Sunday 14 August 2022

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so

There is a story, Sufi in origin I believe, about a poor farmer who saved for years to afford a horse to help with his farm work. His fellow impoverished villagers were incredibly impressed when the horse arrived and, with just a little bit of jealousy in their tone, observed how good it was that his and his family’s life would improve. Surprisingly to the villagers on hearing this the farmer did not entirely agree, and simply said “Not good, not bad, just is.”

Only a single day passed and the horse somehow managed to run away. Aware of the money invested in this fine animal the villagers were shocked by this turn of events and attempted to console him for his loss. The farmer however once again said nothing more than the simple statement, “Not good, not bad, just is.”

A couple of days later the horse returned with another horse following, which remaining unclaimed, became the farmer’s property. The villagers could not believe this farmer’s good fortune. Once more the farmer simply assured all those he spoke to with, “Not good, not bad, just is.” 

Just a few more days passed and the farmer’s son fell off the horse and broke his leg – preventing him from helping to bring in the harvest. Who would have seen that coming, thought the villagers, what bad luck! The farmer of course simply stated his perspective, “Not good. Not bad. Just is.”

The very next day, the army recruiters came to town, drafting every young man from the village, except the son of the farmer – who, of course, could not walk as he had just broken his leg … 


It has to be said however that there is a difference in hearing a fictional parable with a lesson to share and understanding the point being made on an intellectual level, and, on the other hand, actually integrating that learning into one’s own life. Fortunately, in my case, I was given the opportunity to do so, and not over a number of days, but over a couple of hours. What follows is a true story. Note also that I am not saying, “a true story”, in the Hollywood sense of “based on a true story". All of the following happened exactly as described. I will allow the reader to interpolate “Not good. Not bad. Just is” as they read along, at the appropriate junctures. 

Many years ago I travelled overland to India. Along the way I found myself in Eastern Turkey about to board a bus to the Iranian border. Apart from the fact that we all knew there was an upcoming Iranian revolution at the time, what was really bad was that I had an exceedingly dire case of diarrhoea. Although I did not know exactly how long the bus journey was going to be, I suspected it would be at least an hour, and possibly a lot longer. The good news was that I manged to get hold of some loperamide to control the diarrhoea. We set off towards the border post. I should add that I was travelling at this point with some English guys that I had met in Istanbul making the same trip. One hour passed and there was no sign of us getting anywhere near the border post which was not great. However it was at this point that I realised the really bad news that the loperamie had in fact just bunged up and backed up some intensely insistent diarrhoea. So I had ended up with diarrhoea and constipation simultaneously. Another 20 minutes passed and I couldn’t take it anymore. I walked up to the front of the bus and fortunately managed to convince the driver to stop and let this crazy foreigner off in the middle of nowhere. Since I had constipation as well as diarrhoea I knew this would not be quick so I had no choice but to let the bus driver know just to drive on and leave me there, hoping that my travelling companions would look after my bags stowed in the baggage compartment once they arrived at the destination. Did I say fortunately? Did I mention that this was Eastern Turkey where, at that time at least, the countryside was known for having the odd bandit or two to be roaming about. Maybe not so good. 

For the next 10 minutes or so I had the opportunity to admire the beauty of the open countryside around me, squatting at the side of the road. There were beautiful snow-capped mountains in the distance which reminded me of Switzerland. The road beside me was straight as far as the eye could see in both directions. Other than that, there were just some open fields on either side of the straight road. Perhaps some of them were used for agriculture because the ones directly across from where I was had furrows, made solid by the lowering temperatures as autumnal weather was taking hold. It was good when I finally manged to do what I had to do and could get back on the road. Back on the road, to hitchhike in bandit country.

All the time that I had been at the side of the road I had not seen any traffic which could reasonably considered to be not so good news. However, not long after I started standing there I was fortunate to see a flatbed truck coming down the road going in the direction I wanted to go. And the really good news was that it stopped and I was told to jump in the back. As well at two guys in the cabin there was already another guy sitting on the back of the truck and I jumped in to join him. Looking around the best I could make out was that it was a road maintenance crew. Given the possible really bad scenarios that had entered my mind as I had been standing there at the side of the road, this was a really good break. However this thought lasted only 5 minutes as, after the truck had continued its journey down the road for those few minutes, it suddenly veered off the side of the road and started crossing the ploughed up field. Given this was no longer the way I wanted to go this was not so good. And exactly where were we going, juddering across these fields away from the road? After a couple of minutes the truck stopped and the driver’s mate got out of the cabin. I have to admit at this point some of the bad scenarios did once more crowd into my mind. Fortunately the next thing I saw was him stepping down into a gulley – to gather firewood. Ok, breathe, that’s good. It was especially good to see the truck turn round and drive back towards the road again. What happened next however, was that, half way to the road, the driver suddenly cut his engine. And the next thing I see is the driver’s mate emerging from the cabin once more, but this time holding a shotgun, and I notice for the first time the belt of shotgun cartridges hanging across his body. This was bad, really bad. 

