Daily Entrepreneur Quotes

When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.

The road of life is strewn with the bodies of promising people. People who show promise, yet lack the confidence to act. People who make promises they are unable to keep. People who promise to do tomorrow what they could do today. Promising young stars, athletes, entrepreneurs who wait for promises to come true. Promise without a goal and a plan is like a barren cow. You know what she could do if she could do it, but she can't. Turn your promise into a plan. Make no promise for tomorrow if you are able to keep it today. And if someone calls you promising, know that you are not doing enough today.

Entrepreneurs are heroes in our society. They fail for the rest of us.

Good habits and intentional daily effort to turn excuses into solutions will help you become the person and entrepreneur that you want to be.

When we call a capitalist society a consumers' democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers' ballot, held daily in the market-place.

Many entrepreneurs have a “can do” attitude, which is often a requirement if you want to succeed. Unfortunately, this attitude often leads to a dangerous mindset where you feel like you need to do everything yourself.

If you love stress, practice avoidance.

Success is only rented, and you pay the rent daily.

Entrepreneur, the development of your daily discipline will determine then deliver your desired distinction.

Valuing freedom above all else; entrepreneurs work harder to create future freedom, which directly takes away from their freedom in the present.

The system-versus-goals model can be applied to most human endeavors. In the world of dieting, losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system.

Every entrepreneur and every owner of means of production must daily justify his social function through subservience to the wants of the consumers. The management of a socialist economy is not under the necessity of adjusting itself to the operation of a market. It has an absolute monopoly. It does not depend on the wants of the consumers. It itself decides what must be done. It does not serve the consumers as the businessman does. It provides for them as the father provides for his children or the headmaster of a school for the students. It is the authority bestowing favors, not a businessman eager to attract customers.

Creators create. Action is identity. You become what you do. You don’t need permission from anybody to call yourself a writer, entrepreneur, or musician. You just need to write, build a business, or make music. You’ve got to do the verb to be the noun.

Finally, when young people who “want to help mankind” come to me asking, “What should I do? I want to reduce poverty, save the world,” and similar noble aspirations at the macro-level, my suggestion is: 1) Never engage in virtue signaling; 2) Never engage in rent-seeking; 3) You must start a business. Put yourself on the line, start a business. Yes, take risk, and if you get rich (which is optional), spend your money generously on others. We need people to take (bounded) risks. The entire idea is to move the descendants of Homo sapiens away from the macro, away from abstract universal aims, away from the kind of social engineering that brings tail risks to society. Doing business will always help (because it brings about economic activity without large-scale risky changes in the economy); institutions (like the aid industry) may help, but they are equally likely to harm (I am being optimistic; I am certain that except for a few most do end up harming). Courage (risk taking) is the highest virtue. We need entrepreneurs.

The problem is that many entrepreneurs start with good intentions to create a new mindset system but then slack off. The solution is to make that system part of your daily routine.

You need to bootstrap when you first start your business, but once money starts coming in, it’s important to focus on your strengths and hire people to do everything else.

What you are seeking, is seeking you.

Practice Take Practice

Courage (risk taking) is the highest virtue. We need entrepreneurs.

Hundreds of forced labor camps came to exist, scattered throughout the South—operated by state and county governments, large corporations, small-time entrepreneurs, and provincial farmers. These bulging slave centers became a primary weapon of suppression of black aspirations. Where mob violence or the Ku Klux Klan terrorized black citizens periodically, the return of forced labor as a fixture in black life ground pervasively into the daily lives of far more African Americans.

Don't be the person who misses out on opportunities in life because you take too long to accomplish your work tasks. Be the kind of person other people marvel at. Be the kind of person other people see and say, "I don't know how they do it." Be the kind of person who takes action and does so immediately.

