Recently in Life Category

Best advice I have ever read about New Year Resolutions, by Jim Collins, author of mega best seller From Good To Great.

This is from The War of Art, an extremely interesting book I just finished reading by Steven Pressfield. It took me, like a good book should, to the time where I was nervously thinking about doing something, anything to get out of my job in the retail business. Standing behind the sales counter, waiting for customers to walk though the doors to buy cell phones, I hated the all glass walls that made up the storefront. You could see the traffic passing by on the always busy Washtenaw Avenue in Ypsilanti / Ann Arbor area and I always said to myself, that this is not a car that is passing by the store, but my life passing by. Best years of my life, 25-30, working for almost nothing, 12-14 hour shifts and in the end nothing to show for all those days: no skills, no money, no happiness.

But my choices were limited and I just played the card I got dealt as best as I could. What amazes me are the folks surrounding me who apparently did not had to move 9,000 miles away, speak a different language, learn how to drive a car etc. but yet they still stand frozen in unhappiness and not getting their dreams started. I used to think it is fear. Fear of losing money. Fear of losing respect in front of your loved ones. Fear of giving up what is known to you in exchange of learning and doing new things ("What! Why do I need to learn about Facebook? I have business cards already.").

Here is something I recently did. I wrote down everything I used to be scared to do around five years ago. I mean shaking-like-a-leaf-what-if kind of fear. What is on that list is not important but you might be interested to know that I have done and still doing every single thing on that list. Not even one missed. Also every single item crossed off on that list has brought an increase in my income and net worth. That was strange to read.

I really did not get it how can this be till I read The War of Art. Pressfield writes that the fear we have is actually a lighthouse, a guide to what we should be doing, and preferably as quickly as possible because that is where our happiness is. Owning a business, doing real estate deals, writing a book, helping others achieve their dreams ahead of ours... whatever is the thing that scares us the most is our true calling. What you and I should be doing every day. Starting from today. Not tomorrow. Not the weekend. Today.

Pressfield begins with "There is a secret that real writers know and wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance."

How many times have you thought about starting a business, late at night when you just could not sleep even when your job was starting only a few hours away, only to put away that dream with the rising of the sun by telling yourself, "I will start looking into it by the weekend" or "Lets plan it and I will launch it once the recession starts to end." How many times did you think about investing in real estate, about actually picking up the phone and making an offer or going and meeting an REO broker and then said to yourself, " Lets wait till next week when my schedule is a little light." Or " I can't do it right now, my kids are too young. Once they grow up a little I will have more time to go and look at houses."

That little voice you keep hearing in your head. That is not logic. That is Resistance and it is out to get you and your dreams and kill them slowly with great precision. Resistance is not happy when you try to improve yourself or try to find happiness in what you want to do. What Resistance wants from you is you to do nothing and put away your dreams of owning your business, investing in real estate, finding pleasure in what you do to make money. Resistance wants you content outside and miserable inside. Resistance wants you stay in the job you hate, making the money you know in your heart is nothing to what you are truly worth, doing things you don't care about anymore. You are not letting Resistance win in 2010... are you?

I stumbled into a former employee of mine recently. When I hired her, despite some objections from my staff back in 2003 - she was waitressing in a Coney Island. I don't even think she bought a resume to the interview. I hired her anyway because she was working 10 hours per day for almost nothing and her work ethic and her cheerfulness even in that tough job impressed me. She turned out to be a good hiring decision. Quick learner and hard worker. Fast to think and react to any crises that came our way.

Once in a while we ended up sharing a meal together on the road and although it served me no purpose, I told her that she should really consider going back to school. She just looked at me and laughed. She was 33, with two kids, about to get married again and the mere thought of going back to school with a full life and not too much money in the bank sounded ridiculous to her.

We ended up parting company sometime later and I forgot all about her until recently. Turns out she did remember our conversations. Got married. Kids got a little older and she dusted her brains off, got a nighttime job and went back to school at 37. She will become a nurse in two and half years. She gave me credit for ignition. I told her that she has nobody to give credit to but herself.

In the blink of an eye, she is going to go from working for minimum wage to a respectable profession with good income, benefits and a future. There is no luck at play here. There is no talent at play here. Just determination, a plan and action to take out what is not to her liking in her life anymore and put in place a future that she knows she wants in her life. Change, manufactured by her.

