Paris Attack

A dark day in Paris. Mourning the victims, and thinking of the victims' families.

3 Kind of Challenges and 4 Ways to Overcome Them

There are 3 types of challenges, and this article provide 4 ways to overcome them. Challenge is understood differently. When people think about it, they see a problem. This makes challenge one of the most difficult things to overcome. Nobody can overcome challenges that overwhelms the mind, and adrenaline pumping makes it hard to move ahead. When you run your own business, never make a decision without a cool-head. Because every decision you make with hot-head cost you more than expected.

Start with defining it. Challenge – when it comes to business – also occurs when a company enters the market and specialize on something that makes it superior to others in the same niche. The gap between entering and being superior has different paths. It might be necessary to take one step forward, and two steps backward. It is critical to remember that defining challenge matters.

When you tell your problem to someone else, they’ll give you their insight about what you said, which might worsen the problem. But when you look at it from your perspective, you might realize that it isn’t that bad. For example, when trying to make 500 sales within a month (during startup), and only meet half the goal, then problem automatically emerges. If you tell someone else about it, they might say it proofs business is not profitable.

But there is a gap between what you said and what they understood, and the point they wants to make. Even if you’d tell them about the situation in full, you’d realize that the person might still condemns the business, rather than tell you how to improve it. This is why the critical part of challenge is perspective. When you focus on finding a way to tackle it, everything else gets easier.

If I tell you to quit your business, and you know the best action is to improve and explore a more efficient method, who has the solution? On a daily basis, we must try to find answers. Because most companies normally set a weekly goal. Throughout the week, they will work towards it. They will consistently ask how they are doing in their effort to meet the goal. As the case of 500 sales within a month that has yet to be met, the question is “What is challenging?”

 

3 Kind of Challenges

Three kind of challenges twists the problem. The first one is knowing there is a problem, and don’t know what to do about it. When you don’t know what to do, then the best solution is asking best solution to it. This means feeling lost, and you need to find a path to overcoming it. The second is trickier than the first. Not knowing what you want is a bigger problem. These challenges are not obvious, because it is hard not to know what you are doing. You know what you want.

But it is possible to think you want one thing, when you actually want something else. For example, when you plan to sell through the phone, but under the process, you realize that visiting customers and client is more efficient. Or to first think that the main customers are individuals. But when you started, you realized that your products will better serve small- and medium size companies. It is a substitute of what you want. But what happen when you make changes to the organization to serve those changes?

These are examples of what challenges do when we thought we want something, but realize we want something else. The challenge is switching from one thing to another. The third is most common. You know what you want, but don’t know how to do/get it. These conditions are best, because when you know what you want, but don’t know how to do/get it, then you can find a way to achieve that objective. There are different resources and materials that helps you achieve a goal. This challenge makes goals worthy. Anything is achievable, when we know what we want to do.

4 Ways to Overcome Challenges

Challenges are inevitable in personal and business live. You might consider multiple methods to overcome it. These 4 are based on experiences that have successfully tackle them. But no matter how tough it gets, always remember that your best first-response is to control the challenge.

1.      Don’t be Afraid

There is nothing more problematic than being afraid of challenges. Fear causes more problems than it solve. When you are afraid of something, you might exaggerate it. Fear can be the first reaction. But the most powerful response is to withdraw from the problem, and cool your mind. Instead of fearing it, embrace it. Fear is the greatest enemy when challenges comes your way. First response should be neutralizing it, before you do anything else.

 

2.      Use Your Mindset

Your mindset is among the most challenging aspects to overcome a challenge. Because a mind that already gives up will not consider moving forward with a goal. This is why your mindset must be “what do I have to do to overcome this challenge?” Goals are achievable with a mindset to move forward, despite the challenge. Using mindset include taking control over the situation. Your mind is either controlling the situation, or the challenge is controlling the mind.  When you are controlling the situation, you see a way to move forward.

 

3.      Infiltration

Infiltration is a military strategy against an opponent. But private people and companies use it to find a loophole in the market, and develop the best strategy to do anything that simplify its execution. Ask “how do I infiltrate this challenge?” It means following a simple task that tackles it, which makes the following process easier. One simple infiltrating task will open another section of the challenge overcoming process.

 

4.      Your Greatest Strength

Everyone has a greatest strength. Some people can retain their strength by smiling and joking about the problem. It relaxes the brain, and triggers possible solution. Other people’s strength lies in their ability to look at the big picture, analyze it, and take the best action. When facing challenges, and we know our greatest strength, it can be a powerful weapon against it. This strength is not necessarily just in you, but also in your team.

It is synergizing with the team member that build strength. Imagine what happen when one party is weak, and the other is strong. They can strengthens one another, which makes the working relationship more beneficial. When facing your greatest challenge, rather acknowledge your greatest strength, and use that to find the best way to overcome it.

These four ways can be collaborated, and mixed. You can choose multiple methods to suit your need. In conclusion, how you define challenge is critical to tackling it. Others might have negative effect on how you understand it. But yours must dominate it, due to it collaborating with a negative definition. Then you acknowledge what makes it a challenge. When you know that, it is easier to overcome it and achieve the goal.

There are 4 ways to overcome it. Stop being afraid of it, because it makes you exaggerate it. Another is having a mindset that focuses on “what do I have to do?” about the issue, because it facilitate a solution-oriented mindset. The third is knowing how to infiltrate the challenge. It normally starts with a simple task that cripples the situation, and allows you to follow the process that gradually solve it. The fourth is relying on your strength, because it is the most powerful thing you have against any challenge. These four facilitates how to overcome challenges.

Don't Do Anything

First, let’s introduce a scenario. An acquaintance use a company’s computer to check his mail. One of them include virus, sent by Ransomware that infiltrated all business documents. This is the first time you experience such turbulence. The cryptolocker virus encrypted all documents, and provided instructions for how to decrypt them. This include paying $500 ransom for decrypting the files. The instruction was clear, and you might consider paying the ransom.

When experiencing problems – especially the unexpected ones – a common response is instant action. Negative events are inevitable. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it. But we can strategically mitigate its effect when it occurs. This is why one effective response is “be prepared”. It is an effective boy-scout strategy in all situations.

For example, when all files were “held hostage”, one action that mitigate – or neutralize – such incidence is having multiple backups prior to the infiltration. Backups can be on cloud, USB, memory card, or flash-drive. In the case of ransomware hacking the computer to encrypt all files, one tendency was to immediately act. It is part of the human nature.

