Tag: learn

Business Lessons I Learned Before 30

Learning starts right from the moment we are born, even though we may not consciously remember every lesson we learned we still practice them every day because our subconscious is much more powerful than our conscious. I am a student of life, and I love to learn, be it a skill, sport, technology, philosophy, or anything for that matter and what I enjoy more is sharing what I learned. I believe in sharing because it helps you spread knowledge, helps others not make the same mistake as you did, and helps you learn and remember those business lessons even better.

Now, I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 14 when I started a comic book company and since then I’ve started many businesses like every other human being and entrepreneur, I’ve learned quite a few lessons along the way. This post is an attempt to document and share those lessons, in an attempt to help you not make the same mistakes as I did and revisit these lessons myself…

  1. A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Action is what counts so, take action, even if it’s not very significant progress toward your business, this step would get the ball rolling. Do it.
  2. Solving a problem or filling a gap is the only way to entrepreneurship. Be a good observer. Look at the current players and their services, interview a few customers, and identify a problem or issue with the current product and service. Then, solve it.
  3. KISS – Keep it simple, stupid. No matter what you do, nothing beats simple, be it a business plan or an email communication, or anything in between. Staying simple would make you far more efficient and save a lot of time, headache, and money too.
  4. Help comes where you expect it the least from. So, network. Talk to anyone and everyone, tell them about your business when they ask what you do, and soon you’ll master your business pitch and be connected to lots of people.
  5. The “right time” is a delusion. Tell me about one thing you did at the perfect time…Perfect timing doesn’t exist. It’s either now or never. What’s your pick?
  6. Don’t Try to do it all by yourself. No one can. So learn the art of delegation and outsourcing.
  7. Don’t Fall in love with your idea. This one is the most important because you don’t want to blindfold yourselves to the feasibility part of the business. A business in order to be profitable has to be feasible and sustainable.
  8. Not everyone is as excited about your business as you are. Yes, and that includes your friends and family. So, try to gauge the interest level of people before you ask them for partnership and/or any help.
  9. For entrepreneurs, failure doesn’t exist; it is a mistake. Not everything you do is going to be a success so, learn to learn from mistakes and make the best use of that experience to turn it into a success next time. Remember, the only difference between losers and winners is that losers quit when they fail, and winners fail until they win.
  10. Always have a plan B. Plan B, according to me is Plan B(est). Not everything you plan would work out the way you planned simply because there are way too many micro and macro elements in business and the market that are out of your control.
  11. A business needs a plan to be successful. You don’t need to write a 100-page business plan to dust on your shelf, but you need to jot down a quick and actionable plan to guide you through the process. Yes, you need a business plan, even if you are not seeking loans or investments.
  12. A business needs a system to be successful: A business without a system is merely a job you’ve bought for yourself. You’d still be trading hours for dollars and would stay in a rat race unless you build a system to scale your venture.
  13. Learn to say ‘No’: Enough said!
  14. Avoid business with your “friends”: Be very careful in setting up expectations if you’re working with friends. You don’t want to ruin a good relationship/ friendship for anything. So, make sure you keep the communication open and transparent, avoid polarization at any cost, appreciate (express that you do) the help, and most importantly try to manage and not boss around.
  15. Partner with friends: Although contradicting to lesson#14 (above) Avoid business with your “friends”, a friend in need is a friend indeed. This is very important, friends who stood by me when I was in need, made me realize how fortunate I was to have them as my friends and I knew I could count on them. Make sure you do not put them on the test again and be there when they might need you.
  16. Don’t fritter the earnings right away: Save for the rainy day, save for the shiny day… You have no idea how wildly your cash flow may fluctuate in a startup setting so, set aside some savings to fund those dry days or weeks.
  17. Money matters: You are in it for money, so make sure you make money. Changing the world is great, and doing what you love is great, but check the financial viability or sustainability of the idea otherwise, you won’t be able to do it long enough for the first two reasons.
  18. Money does NOT matter: May sound contradictory to the #17 above but it is not. If you’re in it ONLY for the money you’ll be outrun sooner than you could imagine, do something because it solves a problem, it fills a gap, it makes a difference, and not just for a quick buck.
  19. Never Lie: It’s a small world, be truthful, because a lie has a very short life and it will not help you get far enough…
  20. Luck favors the bold: As an entrepreneur, it is a practice to get out and make luck work for you and the only way to do it is through hard work and bold moves.
  21. A big goal is only achieved when every little thing that you do every day, gets you closer to that goal…
  22. There’s a big difference between giving up and changing directions. Be savvy and sensible enough to realize if something is not working you need to change the direction. And the fact that you’ve to change direction doesn’t mean you failed or that you’re giving up.
  23. Ignore the naysayers: Oh these guys are idiots, in most cases these are the guys who never did anything themselves and they want to keep the rest of the world just like them. When you see a naysayer, just look at him and ask yourself, do you want to be like him? If yes, follow what he’s saying and if the answer was ‘no’, ignore the guy and stay away from him.
  24. A coach is necessary. I once heard a wise man say “We are so immersed in doing what we are doing and what we think is right, that we miss the obvious”. And a coach helps you not miss the obvious and hence succeed.
  25. Accept faults: Accepting a fault is the best way to deal with the situation. You can either keep wasting your time and brain arguing a fault or you can accept it and move on. I have gained more respect whenever I have said, “I stand corrected”.
  26. Accept criticism and act on it: Listening is very important and especially to those who are thoughtful enough to give you constructive criticism. It is easy and pretty ego-inflating when everyone is telling you how awesome you are but make sure the constructive criticism never goes unheard.
  27. Writing helps. Write your goals, reminders, tasks, dreams, and plans, and write everything. Writing helps your subconscious program your mind in much a better way than if you just keep thinking of those.
  28. Dreams are always out of your comfort zone, so you need to step out of it.
  29. Sow the seeds of opportunity. You know the old saying, do a good deed every day; I have a similar philosophy about opportunities. Make sure you seed at least one opportunity a day, it could be searching and connecting with a potential client or it could be connecting two people in your network who you think can benefit from each other’s connection, or anything these are seeds of opportunities, they’ll fruit in future.
  30. Learning never stops. I love to learn and share what I learn. Please take a minute or two to share your lessons and help me learn more

