The Biggest Threat To Starting Business And How To Avoid It
Do you ever dream of starting business? Yes, I know you do. Who does not want to start a business that will one day make a fortune that you can retire to a beautiful island … become a globetrotter…fly in your private jet to Monaco and many exotic destinations…play rounds of golf with CEOs of corporations and attend White House annual breakfast meetings Yes, Starting business and owning a successful one is a dream most of us will like to come true. In fact successful business creators are rewarded and recognized in our society. Many adult american aspire to be business creators. According to the Kauffman annual index of entrepreneurial activity the overall business creation rate was (0.27 – 0.34) % of adult Americans per month between 1996-2012 That translates to approximately over 500,000 new business owners monthly in the last decade. Starting business is one part of business creation. The other part is to grow it into a thriving company. According to Exploding Topics 20% of new businesses don’t make it past their second year, and 45% don’t survive their fifth year. Why do a large proportion of start-up businesses fail? The answer is not as easy as you may think. A study done at the university of Tennessee on the major causes of business failure gives us the following reasons: Incompetence (46%) Lack of managerial experience (30%) Lack of understanding of their customers (11%) Neglect fraud and disaster When you look at the stats on business start-up failure you can see that incompetence is a major factor. I think the leading cause of incompetence in business boils down to one thing: flawed business thinking You see once your business thinking process is flawed then you’ll be taking wrong decisions that will ultimately lead to failure. Rich Schrefen who is an authority in the area of business thinking believes that flawed thinking is the hidden obstacle to business success for most start up business owners. For example, a friend of mine who wanted to start a business a few weeks ago told he felt he did not have enough capital to start his business. However after asking him a series of questions he was able to see that his problem was not due to lack of capital. His problem is that he was not resourceful You see you can have enough funding for your business and still end up failing-if your business model is flawed. On the other hand, you can grow a business on a shoestring budget to a multimillion-dollar business with the right business model What separates a successful business from an unsuccessful business is the business thinking. Your midset is important in business creation Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos and many other entrepreneurs started their business on a shoestring. They had more of resourcefulness than enough resources. How can you avoid the flawed business thinking trap? The answer is easy. What you need to do is to do a self-diagnosis the cause of the business failings you are facing in your business To become good at finding the cause of your business failings -you must be honest in answering the vital questions on why you are failing in your business How do you drill down to find the flawed beliefs you have in your business? The answer is easy. By questioning your business thinking ways . It is only than can you find solutions to the business problems you are facing. For example if you feel that your business is not growing because you lack resources you are likely to be thinking that -if you had more resources your business will succeed, right? What you need to do to is to see if your assumption is true. To do so you must ask yourself: Is the lack of resources your problem? Are you using the resources you have effectively? When you can honestly answer these questions, …you’ll find that you are either right. You may find your assumptions are false. The next step is to look at other assumptions you have made about your business and test them until you can find many more false assumptions. Once you do this, you’ll find that you will have eliminated the blocks to your business creation. With the hidden blocks to your business thinking eliminated you’ll find that you can move in the right direction for your business, and avoid being part of the business failure numbers That is how to overcome false thinking and grow more competent in starting a business and succeeding
The Secret To Achieving Your Daily Goals
The major hurdle you’ll face in setting your goals comes from your daily action that will lead to their accomplishment. I am not sure if you have been in my position …but my own weakness in achieving my goals comes from follow through. I have struggled with the habit of losing focus on achieving goals for a long time and It concerned me. So a couple of years back I wanted to do something about overcoming my bad habit…I started looking for ways to overcome this dream killing habit. As I read and studied around the subject of goal setting, I realized the cause of my failing to follow through on my daily goals- came from how I spent my time working on my goals. Let me explain. You see we all have the same 24 hours each day. The same numbers of hours to work, sleep, eat and relax. What separates the successful and unsuccessful individual boils down to … time management Brian Tracy, best selling author of the classic time management book Eat that frog says time management is the raw material for success in life. He concludes that success in life depends on how you spend your time on your most important goals. How do you spend your day? Do you spend your time working on your most important goals …or you are just spending time doing what is important for others ? Now in trying to solve the dilemma of following through on my goals, I had to look closely at how I spent my time. When I did an analysis of how I spend my day … the results shocked me. I saw that I spent time on mundane tasks that had no impact towards the achievement of my goals. I was like a robot working on a list of tasks with no clear objective. The truth was that I