Did time slow? Maybe. There did seem to be a frozen moment where the entire focus of my being was on the sight of this guy emerging from the truck and then crouching with a shotgun a few feet away from where I was sitting. Wait a minute. Crouching? Why was he crouching? It was at that point that I saw the ducks flying up and away from the side of the field, flying away to live another day. As was I. The driver’s mate turned and climbed back into the cabin, muttering at the driver – probably complaining that he did not stop quickly enough or something. The truck continued its journey back on to the road. It was really good to see that the truck turned once more down the road in the direction I wanted to go. But then, after another 10 minutes had passed the truck stopped again. This time opposite another truck that had come up the road in the opposite direction. At least this time the turn for the better had lasted all of 10 minutes. Not so good, once more, was that I was not making progress to my original destination and my bag with all of my possessions that was accompanying me on my journey to Iran and on to India. It was however good for my truck mates. They manged to exchange some unused cartridges for 2 ducks from their colleagues in the other truck. And only for a handful of cartridges, which might speak to the accuracy of their shooting when they do get a chance to take aim. 

Once more fortunately the stop was brief and off we went again – only to once more veer off the road shortly afterwards to stop just by the side of the road. The ducks came out. The brushwood came out. The retsina came out. It was picnic time! While it was really good that it was made clear that I was invited to join in on the feast, the down side was that this would keep me from getting back to my travelling companions and my baggage. So somewhat reluctantly I had to take my leave and get back on the road to continue hitchhiking. Once more fortune was on my side and another truck stopped to pick me up and this time, without interruption, took me to where I needed to go and a re-union with my belongings and my travelling companions. So that was good. With all that had transpired, at this point it occurred to me that the latter had just experienced yet another boring, not so good, lengthy bus journey while I, on the other hand, had undergone a short but intense real life adventure. And maybe had learned some personal lessons along the way? In conclusion, not so bad after all?

At the start of this tale, I made a reference to Sufism, a mystic branch of Islam, so let us conclude with another one. A famous Sufi teacher called Rumi once said, “From books and words come fantasy, and sometimes, from fantasy comes union.” In this case the fantasy is the phrase “Not good, not bad, just is.” So here is a question for you. Could this fantasy become a universal truth for you too, beyond the intellectual, beyond the rational? A truth that you could integrate into your life from this point on? That would be good, wouldn’t it?


Sunday 3 January 2016

Entrepreneurs Grow at Warp Speed – Part 5

By Steve Pavlina


Take command of your life

As an entrepreneur you decide which goals, projects, and opportunities to pursue. You don’t have to waste your time working hard to achieve someone else’s goals.

If you have ambitious dreams and if you like working on your own projects, you’ll probably enjoy running your own business. There’s nothing quite so sweet as spending decades of your life setting and achieving your own goals — and getting paid to do it.

As an entrepreneur you can guide your business to help you achieve your personal goals. Many years ago one of my goals was to write a book and to see it selling in bookstores. Thanks to my personal growth business, that goal pretty much fell into my lap. The business made the goal easy to accomplish, much easier than if I’d tried to accomplish that goal on a purely personal level. It was as easy as saying yes when a publisher offered me a book deal. No agents. No submissions. No rejections. That offer only happened because of my business.

Another personal goal was to travel in Europe, which included subgoals like exploring Paris, London, Berlin, and Amsterdam. What does that have to do with my business? Very little at first glance. But thanks in large part to my business, I’ve visited at least a dozen European cities in eight different countries. Thanks to my business, I get invitations to speak at other people’s events in Europe, and they cover the travel expenses. Once I’m in Europe, I usually stay for a while and explore. I could have achieved this goal on a personal level, but it would have been more costly and difficult. With my business it’s as easy as saying yes to an invitation.

You won’t always be able to align a personal goal with your business, but at least as an entrepreneur, you can prevent your business from getting in the way of your other goals. My computer games business didn’t help me run the L.A. Marathon or train in martial arts, but at least it didn’t get in my way. If I wanted to train in the morning, afternoon, or evening, I could do that.

If you’ve never had the freedom to pick your own projects, let me tell you that it’s even more wonderful than you realize. It’s easier to do your best work when you can pick your projects. You can favor projects that you’re motivated to do, that fit your strengths, and that align with your personal growth interests. Many people find themselves working harder as entrepreneurs than as employees, and one reason is the motivational boost that comes from picking your own projects.

The freedom to choose your own work gives you command over your life. No one tells you what to do… or if they do, you can ignore them. This may seem like a lot of responsibility, and it is, but this isn’t Spiderman. You’ll get used to calling the shots within the first year or two. Then it will just seem normal to have command over your time, and it will probably bother you when you don’t.

When your motivation and energy is surging, you can hit the accelerator and work longer hours. At other times when you’re feeling too distracted to work productively, you can intentionally take time off to recharge and renew.

Many entrepreneurs don’t work steady 40-hour weeks. They may put in 60+ hours one week and less than 25 hours the next. Entrepreneurs often adapt their workflow to suit their energy and motivation. Some love to maintain steady pacing week after week, but many enjoy working in powerful bursts of enthusiastic effort followed by extra downtime for rest and rejuvenation. Many entrepreneurs like to switch things up for extra variety, sometimes working with a steady pacing and other times cycling between bursts and rest.

When you’re in command, you no longer have to follow anything resembling corporate rules or standards. If you want to work in the middle of the night, you can do that. If you like sipping martinis while you work, put a bar in your office. If you want to exercise in the late morning or early afternoon, go ahead. If you want to work every other day, every other week, or every other month, enjoy yourself. You’re in command.

If you like variety, you can select a business model that lets you work wherever you desire. If you feel like working at a coffee shop, grab your tech and go. If you want to climb a mountain in the morning, work on the mountaintop, and climb down in time for dinner, you can do that.

If you slack off and mess around too much, you’ll hurt your business. Otherwise if you can find creative ways to be productive, it’s all fair game. There are many ways to be productive that you’ll never find in an employee handbook. If you have such a handbook, burn it before you start your own business.

