Category Archives: Business

We’re Created By What We Read

Posted on November 1, 2013 | Leave a comment

What materials do you interest yourself in? Based on what we focus our attention in, we create ourselves part of it. Do we get home and sit on the couch only to watch the bad news going on? Or do we study on books and blogs about what we want to become or improve on?

Several great friends of mine I was mentioning to them recently that based on what we want to be, we have to stick to that field of interest as much possible. What we nourish our mind with is what will make of us. They’ve mentioned it’s sometimes difficult, it gets boring; and indeed it may get that way, but upon what I’ve studied, avoiding that all together we will succeed quicker and further to where we want to get. We let go of that pack and become one.

I remember my father would tell me he didn’t like the fact I was reading books about stories that are not relevant to what I wanted to be. Aside from a usual school reading I had to do, fiction books never caught my interests as a result. My father would want to start bashing them saying they were a waste of time and at times I did agree. However, I think it’s great to take a fiction book outside of business or in your similar field and read it to clear your head when feeling to get away.

When we get home, let’s find something that we want to get better at, and dig deep through it. Ask yourself how will I benefit from this? If there’s a clear explanation, then you’ve found the right source of information that will fill your mind. Upon doing this regularly, distractions will become minimal and putting focus of an area that’s consider a waste of time will not be as interesting. It’s a great feeling to have after you’ve become aware of how much you’ve grown and improved yourself with those interests.

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What Now? Post Goal Achievement

Posted on October 17, 2013 | Leave a comment

After adding much effort and enthusiasm in setting up our goals, doing them step by step is part of the process, but what do we do when we’ve come to the point of completing them? I’ve been in this situation several times and after doing several research, there are steps that have helped and you can take after you have achieved a certain goal.

The question I’ve came across recently however is if the goals we set to put out, should be achievable? Tim Ferriss talks about this in one of his articles, and he states goals are not always meant to be achieved, rather are there to help you navigate close to where you want to get. I came to think this is true in a way because I’ve completed several certain goals in my past but after competing them, I’ve gone back to my old habits and feels like I’ve gained nothing there.

Of course it’s something to celebrate if we do come to the point where we’ve accomplished a goal we intended to, but what do we do afterwards?

One helpful advice I received was while planning your goals, make sure you have something leading it to another. In the case your mind becomes numb not knowing what to do, set out another goal bigger than the previous goal you’ve made. This was very helpful because all the experience and knowledge I gained trying to complete my first goal, helped me stay on track using the same resources I had to get to the other.

Another helpful advice is trying to stay motivated. As previously stated, after completing a goal, we tend to wine down back to the things we used to do. Instead find motivation by surrounding yourself with other people who’ve had the experience of completing their goals or by listening to audios that elevate you to strive for more.

With all the hard work we did to complete our goal, rewarding yourself would be the other option. By doing this you’re setting your mind to saying that there are benefits after accomplishing something. With that mentality, you are moving forward of what you did and you’re off to new heights you’ve planned out.

These are the steps I’m currently using after I’ve completed one goal, and hope they could be of good advice for you as well. What else do you do; that hasn’t been mentioned, after you’ve completed a certain goal? Do you agree that goals are not always meant to be achieved?

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Setting Up Our Goals

Posted on October 2, 2013 | 4 comments

What goals do we tend to set ourselves in life for? Have you accomplished them or have they slowly become disinterested and faded away? What techniques do you use to set your goals in life of what you want to achieve? I want to give you some advice of my own to describe to you what I do to set up and accomplish my goals.

One of the first things I do when preparing to set up goals is to go to a setting I know I will feel comfortable without being disrupted by others. It helps clear my mind and gives me more focus to what I want to achieve.

After sitting down at a comfortable setting, write it down in pen and paper so you can see it everyday. Why write it down? There’s some form to it that the mind pays more attention to a physical thing rather than something that hasn’t been written down- don’t keep it in your mind.

Let’s get more into this: what strategy do you use setting up your goals? Dale Carnegie, Zig Ziglar both demonstrate their planning strategy, which is highly helpful. I took some advice from them and when strategizing my goals, I tend to be specific.