During my first year in USA, I met a professor from Bangladesh, who was working in the local Meijer in Ypsilanti at that time. I used to go there, late at night to pick up groceries. The buses ran till midnight so I could leave work at 11 sometimes, run to Meijer and take the bus home before they shut down the route for the night. We talked sometimes and he was an angry little man. He had a useless PhD that was unable to get him a decent job. Somebody told him that doctors get paid well in Michigan.

At the age of 56, he applied for Medical school. Failed to get into Wayne State. Applied to the medical school in the Caribbean who has a more relaxed admissions policy. Got in and moved to the Bahamas for a couple of years. Finished school, came back and did his residency here and by the time it was all said and done, at the tender age of 61, he was making $110,000 per year as a M.D. Just did not like what he was doing and how his life was looking standing eight hours on his feet at the Meijer on Carpenter Road in Ypsilanti. So he decided to make a change.

Once again, he did not wait for the auto sector to stage a comeback, for Jenny to figure out Economics 101, for Obama's stimulus package to launch, for the bailout funds to reach him - he just manufactured change in his life. Investigated his options, made a plan, and got started doing things (moving to Bahamas, going to school) that would bring the change in his and his family's life that he wanted to see.

Change, made in America, manufactured by him and her alone. Very very few things in this amazing country are out of your reach. Despite of what you might hear or made to believe. As long as you know that you are the founder, architect and executor of all the change in your life. You can have whatever you want. Believe what you may. Those are the lies. This is the truth.

"The biggest life lesson I have learned is that you have to discipline yourself to do the work. If you want to accomplish something, you can't spend time hemming and hawing and making excuses. You actually have to do it. I still have to go home every single day, know where I am, what I'm doing - and include 45 minutes of practice on my clarinet, because I want to play. I want to write, too, so I get up, go in, close the door and write. You can't string paper clips and get a pad ready and play around."

- Woody Allen

Paul Newman was describing the secret behind his 50 year old marriage to Joan Woodward, a strange thing in Hollywood. I say his words also apply to people who start their own businesses. Who can really explain why we do, what we do? We, the true believers, who get up one day and decide, without paying any attention to what is going on in the world, in the stock market, in the economy, to start a business. I never investigated what the economy or Dow Jones was doing on January 10th, 2001 when I incorporated my business.

I would make an argument that is probably dumb. That one should take careful consideration of all the things that is happening in the world, in your industry, what your competition is doing, what the forecasters of the world are saying about what might, could, should, would happen tomorrow... but that is not the way the entrepreneur heart works.

I know it should sound strange and disturbingly reckless to somebody who does not belong to our tribe but it is what it is. You get up one morning and just know, that you have to try it, that you would not be able to go another day if you did not give it a shot.

Could you lose money? Sure. Could you spend all this time learning about a business only to discover that it is not for you? Happens all the time. Could you completely flop and risk your significant other, friends and family snicker at you, both in your face and behind your back? Happened to me several times. Will somebody who you respect, will take you in a corner and whisper to you give up that really you are a good person but nobody thinks this is a good idea. Very possible.

I have noticed that if I tell somebody who is an entrepreneur about something that I tried and it did not work out... their face becomes excited, their eyes glow with happiness and they cannot just stop smiling. I have just made their day. Proved to them that their strategy of not-doing-anything-because-something-bad-may-happen-and-I-might-hurt-myself is valid, that the world is a dangerous place where you can lose money / credit / reputation / respect of your loved ones if you go out and try something new that you have not and you may fail.

I don't mind. Really. They are right in their own way and for their own life. They don't get to taste the bitter defeat of hearing 'NO", of seeing a deal fall apart for no logical reason, to try out a new marketing campaign and to see it fall flat on its face, to put out a new website that doesn't convince even one person to do business with you.

They are right in staying behind the walls and not venturing out. But they, who don't belong to our tribe, also don't get to share the insane joy of seeing a business grow, they don't get to open up their emails and read the testimonials of happy clients, the rush of seeing a tactic work perfectly after 10 tweaks and knowing that we did this, inch by inch, all by ourselves.

Lust operates without reason. Patience requires planting seeds every day. Lust defies explanation. Patience and everyday boring progress silences all skeptics eventually.

50 year marriages are not easy. Getting rich is not easy. Running a business is not easy. Raising children is not easy.

Since we are at it... name one thing that is worthwhile doing in a short life which is easy?

A very good friend of Nora's is going through some difficult times right now regarding money. She came to our house, three months ago, and had a frank discussion with us. Wants desperately to get out of her current situation. Wants to make more money than the $8 per hour she is making right now. No skills. No education. No cash. Has good credit though.