After you’ve been an entrepreneur for a while, being in command of your life will seem so normal and natural that you’ll wonder how you ever could have taken orders from someone else. You may even want to rescue more people from that fate. Or you could enslave them to come work for you instead. Your choice.


Get paid to grow

Business pays you to grow. The smarter you become, the more you can apply what you learn to your business, so your own learning and growth can translate into higher income.

If you want to give yourself a raise, you can do that, but you’ll probably need to grow your business to make that possible. This usually means that you’ll have to grow too, such as by gaining new knowledge, skills, and habits.

What’s especially wonderful about this is that since your business benefits from your personal growth, your business can justify covering many of your personal growth expenses, such as your educational and training expenses.

I can’t say what the tax laws are like in other countries, but in the USA the general principle is that your deductible expenses must have a reasonable business purpose. If you’re spending money with the intention that it will eventually help your business, such as by reducing costs or increasing revenue, then in many cases that expenditure will be deductible. There are many nuances to this — business meals are only half deductible, for instance — but if you spend a lot on personal growth already, it’s downright foolish not to have your own business. Even a small side business could be deducting those expenses, meaning that you’d be paying for them with pre-tax dollars instead of after-tax dollars. This is like receiving a permanent discount on your personal growth expenses for the rest of your life. What growth enthusiast wouldn’t want that?

One reason I decided to run a personal growth business is that I was already spending significant sums of money on my growth and learning each year, such as by purchasing books, audio programs, seminars, and training programs. By creating a for-profit business that could financially benefit from these ongoing investments, I turned a lot of otherwise personal expenses into tax-deductible ones for my business. This also allowed me to justify spending more money on my personal growth since much of the time, those expenses could easily be justified as being financially beneficial for the business.

Even if I spend hundreds of dollars on supplies and materials to research and write a single article for my blog, the extra traffic and income generated by that one extra article will likely justify the expense, even if the article isn’t directly income-generating itself.

What are you already spending money on now? Technology? Travel? Fitness equipment? Please tell me you’re not spending thousands of dollars on purchases with after-tax dollars that you could easily be deducting if you had a small business aligned with your hobby.

Do you realize that your business doesn’t even have to be financially successful for you to make these deductions? You do have to try to earn a profit, so your business can’t be a sham, but if you try to make money and don’t earn as much as you’d like, you can still deduct many more expenses than you could without a business. Even when you have a bad year and lose money, you can typically punt your loss to a future year and use it to offset your income during a good year.

Tax laws can be extremely biased. In the USA you’re going to be penalized with extra taxes for earning regular W2 employee income. As an employee, you pay the highest taxes and enjoy the fewest deductions relative to your pay. Running a business makes it easier to redirect some of the money that would otherwise be going to taxes and to reinvest it back in yourself.

One reason for these biased laws is that governments generally want to encourage more people to start businesses. Another reason is that businesses have the resources to lobby governments to bend the tax laws to favor businesses (sometimes just big business, but often to the benefit all businesses). If and when your business makes money, you’re going to generate a lot more tax revenue anyway, especially if you hire other people. And hopefully your business will create other positive ripples for society as well.

Another unfortunate reason for this bias is that regular employees are generally the least financially savvy group in the business world, so they get beat up the most by the tax code. They pay higher taxes than necessary because they don’t know any better. The game is rigged against them, and they don’t even realize it. If these same people did nothing more than start a side business, they could run many expenses through it and save a lot of money on taxes every year for the rest of their lives.

Explaining what you can and can’t legally deduct is beyond my ability. In fact, it’s beyond the ability of even experienced accountants and IRS agents. That’s because the U.S. tax code is so ridiculously labyrinthine that no human being actually understands it. Even when you ask qualified experts, you’re going to get different answers. Why such complexity? An overly complicated tax code benefits large businesses that have the resources to mine it for endless deductions, so they can deduct almost everything they buy — a private helipad, massage therapists, launch parties, alcohol, etc.

I decide what to deduct and what not to deduct based on following the law as best I understand it (such as knowing that business meals are only 50% deductible), and then within the law, I apply the standard of reasonableness. I ask, “Is it reasonable for the business to cover this expense based on the expected benefits to the business?” Every year or so, I discover new things that I could have been legally deducting, if only I’d known better.

Another simple rule of thumb you can use is to ask, “Would a big corporation cover this expense for their employees?” If a big corporation would deduct it, a small business can often deduct it too. This isn’t always true because some deductions only kick in for businesses of a certain size, but for smaller purchases it’s often a reasonable standard to use.

With the right business model, you’ll surely find a way to expense that helipad you’ve always wanted.


Explore your strengths

Many people have unusual combinations of skills that make them less desirable as employees because employers don’t know how to extract the value from those combinations. A hospital that wants to hire a doctor might not care that the doctor is also an accomplished musician and architectural engineer; the hospital only cares about the medical subset of the doctor’s skills. Real human beings aren’t usually so mono-skilled, but many corporations treat us as if we are.

As an entrepreneur, you’re free to pursue opportunities that leverage your unique package of strengths as far as you can push them. The same qualities that might be useless as an employee could be turned into business advantages.

I know a lot about personal growth, but so do many other people. I’m an author and professional speaker, but that’s commonplace in my field. What’s less common is being proficient in writing, speaking, and computer programming at the same time. Sometimes being able to code my way out of a problem is really helpful, and I shudder to think of what a pain it would be to solve certain problems if I didn’t know how to program.