The first thing I look at is the dream, what do I want to be or have accomplished? I write down the end results. After writing down my dreams goals I start with the realistic and reachable goals, I write what I want to accomplish this week, followed by this month, six months, and 12 months.

Usually by 12 months I want to accomplish a big goal, something I could be proud of, therefore; when I write a goal for this week, I’ll have something that will benefit me getting close to what I want to achieve for next week, followed by month, etc. Making those small steps.

However, we shouldn’t just write one goal that we keep all our focus on. Instead make more than one goal for yourself such as goals for your health, and your finances, family, but make sure they’re enough to have yourself focused on, don’t carried away.

Once I’ve written my goals down I visualize and review them to myself. Visualizing the end results of my goals gives positive motivation and keeps me focused. I also tend to share my goals with people who are also in the same experience.

As the time goes by, I often go back and mark out the small goals/steps that I’ve accomplished getting me closer to the bigger goals I set myself. Remember to keep in mind that we may become distracted, not having enough time, or slowly lose interest in our goals. The key here is consistency and discipline.

Are there any other techniques you use to plan your goals? One question I look at is, what do you do when you accomplish your goal before a deadline? I hope these tips will help guide you through making your own goals today and in the near future.

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Knocking Out Fear & Networking With Others

Posted on September 24, 2013 | 2 comments

Last week I had the opportunity to attend Denver Startup Week, and it was an amazing experience. I must say it’s my second time I go to an event like this and I plan on attending many future events like this.

When I first heard about the event, I marked it down on my calendar, I was excited about it but there was this emotion of fear going on. As the day got closer and closer, I began to worry even more about the what happens if this or that situation would occur.

I began to question instead of what, I asked why did I fear about these issues. It’s not just an only me issue but many people will come to a point; where before they attend an event for those starting out, will begin to worry about the weak parts of themselves. Wondering what if I don’t fit in or what if they know more than me, and not knowing what they’re talking about.

When I asked myself why did I have this fear of attending an event with a huge gathering, it made a switch in my mind that in reality it’s nothing to worry about.

When I got there, it was such a great turnout. Not only were people willing to come up and meet me, but they were delighted to give me advice in the struggling areas. Not knowing where this mindset of everyone being selfish came from, but I had in mind many people would not offer advice because they’d think I’m too inexperienced or too young, and it wasn’t like that.

A book I recommend you to read is called “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi. It’s such a great book about how in order to be successful we must also find other people and work with them. Making these relationships with others will help us grow and gain additional knowledge we didn’t know about.

What we should learn about this is that we shouldn’t have the mentality of fear plugged into our minds, instead we should keep in mind how important it is to establish a network relationship with other people similar to your field. However, we shouldn’t just walk up to them and ask if we may have their personal phone number. We have to ask ourselves what is it that we could do for them that they later can do for us.

What are your experiences in first creating a relationship with others? Were you afraid of any small mess-ups that weren’t true? What advice would you recommend for those first-timers?

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“Me” Is Not Better Than Team

Posted on September 17, 2013 | Leave a comment

When you start to brainstorm on your idea, do you tend to seclude yourself from the outside that you start to lose motivation and gain exhaustion? You’ve reached the limit and are stuck where to go? That’s what happened to me recently.

I’ve stumbled upon a great idea and began working out on the layout of the plan, and the business model. What I immediately did afterwards was to start making a small illustration of what the product would look like. After putting in several hours onto this idea, I came to a complete stop. The reason being was because my mind felt blank with nothing else to add or what I could do to change it up a bit, I felt exhausted.

Having lunch with a few close friends of mine, I mentioned to them about this idea I had that could work out and describe to them what the whole concept was about. They loved it. To my surprise, they started to brainstorm as well.

They removed some features which I was okay with, and added other small things that could make it better. What was even better was they took the opportunity to take their time and come up with the design for the layouts and logo, which I’m fortunate to have great graphic designers as friends.