Learn: 10 Extraordinary Means for Learning to Learn

Herbert Gerjuoy once said: Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read: he will be the man who has not learned how to learn. What is your choice for the top learning issues of the day? Learning to learn is our choice. Taught in schools? We have not found many that teach it. We were very surprised by this finding.

learn
Learning objectives.

Check out our thoughts on team leverage.
In earlier times, perhaps several generations or so ago, our great grandparents and their parents faced an entirely different problem of learning to learn. In their environment, both generations shared the same problems and basically the same solutions. Learning in this environment was a lot simpler. It was simply a matter of transferring information (facts) from the older generation to the newer one.
Related: How Good Is your Learning from Failure?
Enter the industrial age where the world had begun to change very rapidly and grow in complexity. Old solutions, old facts, were no longer enough. Learning needed to change to keep up, switching from learning old information to discovering and understanding new information and solutions. Clearly, a paradigm shift had begun.  No longer dumping facts into a learner’s memory was going to be adequate.
Here is another valuable resource.
In the information and internet ages, learning problems have gotten much worse. The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years … doubling. We are clearly living in exponential times.
So how do we improve our ability in learning to learn in such a complex environment? We have defined 10 ways we believe are essential in achieving this goal. Let’s discuss each of these:

learn by doing
Learn by doing like Da Vinci.

Learn by doing

Most of what we know, we didn’t learn in school. We learned it in the real world, actually doing, not reading or listening to about doing. Confucius once said: I hear, I forget. I see I remember. I do, I understand.
He appreciated that being a creator was the best way to learn. Make your learning be active learning and be creators as often as possible. We believe this the most critical of the 10 ways to improve your learning.
Watch this short video to learn more …

 

Define upskill … create curiosity

If we have the guts to think about what we don’t know, confuse our learners, perplex them, and evoke real questions, we can create curiosity. This curiosity can be used to tailor robust methods of blended learning. Curiosity must come first. Questions can be fantastic windows to great learning, but not the other way around. Build your skill of curiosity … it is a necessity for good learning.

practice imagination
Always practice imagination.

Learn and practice imagination

Albert Einstein once said: Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you anywhere.
He understood the complexities of the world today required imagination for the discovery of new ideas and solutions. Imagination requires lots of practice; it doesn’t just happen on its own. So start working on this skill to add it to improve your learning.

How Can People Spot Intelligent Person Characteristics?

 

Observe and reflect

By observing life’s experiences around us and careful reflection of what we observe, we can gather facts and information to learn new solutions and methods. Increase your ability to ‘connect the dots’ around you. Take notes and revisit them often.
Embrace the mess of complex learning. In this new world of continuous learning, we are all teachers as well as learners. We realize learning is often an ugly task. Accept that the process of trial and error is an acceptable learning process.

  

Employ novelty

Our brains pay more attention to things in the environment that are new to our experience. So, seek out as many new experiences to try as you can handle and become an explorer.

