Author Archive

Keep Going, the Motivating Force

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

Success is best achieved through hard work and determination. It’s not a one time, big time thing. It’s walking in a long road full of surprises, bad and good, yet you have overcome and reached the end. People always eye on the price but sometimes tend to forget the way of getting it.

Personal development and growth is an effort not only made by one’s self but with the help of other people. Some might contest that it’s all self-effort. That’s not true. Growth cannot be achieved with only the self to pursue it. It needs to relate to other people.

The most important thing about development of self is that it can be reliant on other people most especially to society. It has this indirect way of saying that everyone should follow what they want. This makes almost all individuals subscribe to their standards.

In getting the way to success, you first need to realize that life is not something that you expect. Meaning to say, it’s not a fairytale land. For you to succeed, you have to look at life as a battlefield and you are the soldier trying to conquer the enemies. The enemies need not be a person; they may come as problems or challenges. As a soldier trying to win in a war, you have to win over life. The question now is how.

As a soldier training for a battle, you have to get yourself conditioned. You need more determination than courage. Determination is the motivating force that never allows you to stop. It’s like fuel in the machine that keeps it running. This has to be backed up by courage because a brave person confronts his fear and moves towards it as it keeps on getting smaller.  

How you deal with time can also be an important factor to success. Make use of your day and turn it into a productive one. If you are making a project due in two weeks, you don’t make it the night before. Be sure that every day you will able to finish something as this gives less burden on your part.

But given that you have poured everything at the end of the day and you still failed, you didn’t make it, never fear. Failure may hurt but it can work for your own advantage.  Why? Simply because you get the greatest lesson in life that is not from another people but is based from your own experience. You would make sure that you never commit the same mistakes again on the assumption that you have learned from them.

Life is not about whether you made it at the end of the day, it’s about how you make it.

Posted in Mindset | No Comments »

How to Make Your Organization the Ideal Provider

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

In order to make your company look like the best catch in the market, use strategic words and phrases like –

  • Flexible
  • Responsive
  • Accommodating or willing to make accommodations
  • Never try to put a square peg in a round hole
  • Recognize your uniqueness
  • Thorough
  • Follow through on everything
  • Cover all the bases for you
  • Willing to do whatever it takes
  • Make sure every detail is covered

An entrepreneur’s desire for flexibility from your organization implies one of two needs – personal independence and products or services that are designed to suit their specific situations.

In reality, there are more small and medium sized business than large corporations. Yet, most entrepreneurs think that almost every part of the society favors the larger companies and institutions – university courses, professional and consulting services, trade shows, published articles, seminars, books, research data, legislation, periodicals and just about everything else that teaches, and almost everything else that has value. Not only those, most entrepreneurs see the whole structure of the world as something rigid, with unyielding indifference.

Entrepreneurs have this weird concept of the world, seeing it as something too big and powerful for them to bend to their will, too impersonal to care about them, and too consumed by what is of no interest or value to them. They see the world as a place that will not yield to theur needs, or even pay attention to them.

And because of this twisted perception, entrepreneurs only want to do business with a provider whom they think considers them as something of great importance – a provider that sees them significant enough to offer them a sense of flexibility, and if possible, a “little” special treatment. An ideal provider for any entrepreneur therefore, is someone who is willing to accommodate whatever the entrepreneur needs and to their very unique needs. You might find this a bit ridiculous, for no such provider really exists. However, the trick here is this – as a provider, you do not really have to actually BE flexible or make the requested exceptions, all you have to do is to be “perceived” as being WILLING to do such adjustments.

Keep in mind that the need for personal independence is highly valued by most entrepreneurs to the extent that they have this firm belief that “I am different from all the other entrepreneurs, so I should be getting a unique treatment”. They are not necessarily claiming to be better than the rest, just different from them. And that sense of uniqueness, or in simpler terms, having special needs, is the ultimate source of the decision maker’s highly suspicious attitude towards salespeople. Entrepreneurs want to be assured that the product or service they get is unique to them, because that is the only way to ensure that it is of quality.

Posted in Business Fundamentals | No Comments »

Get Paid as a Freelancer

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

Freelancing is a trend all its own today and in the past. People get into freelancing because they want the freedom that an eight-to-five job is unable to give them. A few, on the other hand, see freelancing as a matter of survival for the lack of better job opportunities in the market. No one will hire them or pay them for a regular eight-hour work that is why they’ve taken matters into their hands to make both ends meet. But for the majority of freelancers out there, it’s the freedom and money though can be irregular at times that come with freelancing that is their reasons for freelancing.

But you might ask how exactly does a freelance say copywriter get paid for his services? How should he rate his services to potential customers? What is the trend in the freelancing world today?