was nowhere near achieving my major objectives after ticking off the boxes at the end of my day. You see I was like a hamster on a wheel. I was busy but not productive. Lack of productivity is a major obstacle to goal setting Well I thought the problem was an isolated one . I thought that I was alone. I was wrong. The problem of lack of productivity is widespread in the work place. Business insider published an article in November 2011 on the subject. The article published the highlights of Microsoft Office personal productivity challenge, which drew responses from 38000 people from 100 countries. The survey showed: People work an average of 45 hours a week; they consider 17 hour unproductive People spend an average of 5.6 hours in meetings; 69 per cent feel they meetings are unproductive The commonest obstacles to productivity; unclear objectives, lack of clear team communication, ineffective meetings, procrastination As you can see it’s very easy to be, side tracked from working on your goals. I wanted to overcome these obstacles to my becoming more productive…So I started thinking “what am I doing wrong that is not allowing me to achieve my goals”. You Need To Prioritize Your Tasks The answer eluded me for a long time… until I read Steven Covey’s bestselling book the 7 habits of highly effective people that I found the solution. Steven Covey ‘s summarized briefly, what separated highly successful people from the unsuccessful. He concluded that the secret to being effective and super productive comes from prioritizing your goals. In addition, he also believed that you must align your daily tasks in such a way that …you spent more time working on tasks that will help you your goals on the long term. He came up with a model to prioritize your daily task that is … divide your daily tasks or to do list into four quadrants: Important and urgent tasks you must do to avoid a crisis; it may be a deadline on a project, or paying your mortgage bills Important but not urgent tasks are the ones that will advance you in the direction of your goals. They include working on your side business, reading about investing, taking a home study course related Urgent but not important tasks are tasks like replying to a non urgent work, taking phone calls unrelated to your work Not urgent and not important tasks are doing things like gossiping with your colleagues, watching sitcoms, checking emails The important lesson from prioritizing your daily tasks is to do less of the unimportant tasks… and concentrate on doing more of your important but not urgent tasks. These tasks are the ones that will move you towards achieving your goals. The next major obstacle most people face in achieving their goals is lack of motivation. I hear many of my friends tell me ” I need to find the motivation to start on my project”. They give excuses about having to work full time, taking care of the children. The truth is there will never be a “perfect time’ to start any project Action brings motivation The solution to lack of motivation is to take action on your most important tasks even if when you are not in the mood. Why? Because you’ll gain motivation once, you start taking action Robert Ringer New York time bestselling author of million dollar habits says, “Motivation comes from taking action”. Ringer says I would not have become a bestselling author if I waited to get the motivation to start writing daily. He goes on to say, “when I wake up every morning I start typing no matter how bad my spelling or sentences look. I know I can always go back and edit my writing. But if I wait to get motivation before writing I’ll never become a bestselling author” The whole point of what I have learned from Robert Ringer is this… action brings motivation. When you take action on your goals, you also get motivated. Thinking positively on your goals is not enough. You also need to take action when I started to prioritize
Secrets of Millionaire Mind- How To Transform Debt To Wealth
Wealth builders manage debt In order to become wealthy, you need to know how to manage money. One of the secrets of millionaire minds is…they know how to manage debt. In fact they know how to transform debt to wealth. However for the average person …personal debt is a living nightmare that is affecting his family and financial well being. One of the main reason most people end up broke and retire penniless is this: they spent most of their working life servicing debt instead of saving and investing money for their retirement. Personal debt is a modern day Trojan horse that could torpedo you chances of becoming financial free. The only reason why we have a prolonged recession in the United States of America and many parts of the Western world is high level of personal debt. If you think I am joking here are some statistics: 48% of all Americans carry personal credit card balances from month to month According to the Federal Reserve Bank the median household debt in America is $75600 The overall Personal credit card debt is $1.18 trillion. It will take you 27 years to repay a credit card debt of $10,000 at 13.1 percent rate using a credit card calculator from the federal reserve bank website As you can see, card debt is worst type of personal debt you can owe. If you don’t pay off your credit card debt, it’s as if you have a big hole at the bottom of your piggy bank. This hole will continue to leak money out of your piggy bank until you pay up. This is why you must try as much as possible to clear your credit card debts or else you’ll never be able to have a shot at becoming wealthy. You’ll always feel you are taking one step and then two steps backwards I give this advice to you because I have owed debts at one point to the tune of over $50,0000. Yes, I have been in debt, and I am still clearing debts. The good news is …it does not matter how much you owe right now…you can use get out of debt. All you need to do is make a commitment to never allow your debt to ruin your dreams to retire wealthy. Even if you cannot clear your debt immediately, … you must develop a plan to eliminate it. You can transform