Learning how to learn strategies … accept failure

We need to be learners that ask hard questions and explore what might work and what won’t. As a learner, we need to accept failure so we can use often times messy trial and error. Make failures and mistakes as learning sources (and the mistakes and failures need not be yours).

 

Use emotion

We as learners respond to things around ourselves that elicit emotion. Put emotional stories to work to create a stimulus-response learning process. Listen for inspirational and emotional stories and use them as experiential learning for yourself and those around you.

 

Explain the meaning

In learning, we respond best when we determine things are that are most meaningful. Find the motivational meanings that provide the meanings that motivate us to dig on.

 

Learning to learn … change and contrast

People learn new things best when they are in contrast to other information in the environment or to things that are in contrast to previous experiences. To improve learning, work on your experience of change … study trends and study changes going on around you. Step out into the unknown as often as you can.

 

Connect and collaborate

Connecting with others in the internet world is a great way to share ideas and solicit feedback, new views, and ideas. Once you have found some interesting connections who share goals, try a collaboration project or two. Collaboration is an excellent way to expand learning in a sharing environment.

 

Here is an example of learning we came across recently:

In 2009, scientists from the University of Louisville and MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences conducted a study of 48 children between the ages of 3 and 6. The kids were presented with a toy that could squeak, play notes, and reflect images, among other things. For one set of children, a researcher demonstrated a single attribute and then let them play with the toy. Another set of students was given no information about the toy. This group played longer and discovered an average of six attributes of the toy; the group that was told what to do discovered only about four. A similar study at UC Berkeley demonstrated that kids given no instruction were much more likely to come up with novel solutions to a problem.
Several of our ways to improve learning to learn methods in this example, isn’t there? It’s amazing what we can come up with when we put our minds to it, isn’t it?
awesome content
If we as learners embrace the new paradigm of active learning, curiosity, and imagination, we could offer a spark to others around us and may even build a new movement.
 
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
 
It’s up to you to keep improving your abilities for learning to learn. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
 
It’s up to you to keep improving your continuous learning from all around in your environment.
 
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
 
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on learning from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
The Nine Most Valuable Secrets of Writing Effective Copy
How Good Is your Learning from Failure?
Continuous Learning Holds the Keys to Your Future Success
Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

A Story about Living – One Told by a Six Year Old Boy About his Dying Dog

We love a good story. How about you? Here is one of our all-time favorites told by a six-year-old boy. It is a story about living. Here it is:

story about living
A story about living.

Story about living

Being a veterinarian, I had been called to examine a ten-year-old Irish wolfhound named Belker. The dog’s owners, Ron, his wife Lisa, and their little boy Shane, were all very attached to Belker, and they were hoping for a miracle.
I examined Belker and found he was dying of cancer. I told the family we couldn’t do anything for Belker and offered to perform the euthanasia procedure for the old dog in their home.

story
A story about living.

As we made arrangements, Ron and Lisa told me they thought it would be good for six-year-old Shane to observe the procedure. They felt as though Shane might learn something from the experience.
The next day, I felt the familiar catch in my throat as Belker’s family surrounded him. Shane seemed so calm, petting the old dog for the last time, that I wondered if he understood what was going on. Within a few minutes, Belker slipped peacefully away.
The little boy seemed to accept Belker’s transition without any difficulty or confusion. We sat together for a while after Belker’s Death, wondering aloud about the sad fact that animal lives are shorter than human lives.
Shane, who had been listening quietly, piped up, ”I know why.”
Startled, we all turned to him. What came out of his mouth next stunned me. I’d never heard a more comforting explanation.
He said, ”People are born so that they can learn how to live a good life — like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?” The Six-year-old continued,
”Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don’t have to stay as long.”
Another story for you: The Story of Tank the Dog or Is It, Reggie?

comforting explanation
A comforting explanation.

Remember, if a dog was the teacher you would learn things like:
When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.
Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride.
Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.
Stretch before rising.
Run, romp, and play daily.
Appreciate attention and let people touch you.
Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.
On warm days, stop to lie on your back on the grass.
Delight in the joys of simple things … like a nice long walk.
Be loyal.
When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by, and nuzzle them gently.

Bottom line:

There comes a time in life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh, forget the bad, and focus on the good.

 

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Need some help in capturing more customers from your marketing or advertising campaigns? Looking for creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential customers?
 
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your enthusiasm?
Do you have a lesson about making your motivation better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
 
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change.  We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
  
More inspirational stories from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
A Story About Living as Told by a Six-Year-Old Boy
Great Stories and Storytelling Can Have a Very Healing Influence
Never Give Up Your Dreams
Surprising Story Lessons on Making a Difference
 
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.