There’s a tendency in business to try to run your operation the same way everyone else does, which is generally a mistake because then you aren’t differentiating yourself much. It’s more intelligent — and often more lucrative — to draw upon your other strengths to give you an edge that others don’t have. This can be difficult to do as an employee, but entrepreneurs have the flexibility and freedom to do this well. A good example is Steve Jobs using what he learned in a calligraphy class to give the original Mac different fonts, which helped differentiate the Mac from other personal computers.

As an entrepreneur you’ll connect the dots between your skills in surprising ways, thereby gaining access to opportunities and experiences that would otherwise be inaccessible. This can enrich your life tremendously.


Explore your values

Building a business is like creating a work of art. As you paint your business, you also paint yourself.

Obviously it’s good for your business to turn a profit. But for an experienced entrepreneur, making money is often the easy part, not to mention one of the most boring. The bigger question is: What do I really want to build?

Lots of people will tell you what you should build. You may have some shouldsof your own. But you’ll still have plenty of freedom to choose your own brush strokes.

If you want your business location to be filled with unicorns and rainbows, you can decorate it however you like. If you want to run a carbon neutral business, make it so. If you want to create an all-vegan version of Costco, please invite me to your grand opening.

You can design your business to focus on making money above all else, or you can create a purpose-driven one with a mission statement that makes you cry.

You can build a business that’s an island and work alone, or you can go poly and build a network of partnerships.

You can use your business to learn, grow, create, and explore as much as you want and in whichever direction appeals to you. You can floor the accelerator when it feels good, and you can hit the brakes when you need to slow down.

Business is full of value-based decisions. You’ll need to decide when to work hard and when to rest, when to pursue a timely opportunity and when to stick to your original plans, when to seek help and when to solve problems alone, etc. Facing such decisions in seemingly endless variations will help you explore, understand, and refine your values. After a few decades as an entrepreneur, you’ll have a strong sense of what it means to be you, and you’ll probably like the result.

www.stevepavlina.com

Sunday 27 December 2015

Entrepreneurs Grow at Warp Speed – Part 4

By Steve Pavlina


Overcome limited thinking

When you run your own business, you’ll see how your thoughts and beliefs impact your business results. Your personal limitations will limit what your business can do. The motivation to grow and improve your business helps you get your own beliefs in line since it can be painful to see your own beliefs holding your business back. Once you have some customers, they’ll encourage you to push through your personal limits.

Last week someone who’s been reading this series asked me if it’s possible to start a business when you’re broke.

Is it possible to travel to another country? Is it possible to learn to drive an automobile? Is it possible to read the entire Harry Potter series?

If you’re asking “is it possible” for people to do something that’s been done millions of times before, then I would have to say yes.

How many millions of times have people started businesses while broke or in debt? Being broke can be one of the best times to start a business since you have little or nothing to lose. If you fail, you’ll still be broke, and you can try again.

In some ways business is the great equalizer. Your potential customers probably don’t care how you started. They care about whether your business adds value to their lives. They may care about the impact you’re having on the planet. I’d say you’re more likely to receive extra praise for starting your business while broke than if you started out wealthy. People like seeing underdogs succeed.

Entrepreneurs get busy solving problems. If you like solving problems, your business will provide you with an endless stream of interesting problems to solve.

To think like an entrepreneur, take all your “can I…” questions, and put the word “how” in front of them:

  • How can I start a business while broke?
  • How can I overcome a weak education?
  • How can I motivate myself to work hard?


“Can” questions make sense when you’re referring to things humanity has never done before, like Can we safely send humans to Mars? or Can we build a teleportation device? or Can we make two good James Bond movies in a row?

It doesn’t make much sense to ask such questions for things we’ve already done millions of times before, like starting a business while broke. You can start a new business in an afternoon.


Learn to spend wisely

Business is a great teacher of money management skills. As an entrepreneur you’ll get to buy and sell more often, so you’ll train up faster in this area.

When you first start out as an entrepreneur, you’ll learn that you’re either too loose or too tight with your money.

Being too loose is usually the more common problem, especially if you have some funds to start with. During your first few years as an entrepreneur, you’ll probably make some questionable purchases by justifying them as good investments. I once bought a new $700 photocopier for my office, and we probably made less than 1000 photocopies per year. It’s easy to buy wasteful luxuries when you’re flush with cash, but when you go through several cycles of boom and bust, you’ll learn to be a little more conservative at the high points instead of spending money just because you can.

Being too tight with your money is also risky because you’ll pass up good opportunities to increase productivity. Some expenses that may seem unnecessary can actually pay nice dividends. Upgrading a sluggish computer is often a wise investment.

Earlier this year I replaced the lighting in my home office after stumbling upon some research suggesting that light in the bluish part of the spectrum is better for productivity. At first the results looked unnatural to me, like something from a sci-fi laboratory, but after several days I got used to it. The more bluish light makes me feel more awake, alert, and stimulated than the yellowish halogen lighting I used before. What seemed like a fluffy purchase turned out to be a worthwhile investment.

One of the most important lessons you’ll learn is how much to spend to get your business up and running. I recommend starting out very conservatively. It usually doesn’t make sense to spend much money until you test your business idea in the real world. Once you start making money, you can scale up your expenses as needed, but until that happens, treat every dollar as precious.

Having to make business purchasing decisions again and again — and dealing with the consequences of bad purchasing decisions repeatedly — will help refine your spending habits. You’ll learn to make wise investments without being wasteful.


Enjoy the light side, but protect yourself from the dark side

Generally speaking there are two ways for people to do business together:control or trust.