debt to wealth How I dug myself out of personal credit card debt One way I have used to clear my card debt balances… is to come up with a fixed repayment sum in addition to making minimum payments. I use this fixed sum to pay down the highest interest loans first until I pay down the balance. The next thing I do is to pay the next debt with the sum of the minimum payment I had made on my other and my fixed sum. When you use a fixed sum (call it accelerator margin) to pay off your card debt, …you’ll snowball your repayment and you should eliminate all your personal debt within 7 years. I have mentioned eliminating personal credit card debt, as part of your wealth building goals. I know you may be thinking “is it bad to borrow money?” The answer is no, if you can afford to repay…or if you are borrowing money for investment in rental real estate that can repay the loan …or for a profitable business venture. The key to managing personal debt is to only borrow money that will make you wealthier. When you borrow money to buy consumer goods that you cannot repay, you’ll create a financial burden for yourself On the other hand, when you are debt free, you will live within your means…save more and have enough money to invest so you can retire wealthy The bottom line is this … if you are debt free … you’ll save enough money each month…and invest your money regularly. And its a sure thing you’ll end up a millionaire at retirement. Yes you’ll end up being wealthy, that is… if you have 20 years to retire and can stay focused. If you want to be wealthy, you need to must make the pledge to be debt free
How to Save Like a Millionaire
Wealth can only be accumulated by the earnings of industry and the savings of frugality. -John Tyler Imagine you have a goal to own a house in an area you always dreamt you’d one day live. You have a picture of your dream house sitting on your bathroom wall… you wake up every morning affirming to yourself…I live in this house on xyz street… You dream …and smell fresh coffee, egg bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes served by your chef each morning…as you read the Wall street Journal and USA today in its 1,000 square foot black marble top kitchen…. In fact, this house is so real for you that your wife thinks you need to see a doctor. One day you hear from your realtor that this dream house is for sale… because the owners want to retire and move abroad …so they can stay close to their children and grandchildren. The owners want to sell their house quietly. They are looking for a buyer who can move quickly and buy their house… They are going to give the buyer a significant discount from the asking price. What would you do? … I guess you’ll act fast if you had cash …or raise a mortgage loan quickly to buy your dream home. However, you have no money and your credit history is not good enough to get a mortgage to buy your dream home from your bank… You realize you were daydreaming … your wife’s observation ring true- that you may need to visit your doctor. I hope the imaginary story I have just described is not real for you because for many people… their hopes of ever-living their dream lifestyle … is a living nightmare. One of the major reasons many people find it difficult to fulfill their millionaire dreams boils down to one thing…they don’t have enough money to live their dream lifestyle. Many people lack money to invest because they have… little or no savings to jumpstart their investing plan…quit their job to start their own business…or to invest in the kinds of assets that will yield enough income-so they never have to worry about money when they retire. You need capital to start investing your way to wealth. The start-up cash you’ll need must come from your own pocket… That is why you need to have savings. The biography of many millionaires I have read follow the same pattern…. that is they started their businesses with their own personal money at the outset: Michael Dell started Dell computer in his dorm room with his personal savings of $25000 Jeff Bezos started amazon.com with his personal savings before taking a loan from his parents Sara Blakely invested her life savings of $5000 to start Spanx an under wear shaping company from her garage These millionaires were able to get their shot at becoming wealthy because they had savings. You must develop the habit of saving a part of your income because it’s easier to start investing with your own money than borrow money from others The truth about savings is that millionaires save more of their income than the rest of us… Why Millionaires Save Money Millionaires save money so they can take advantage of investment opportunities when they come knocking… Millionaires make more money in bad economic times because most wealth producing assets are usually up for sale on discount. In times of recession most companies, government and people are looking, to survive and will mark down most of their assets to stay alive…. …And guess who buys the goods they have to sell? Investors who have cash reserves. That’s why you need to form the habit of savings… When you save and have cash reserves…you’ll find it easier to invest…have money to buy bargain investments …and enough money to ride through rough financial times. You see, one of the reasons many people are scared of leaving their jobs to start their ideal business is… because they lack money to keep them going while they grow their business. When you start saving, you’ll not be afraid to quit your job to pursue your ideal career. The good news is you can form the habit of saving money and begin to accumulate enough money… so that you can start to invest and increase your net worth. In order to form the habit of saving money… you need to make a conscious effort to start saving money. Let me explain… Habits form from repetitive actions that eventually create neural pathways in your brain… these neural pathways then become part of your subconscious mind. The first step you need to develop a skill is make a conscious effort to start practicing the skill until you become masterful… This conscious and