Freelancers get paid three ways. A freelancer can choose one way throughout his career or he can use all three depending on the task at hand.

The first way is to be paid with a flat fee. A flat fee is an amount you get paid with for the work you did for a client. It is the easiest and most hassle-free mode of payment. With this type of method, a freelancer should be able to know how much freelancers in his area are currently getting. He should know the exact range of amount so that he can negotiate with a client if the need arises. In this mode of payment too, a freelancer should request for a half-half arrangement. The client should pay you 50% of the agreed flat fee with the other 50% to be paid after you complete the assignment.

The second way to get paid for your freelance work is through commissions and royalties. As a freelancer, if you’re really good at what you do, word of your excellent work will eventually get around the market. Once this becomes your status you are either able negotiate for a higher flat fee or demand that you be paid with a percentage of every piece of mail carrying your write-up or with a percentage of the earnings of the company you are servicing. In this mode of payment, you can waive your flat fee and wait for the profit that your creation will bring you right after it becomes available in the market.

The third way is to earn through the payment of a flat fee and through commissions. This is simply a combination of both mode of payments and should also work for you if you are already playing in the big leagues, which simply means that you are a freelancer who is popular and in demand.

No matter what mode of payment you choose, only one thing is certain in the business that is freelancing and it is passion for the work and being the best in what you do.

Posted in Starting Out | No Comments »

4 Ingredients to be Successful

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

Wanting to be successful is normal in life. Everyone wants to succeed in his or her field and reach their greatest dream and be someone that everyone would look up to. Being successful is not just all about the money you make, but it’s also about the feeling of fulfillment and leaving a legacy.

There are many books out there that would tell you how to become successful, but the truth is, being successful is a decision you have to make because all those books could only go as far as what you read. In order for you to become successful you need discipline, motivation, goals, and ambition.

Those four words are the key to success and all of them are difficult. First step is to set your goal and to have an ambition. Now this one is easy, you can think of many goals in life and an ambition you want to reach. Those two by the way are brothers; one is not without the other. You can’t have goals and ambitions that are too general, be more specific about it. Like you want to be successful in the field of business, what kind business? Be as specific as possible because details will help you to be on track. Think wisely what you want to do and what you really want to reach because those things will define you for the rest of your life. Every great man had an ambition, had a goal, and they reached it and so can you.

The next step is difficult, it’s probably the hardest part. It takes effort and focus to be successful, that’s why you need to have discipline and motivation. In order for a person to reach the goals and the ambition that they have laid, they need to be able to discipline themselves to focus on their goals. People go through many things in order to be disciplined. It’s not easy because you will have to say NO to the things that you want and say YES to the things that you don’t want. It’s like losing weight, a person dieting can’t eat the good food and most of the time they succeed in what they aimed for, and they lose weight.

With discipline comes motivation, because without motivations, it’s very easy to fail. Finding motivations isn’t easy either but if you look closely, you’ll find your motivation, decide what your motivation is. Your motivations can be someone; some thing or it could be your goal itself and the greatness it would bring to you. Having motivation is very important because it’s the only thing that keeps you going and keep you pushing.

They say that the view from the top is beautiful because you get to see how far you’ve come. The path to success is crooked and has lots of bumps, but your decision to be successful would keep you going because after all, success is a decision.

Posted in Starting Out | No Comments »

Move Your Benefits a Notch Higher

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

For you to make sure that your customers will think that they are getting a lot from your product or service, use the following words or phrases –
• Order (in the business)
• Control
• Be in control automatically
• Order that reflects your personal wishes
• No more chaos
• Never tolerate disorder again
There is only one word that will effectively remind most entrepreneurs about their business, and that word is chaos.
Every big boss in any company should be able to deal with a certain amount of disorganization within the organization, and should have the patience to tolerate it. However, entrepreneurs are different form senior executives – they simply can not tolerate and deal with the slightest form of disorganization.
When entrepreneurs attempt to deal with any form of chaos, they usually end up as victims of their own management style. They tend to feel very exhausted and energy drained whenever they try to wear the manager’s hat even for just a day. Being in charge, for some reason, wears them down that is why they would do anything in order to avoid any activity that is related to overcoming a slight disorder in the business. entrepreneurs are well aware of this personal weakness, so they know that if they accept the challenge, they will really be exhausted.
The need that Entrepreneurs have for order is also the need for proof that their lives are not being wasted by something unimportant and irrelevant. But because they are very much afraid of the challenges associated with their personal-intervention management style, they would rather get control of the business in a different way – automatically.
They think that business problems are directly attributed to the people behind the business – to themselves and their employees – that is why most entrepreneurs make sense of their business problems and failures by associating it to human factors. Since being in business is a greatly personal experience for them, it is no surprise that successes and drawbacks are almost always seen as the result of human performance (or error). Entrepreneurs do not care about external forces such as market dynamics or other academic explanations and theories. For them, a problem exists and persists because of people, and only people can solve them. No further questions asked.
Ironically, although they see every problem as something that is brought about by human factor and nothing else, most entrepreneurs do not fancy the idea of changing themselves. They could always assign tasks to other people, but never to them. Why? Because entrepreneurs want their business to be reflections of themselves, of their personal identities. That is why they do not want to take the blame.