If you can control someone, you can simply dictate your terms, and they’ll do business with you.

There are two primary ways to control people: silver or lead. You can bribe people with silver, or you can threaten them with lead (bullets).

The promise of a reward or the possibility of becoming a bullet-ridden corpse can be very motivating. Once the silver or lead has been delivered though, the motivational effect fades. So the offer must remain active for business to continue.

Of course you can use silver and lead together. And of course there are many variations on this style. A company may try to control its employees by offering stock options for good performance combined with disciplinary measures for poor performance. That same company may use entirely different methods to motivate its customers, such as discounts or late fees.

The second way to do business is with trust. If you cannot control someone’s behavior, you can still do business with them on the basis of trust. This approach can work well in high-trust cultures where enough people have business-friendly values, such as believing that fair exchanges are good and that theft is wrong. In cultures with such values, business can flourish on the basis of trust.

In practice many small businesses begin with a trust-based model and then apply control-based strategies to the problem areas. More savvy entrepreneurs will anticipate where controls are likely to be needed and establish them early.

Suppose your business sells products online. You may offer products that provide good value at reasonable prices. You may present those products honestly. You may design the ordering process to be simple and straightforward. If all of the people who connect with your business are honest, you’ll probably do just fine. In the real world, however, such a business may attract a lot of fraud as well. Some people will try to devise ways to steal your products without actually paying for them, such as by using stolen credit cards. You’ll eventually learn to taper your optimism with some practical control strategies, such as by taking steps to reduce fraud.

How does this type of learning experience benefit your personal growth? Your business will give you more frequent exposure to the light side and the dark side of humanity. This can help you release some naiveté and develop a more realistic understanding of human behavior, which can save you a great deal of trouble elsewhere in life, such as in your personal relationships.

The more successful you become in business, the more you’ll expose yourself to the best and worst of humanity. Because of my business, I’ve had the opportunity to connect with some wonderful and amazing people, including my girlfriend since she and I met at one of my workshops. Simultaneously, my business has also increased my exposure to some of the worst aspects of humanity, such as receiving threats of violence from people I’ve never met.

The challenge is to mature beyond your child-like innocence without descending into paranoia and cynicism. Can you learn to protect yourself from the worst of humanity while still being able to access the best of humanity? That is no easy balancing act.


Understand human behavior

In business you can learn a great deal by running experiments that you can’t easily do in your personal life. In fact, such experimentation is expected, and people are generally pretty accepting of it as long as you don’t go crazy with it. You’ll learn a lot about human behavior along the way.

Business often rewards experimentation. Your first attempts at any policies or procedures will be guesses, and many of your guesses will be wrong. Once you have some customers, you can test other possibilities, and pretty soon you’ll improve upon your early guesses. You’ll discover better ways to generate sales, reduce expenses, prevent fraud, increase your productivity, and more.

I love to experiment in business because the results sometimes surprise me, and those surprises can give me deeper insights about human nature.

In my computer games business, I decided to test a money-back guarantee on all game purchases, which was unusual in the industry during the years I did it. It also seemed redundant since my games had free demos anyway. But I tested the idea and found that it worked well. Even with a money-back guarantee on downloadable games, refund requests were negligible. What surprised me was that this policy also significantly reduced fraud because people who might otherwise try to get games fraudulently would instead buy them with the intention of returning them later, but most of them never bothered to ask for a return. I liked this policy because it didn’t hurt the honest customers, and it helped reclaim some positive business from potential customers who might otherwise have hurt the business with extra chargeback fees.

Another friend from that field devised a special “hacker discount.” When his software caught people trying to input stolen registration codes, he’d refer those people to a special web page offering them a 50% discount to actually buy the software instead of trying to steal it. He got some positive feedback and some extra sales from people who appreciated the creative approach.

I often find that experienced entrepreneurs are socially savvy in ways that non-entrepreneurs usually aren’t. Running a business gives you frequent exposure to aspects of human behavior that you might not otherwise see very often. Through business you’ll come to understand many behavioral nuances that defy simplistic labels such as good or evil. In the long run, this can help you become a more functional human being, partly because you’ll understand other people better and also because you’ll deepen your understanding of your own behavior. Such understanding can yield major payoffs. Imagine how much you’d gain if you could learn how to consistently motivate yourself, for instance. Do you already know how to do that? If not, the lessons of entrepreneurship can teach you.


Sunday 20 December 2015

Entrepreneurs Grow at Warp Speed – Part 3



By Steve Pavlina


Learn the pain of indecision

Indecision hurts.

When you have a business, you’ll be punished for indecision. You’ll lose customers, miss opportunities, and struggle with lower sales if you don’t get your act together. Many would-be entrepreneurs can’t even get their first venture going because they waffle in indecision.

The consequences of indecision can shred your self-esteem. It’s easy to get down on yourself for not making clear, committed decisions.

I like that the rewards and punishments of business have trained me to make efficient but careful decisions. This skill benefits me in all areas of life. Even when I have to do something as mundane as buying a new appliance, I can leverage the decision-making muscles I’ve built from thousands of business decisions over more than two decades.

Many experienced entrepreneurs develop simple processes for making decisions efficiently. Usually they have a process for making low-priority decisions and another process for making important decisions.

The process for making low priority decisions is often just to rely on one’s gut instinct or intuition. Some people use simple heuristics, such as “Buy the best quality I can afford” or “When in doubt, sleep on it” or “Make the decision after exercising.” This works fine when the consequences of making a mistake are low. For some decisions like this, you could also ask the advice of a friend, check online reviews, or use a few other simple processes for making a decision.