deliberate effort to a skill also applies when it comes to developing the habit of savings. The major obstacle most people have when asked-why they are not saving money… is they say they cannot find money to save. I used to have the same block until…I made a conscious mindset shift to do what millionaire do as habit. The number millionaire habit for saving is to learn to pay-yourself-first. This advice sounds simple yet more than 99 percent of adult don’t practice it Learn to pay yourself first or stay broke forever In order to learn the habit of paying yourself, first… you must set aside a portion of every income you earn …no matter your financial situation. The reasoning behind this principle is simple…. When you pay yourself first …you are building your net worth. You see, when you pay your bills…you make the electricity, gas and credit card companies rich…when you save a portion of your income you are building up your wealth. The more you pay yourself first, the
How To Be A Confident Millionaire
“I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.” – Warren Buffet The first time I decided to buy my first rental property…I had no idea how I would raise the money to buy the house. Because I had set a goal to become wealthy through real estate… I had determination to act on my goal. Flash forward to present …I now own substantial rental real estate in my investing portfolio. I am also a real estate developer How was I able to find the courage to act on my dreams? The answer is simple. I am now living my millionaire dream because I took massive action. The more I work on my dreams, the bolder I become in taking action to my millionaire goals You see, you need to be convinced in yourself to become a millionaire…because it is a test of whether you’ll accomplish your dream. How do you build confidence to achieve your millionaire dreams? The first thing you must do is to set goals and achieve them. You see a goal is like a dream with a deadline. Goal setting gives you the courage to take decision and act on them. In addition, your self-esteem grows when you hit your targets. You see your brain is like a muscle…the more you set goals and achieve them the bolder you become at taking on more financial risk… that will make you a millionaire. Let us imagine you start a new business venture, you aim for a profit of $50 in the first 2 months, and you earn $ 50 within 2 months… What will that do for your self-esteem? Your guess is as good as mine is. On the other hand, your confidence would hit the rock bottom if you set an unrealistic goal like earning $5000 within the first 2 months of starting your business. The secret to building your courage with goals is to start small and keep setting goals that are achievable. As your continuously hit your goals, your confidence will also skyrocket Keep A Success Journal Another thing I do is to keep a record of all my past successes. You can do the same. I use my records of my achievement as confidence boosters when I start to feel insecure along my journey. One way you can do this is to create a box on your desk that contains…inspiring stories, any accomplishments, testimonials, …. Thank you letters from customers into the box. You can also keep a success diary where you record all your successes daily. I use my journal to do daily reflections as well. I used to read my diaries in the past…. Nowadays I use my Ipad to record my success journal. The point of keeping a journal and box of inspirational materials is to help you believe in yourself. You Need To Network with People who will help you to fulfil your dreams If you are not shy and like to live in the real world like myself…then you need-to network with like-minded persons …who is also working towards becoming wealthy. You need to surround yourself with positive energy. You need to live and be in an environment that will nurture your dreams. You need to find people and make friends with people who will keep you motivated. I have friends and mentors that help me stay focused on my plans to become wealthy. As an entrepreneur, you need to feed on positive material to keep you charging to wards your dreams. I set aside time yearly to attend seminars, conferences because I have experienced growth in my business anytime I attend. I have a mastermind group where we hold each other accountable to our goals. I find these one-hour monthly meetings useful. There is no better place to be than among people of your kindred spirit. Join social and networking events to meet more people if you need to…because not only will you be able to exchange ideas, you will be able to motivate each other. Keep Learning The last thing I’ll like to say about gaining confidence is that you must spend money on educating yourself. You need to become an avid learner and reader. Buy audio programs, read books related to your wealth building goals. You need to spend money on developing your mind. I always tell people this story to make my point clear about spending money on self-education. Here’s my story… How a $250 Seminar saved me from bankruptcy I never realised I was a novice until I bought my first rental property in London. This property almost made me bankrupt. My first real estate exposed the knowledge gap I needed to bridge… in an expensive way because I was losing up to $900 every month until I went to $250 real estate seminar. It was after I attended that real estate seminar that I was able to plug my negative cash flow from the loss making rental property until I sold up. Fast forward to the present, I now own income producing real estate …because I made a $250 investment in my education. Are you spending money on improving yourself? If you are not then you must start doing so. You are not alone If you are not feeling confident about becoming a millionaire … most of the persons that became millionaire never had the confidence…they gained it over time. The key to gain confidence is to take action… set goal and achieve them. Keep motivating yourself with every progress you make. Surround yourself with like-minded persons and keep learning To your success Akin osho