What I’m learning here is that, it’s good to share your ideas with everyone. Two or more minds is obviously better than one mind. When you have people that believe in your idea, you’re creating strong motivation amongst everyone who’s in on the conversation and the chances of executing it is even greater.

However, one of them asked if I was afraid someone might steal/copy my idea. Of course I responded to him with the simple no. He seemed a little bit shocked.

There may be innovators out there who are very sensitive with their ideas, but one of the most important things to not worry about is whether or not they will steal your idea. The reason being is because you’ve already captured it in your mind, and the purpose along side with the end results of where you want it to go will be different than that person who decided to copy what you were doing. In fact I would encourage them to copy it because I yet still have no clue how good the idea would work out in the market.

As I come to conclude this post, the point of this story is that we should invite more people to share their opinions, feedbacks and any other comments they have about our ideas. When you feel exhausted or frustrated, I think that’s the best time to open up opportunities and let others in on your idea. Not only will it re-create great motivation, but getting the work done is greater than you going at it alone.

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Consequeces of Holding Someone for Too Long

Posted on September 14, 2013 | Leave a comment

Have you been in a situation without thinking of what the consequences are when we hold on a team member that loses interest with the entire team and isn’t showing any enthusiasm any longer? Recently I had a conversation with my mother that runs a business about working different ways this situation could’ve been handled.

The discussion was mainly about how one of her team staff was just lacking in her work ethic. She was slow, non-energetic, and throughout the day the manager would be very stressful due to her speed of work. She would on occasion try to motivate her, talk her into giving more passion for her work so they could speed things up and leave customers satisfied, but over-time, it just wasn’t working out.

She mentioned she didn’t want to let her go because she’s been a part of the business for too long, with all the experiences she’s gained and if she were to let her go, finding someone else would seem too expensive for her.

I started to notice something going on here, it wasn’t that she didn’t want to let her go because she was a very experienced member, but rather she’s become dependent on her.

When we start to become dependent on someone for too long, it creates this barrier keeping you from stepping up to take the lead. That person of who we become desperately dependent among will not only notice it, but will take it to advantage and this is where I think starts to get ugly.

Why you may ask? Because a shift in power starts to happen and now the one who is being dependent on starts to play it as a game, sort of like a “you’re nothing without me” type. This will drag the organization down slowly and other team staff will become aware and I’m sure most would start to take off in different direction.

This as leaders makes us weak without hesitation, and we must not be carried into this playing field. What I suggested is that this team member should’ve been let go quickly. The ‘hire slow, fire quickly’ mentality.

When we hang on to a person that doesn’t bring value to the organization any more, they are robbing us- our time, our team, our customers, and our money.

I understand also that there is fear about what happens when we aren’t prepared to let someone go in that moment?

What happened during this situation was that the manager couldn’t handle it anymore and told her how she saw it. She blamed her for being too slow, wasn’t doing quality work and was wasting their time. That staff got upset and at the end of the day she decided to quit.

Soon after they all came to a meeting, they weren’t sure of who they were going to hire next. It was a clueless situation, there was no one in mind for the following Monday to hire. They quickly began post hiring ads everywhere and you could sense the stressful situation they got themselves in. On the opposite side however, they were the ones walking away laughing because they knew she was needed.

So what can we learn from this?

When there’s a person that doesn’t bring value to the organization any more, we have to let them go promptly, but before we let them go; we should prepare ourselves to have a plan of those who can replace them following the termination. This will reduce a lot of hassle and once you’ve found a replacement, it’s best to not go all out on a member in front of everyone, but instead at the end of the day have a one on one discussion with them about their work performance and let them know they no longer will be bringing their contribution to the team. It’s much more organized and saves a lot of time.

What strategies do you tend to use before letting someone go in your organization? Have you ever had to wait onto someone for too long and just decided to stick with it? Was your outcome good or bad? And what experiences have you gained?

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Dealing with our Failures

Posted on August 20, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’m sure most of us through our lives have failed once, the problem however, is how do you come to admitting it to your team? What are the first words you say to your team and how do you bounce back from it?

