Tag Archives: Business

Let Go: Agreeing To Let Go At the Right Time

Posted on November 7, 2013 | Leave a comment

Letting go of something can be perhaps the most difficult thing we come across in our lives. As kids, letting go of something isn’t an option, and therefore we are taught by our parents that the best thing to do is to let go because we may receive something bigger in return. However, it sounds nice, but the greediness within us keeps telling us no, this is comfort and I want it to stay that way.

As becoming leaders, we will come to times where we will face decisions with our relationships and team to determine if we think it’s the proper time to let it go or not. Those frustrating decisions when one of your most loyalists mentions they want to move on and go do their own thing. How do we handle those situations?

I recently experienced one of my very own closest friends I collaborated with deciding to move out of state. It was the most toughest thing I’ve ever heard. I responded to him that no he couldn’t go he has every helpful resource here, but he replied back saying he wanted to start a new life somewhere he desired to be.

Knowing him since my childhood and growing up together, at first I thought it was an insult. After everything we’ve been together and how much we both helped each other, that the end result would come to this. But I began to think clearly now, that as we come to age, not everyone stays in one place. What we have as comfort will not always be there in order to keep growing, we have to give something up in order to receive something bigger in return.

Having a hard thing to listen to, I agreed that I too thought it was the right time for him to carry on to a new journey. I gave him words of advice, and having the great technology we have now, we can on occasion schedule a Skype call to catch up on how things are going.

What I’ve learned from this is that this situation can occur on our team as well. The person we shared our knowledge into, cannot and won’t be there for a long period of time of we want them to be leaders as well. As the saying goes, leaders are hard to keep. They too will have to break free from the pack and hire a great team repeating the same cycle all over.

If we deny them wanting to leave, we are doing ourselves nor them any good. The time to show them great leadership is when we demonstrate them our decision making skills at the point of time. They expect us to deny their reasoning, but when we come to agreement that it’s the right time to take on their journey, we become that root of great influence and respect. We are not only building leaders, but we are building an empire of great leaders and what’s more to have than that?

As of now, we continue to lead pulling forward and not look back. There’s always room for growth and deciding to let go of situations similar to this, can be the right choice made.

To conclude this post, how has letting go made an impact on you? Was it the right choice at the right time? What did you learn from your experience and what can we do based on what you went through?

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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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Lessons at Work

Posted on October 11, 2013 | Leave a comment

Throughout the year I went out into the job market to study how it really is like working in a field that I did not enjoy. Having grown up and worked/made small projects for my parents, I’ve learned the complex life of working at a nine to five job. I decided to do this because I figured it might be a way to motivate myself to start my own business. Was it a good idea? More than likely yes. I want to share with you three of the issues that has build upon me throughout the year that I’ve taken noticed and what I have done to resolve them.

First and foremost I think we can all agree that depression takes a hit when you’re at a job you don’t love. I didn’t start noticing this as much until I began planning out other projects I had apart from my job. During the weekends, I would spend most of my time studying and finding ways to strategize a business project I wanted to start, but once Sunday night hit, it felt frustrating because I knew I wouldn’t have enough time over the week. Throughout the week I would just think about the project, any changes or when I get back I’ll look at other related projects. The frustration began to build up, not only because I didn’t want to be there, but because I felt like I had so many things going on at the same time and I wanted to get it done.

Depression tends to hit people hard. Your mind barricades itself from the outside world and it is difficult getting yourself out once you’re at mid-point. There are many helpful articles all over the web that helps you out of depression. I denied I was depressed and kept saying I was mostly frustrated, but it ended up being the same. So what did I do about this?

I was very fortunate enough to have read many articles about depression in high school, I had friends that would feel like this after a rough breakup in their relationships, and I would give them advice of my own what I knew at the time; if anything, to help. One of the very and most important things I had to do was to talk it out with someone whom could guide me out of it. I think this was key to getting out of it quick. I knew signs of depression was rising and once it hit, I had to talk to someone to give me their feedback about what they thought. If you have signs of depressions I would encourage you to talk to a therapist or someone that could guide you out.

Next, I’ve tried questioning why are people afraid to leave their jobs or why people rather waste time watching television after they get home rather than spending that time studying on something they want to achieve?

The answer is comfort! While working at my job, I began to really feel comfortable. What do I mean by comfortable? Comfortable by making expenses bigger than what I could afford, and the feeling of depending on that job.