Instant action is based on current information. It might be the most prominent action, based on limited data. Following encrypted files scenario, instructions were given before you’d get our files back. Based on such information, you can pay the ransom to get the files back.

However, paying the ransom sounds like a bad business. Because you can’t be sure that the files will be decrypted after ransom was paid. The only thing you know is you paid ransom, which might also led to the files being returned with additional viruses and demands for higher amount after some time.

Why will they do that? Because paying for it once means they can get more after some time. They can just “reactivate” the virus after 5 months, and demand for more money. This is why the first response is to retreat from the problem, and seek answers about it. It is mostly efficient to assess the problem, and see possible scenarios before deciding the best action. It helps to determine best action. When we know what the problem is, then we should strive after understanding it.

Understanding something gives in-depth knowledge that helps allocate focus on something specific that actually get to the root of the problem. Following the case, understand that paying the ransom can worsen the case because they can ask for more money next time. Imagine the possibility of them just encrypting the files again after 5 months, and demand for $1500 because they know you will pay. All they need to do is to embed virus/malware codes in the files that can be remotely activated after 5 months.

All these things can make you ask, “When do I act?” The time to act is when you’d know the best action to tackle current problem. When you don’t just know, but understand it.  They make it easy to choose the problem resolution strategy. For example, if you don’t understand something, then acting will be ineffective because understanding is the key that determine when we should do something. When understanding, you can evaluate different resolution options as explained in “Problem Resolution Formula”, to identify the best action. When you’d know best action, act on it.

In conclusion, people’s tendency to act during a problem is understandable. But it can be expensive to impulsively act in comparison to first step-back from the problem, in order to understand it. It tells the best action for solving it. Best action is after we understand it. When you understand the problem, and evaluate options prior to choosing the best one, then your response will be highly efficient, and problem-solving.

Patience, Additional Key to Success

Have you thought of buying stocks from ALPHABET, Google’s new parent company? Did anyone thought of purchasing stocks from Facebook when it went public? How many people thought of buying stocks from a small company without famous brand or identity?

Some people answers no to these questions. Others regret not acting when they had the chance. For example companies that went public in early 20^th century had a few people purchasing stocks from them. Small investments in such companies then would now worth high return on investment. But considering the time it takes for such investment to yield to maturity, very few people will see the positive future. Because we are mostly driven by current circumstances.

It is the human nature to thrive after instant result from any action or desire. There is nothing wrong about it. But when making investments, it is better to consider serving a purpose. Every investor invests in the business for a specific reason. It can be financial or non-financial. He/she thrives after a specific result.

But in a corporation, purposes are traditionally vision, mission and scopes. These directs it. They are long-term-driven. They defines and drives suitable brand for the enterprise. It allows management to drive the business forward.

For instance, vision, mission and scope makes brand choice easier for a company’s driving power. When the driving power is having products that allow people to socialize, the brand should say we are a company that connect people and communicate in different ways.

A process drives productivity. It is impossible to start certain things and finish them within a day, week, month or even year. For instance, when taking a million dollar loan, we can’t pay it back within a year. Because even if the company has one million dollars profit, it might rather seek to improve than pay back. Because the corporation has a contract for duration of payment. We will only pay back earlier if we have no plan.

Everything we do takes time – from start to finish. Don’t think too much about the time it takes to produce something. Spend the time it requires to achieve the goal, as you follow the process. A path has a process that simplifies its progress, and every one of them should produce something before it progress.

We needs to gather the whole process, and watch them like a hawk. Because they tells you when to take action for a progressive path to success. Someone once said, “We should do it as we supposed to, for it to produce desired result”, because what we do reflects on what we get. This is one reason people believes life is what we make it.

The progress has to result in something specific, which means putting everything in a specific order. And see it moving closer to success. Because if everything was done accordingly and co-ordinate plans with objectives, it facilitates its result. When we have done something as we need to, we see a productive end-result.

When we want results, we must consider possible challenges in the process. Because any success worth achieving make challenges more valuable when deciding best way to proceed when facing challenges. Every challenge needs creativity, strategy and dedication to overcome it.

There is no problem when we see solution in front of us. For example, when you know best solution, will you consider it a problem? Problem without solution leads to frustration. This is why we need to solve problems through influencing it, which eventually solve it. The “Problem Resolution Formula” is a useful technique to solve it.

When we think of how to tackle a challenge, there won’t be a problem. But no matter how many challenges comes your ways, think rather about how to tackles or solve it because “Challenges don’t mean Failure”. I believe you can do it, and you know you can.

You started for a reason. You see opportunities, and challenges are important to make the success worthwhile. Changes are part of the driving power that makes you appreciate success even more. When we work hard for something, it worth more to us. When going through challenges, have patience on the way to success. For example, when you send an application to a government agency, you can’t expect instant result because of the time it takes for agency’s officials to go through the application.

You are patience because you awaits result, which you know will come to you. Some results come within a week, while others takes up to six months or even a year. But you still wait for that result. The same patience work with business. But in a longer term. We know what it takes, and we work towards it, but it doesn’t mean instant result.

That takes some time. Be patience on your way through all challenges. One method is forgetting about the investment, while driving the business. It means investing in the purpose. For example, you wouldn’t purchase a house and sell it the following day with bargain. It is possible, but rare.

However, if you’d forget what you initially invested, and focus on why you did it, you’d get extra energy to achieve the expected result. It is more powerful and define what we invest in. Because we solely focus on why we made the investment. When we forget about it, we give it the time it takes for it to be productive, while following its progress. Because being result-driven make us focus on achieving a specific result, and that has its own process.

Process takes its time, and we can’t afford to rush it. Especially when we have certain objectives in every step of the process. We follows its progress. We can’t expect instant result when parts of the process brings success closer to you, as you’d follow the process of a productive end-result. Through this, we can embrace the result.

Success has different perspectives. When someone is thinking something is crazy, another person sees an opportunity for a new business. We have a distinguish perspective about things.  Most of the time, some people find a business idea a little bit too crazy.

A business has to embrace success through multiple channels (marketing, human resources, leadership and management etc.), because it mostly establish a business. There are others in the business – competitors – that make distinguish strategies necessary to embrace success.