Posted in Business Fundamentals | No Comments »

Making Your Benefits Even Better

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

One of the things that most entrepreneurs hate in their business is chaos. Executive officers in large corporations have no choice but to deal with and tolerate a certain amount of disorganization from time to time. However, entrepreneurs simply cannot.

When entrepreneurs try to deal with chaos, they end up being victims of their own ineffective management style. This is because entrepreneurs treat their business using a physical approach rather than an intellectual one, so they run it with a direct and personal intervention. And because of that, they feel very exhausted and drained every time they try to do a “manager’s” task – being in charge drains all their energy and they would do anything to avoid such a task. If they decide to accept the challenge, they are well aware that they really be exhausted. But is they do not accept it, they just have to tolerate it. Either way, they are screwed!

For non-entrepreneurial executives, they see their companies as a place of work or business. Entrepreneurs on the contrary, consider their business a home – an extension of themselves and the place where their entire existence is at stake every single day. They see their business as a place where their identity, values and purpose in life are being constantly tested. That is why they have this great fear (and annoyance) for any form of disarray.

The need that entrepreneurs have for order is the need for proof that their lives are being lived productively. But because they do not want to accept and deal with the challenges associated with their personal intervention and management style, they would rather get control of their business through a shortcut.

Entrepreneurs see the problems in a business as something that is closely related to the people behind it – to themselves and to their employees – leading them make sense of business problems and failures in human terms. Since being in business is very personal to them, they are likely to attribute success and reversals as a result of mere human performance, good and bad. They do not welcome external forces such as marketplace dynamics into the equation. Instead, they assume that a change should be done to the people involved in the business in order to solve persisting problems. But the funny thing is, most entrepreneurs are not comfortable in changing themselves. They are what they are and are most of the time, stubbornly proud of it. Not only that, they also believe that their employees will not change fro them either, or that they do not know how to change their employees or that they cannot master the energy to make the effort altogether.

So in order to make your service or product appeal to entrepreneurs, use words such as order, control, be in control automatically, order that reflects your personal wishes, no more chaos, never tolerate disorder again in your marketing campaigns.

Posted in Starting Out | No Comments »

Call ‘Em Like You See ‘Em

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

The challenge in analytic objectivity is not on the process of analyzing. It is on the presentation of the product of analogy. Being objective in anything you do is easily a cinch, you just have to take heart that the accuracy of the information you impart is a serious accountability, and policies and future actions will be hinged on the veracity of the information we relay.

However, the trip to objectivity does not always have successful endings. The process is not always hunky dory all the way, in fact the hurdles might be coming towards the latter part of the whole process, the delivery.

Of course, we never be able discount the influence our past experiences have on the outcome of our analysis. There have been advances made in the setting up of strict parameters on analytic methodology, but still the final product of human analysis is highly prone to the human prejudicial nature. Somehow, we come to a particular topic where we have already stereotyped a particular segment of which, and it would be a big personal lie if we look it in a totally unbiased fashion. At most, the milieu we live in, together with its different media, help cloud our own perception of things.

If one is able to overcome this inherent error and come up with analysis that is free from bias partiality, well and good. However, what if the bosses are the ones “wanting” and “expecting” a predetermined stand? What if after putting forth your earnest effort and presenting the most objective analysis on a particular research item, your managers totally disregarded your findings and diverted your focus to an item not on the possible reasons list? It only means that the higher ups have honed in on a totally different end result and they were expecting your research would vindicate their partiality. It may not be intentional, they might be working on what we call “seniority hunch” which is a classic example of what we discussed awhile ago, bias based on past experience.

Whether the attempt to veer us from being objective is conscious or not, it is our responsibility to put things right back on track. We can rephrase the question in a different way as to highlight only the more objective aspects of the issue and give a more impartial scenario. Everyone has to realize that the relationship between analyst and management is two-way, not authoritarian.

Posted in Consulting | No Comments »

Surviving in a business world that’s full of Competition

Saturday, August 8th, 2009

Competition is healthy. It means there is a market for the good or service you are selling. If there is no competition, you’re in unchartered waters & you have a greater risk of failure if you haven’t done your homework.

