win right? Wrong. Every winner is a product of a long line of failures plus an ounce of luck and a pound of persistence. Winning is actually a process which needs to be developed. Part of the process of winning is learning how to fail. Learning how to fail will provide you with powerful lessons to apply to the next business venture or your next trade.

Learning how to fail takes a lot of work. Luckily, failures usually mount quickly, giving you mounds of material to sift through for lessons. When dealing with a failure, it is necessary to pick apart the event to see what went wrong, what you could have done better and what you will do differently next time. The earlier you get on the learning curve the faster you will progress through the necessary setbacks and begin to win.

A loser will not do this.

A loser will quit because the weight of the failure will prove too much to bear. A loser curls up in the fetal position and waits for someone to make it better. They are unlikely to be able to get the loss or failure out of their mind and these thoughts will fester and hinder them from taking future risks – eventually turning them into a bitter loser. A bitter loser will have stern warnings and violent head shakes when conversing with any individual still working on the process of winning.

Obviously, the bitter loser is the worst kind of loser. All optimism for life and an irrational blame game with risk has developed. Avoid a bitter loser at any cost!

Failing is the best thing that can happen to you. You learn adversity, determination and humility – all necessary attributes for a successful life. Whenever someone brags about a life without failure or an investment portfolio without loss, I am always skeptical. Either that person has not ever pushed themselves to be great, never took chances or is dishonest. Maybe this person has never left the cozy confines of their comfort zone.

Living in your comfort zone is a recipe for monotony, average investment returns (at best) and a run-of-the-mill life.

Like any pain in our lives, a failure stings, burns and makes you sick to even think about. These emotions will not last. Only you will know when you are ready to apply the lessons learned and get back on that horse – whether your horse is the stock market, an entrepreneurial venture or a relationship. Accept and embrace failure as a necessary bump in the road and a valuable education. Ask yourself, “what can I learn from this setback?”

Avoid becoming a loser by keeping an open mind to the possibilities that lie ahead for you in the future. Be wiser next time and your failure will make you a better winner in the markets and in life.

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