In conclusion, people mostly want instant result. This is problematic to achieve success, because we have to serve a purpose when starting a business and drive it to success. We must give everything we do time to mature or produce something. During this time, we watch the whole process like a hawk. When following the whole process, and done everything we need to do, it will yield desired result.

On the way to success, handle emerging challenges. No matter how many they are, don’t let them go to our heart. Because we have to be patience with everything, from doing something to solving a problem. Our investments takes time to yield positive result, and we have to give it the time it takes to achieve it.

We need to forget about the investment, and focus on why we made the investment. Because it will take time for it to progress. Let success in and embrace it when it comes knocking. Because embracing it simplifies its achievement.

3 Basic Cash Flow

Cash flow helps understand company’s stabilities and instabilities. Positive cash flow mean bonuses that can be shared with stockholders and employees. If the company has lower debts, it can expand or explore other markets. Cash flows tell if the company is getting income or fading away in debts. It follows company’s income and expenses under a short period of time. It is measured in three different ways.

Economic Cycle

Describe company’s incomes, customers, short-term debts and warehouse.

Investment Cycle

It is acquisition of fixed assets and other type of investments.

Financial Cycle

It is about emission, long loans, dividend or amortization of debts

Cash flow is all about addition and subtraction to understand economic-, investment-, and financial-cycle that helps apprehend how the company develops, and its ongoing process. It also helps with knowing whether or not to expect profit in the future. This help comprehends how the company works from a deeper perspective.

The 6 Steps Problem Resolution Formula

Success go through problems because it pass through a lot of hardships that challenge the achiever. The 6 steps problem resolution formula can strengthen success.

1: Ask What?

The beginning of everything – good or bad – is what. Something makes you successful or cause problems on the road. This is why people initially ask “what is the problem?” You can approach the question as you please. But if it involves more than one person, it might be better to ask in a way that indicate you want to solve it. When defining the problem, you can be broad. Some problems are obvious, while others require digging before defining the problem.

For example a customer calling customer service about a product not working is an obvious problem. Analyzing customer service’ response to customers that say customers are waiting ten fifteen minutes before a staff respond to them mean digging to find the problem. How you find the problem can go from while brushing your teeth to going through paperwork. But knowing it simplify its process.

2: Find the Core

Knowledge of the problem is explored to find its core. The core is probably the key to exploring possible solutions. Problems are generally surrounded with circumstances, which make it challenging to find the actual problem. Following the example of customer service response to customers, the core problem cannot be customers discussed their problems for a longer period when contacting the company.

However, it can be flaws in the product that need adjustments. It can also be current size of customer service being too small. Another core problem can be staffs are on lunchbreak when customers needed help the most. Some customers can only call when they are on lunch. When trying to find the core, minimize the problem’s surrounding. This is why most problem-solving experts spend about 90% of their time understanding the problem, and 10% for establishing its solution.

3: Discuss the Problem

Discussion is a method, but it helps to get deeper understanding of the problem. Some people call it brainstorm. Some do it first before defining a problem. But, it is arguable that people brainstorm for a reason. Businessmen and women act for a reason – financial- or nonfinancial – that facilitate action. Following the example about customer service, discussion might led to management discovering that customers mostly call about installation or the product rebooting on its own.

This discussion will help explore resolution beyond the problem. For example, if discussion led to the corporation making changes for customers to easily install their product, then it transfer the problem from customer service to technology department.

4: Delegate

Delegation includes what happen if one solution was applied to the problem. Then it continues until all possible options were explored. It’s critical to remember that expectation might not meet reality.

Following up on the customer service, a delegation can be asking “what happen when focusing on expanding the customer service?”, “what happen if focusing on products’ installation, and purposely make it easier for customers to do the installation themselves?” or “what happen if we adjust staffs’ workhours so customers can reach them when it is comfortable for them?”

A possible adjustment is lunchbreak at 13:00 instead of 12:00.

5: Make a Decision

Decision about resolution can be challenging for managers. But it is still up to the management or board of directors to conclude on an action. Following up on the customer service, decision can’t strategically begin with making it easier for customer to install products. Because of the time it takes to process from technological aspect to distribution.

However, a strategic decision that can instantly take effect is adjusting workhours. It can begin the following day or week. It only involve telling customer service’ staffs, so they can adjust. With time, the company can start process of strengthening the strategy through simplifying for customers to install products on their own.

The decision should be based on finding best solution to the problem. In the overall process, one critical point to remember is that delicate problem needs to be handled delicately when implementing a solution.

6: Execute and Evaluate

Executing the solution (based on the decision) should begin along with evaluating how it is meeting expectation. It facilitate knowledge and time for adjustments. If the solution works, then record the problem, solutions and celebrate.

In conclusion, the problem resolution formula is defining the problem, exploring it to find the core, and discuss it and its impact. Furthermore delegate possible resolution and its transition – from problem to solution – when solving it. Decide and implement the best solution, and remember to be careful when handling delicate problems. Evaluate the solution to see how it is progressing. Finally record the problem, a working solution, and celebrate.

Imposter Syndrome Neutralization is Crucial for First 5 Years

Minimize or eliminate imposter syndrome during the first 5 years in business. It mostly refers to performance in exam and other academic fields. But it also applies to business because you implement and test its vision. What is imposter syndrome? It is a feeling you get when you do well in class, get a job offer, or feel unqualified to own and run a company. The fear of being discovered as someone who lack high performance emerge.

Businessmen/women feel good when implementing their visions. The implementation process enhance enlightenment of required resources that work for bringing the vision to life. Information indicates everything is going well. This include having a fully functioning company that customers can find for their needs. This can take about a month.

The progress leads to effectively operating a company. A progress like this boost confidence. Because its effectiveness allow assessing revenue and expenses. It goes from established vision to implementation, and following sales forecast when executing the plans. We begin to see how projection is fitting into reality.

After about a year, facts indicate that things won’t go well. For example, a well-respected entrepreneur magazine published an article that businesses in similar branch don’t survive two years. This might lead to feeling like it is your true nature emerging. It is why you are not qualified to own and run a business. You see previous successes as luck.

Something accidentally fit into implementing business’ vision. All sales are suddenly based on luck, which is about to change. In all situations, remember that you have not been an imposter. You should not see yourself as one because your productivity made you successful. Lucky means being fortunate. You have been carefully reading the market trend, providing plans and strategies for implementing a vision.