In churches or the business organization, it probably is about the most embarrassing thing to say up in front of your team with all eyes on you and have them note we didn’t accomplish it or are on a pitfall. So what do we do?

We all have to note that part of becoming a great leader is to willingly admit to your mistakes. We can’t hide them because they will build up and cause havoc amongst you and your team. Especially with pastors. Many pastors at church I have noticed will not acknowledge their errors with the congregation due to the fact many members may leave, and want to make believe that the church has a firm standing.

I think that’s not the case. Once we admit that we have failed in front of everyone, the congregation will not get up and walk away. Instead since we are a team, this creates a tighter bond and much stronger motivation planning out how to bounce back up.

And how do we bounce back up?

Well we already establish ourselves to be motivated so that’s done. The next thing to do is to strategize what we are looking to aim for. What are the goals for the month? The year? Three years from now and how are we going to do it? Is everyone committed to be on board? When planning out, we have to be specific and give details in order to not come across failure again.

Another thought we have to keep in focus is not to listen to those who keep bringing us down (naysayers). If some of the members of the team left and decide to talk about the rest behind their backs, don’t listen to them. Listening to them will only cause more fuel to fail.

As leaders, when we fail, we should most importantly learn from it. This is how leaders become great. We build experience and gain knowledge if the path we are taking is the correct one to succeed. And what I love about this is that when we start to admit to our failures and learn from them, we then will gain more respect from our team or congregation, and that strong bond will be difficult to break.

To conclude, as leaders, how do you handle yourself when wanting to admit to your team of your failures? Do you address everyone about it at the same time or individually have them aware of what’s going on? If you’ve already had them aware, what was the experience like bouncing back up?

One important thing to keep note is that we shouldn’t be afraid to fail. Robert Kennedy quotes:

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”

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The Power of Positive Thinking

Posted on July 30, 2013 | Leave a comment

What favorite quote do you use when you feel let down, that nothing can’t be accomplished? Is there something in particular you look at to set your mind to think positive? The reason I ask is because I think we should all stick to a quote we can look to motivate and carry ourselves up again. I want to write this post especially for a friend that hasn’t learned how big positive thinking is.

This came about on a good evening where I was minding my own business when all of a sudden she mails me a message asking for resources of websites she could look at for job postings.

I gave her a listing and she told me she was scared of going to work for the first time, and didn’t know if she could handle the pressure of both school and work. I told her it doesn’t seem quite scary of going to school and having a job at the same time, but after you throw yourself in, you won’t know how it feels until you’re in it.

Later she complained she wasn’t confident enough and started putting herself as a let down. I told her no that’s the incorrect way to think. Anyone can be confident it’s not hard at all, it all takes practice. Her sister is a very well prepared and confident person but what I saw in her was that she is afraid of asking for help.

She later told me that it’s easier to say it then to do it. But what’s the problem here?

Of course it’s easy to say it, but it’s also easy to make it difficult. This is something that I’ve learned from the great Jim Rohn. It’s a habit that we create to make it easy for not doing anything.

When we let ourselves down and get stuck there, it’s one of the worst things we as humans can do. Our mind plays a very powerful role, that it affects how we choose to live our lives everyday.

Several things I’ve learned is that we should try having our minds set up high. Meaning we should always tend to keep ourselves positive. When you are positive and you get your mind influenced, you tend to do better things you thought couldn’t be possible.

For example if we lack in confidence, we should foremost focus on what is it that I’m good at in my social skills. If you’re good at listening, then obviously asking for help isn’t a problem. But again, what if asking for help seems terrifying? The only thing I have to say is that no man becomes successful in an island. It’s a great quote I heard from Og Mandino.

We all need help at some point in our lives and if we want to reach a certain skill or goal, we have to look at others for guidance resulting in a much higher percent success rate compared to going at it alone.

Again going back to the positive thinking of the mind, it can become very powerful and controlling. If we picture something we want, say a job for instance. If we focus on a particular job we want in our mind, it won’t be too long before we acquire it.