In your personal life you probably use simple heuristics for making a variety of everyday decisions. As you gain experience, you’re likely to upgrade your heuristics as well. If you need a new appliance, you could walk into a department store, talk to a salesperson, and make a purchase based on his/her recommendation. Another heuristic would be to go online, research models in your price range, check customer reviews, select a model based on your assessment of customer satisfaction, and buy it from an online store.

What about big decisions? You could fill a library with the books people have written about how to make important decisions. What matters here is finding a process that works well for you under real-world conditions.

It’s easy to get caught up in analysis paralysis. As an entrepreneur you’re going to feel some pressure to make decisions quickly and get into action because opportunities have a limited lifespan. If you wait until you have perfect data to make a wise decision, the opportunity will be long gone. The real skill here is to get used to adjusting your decisions dynamically.

Big decisions are often not a matter of being correct or incorrect. They’re value judgments about which option is better. You get to define better.

A major reason for indecision is being unclear about what matters to you. If you don’t know what matters, you’ll waffle a lot because your priorities will shift too much. Conscious decision-making can be very powerful because when you make a decision consciously, you use essentially the same set of values each time. This gives your decisions some consistency.

For big decisions I normally use the core principles of growth — truth, love, and power — as my guideposts. I favor decisions that will help me grow. Since the nature of my work is to explore personal growth and share what I learn, my own growth experiences eventually become lessons and insights that I share with others. One of my best decisions was to align my work in such a way that working on my personal growth (which I love) also creates a lot of value for others, thereby producing a viable business model.

Note also that this means I’m frequently going to turn down so-called business opportunities that might be counter-productive for my own path of personal growth. I got into business because I wanted to grow faster. Whenever I’ve lost sight of that, I’ve made poor decisions that often lowered my motivation to work.

To make decisions based on truth, love, and power is fairly straightforward.

First, I take a step back and try to see the truth of a situation, as if it’s someone else’s decision. I put on my Vulcan cap (only metaphorically — I don’t actually own a Vulcan cap) and pretend to be Spock analyzing the details logically. I look at the external truth by going over the known, measurable facts involved. Often I’ll write them down. I consider the predictable consequences of potential decisions. If I decide A, then B and C are likely consequences. If I decide D, then E and F will probably happen too. Then I look at the internal truth, which includes my own thoughts and feelings related to the decision.

I try to be as objective as I can here. I think about the immediate consequences of a decision, and I also try to imagine what additional ripples might occur as a result of those decisions.

Yesterday Rachelle and I were at Starbucks with a friend, and we tried to predict some additional consequences of self-driving cars. Some seem obvious, like taxi drivers becoming obsolete. But what isn’t so obvious? A diner at a popular truck stop may go out of business because self-driving trucks won’t need to stop for food. A company that sells software to truck driving schools may suffer because we won’t need more truck drivers. Demand for artificial hearts will increase because self-driving cars will cause fewer fatal accidents, meaning that fewer human hearts will be available for transplants, so a parts supplier for artificial hearts may see its business improve, at least until we have android bodies.

It’s like a game of chess. Sometimes a move that looks only so-so at first can look brilliant a few moves later, and vice versa. To make more intelligent decisions, favor the decision branches that lead to desirable long-term outcomes and which have short-term consequences that you can live with.

Second, I look at the love aspect. What do I want? What would I love to experience? How do I define desirable? What do I want to move towards? What do I want to shed or avoid? What excites me?

I delve into the subjective side. I try to gain clarity about what it would be like to experience the full consequences of a decision. Usually I do this part by lying on my couch or going for a walk and visualizing possibilities. I pay attention to my inner reaction to each scenario. The key here is to visualize each major decision branch as a whole new world I could enter. I often refer to these as different quantum realities. I imagine what it would feel like to experience each quantum reality as if it were already here.

For a while there’s a negotiation between the truth and love sides. I go back and forth between these, looking for an option that satisfies both sides.

Third, I use the power principle. When I feel I have an option that looks good objectively and subjectively, I move into that new space. I immerse myself in the new decision. I tend to slam the accelerator at this point, which is often necessary to overcome inertia and get moving.

What if I’m not sure? I’m never totally sure. But when I catch myself waffling too much, I use some simple heuristics to make a decision. One heuristic is Embrace the New. All else being equal, I favor going in new directions. But the more important higher-level heuristic is to embrace learning and growth. Usually the newer path will yield new lessons, so it’s a decent short-cut to use.

Another heuristic I use is to explore and experiment. Sometimes the only way to understand the possibilities is to test them.

Last year I was gung ho about going nomadic. It seemed like a wonderful idea, and I felt reasonably committed to it. I took a test trip in January, traveling through Europe for a few weeks. I’ve done that before, but this time as I was traveling, I imagined living on the road long-term as a digital nomad. Instead of approaching the trip as a temporary vacation, I imagined that it was my primary lifestyle, just to see how it felt.

I didn’t like it, which surprised me. Socially and experientially it was fun and engaging, but I found it difficult to be productive on the road — or to even want to be productive during those weeks. I enjoy travel best when I do it as a temporary accent to my life, as a way to soak up new experiences. I’m happiest on the road when I don’t try to be productive.

I’m sure there are good ways to be productive from the road, but at this time I still want to immerse myself in the more focused productivity I can experience in my home office, where the environment is stable, quiet, and neatly organized and where I can use a large monitor instead of a laptop screen.