All facts have critics. It is arguable that businesses normally have facts proven wrong. Things like rational arguments or reality proving it wrong are part of the process. It is not your true nature prevailing, but the nature of business that enlightens where things are going wrong. You can remind yourself of what you did right, and where you might have taken shortcut to quickly achieve a goal.

Because shortcut is a possible reason things don’t work out. But imposter syndrome can make you think it is your true nature emerging. Shortcut can be taken due to time limit or other circumstances. This led to a negative result.  But rather ask, “what went wrong?”, and “what went right?” than thinking it’s your true nature emerging.

There are negativities that enlighten where to improve. It is inappropriate to find negativity, and condemn identity. It is mostly appropriate to find where to improve for the business to keep progressing. Every business owner and manager finds downside of the business to improve it. Nobody does it to condemn it.

The best driving power is why you are doing it. In “Failure Doesn't Stop You”, I argued that if you persist with current action, you can achieve success. When something does not fit with plans, remember why you started. Have motivation in the back of your mind. It keeps you going, and shape your entrepreneurial habits.

It comes down to knowing how you process things from idea to execution. This might need a “Success Formula” of your own that simplify achievement. You are successful because reality supported your facts. Throughout your business – from the beginning to the day it dissolve – you can’t argue that your business always has positives experience.

There will be negative experiences. The first five year is crucial to remember that business is successful because of your ability to deal with diversity, ambiguity, and problems. You will survive controllable negative experiences. But it depends on the sunk costs, and their monthly expenses. Negativities enhance your ability to enhance improvements and remain in business.

In conclusion, the imposter syndrome emerge when things go well. People think that their true identity will reveal itself, and success is based on luck. It is crucial to remember that you are not an imposter because facts are true or wrong. It isn’t your true nature prevailing, but some information proven wrong. Think about what you did right, and use any negative event to improve yourself because motivation got you started. Nobody in business will argue that throughout their business, they experienced 100% positive since its establishment. Believe it is you doing it.

Practical Business

It is traditional for your company to produce theoretic reports that prepare it for launching. For some time, we have focused on estimations vs reality when moving from theory to practical for business establishment. It’s because of the differences between them. I have heard of and seen instructions not matching actual situation, and people not doing exactly as expected.

We normally use estimations to directly establish the business, as it progress. It limits knowledge about necessary resources for how things will work in practice. We can underestimate everything related to business, which results in something else. The actual situations will then put constrain that either enlarge or jeopardize resources and stabilize enterprise.

But they collaborate to produce the plan to take into the field for stabilizing the business. When establishing, new questions will emerge. For example, establishing a new corporation make you seek new information about producing necessary documents. Documents like Bylaws, contracts, policies and so on make you ask new questions. It involve asking, “How would contracts, policies, and Bylaws look like?”

These are some of possible questions to answer, and they collectively turn questions into Business Intelligence for anything relevant to your corporation’s stabilization. These questions will lead to consistent research, which is necessary to find answers. For example, market information is critical for driving the business forward. It is dynamic in nature, and you have to shift with the market, otherwise you might end up in a different direction. While stabilizing, we realize that we can’t fully stabilize anything because we need to consistently reinforce that stability.

In conclusion, we need to know difference between estimation and actual resources or incidents. New questions will emerge as we progress in stabilization, which takes you back to research that you – in one way or the other – will do consistently. Especially since the dynamic nature of business make it necessary to reinforce stabilizing a fully function business.

Circle of Influence is Critical to Success

The moment you start a business, you enter the circle of concerns. You are consistently thinking about how to do everything. Problems emerge on a daily basis. Even private people experience it. The only difference is a larger scale, and weekly plans of tactics relating to strategies. They are necessary challenges for the entrepreneur.

Problems – or challenges – are in all part of the corporation. It doesn’t matter if it’s marketing, human resources, customer service, or purchasing a service from suppliers. They all stabilize the enterprise. Sometimes, the problems can overwhelm the entrepreneur, must deal with all issues that facilitate overall objectives. The problems are necessary for achieving an objective or succeeding with other relevant things that simplifies company’s growth.

A company consistently put constraint on an entrepreneur management’s skills, making it necessary to make tough decisions. In order to deliver product to the customer, you face challenges relating to product’s manufacture and distribution. Innovative approach is needed for creating products, and establish all necessary services that facilitate its usage.

Service and products deliverables are a couple of problems. Innovative mind is the only strategy that your manufacturing process must go through. Things explained above contribute to putting you in circle of concerns. Entrepreneur with innovative and dedicated mind for success is always in it.

Sometimes, people never realize how close they are to success before giving up. Dwelling in circle of concerns means ignoring circle of influence. Rather ask “how do I solve this problem?” than dwelling in it. Thinking about solution means simplicity in visualizing it. These contribute to people’s success. Even though your mind is in circle of influence, sometimes you can’t see a solution.

Think outside the box when trying to solve a complex issue that seems to have a no-way-out. Even scientists face these kind of issues. They take a break from it, and find the missing link. Constant concentration in a problem can be fruitless, until you focus on something else. Thinking of nothing could expand the influence of most complicated problems. As Thomas A. Edison said, “I haven’t failed. I just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”.

Make sure you are constantly influencing problems. Influencing them lead to solving them. Never stop influencing everything that comes your way. It stabilizes your business and keep it going. In conclusion, it is impossible to live or run a business without solving problems daily. Rather influence these problems, challenges or concerns because there’s a solution to everything. You get a stabilized business model for business’ growth.

Success is not Far Away

Goal and purpose are essential to an entrepreneur. One can multiply beyond expectations. In all business and market plans, objectives were specified, based on its relevance to business’ direction. These goals are connected to one another in one way or another.

Things like innovation, resources allocation and utilization, productivity, developing human resources, supplying quality goods to customers and clients, identifying customers more loosely, and creating something for employment indirectly reflect in all business objectives.

It is easy to visualize goals achievement. But an objective has achievement processes. A process focuses on how resources produce something. Productivity – depending on grade of requirements – needs planning and strategies that collaborate proficiently in achieving the objectives.

It is theoretic plans that prepare it for practical adaption. It’s knowing where you are going, and how to get there. Plans and strategies make it possible to identify how to start. The execution can enlighten best position for the business, using plans and strategies. A position can either directly – or relevant – apply to the objectives. The execution enlightens mysterious part of the plans. For example, identifying and planning objectives exclude details like how long it will take to achieve them, or how it will work.