I read helpful tips from Noah Kagan and wrote down what’s the worst that can happen if I left my job at this moment. What I came to figure out was that, money played a huge roll. We get comfortable with with our salaries that it gets hard to leave that to accept something much lower.

So what I had to start doing was change my habits. I started lowering my expenses dramatically, and saved my salary instead. Although there’s this issue I’m debating about that I stumbled upon with Robert Kiyosaki saying saving doesn’t work anymore, rather invest in things you will benefit from.

Finally, the people you don’t enjoy working with. Before being hired at the place I worked at, I didn’t know about this problem. I thought, no that can’t be true, I’m sure the leader in charge will solve that out get. Unfortunately where I was at, this was not true.

There were two particular people that I could not stand to be working with. Now as studying to be a leader, I would take steps to make the situation better, but I would say those two at first would not accept anything and go on with their own. I had to acknowledge the fact that there are people out there that carry a mind full of negativity and do not want help.

One very helpful way to resolve these situations is to always carry a positive mind. Perhaps it sounds cheap, but if you look at this from an outside prospective. If one person is angry and you show positive energy towards them, they’re going to want to bring you to their level by you responding angry as well.

They’re going to do things that makes you bring out negative emotions, and by doing so, your on their playing field; they’re taking advantage of you. Instead avoid that, show you are bigger by being positive and bring them up to your field.

These three issues I think are the biggest that I have noted and impacted me over the year while having a job. I’ve really learned a lot from this experience and I hope this post gives you some guidance on what to do and avoid as well. What are your experiences while working at a job you don’t enjoy? Would you agree that the feeling of being too comfortable at your last job was difficult for you to go out on your own and start your business? What steps did you take to let go of it?

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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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Stories Make a Bigger Impact

Posted on September 3, 2013 | Leave a comment

Ever found yourself remembering about a great story from a motivational speaker weeks after you’ve listened to it? And you question yourself why is it that you remember this but not a lecture with bullet points on a slide show presentation?

The answer is simple: telling a great story sticks to even long after it was told, and as leaders, when we want our team to succeed, these stories can make a huge impact towards them.

Having scheduled meetings with the team, we always tend to write down what is needed in our improvements. There are members I’m sure of that really can’t hold that long of an interest and what we must do in order to get their attention up is telling them a story that can relate to what is needed or what we’re doing.

There’s a science about the magic of listening to stories. I was reading an article that mentioned about this and it mentioned that our brains are somehow wired to story-tell and captured what they’re saying and we tend to put it into an image. It then forms into a connection where we then try to relate to and this is how it begins to make an impact on us.

To make our team capture our stories more further, make sure to keep it simple. Making it simple reduces all the stresses of capturing difficult terms or nouns we are trying to explain to them.

How has telling stories related to a project your team is working on improved their performance? Would you rather consider this form of strategy more than the usual bullet point presentation?

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Choosing the Right Idea

Posted on August 27, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’ve been coming up with so many business ideas lately and the problem that has arise to me is that it always comes to mind that the idea will not work. Similar to the first post, I’ve been keeping my mind open to all the options that are available in creating great ideas. But somehow this thing in the back of my mind somehow always comes up saying the idea probably won’t work.

I’ve been listening to great speakers talk about this issue and it’s very common. One of the speakers who I appreciate so much and would love to have the chance to meet is Jason Nazar. CEO and co-founder of Docstoc, he spoke about how we shouldn’t be worried if an idea will work or not. We actually instead should be worried if that idea exists within the market because if it doesn’t exist, then you won’t be able to sell it.

It doesn’t matter if the idea we have already exists or if it sounds stupid, we should take that idea and figure out how we can make it different and improve it to the public. And that’s what I think we have to put in focus, rather than fearing if our idea will work or not, we have to execute it. So how do we know if our idea will work?

There are several questions we must ask ourselves first in order to make that idea become a reality. Similar to a business plan with getting down to specifics, two questions that are important to ask are: Who are our audience? What is their problem?
Figuring how we can deliver it and create demand will come afterwards.

So how do you know your idea you came up with will work? Have you doubted yourself with that idea? One advice that has begun to get implanted into my head is that when we have an idea, lets execute it with the least amount of cost possible. That way you won’t risk a lot and you can start all over again with out the weight on your back from the previous idea.

It’s awesome coming up with many different ideas, but I think when we have the mindset of thinking if it will work or not should be forgotten. I always speak with my mentor about it and if you’re in that struggle of figuring which idea will work or not, I would suggest talking with a mentor to advise you which is best.

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