As entrepreneurs, time is our most valuable commodity (MVC). Money will come and go, but once you’ve invested your time into something, that time is gone forever. It stands to reason that if there are any actions we can take as business owners to free up more time in our daily routines, we should take them.

ideas are lost if they aren’t captured in some way. Additionally, according to the Zeigarnick Effect, any incomplete thought—such as an idea or task you need to complete—will occupy your mind until you take some kind of action on it by either completing the task or capturing the idea with a plan for accomplishing the task.

many people mistaken for entrepreneurs fail to have true skin in the game in the sense that their aim is to either cash out by selling the company they helped create to someone else, or “go public” by issuing shares in the stock market. The true value of the company, what it makes, and its long-term survival are of small relevance to them. This is a pure financing scheme and we will exclude this class of people from our “entrepreneur” risk-taker class (this form of entrepreneurship is the equivalent of bringing great-looking and marketable children into the world with the sole aim of selling them at age four). We can easily identify them by their ability to write a convincing business plan.

Every conurb, my guide answered, has a chemical toilet where the city’s unwanted human waste disintegrates quietly, but not quite invisibly. It motivates the downstrata: “Work, spend, work,” say slums like Huamdonggil, “or you, too, will end your life here.” Moreover, entrepreneurs take advantage of the legal vaccuum to erect ghoulish pleasurezones for upstrata bored with more respectable quarters. Huamdonggil can thus pay its way in taxes and bribes. MediCorp opens a weekly clinic for dying untermensch to xchange any healthy body parts they may have for a sac of euthanaze. OrganiCorp has a lucrative contract with the city to send in a daily platoon of immune-genomed fabricants, similar to disastermen, to mop up the dead before the flies hatch.

If there are costs to becoming legal, there are also bound to be costs to remaining outside the law. We found that operating outside the world of legal work and business was surprisingly expensive. In Peru, for example, the cost of operating a business extralegally includes paying 10 to 15 per cent of its annual income in bribes and commissions to authorities. Add to such payoffs the costs of avoiding penalties, making transfers outside legal channels and operating from dispersed locations and without credit, and the life of the extralegal entrepreneur turns out to be far more costly and full of daily hassles than that of the legal businessman. Perhaps the most significant cost was caused by the absence of institutions that create incentives for people to seize economic and social opportunities to specialize within the market place. We found that people who could not operate within the law also could not hold property efficiently or enforce contracts through the courts; nor could they reduce uncertainty through limited liability systems and insurance policies, or create stock companies to attract additional capital and share risk. Being unable to raise money for investment, they could not achieve economies of scale or protect their innovations through royalties and patents.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

KEY TAKEAWAYS •Believe in yourself—make it your daily mantra. •Find a mentor—you can always learn something new. •Always be on time. The early bird catches the worm. •Treat everyone with kindness and respect, especially the “gatekeepers” to success. •Return calls and texts in 24 hours or less—response builds customer loyalty. •Sweat every detail. •Dress for success, even if you’re down on your luck. •Know your target market and whether your product can succeed. •Selling a necessary product is easier than selling a luxury. •Don’t reinvent the wheel—let someone else do that. •Leave nothing to chance.

Blessed are the misfits who make their own rules and stick to them for they shall inherit peace of mind

Media City, Dubai, UAE – Kazema Portable Toilets, one of the leading suppliers of plastic portable toilets, GRP portable toilets and sinks, and other portable sanitation equipment today, this week excitedly announced they have been named a finalist for their entry into the “RSA Customer Focus of the Year Award’ at the Gulf Capital SME Awards 2017. With all portable products being made from high quality, durable materials that can withstand the demands of sanitation, Kazema Portable Toilets carries a wide variety of ancillary products and accessories designed to assist business owners in earning more. Now in its 6th year as a regarded small to mid-sized business recognition awards ceremony, the SME Awards proudly identify startups, innovative SMES with exemplary products and services, SMEs which invest in their employees’ environment and customer strategy, and also the visionary entrepreneurs at the helm. “We’ve created a portable solution that is compatible with any business looking to add depth, expansion, and productivity to their operation,” said Raj, Founder and Owner of Kazema Portable Toilets. “We provide our clients with professional support worldwide that enables them to supply clients locally with our product, as well as harness it for widespread exportation.” Recognized for their high-stock, ready-to-use durable product today, Kazema Portable Toilets is one of the front-runners for their SME awards category. Kazema beat out hundreds in the category to be regarded as a finalist for their entrepreneurial solution to a problem every person encounters daily. “We are passionate about our work here at Kazema Portable Toilets, and we are honored to be named a finalist in such a reputable competition,” said Raj. “We want to thank SME for the recognition, and look forward to winning our category.