It includes things not precisely meet expectations, and expenses being over- or underestimated, which require some adjustments. This can cause a stop on the road, and delay other parts of the plans. After defining, planning and begin execution, we’d get insight about response from people that participates in the process.

The response will help acknowledge where expectations were met, and where they were not. It also simplifies knowing best action. Current situation involve things like invoice arriving earlier, expenses exceeding expectations, or plans not directly applicable to the situation. A new plan might be necessary to solve the problems.

The response varies from time to time, situation to situation, and circumstances to circumstances. It form new strategies to adapt. This is part of the goal’s process that cannot be ignored, which happens to all businesses. Response enlighten areas of improvement through adaption depending on current situation. We might consider one response in risk management, which prepare us for it, and improve plan execution. It is possible that it takes another directional course, affecting time.

Improvement is good because it might lead to a new opportunity or divert a threat. For example, plans might need improvement when noticing that estimated resources don’t match actual ones. Goals are reached when collaborating things listed above.

After identifying an objective, plan tactics and strategies to achieve it, errors emerge in execution, which call for improvement. The most innovative companies in the world manufacture technological products, check for bugs, and test it with a focused group. It is how they reach their goals.

They get to launch the product, but not acknowledge how it will work when people start using it. Any feedback from the focused group leads to adaption and improvement of the product. As clarified above, success is achievable, but there are stops in-between start and end of the road.

In conclusion, goals are normally short-sighted. Success is visualized, and we see end-result in front of us. But it has a lot of stops in-between. It means taking one step at a time, based on relevance to the objectives. Relevant tasks prolong time for achievement. We have to do each one of them to achieve success. There is no shortcut!

Build 1 from 6 Worlds

Lee Child said ”Hope for the best, plan for the worst”, which is also important for operating business. Everything won’t work out as planned. Most of the time, all pieces of the plan will not turn out as expected. The price of something could be more or less than expected, or response not matching expectations. This is a reason to gather information from 6 worlds. We surround ourselves with them.

The first is pessimistic that seek negative sides of the business. Details might decrease hope or confidence about the future or plans. For example, majority of business startups don’t last the first two to five years. This knowledge might make you lose confidence in your plans. But remember that every time you take a bus, or drive a car, accident can happen. But you still do it because you don’t let it stops you. Every failure happens for a reason, and yours won’t necessarily be the same.

The second is cynical. This is driven by self-interest or believe that others only focus on their own interest. It is filled with people that perform duties based on their own interests, regardless of the accepted standards. These people are skeptical, and can point out the negativities in any plan. An entrepreneur might be a cynic – to a point – when acting on a belief.

The third one is optimistic world, which is part of business. It is having hope and confidence about the future or success of something. It’s essential to all business owners. Without optimistic spirit, achieving anything might be more challenging.

The fourth is antagonizing. It oppose everything and/or is hostile to the business. They are totally opposing anything you want to achieve. They can rationalize their decisions, by emphasizing on how much you’d fail with your objectives. The best recommendation is embrace them, because when someone tells you, “that is impossible”, and you are thinking, “just watch me succeed”, it can be motivating.

The fifth one is a talkative world. They talk but does nothing to make it happen. They can discuss what you are going through without actually knowing anything about it. I am a total supporter of action speaks louder than words. It’s why I rather put all my effort into doing something, and let its success speak for itself.

The sixth is supportive and active. It is a fantastic world that most entrepreneurs use to provide the greatest result. A business need things that support its actions. There is nothing called “self-made”, because the self-made have some kind of support. For example taking a course from an expert about a topic relating to your success counts as support. Same goes to getting a loan from the bank. The term self-made means using what you have – literally everything – to achieve success. This means without any support – either academically or financially – even if it is because the entrepreneur has great credit.

These six worlds are methods for defining a customized world. Gather information from the worlds, and what they tell you about your objectives to define your own world. One great method is defining the world, without reading too much into all these worlds.

Pessimistic, cynical and antagonizing worlds are great places to identify risks. For example a cynical person can tell you that you are only in it for yourself. Acknowledge your interest in your business. People do act for selfless reasons, but sometimes we act for selfish reasons. An antagonizing world can help you define the threats against your business.

These are assessable risks, through what they say. Its likelihood and impact are still methods for rethinking the plan. Risks assessments help response to threats. You can mitigate risks (lessen its impact on your business), avoid it (planning in a way that exclude the risks), transfer it (asking a more qualified person to respond), accept it (do nothing to prevent it). Just because you identified and assessed 100 risks doesn’t mean all of them will happen. I have worked on projects where unexpected risks occurred.

Now that you have your world, exclude unnecessary ones. Someone once said, “Have the risk in the back of your head, but don’t let it be a driving power”. The positive and negative part of anything completes it. Acknowledge the negatives side, but don’t dwell in them. Some information in each world is relevant, and we can’t exclude unpleasant details. These information collaborate to complete our identity.

Everyone and everything has a flaw. Sometimes we only notice them during plan execution. Once we know excluded details in each world, rebuild it by picking pieces from good and bad. Every part of the world could be relevant, while some are irrelevant. Exclude irrelevant details. Pick and rebuild the world that suits the business. Once the world is created, remember that it might not be totally compatible with the real world. If the job was properly executed, the difference is redeemable with adjustments.

In conclusion, these six worlds are key components in building the world for a business. It collect information to create something that facilitate the real world being compatible with yours, while leaving room for adjustments.

Have a Cautious Business

Everyone agrees that we should know what we do. Know your business as you know yourself.  Our knowledge about it simplifies its structure. It is a method for building it. With the amount of time and money you invested in the business, you must consciously know it. For you to do this, know its principle motivation. For example, you purchase something from a supplier because your business needs its components, products and/or services.

Do everything consciously. You must remember to put your business purpose first. It is an owner’s responsibility to ensure that it reflects on it when he/she or staffs represents the business. If your business purpose don’t match its vision or mission, then adapt them to ensure they match. But if it is necessary to change the purpose, assess the best action.

One thing to remember is business include tradeoff from time to time. But avoid a consistent tradeoff among existing stakeholders. For example, choosing a business partner over the other because he/she pays less make it hard to maintain a professional relationship with both of them.