Based on what she was telling me about herself, I came up with a very low cost, start from home type of a business for her, which I know for a fact, is working for several people outside Michigan. Cost of startup was less than $3,000. She was nervous about putting that on her credit cards, "What if I lose that money if my business does not works out? What would my husband say?"

I told her that we would help her, write her a check for $3,000 as an interest free loan, would loan her my assistant to do all the grunt work for a month on my payroll and actually sit down and write her the first 30 day plan. Tears of happiness were streaming down her face when she left. I emailed her a list of around 10 Things-To-Do-Before-Launch the next day and told her to call Nora once she was ready and we will pull the trigger.

That was almost three months ago. So far no phone call. No email. According to Nora, she is working, in a different job right now, night shift, 10pm to 6am, five days a week right now for $9 hour at Wal-Mart while taking care of her two kids during the day.

Why?

There is thought that owns her, despite all the resources, help, knowledge offered to her, which says, "I will fail, lose money and my credit score and my family especially my brother and sister will laugh at me." That thought owns her. Completely. Buy books, go to seminars, watch The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch as he lines up one successful entrepreneur after another five weeks a night, buy and read the entire Rich Dad series, hang out at blogs on small businesses and attend every single workshop SBA puts out - it does not matter and will not matter till the day she realizes that she has a master and unless she get rids of that, on her own, there is no small business for her, only long tiring nights refilling shelves at Wal-Mart.

I have been asked, so many times, in the last 13 years in Michigan on "When did you come to USA?" Nobody ever asked me, the much better question, "How long did you planned this? How long did you carry this insane dream of coming to America while living in a third world country, 9000 miles away from Detroit?" I had a voice back then too that said to me, that I need to get to USA, that I will get there one day, that it is my destiny, "little" obstacles such as money or education be dammned. That thought of leaving where I was born and coming to America for a better life, had complete ownership of me for a very long time.

The things you own, end up owning you. TD was talking about hard stuff here - cars, houses, couches, clothes etc. But this applies to thoughts also, especially the ones we all carry in our heads, some times by choice, some times without knowing.

It is worth sitting sometime quietly and write down the conversation that you have with yourself all the time. The false assumptions made true by years of practice, inside your head. You don't have to tell anybody but it is good to know, at least for your own self-knowledge if there is a thought, that you own, which actually owns you.

I am busy.

That is what I told two people at a meeting when they are inquiring about how my day was going. It is a whirl of meetings, writing, phone calls, incoming emails, shaking hands, hiring, managing, and connecting people and dots together. I told Nora that I want to work 7 days a week for the next 24 months. She is not too happy about it. But she understands the importance of what is happening in Michigan and in the broader USA markets right now.

Chinese saying, the first one to ascend to the Dragon Throne always has bloodied hands. I am a first generation immigrant to USA. Nobody standing behind me to catch me if I fall. 24 months. Work seven days. Every day. Throw dirt on the wall and see what sticks. Not for the faint of heart but I have no right to anything that I have not pursed and pursued with bleed-through-my-eyes kind of work. So the question you might be thinking is....

Risk of failure? What is that? Failure is just a word. That is all. Friends will laugh at me? I will get new friends. Significant other think you are nuts. Dump them. Make your fortune and then get back with them with a pre-nup. They will love you even more when you have more to spend on them. Might lose money? They print new dollar bills every day at US Treasury. I will go and get some more. Wasted time walking on the wrong road? Hopefully I was smart enough and not too dumb to pick pointers that will help you when you do find the right road for you. Partners did not do what they were supposed to do? Possible but not life threatening.

When you are in a hurry, and the clock is ticking against you - the smartest thing to do is to do a lot of things and see what sticks. Ask your partners to do lot of things and see what sticks. Talk to a whole lot of people and see who responds. Put your business information (not business cards) and what you can do for them in lots of hands and see what happens. Launch, print, distribute, and tweak on the fly. It might sounds emotionally disturbing but that is how you speed up everything.

Make no mistakes about it: there is an enormous amount of bad news that you and I have already heard in Michigan. Nothing you or I can do about it. How we choose to react to it is entirely up to us. Putting things in motion to gather private money, buy apartments, launch a businesses - your reaction is entirely up to you.

Sitting out of the game is an option also and probably for some people it is a good option. Not for me. I was a lousy student all my school years but I have always been an avid reader of history and I know for a fact that fortunes are made during recessions. Not by the rising tide that lifts all boats but by entrepreneurs who find opportunity while others are heading for storm shelters.

Find which option works for you.

So if you are wondering how my day was today?

My life is a blur and I love it.