When I got home, I experimented in the opposite direction to see if that felt better. I upgraded from a 24″ desktop monitor to a 27″ 4K model to make my home office even better. I decided not to travel and committed to staying home for most of the year, so I could complete more projects in one place. That felt great — much more congruent than going nomadic — and I’ve loved the results thus far. My 2015 home office productivity has been terrific.

Many entrepreneurial decisions are like this. You’ll be gung ho about them at first, but give yourself permission to change your mind as you gain experience. When you’ve made a mistake, admit it and adjust course.

If you find yourself at a crossroads, don’t just stand there like a hapless dolt. If the correct path for you isn’t clear, then walk a few miles down one path, backtrack to the crossroads, and walk a few miles down the other. This will give you more information to decide.

Once I’m in motion towards a new direction, I make a lot of turns. I continue to assess and evaluate as I go. I sometimes do daily or weekly TLP check-ins (truth, love, power) to adjust course. If things go south, I’ll often quit and make a different decision.

It’s usually easier to make good decisions when you’re in motion. When you’re standing still, you have no data coming in, which makes it harder to decide. Making decisions from a standstill can lead to a lot of waffling because you’ll keep second-guessing yourself. In those situations it’s usually better to just embrace the new and go forward into something you’ve never done before. Learn by trial and error. Don’t even expect to be right. Just try to learn.

Which approach is better?
  • Waffle about starting a new business for a year. -or-
  • Start a new business, try to make it work, quit after three months, and repeat a total of four times in a year.

Obviously you’re going to learn more from the second approach.

If you stick with the first approach for too long, eventually it’s going to get under your skin. You’re going to tire of missing so many opportunities. You’re going to get sick of being broke all the time.

Sometimes you need to feel the pain of indecision to start building your decision muscles.


Learn the pain of perfectionism

If you’re a perfectionist, entrepreneurship will teach you to stop being one, unless you’re also a masochist.

I’ve received emails from people who’ve waffled for a year or more over which domain name to buy for a new online business they wanted to start. Since they couldn’t decide what to name their website, they didn’t start the business. They let that one simple step stop them.

Maybe this is an important decision, but clearly it would have been better to pick just about anything, such as I-have-no-clue-what-to-name-this-site.com, instead of doing nothing for a year.

How much does a new domain name cost? How difficult would it be to change course if you screw up? Sure, you may lose some links if you switch domains, but it’s still better than doing nothing.

It’s okay to make a mistake and change your mind later. It’s not okay to do nothing for a year.

Look at the names of the Fortune 500 companies. Why is the top tech company named after a piece of fruit? Does the name Walmart make you excited to shop there? When you drive a car from General Motors, fueled by gas from Exxon Mobil or Chevron, does their amazing branding give you a titty hard-on?

What’s really going to annoy you in business is when you see people making fast, dumb decisions and passing you by. Other entrepreneurs will pick lame domain names for their websites. They’ll make ugly websites. They’ll pick the wrong technology to use. And they’ll make more money than you.

If you’re a perfectionist, let me give you a simple process for making decisions:
  1. Have a meal to get your blood sugar up.
  2. Select an option for your decision that you know is bad, such as naming your website StevePavlinaIsMyMaster.com, going out naked, or hosting your website with Hostgator.
  3. Now see if you can improve upon the decision from step 2 by coming up with an option that’s better. Use whatever option generating techniques you like, such as brainstorming lists of possibilities, asking people for suggestions, or consulting a Magic 8-ball.
  4. Keep repeating step 3, trying to progressively improve upon your previous best options.
  5. You can waffle as much as you want until you need to eat again.
  6. As soon as you put any food or drink (other than water) into your mouth, your last best option becomes your decision.
  7. If you cannot identify your last best option before you need to consume something other than water, then your decision is to go with your worst option from step 2.

If you can’t do this process without cheating, then maybe what you really need is to be told what to do. If you stubbornly refuse to make decisions for yourself, you can always work for someone who will decide for you.

I like that business rewards quality but punishes perfectionism. The ongoing pressure to make good decisions quickly can push you to grow much further than you otherwise would. I have made some truly horrendous decisions in my life, especially during my late teens, and being an entrepreneur has refined my decision-making skills far beyond the impulsive recklessness of youth, but without losing the edginess and stimulation I find so rewarding.


Learn the pain of denial

The rapid pace of technological innovation forces us to keep reinventing ourselves and our businesses if we are to survive and thrive. But when we’re faced with new opportunities and threats, it can be difficult to shift directions. Changing course often requires a tremendous amount of work with no guarantee of success. It seems easier and safer to keep doing what we’ve been doing.

As the saying goes, old habits die hard. But to succeed in business, sometimes old habits need to die, even when it seems like they still have a lot of life left in them.

Maybe Encyclopedia Britannica could have become Wikipedia. Maybe Kodak could have owned digital photography. Momentum can be deadly if you can’t get your business to turn when it needs to.

If you’re a taxi driver today, do you see that your business model is going bye-bye? Your customers are being snatched up by ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, and within a few more years, you’ll have competition from self-driving cars as well. Do you really think that any sort of collective action can stop this? This would be a great time to start retraining yourself for a new line of work.

Entrepreneurship punishes denial and clinginess and rewards flexibility. If becoming more flexible, adaptable, and nimble appeals to you on a personal level, entrepreneurship can help you calibrate and fine-tune these qualities.

Change can seem threatening, but change also means opportunity. The forces that hurt many established businesses simultaneously spawn wonderful new business models for other entrepreneurs.