An owner is also a leader. He/she doesn’t allow the employees to do all the hard work as bosses do, but leads everything. He/she is straightforward with the team, and does not act with dishonesty with its members. He/she rather think “we” than “me”, because they works as one.

Remember cautious culture is being aware of important things keeping corporate culture intact. It means clear definition of the business social fabric. These include the business value, its principles and practices. The principles can be listening to one another, being accountable for one another (you are only as good as the least performing team member), empower and excite the team, and communicate with one another. The values can be characters that business value.

A cautious business drives employee engagement. It is a culture that let them be themselves. For example, there’s no motivation when 3 employees work hard to produce a result, and 15 co-workers in the same team criticized their performance. Those hardworking team members will lose motivation to improve performance in the future.

A conscious business enhance your leadership skills. Ask yourself “what kind of people do I want to lead?” It is the engine that help you define your teams. As a business owner, you’d probably want productive teams. A cautious leader really knows what he/she is doing, which makes people follow him/her. Otherwise, nobody will follow him/her. When an efficient leader speaks, people feel motivated to listen because they are sure he/she speaks for a motivating reason.

In-depth knowledge about business greatly simplifies choosing the best way to allocate company’s assets and investments. These are resources that make it easier to cautiously acknowledge latest events. It is important to be cautious, even the biggest companies in the world are vigilant.

One effective reason is limited fund forcing wise investments. It also makes it easier to know how to handle things. This is one of the reasons large corporations might provide limited fund for a company or project manager to execute a project.

Another reason that affect allocating investments and assets is no one can truly predict the future. There are uncertainty about it making it necessary to think wisely before making any investment. These are efficient in cautiously knowing the future economic uncertainty make it necessary to follow through on investment, and mitigate risks in the investment.

This makes flexibility a necessity in the process. It mitigates economic uncertainty. For example, when investing 5,000 to yield 20,000 between next two months. It yield 8,000 after three weeks, and something indicate that changes might occur. Then the best strategy might be mitigating the risks before reaching the goals. This keeps the business going smoothly.

When progressing with flexibilities, you’d notice that cautious include responding to things around the business. It responds to things as they occur, regardless of if it is a current or upcoming problem that will impact the corporation. It can also be an opportunity that lead to a new market, or complementary products.

Issues among the teams might emerge and the leader has to deal with them. Another critical point is dynamic nature of being conscious with what you plan and execute. In conclusion, a conscious business knows itself, why it exists, and has no tradeoff among its shareholders.

It has a leader that rather think “we” than “me”. There is a cautious culture with clear values, principles and practices that underline business social fabric, while driving employee engagement. It also build and enhance leadership skills, ensuring you know what you are doing.

Limited fund, economic uncertainty and flexibilities force cautious business to wisely allocate its investment and assets. It make it responsive to latest event in your business, being dynamic and deal with market and proactively handle issues between the team.

 

Brand Architecture

 

Brand is important to a corporation. It normally start with knowing your market, which mean written marketing plan. When you’d have it, you uncover parts of it. It can be challenging to blend sales and marketing plan with business plan because they focus on different things separating them from one another. But they complete each other by bringing all the pieces of your business together.

Business plan discuss overall objectives, resources required to achieve them, and strategies for it. Sales and marketing plan take your business to the next level. It focuses on channels, tactics and strategies for marketing and making sales. These show things – characters, strength, and weaknesses – that matter to the corporation. It simplifies progress for brand architecture’s process because you have identified characters.

Use these to picture your business. It is an objective perspectives – using data from market research – that help visualize the company operating for delivering value for customers. Focus on created value surrounding a business model before its plan and execution. Try to see your business’ added-value perceived by your customers.

Then choose characters that matters to them. Three to ten characters are useful for describing your company. For example, a restaurant that identifies added-value that provide a customer friendly environment for people can list these characters: friendly, flexible, social, organized, service-oriented, respectful etc. These signify the added-value.

But so would other things – what colors, symbols or objects say all these? What characters, colors and symbols signify those things? Acknowledge what the service/product allow people to do, or what they do while using it. Using the example with restaurant, it can be socializing and watching television or movie. Acknowledging the difference between those who want to talk and those who want to watch television.

The restaurant owner might choose to have a television that somehow tell a story. It can be a football game, news or other occurring societal events. They do this because the television is in lowest volume, so it doesn’t interrupt those whom are socializing at the restaurant. People do other things with the products. Some brands are meant to inspire people others make them relax.

The golden question is, with your business structure, what do your product/service let people do apart from using it? It is the added value. Focus on something that product – in additional to its standard function – is doing for customers/clients.

In conclusion, the best way to find a brand is to look at other things (apart from intended function) your products does for your customers. You can list all of them and decide the most valuable one to your audience/customers.

Reinforce Yourself

Research indicates you cannot reinforce yourself. But you can improve parts of you that advance your capabilities. You can do this by focusing on things that need reinforcement. For example when going for an interview, you start practicing your charismatic skills in front of a mirror. It is not because you don’t know what to say. But you want to make sure you sound professional during the interview.

You reinforce yourself by learning how to sound more professional before the interview. The most challenging part is sounding natural – your own voice – so the interviewer know you’ve not been practicing those words. That is why you try to focus more on how you sound than what you’d say. Reinforcement of yourself is done when advancing your level.

For example, you are familiar with finance. You know that your income have to be more than expenses. But when taking a new position in management, you have to go beyond standard knowledge about it. You have to learn about cash flow, asset pricing, understand equity, stocks and so on. You don’t need to be expert at it, but have enough knowledge to simplify accountant’s job.

You should reinforce yourself before starting a new position at the company. No company owner wants a new employee to learn something the person should already know before working in the company. Everyone only has 1440 minutes (24 hours) a day to do their daily activities. No company will spend a minute on something the employer should already know. The owner train you about company’s system. They can give you some weeks to master it. But your knowledge before starting makes you qualify for the job.

Reinforcing yourself requires a know-how attitude and strive after knowledge that make it easier to do what you want to do. In “Elevate Yourself and Conquer your Greatest Fear”, I said it is important to learn new things that corresponds with your improved position. We can advance to any level. How we do it begin with identifying what we need to know to elevate and how we use that knowledge to uplift ourselves before elevating.

Reinforce yourself for the same reason you strive after a new position. Sometimes what you plan to accomplish is a driving power, and other times why you are doing it is more motivational. They are keys to reinforcement. You know what and why you are doing it. It is your driving power.