Direct completion can be cut-throat. You are in this game called survival of the fittest. Once your weak, you’ll be eliminated which turns to loss of business, financial investment, effort and time, but once you’re strong, you will be on top and the price; fame, power and money.

There are certainly benefits to having competition. Here are some tips on how you can be successful in spite of the presence of competition

Analyze your target market and identify your industry norms

You must know your competition. Write down and observe all the businesses that are going after your same target market. If they are non-direct competitor, team up with them (Joint Venture – create a win-win scenario). If they are, how can you differentiate yourself from them? Where are they located? What are the features that make them more unique than your product? Also try to identify all the market norms (competitors pricing, their marketing strategies, their product positioning, how they advertised and so forth…). After you gathered all the necessary information’s of your competitors, brainstorm and create an intensive plan on how can you attract customers and make your product more appealing to your target market. Remember its not a wise thing to compete your customer directly and be on the same boat as them, that’s a big mistake if you will continue to fight them eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. Product uniqueness, service, support, guarantee, pricing and quality are the features that each customer is eyeing at.

Gain knowledge from your competitors and your customers

Don’t be afraid of competition. Instead of worrying competitions, make it your learning tool and assess their marketing/business model. Learn your competitor’s strength and weaknesses – challenge their strength and use their weaknesses as your own advantage. This will help you to surpass them in your industry.

Gain in-depth knowledge about your customers (their needs, are they after with the price or the quality, are they introverts or extroverts type of customer, etc.). You should need to take note of that. Ultimately, they are key to business success.

Don’t be afraid to take risks

Take calculated risk, try new things, and don’t fear change. Test, test test, the three most important words for any business. Make sure you isolate each variable when testing. NEVER test more than one thing at a time! How will you know what works and what doesn’t? Patience is everything and in the long run, it will save you time. If you change multiple things at once, it will take you even longer to fully maximize profits, as you’ll have no idea what’s working and what’s not! Tweak and try as many marketing tactics you can until you find the right plan for your business. (By the way, this is an endless process)  :)

Posted in Business Fundamentals | No Comments »

Basic Principles of Productivity

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Are you always late, in a hurry or leaving projects and deadlines to the last minute? Are you always struggling on prioritizing what which to do first and what can be left for later? Well, I plan on helping you with your time management. If so, you need to breath, focus and ask yourself if you are ready to change and start managing your time properly. Read each article in post order to get the most out of this category. Each will build on one another, resulting in a solid foundation in managing your time.

Here some principles that you need to know that can benefit you a lot in understanding time management.

Basic Principles of Productivity

1. Everyone can be productive and creative [ identify talents and develop them into strengths]

2. Managing time is actually about managing yourself [we're not in control most of the time, we are in reactive mode]

3. We have 3 brains, not just 1 [Brainstem [physical] – Mammalian [emotional] – Cortex [intellectual]…we have a thought and we can ‘will’ ourselves = an illusion, really our old brains are in control in terms of sex, power, controlling others, feeling threatened, getting love and affection and approval from other people — not the intellect brain — take control of us and the thinking part of our brain and rationalize things etc…the 3 brains aren’t in rapport and experience conflict [i.e. feeling emotionally pulled to do something but you know you probably shouldn't, or you really want to do something that will give you pleasure but your emotions are feeling guilty] – thus where a lot of our inner conflict comes from…thus must integrate them together]

4. Habit is destiny [most of what you do is the exact same thing physically, emotionally, and intellectually and you've paved these neurological ways of being to become 'habits' - thus you must make the things you must do to be productive into routines into habits]

5. Internal chaos creates external chaos [inner butterfly effect w/ mind body feelings and emotions and managing and smoothing inner chaos means the external chaos will take care of itself]

6. Focus your talent and strength on your biggest opportunity [take your talent, develop it into a strength, and focus it on your biggest opportunity]

7. Your future can be an extension or replay of your past OR it can be something new that you create [if you try and hold on to your past, your story, your explanations, things you do to get approval etc vs let go of all of it to create the future you want -- you cannot become the best and highest potential you...you have let go of the past and comfort zone and create something that is entirely new]

8. Focus on what you want to create, not what you want to avoid

9. Choose, don’t decide ['decide' implies to cut off possibility while 'choose' implies having multiple options and choosing the one you want]

10. Balance organization with restricting creativity [organizations and structure vs going with the flow - where could you use more of either in your life?]

11. If you want to wake up productive you must go to the next level and you must become the next version of you and you must go to the next paradigm and next level of thinking [you must become YOU VERSION 2.0]

Posted in Time Management | No Comments »