The reason being is because we then start to focus on the skills that is involved in that position, and soon instead of asking why can’t I have this job, you’ll be asking how can I get it? Who should I look for? What skills are necessary and how do I get started? You’ll put yourself even more closer to getting to where you want to get by preparing instead of sitting somewhere wishing for it.

Today’s post is something I wanted to discuss about to help a friend in need that hopefully now becomes motivated to start. By concluding this post I want you reader to ask yourself how has putting your mind on positive thinking helped you along the way? Has it overcome struggles? Has thinking big been a great success? If so, please feel free to share your experiences.

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Breaks May Cause Barriers

Posted on July 16, 2013 | Leave a comment

I woke up one morning on a weekend thinking to myself that after the whole week of studying, working and focusing on goals, I wanted to take a break. Most people enjoy taking time off when over a period of time they’ve been consistent, and l consider people should do it when they face exhaustion. I took that time to relax, clear my head and get away from what I usually do.

Heading down to the park visiting friends, it felt great and made me forget just about everything. However; after getting back into focus that following week, taking these breaks frequently I tended to feel too comfortable with it and I felt that it dragged me off course of what I was originally doing.

The problem that occurred here is that when we start to feel too comfortable, we tend to not let go and returning back to what we did before becomes difficult.

It may ruin your following week or perhaps even your month because the comfort of not doing anything starts to become a habit. Your mind is filled with distractions and it’s lost somewhere else. I think we all know how controlling habits can be, and how difficult it is changing one to another.

How do you put your focus back into that mindset you’ve been having?

One of the critical things I do is try self motivation. Finding things that bring me back into that mindset. Listening to audio, or videos in relation to what I was doing before. It’s a big help and I’m sure it can help you too.

Another method that helped being me get back to that mindset is by making a list of what I will be doing the following week; I have a small whiteboard by my bed, you may say it’s a goal setting form for the week if you wish. This helped me also because it is in physical writing and by hanging it or displaying it somewhere you can easily be reminded of what you should be doing if distractions arise.

We all love taking time off its a good thing, but when we tend to love it too much it can become a negative thing loosing consistency and carrying you somewhere else you didn’t intended it to go. What do you do when you lose interest in what you were doing before? Is that method your number one thing you do that instantly snaps you back into your focused mindset? Have you tried sharing it with others that may be in the same situation? If so, has it worked for them?

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Bringing A Mentor

Posted on July 9, 2013 | Leave a comment

For some time now, I’ve began to start wanting to have a mentor. A mentor who gives you more specific guidance into the direction you want to go. A mentor who has faced the experiences, and informs you what is to come. There seems to be like there are great benefits when you bring a mentor into your life.

My father has been the great mentor in my life so far. He’s taught me so much about life, leadership and business, but now I feel that it’s appropriate to add someone else into my life to guide me even further to push me. I believe in order to go after what you want, you should also seek the help from another who’s been through that direction. You may ask why do I need one?

One of the reasons I look at it is because of further motivation. They seem to know the process clearly and hearing what they have to say will give me a much more needed boost in motivation, telling myself “now that I’ve committed to something, it has to be done.”

Secondly, because of the knowledge they contain. Some mentors are so informative that they soak your brain with all this knowledge you didn’t know existed. By taking notes and capturing their experiences I think you start to think (except for their experiences) in the mindset of their level.

There’s always that fear within us though, of being trapped and lost because we are nervous about whether if we are making the correct choices or not. We shouldn’t shy ourselves from finding further help, instead we should make it a habit to find it. That’s why I began analyzing myself that I should bring a mentor in my life, but where do we find them?

I know most speakers are such great mentors. Having a great relationship with them opens up opportunity. Business owners that I’ve spoken with have offered to give guidance as well. Looking for mentors isn’t a difficult task but finding the correct one is.

Have you included a mentor into your life to help guide you more towards the goals you want to accomplish? Has it benefited you immensely? What did you learn about having a mentor and what opportunities have you gained or created? Remember that we shouldn’t isolate ourselves; no man is on an island alone.

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