In conclusion, you can’t be reinforced, but you can reinforce parts of you that simplifies progress in your life and business. You are not the only one who need reinforcement, your business can also need it. It improve or expand your business. You should always try to improve what you do.

Elevate yourself and conquer the Greatest Fear

People are comfortable doing what they do best. They make it their comfort zone. This impact their way of life. It is their strength, and they capitalize on it. An identity define characters that reinforce strengths, and indicates weaknesses. We all know who and how we are.

Most people are result-driven and aware of using their identities in what they do, how they are, and even their social lifestyles. So they use their identity to position themselves. We place ourselves where we are mostly comfortable. A person who is social and focus driven can be positioned as a social worker, because he/she put their social skills to practice. Their focus is getting other people to open up to them, making their job easier.

This position normally involve assessing critical information, because they deal with bad home environment. They get the abilities to enhance their risk managerial capabilities when facing unforeseen circumstances like someone in the house harassing them or having violence approach. These experiences – good and bad – makes them experts.

You dedicated your life to makes it your masterpiece, and becoming an expert at it. When problems lead to such person being layoff, one door is closed. Bob Marley once said “When one door closed, don’t you know that another one is open?” This quote is forgotten when experiencing it, because we don’t look beyond it. A worker who gets layoff won’t think about any open door, but see emerging problems.

You worry about keeping financial statements intact, problems, and focus on getting a new job. Critical things make everything look bad, and the longer the problem remains, the more frustrated you feel. This motivates planning a solution to the problem. This leads to multiple effects. One problem – being layoff – leads to other problems.

You start looking for work, and lives on savings. When focusing on lost job, you are looking at a closed door, while opportunity is emerging. They are hard to notice, because of bad timing. Opportunities can come from experience. Spending years working for a company mean discovering opportunity to explore. These can be adding value to clients, or finding a flaw that creates a business idea, but you don’t see it.

In best case, you are already thinking about it. In the best case scenario, you see opportunities, but question it. This analyze it, which is a positive thing. In worst case, you doubt the idea itself. The one that question opportunity ask how things will work, which allow improvement, and those that doubt question the idea itself. This is an opportunity because you are taking your experience to a new level.

But doubting the idea means you are doubting something else relating to it. Doubt is the junior sister to fear. Suzy Kassem said “Doubts kills more dreams than hope ever will”. Dreams doesn’t have to be what you’ve always wanted, it can also be an emerging opportunity. Another thing causing problem is ambiguous future. Nobody knows tomorrow. People have tried to predict tomorrow outcome, which is based on probability.

The best companies are based on tactics and strategic decisions collaborating to best position the business. Ambiguity is the source of excitement and adventure. Ambiguity and doubts turn opportunities to problem, and how things will work doesn’t cause fear.  The main problem is facing the greatest fear – uncertainty.  Misunderstanding is problematic, because when you don’t understand things, fear emerge.

It is not the work itself, but a new thing to master – strategic, tactical, management and leadership. If you don’t know about it, you might fear it. Because it takes you from your comfort zone to a new one that enlarge your area of expertise. You need to learn new things, how to leave comfort zone, and add managerial and leadership, and business management skills that elevate your position.

In conclusion, this walks you from comfort zone to a new one. You add a new experience that turns yours skills into a business. In the process of starting and running a business, you learn what you don’t understand. Start embracing additional skills and enhance capabilities that comes with new opportunities. Face your greatest fear – yourself – and start embracing opportunities.

SMART-Method

You might have heard or use SMART-method before. But I still find it fascinating because of it’s significant in business and private lives. People have also use it for different reasons, and understand it differently. In our daily lives, we use it. For example, saying “I have a doctor’s appointment five o’clock” is a way of using the method.

When it comes to business it is much more complex than that. An entrepreneur has to be specific, but the stress lies in achievable (we must plan and execute to prove this capabilities). That is why I want to discuss the helpful method.

Specific is the place to state our objectives. They are necessarily incorporated for the business to know the way forward. It specifically know what you planned to do, including your goals within short and long period of time. This has to be specific, because it determine your chances of success. For example, aiming to run a business within two months does not fit in.

But aiming to have a company that manufactures processors for computers and other technological devices within a year is a specific goal. This might seems big and others have already established themselves in the branch. The fact is, you are in business for the excitement.

Measurable is designed for knowing measurement of the specific goal we’ve stated. One way to have a measurable specific goal is to divide the objectives into pieces that will respectively be achieved over time. Using the business of process manufacturers, the pieces would be things like legal, marketing, partnership, manufacturing, distribution and sales.

The legal will be accomplished within a month, manufacturing within 3 months, and so on. We can measure how we are doing with the process, and accomplish respective piece before the deadline. This allows us to actually measure what we are doing. If it is going according to plans, then you can measure how it goes.

Achievable is suitable. I love to call it analysis because it is where we see if the goal is achievable. For example saying we will have already started the business within a week does not sound achievable. It will requires significant amount of preparation to know what we are getting ourselves into. The achievability of a specific goal depends on the time, and capabilities.

Aiming to sell one million products within 6 months without a product is not achievable. We have to know that we can achieve it, which depends on how we wants it. For your specified goals to be achievable, ask yourself how you will do it.

Realistic has been the most challenging part. People mostly have issues with a new idea. They will try to argue the unrealistic of your plan. Using the same example as running a processor manufacturing company, challenges emerge when you present it to the first group. They will be pessimistic about it. They would argue that the business will not be profitable or leads to success.

This is where you really need to “trust yourself”. It is challenging, because people argues that biggest idea sounds crazy – or insane – to people. For it to be realistic, you have to see it. Seeing it means knowing how it will be realistic to do what you want. Sometimes, we have to be very problematic in order to define realistic of the goals. Other people do what we do, but things differentiates us from one another. The main point of realistic goals are for you to have realistic vision to it. Send positive feeling, and you’d have positive result.

Time-bound verifies realistic accomplishment of the goals. It drives the consistency, because they know that time determines it. Following the example of manufacturing processors, we need to choose appropriate time. It can’t be accomplished within 6 months, unless we have already done most of the work. It includes creating a prototype, and a lot of things can happen in the process.