Does the rapid pace of change in the world worry you or excite you? Perhaps it’s a bit of both. The skills you’ll learn as an entrepreneur can help you see change as exciting and thrilling, even as you know that you’ll have to work hard to keep up.


Stop being a technology dunce

Technology in particular is becoming an increasingly important part of business. Some of the rippling changes we’re seeing in the world are unlike anything we’ve had to deal with before.

I cringe when I hear an entrepreneur say something like, “I’m just not very good with technology” or “I don’t really understand computers.” The worst part is when I hear this from someone trying to start or build an online business.

You don’t stand much of a chance competing in a world where technology is infecting every business if you think it’s okay to claim technological duncehood. Technology dunces get eaten, chewed up, and spit out in today’s world of business.

If you’re an entrepreneur today, you cannot afford to be a technology dunce anymore. Those days are gone. You may have been able to coast up until now, but the situation is rapidly changing. If your outdated business model isn’t under attack yet from other entrepreneurs with superior tech skills, it soon will be.

It’s important to recognize and accept that technology and business are married now. If you want to go into business today and succeed, technology will surely be an integral part of your roadmap.

After the invention and refinement of the steam engine, the whole world changed. No longer were we held back by the biological limits of muscle tissue. Horse power was replaced by horsepower. Many entrepreneurs rode this wave of change to great wealth and success. Many businesses that stubbornly resisted these technological shifts were trampled and forgotten.

What the steam engine did for our muscles, computer hardware and software is doing for our minds, and communications technology is doing for our voices. Once again, we’ve pushed past the limits of our biology.

If you want to be an intelligent entrepreneur today, then get with today’s program. Ride this wave of change for your benefit and the benefit of your customers. Enjoy the fun and excitement of being swept up in it. Don’t wallow in horse dung.

If you understand the tech side of your business well enough, you can leverage technology to great effect. You can make your business do things that would be otherwise impossible. And you can free yourself from a tremendous amount of drudgery that is simply no longer necessary in today’s world.

If you have strong enough tech skills, you won’t need a job to cover your expenses. You can still get a job if you want, such as for personal growth reasons, but you won’t need one. You’ll be able to leverage your tech skills to earn all the money you need to survive and thrive financially.

Almost all of the money I’ve earned in my life has come via the Internet, most of it in the form of passive income that continues to flow whether I keep working or not. I used my tech skills to solve the income problem, so I didn’t have to waste my life working for someone else just to pay for my rent, food, etc. Computers and software handle most of the marketing, distribution, and income generation aspects of my business. I mainly do the fun and creative parts. When I don’t want to work, the business largely maintains itself, and income continues to flow.

Did this require some kind of extraordinary genius? Of course not. Among people with strong tech skills, it’s commonplace. Many people have been doing this since at least the 1990s. I started on this path in 1995.

If you don’t know how to get today’s technology to solve the income problem for you, you can learn. It’s even easier today than it was when I started. Today’s computers and software are much more powerful, and the Internet is a whole lot bigger and more accessible.

I love, love, love that business rewards good tech skills. This encourages me to keep learning and growing. New tech knowledge is exploding and recombining much faster than my ability to keep up with it, and that’s wonderful because everyone else is in the same boat. We’re all dazed and confused by the pace of change, and that’s why there are so many opportunities and possibilities out there.

To solve the income problem without getting a job, you only need to find one combo that works. And when it breaks down, there will be countless other combos that will work even better.

Business will punish you for being technologically lazy, ignorant, or confused. The game is always racing ahead, and if you fall behind, you’ll be left behind.

One reason to participate in the game is that you want the extra pressure to stay close to the front of this wave of change, and you dislike the idea of falling behind. Another reason is that you like using technology to take care of your needs instead of having to work so hard to meet those needs yourself.

During the summer I toured the largest data center in the world, which just so happens to be located in Las Vegas, only 15 minutes from where I live. Apparently Nevada has the least natural disasters of any U.S. state, which makes it a great place to host a data center. I got to see the actual servers running major Internet operations, including eBay, Amazon, Disney, Microsoft, and more — rack after rack of servers processing millions of transactions in a climate-controlled environment. The place had multiple redundant air conditioning units, each one the size of a small house. It had redundant power systems. It had two metal roofs, each one capable of withstanding 200 mph winds. It had armed guards and security checkpoints.

It was great to see so much modern technology in person. It struck me that every server was an automated money-making machine. Thousands of businesses were leveraging these servers to do their bidding. Only decades earlier such operations wouldn’t even have been possible.

My business is nowhere near that level, but it still inspires me to see what’s possible as an entrepreneur today — and to think about what will be possible in the years ahead. Even my tiny little business does things that would have been impossible a generation earlier. Thousands of people all around the planet will read this article only hours after I finished writing it, with some of them starting to read it only seconds after I click “Publish.” How cool is that?

If being an entrepreneur today doesn’t make your heart sing now and then, then stop wallowing in the technological dung heap, and do whatever it takes to bring your tech skills into the modern era. We all have to learn this from scratch as babies, but if you remain an ignorant tech baby, you’re like that black stuff in The Matrix — you know, the slime that’s created when dead bodies get recycled and fed back to the living intravenously.

I love the evolving relationship between technology and personal growth. Many years ago, you could say that personal growth was married to psychology. But today it’s fair to say that personal growth has already divorced psychology and is now engaged to technology. Pretty soon personal growth and technology will be married. You should attend that wedding.

If you’re an entrepreneur today, don’t be a technology dunce. It’s not cute. It’s just stupid.


www.stevepavlina.com