I’ve heard stories of things going wrong in the mass production process. It is where we know that time matters to everything we do. Timing the process must corresponds with measurability, achievability, realistic and what we plan to achieve. You have to give yourself time to process everything. In conclusion, a SMART-method is used most of the time.

It is the perfect method to signify the importance of knowing the destination within a specific timeframe. We have to be specific to know what we want. Then we have to measure how we are doing it, know how to achieve it, ensure it’s realistic with trusting yourself and give it the time it needs to succeed.Because your business is like an infant.

Servant of Ambition

A huge dream is a wish. It is similar to wanting something without acting on it. Filter it by turning them into a clear vision. A vision sets appropriate tactical and strategic decisions for bringing the vision to life. They scare you, if they are big enough. The huge goal has to be specific. Like everything else in life, a specific goal improves your chances of accomplishing it. It is a driver of self-actualization that makes you achieve them.

A specific goal sets the standard. It gives you intimate knowledge about the goals’ requirements. It enlightens you about anything irrelevant. For example, walking around is irrelevant to writing. It is arguably a brainstorming session in the process. Launch the perfectionist part of you that sets the standard of things you need to do in order to achieve specified objectives.

Jessica Stillman wrote about good and bad perfectionists in her article “Are You The Good or The Bad Kind of Perfectionist” A perfectionist sets a standard for what they want to accomplish. It is not a matter of what the goal is, but how to accomplish it. It separates you from competitors and others in the same niche. Be a perfectionist, but beware of your kind.

Two kinds are relevant – the good and bad. A bad one sets a standard so high that it is almost impossible to achieve the goal. He/she worries about making mistakes and letting people down. Work in such unhealthy way that weakens the goal’s productivity. This is not helpful in any way. Things will go wrong, people will make mistakes and let you down – accept that.

The good perfectionist effectively works on what they plan to accomplish. Nothing is perfect, but they know when something is good enough. They know their goals. They are constantly giving it their best. The ambition is driven by setting high standard and proactively work towards them. The main goal is ambitiously dividend into as many as possible, and accomplished one after the other. This kind of perfectionist maintain the goodness of goal achievements, while postponing any debilitated effects of burnout. Soul search about the kind of standards you set – know when goals are impossible to accomplish – and find how to accomplish them.

Use the standard to know path to achievement. A tactical and strategic way to accomplishing objectives will normally emerge when walking through the overall path to it. It helps determine best tactics and strategies for accomplishing the most challenging part. Knowing how we want something tells us the tactics and strategies for getting it. This is based on facts – not assumption – about what is happening in the market, prior to taking action.

As the goal progresses, you enhance your strategic skills that develops as you improve. The goal is stable, but the sub-goals upgrades as you progress. You make little changes to smoothen process. It can be a new idea that facilitate productivity increments. The best parts are know what you want, how you want it, and path to getting it is taking action.

You start acting. You serves your goal. If the ambitious goal is to run a great company, then define greatness. This definition is based on your understanding of it. It tells you where you are going. That is what you serves. Serving this can helps improve your decision process. It motivates and reminds you of where you are going and why you are doing what you do. A servant only serves the ambitious objectives, which was explained in “Only Serve Your Ambition”.

In conclusion, set a goal that is so big that it scares you. Know the necessary standard you need to set to accomplish it. Know the sub tactical and strategic goals you need to accomplish to meet the overall goal. Accomplish and serve them. These progressive goal accomplishments makes you a servant of ambition.

5 Steps to Trust Yourself

Arnold Schwarzenegger said “trust yourself”. It can be challenging. Especially after making mistakes. Another source of problem is the odds against you. Everyone has a history. Some darker than others. The stories are either true or made up. It is hard to tell which is which. Don’t try to tell. Analyze it and form your own perspective. Everyone forms an opinion about yours – why shouldn’t you?

True stories teach us something. If it does not, then consider acknowledging the reason behind that story. Case studies about failure can shatters your confidence to move forward. They are conflicted with what you want to do, because they “proof” you wrong. Their stories were confounded and compelling. Everything they told you about their failures might be true. Nobody have intimate knowledge about it, expect for those around the person who wrote it. But researchers know that one way to critically analyze a story is researching why the person wrote it the way he or she did.

Statistics is a problem. Evidence against you makes it harder to progress. This opposing evidence is not necessarily wrong. Other people’s results won’t necessarily be yours. For example, we’ve heard stories of marketing strategies that yield nothing. When someone else tried the same strategies, they earns six figures. Every story about failure won’t necessarily means yours will be the same.

People have an idea about almost everything. We all know what is best for you. We tell our stories. We can even go the extra mile to make it looks like yours will be the same. Other people’s stories won’t damage you as much as your own perspectives. What I say about you is not as valuable as what you believe about yourself. Being called a failure does not necessarily makes you one. Believing it is wrong. That is why trusting yourself is challenging. These five steps makes trusting yourself easier.

 

1.      Know what they did wrong

Read the stories about failure. Don’t believe your situation will be the same. Ask objective questions. What did they do? Where did it went wrong? What did you learn by going through their stories? How will you do it?

 

2.      Face Yourself

You are your greatest obstacles. Jordan Belfort says “The only thing standing between you and your goal is the stories you keep telling yourself”. Look at every mistakes you made. Ask yourself what you’ve learned from them and your improvement. The best thing we know about life history is how it has shaped us. If not for yesterday, we won’t be in our current position.

 

3.      Reshape Yourself

Use your knowledge to reshape things into something you can learn from. Condemning yourself doesn’t help. You should only use what you learned to do things better. Because all mistakes that prevented success only means to start over – smarter.

 

4.      Plan

Set an achievable goal within a short period. Huge one consumes time. Plan that goal. Doing nothing means you don’t trust yourself. Plan means using everything you know to proof to yourself that you are better. Strategies turn our knowledge into a plan.

5.      Act with Trust

Actions with trust means you have a direct goal. Acting with trust for what you planned makes you success-driven. Don’t get distracted or compromise the goals. There is no short cut or perfect path to the goal. Remember you will learn on the way. Everything you learned taking actions is the driving power that in collaboration improve results. For example, something new might emerge, which boost the action’s productivity. The action enhance productivity, when it is direct-driven.

In conclusion, these five steps work best with persistent. Everything is in action, which makes determination necessary. Proof to yourself that you can do it. When you proof you can do little things, bigger things becomes attractive and trusting yourself boost your confidence, self-esteem and self-actualization.