Although your daily ‘to do’ list may change, your overall work priorities shouldn’t. My priority list goes something like this: Existing client work New client luring Financial admin –getting paid Marketing, self-promotion and blog writing Faffing about on social media It’s a simple and effective way to make sure I focus on my customers and don’t get sucked into random videos about cats on Facebook. (Well, most of the time.)

This applies as well when opportunities come to merge an existing portfolio company with another private company. Entrepreneurs and investors can get carried away when a private firm offers shares in its company to acquire yours. There’s a momentary feeling of exultation if the pricing seems on the face of it to represent a good exchange. But the fact is that no one really knows what one private company is worth versus another private company. This is another example of a “my cat for your dog” transaction. Selling to a public company whose price is established through daily trading offers a more objective exchange of value.

The demands of customer discovery require people who are comfortable with change, chaos, and learning from failure and are at ease working in risky, unstable situations without a roadmap. In short, startups should welcome the rare breed generally known as entrepreneurs. They’re open to learning and discovery—highly curious, inquisitive, and creative. They must be eager to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Agile enough to deal with daily change and operating “without a map.” Readily able to wear multiple hats, often on the same day, and comfortable celebrating failure when it leads to learning and iteration.

During the bust, fuckedcompany.com—a snarky twist on the technology magazine Fast Company—became popular with the tech crowd. As its name suggested, Fucked Company logged the era’s many misadventures. Several X.com employees remembered browsing Fucked Company daily during this period—not out of schadenfreude, but out of fear that they might be next. That Confinity and X.com didn’t end up in the Valley’s discard bin was attributable to a number of factors, not least that it had enough runway to ride out a rocky year. “Back then, there were probably five to seven other little piddling online money moving services… that just got starved of oxygen over time. And they all died out by the fall,” said Vince Sollitto. Former employees point to the $100 million round’s timing as a watershed for PayPal. “I don’t think people know how precarious it was,” Klement offered. “If we hadn’t raised that $100 million round, there would be no PayPal.” Mark Woolway extended the counterfactual: “If the team hadn’t closed that one hundred million,” Woolway said, “there would be no SpaceX, no LinkedIn, and no Tesla.

In your daily meditation, even if it’s just five minutes a day, be sure to quiet your logical, left brain. Agree with your left brain to reconvene at another time – when you’ve learned to quiet your mind and the road gets rough, the entrepreneur still sees a path.

Who are we, the people who have ADHD? We are the problem kid who drives his parents crazy by being totally disorganized, unable to follow through on anything, incapable of cleaning up a room, or washing dishes, or performing just about any assigned task; the one who is forever interrupting, making excuses for work not done, and generally functioning far below potential in most areas. We are the kid who gets daily lectures on how we’re squandering our talent, wasting the golden opportunity that our innate ability gives us to do well, and failing to make good use of all that our parents have provided. We are also sometimes the talented executive who keeps falling short due to missed deadlines, forgotten obligations, social faux pas, and blown opportunities. Too often we are the addicts, the misfits, the unemployed, and the criminals who are just one diagnosis and treatment plan away from turning it all around. We are the people Marlon Brando spoke for in the classic 1954 film On the Waterfront when he said, “I coulda been a contender.” So many of us coulda been contenders, and shoulda been for sure. But then, we can also make good. Can we ever! We are the seemingly tuned-out meeting participant who comes out of nowhere to provide the fresh idea that saves the day. Frequently, we are the “underachieving” child whose talent blooms with the right kind of help and finds incredible success after a checkered educational record. We are the contenders and the winners. We are also imaginative and dynamic teachers, preachers, circus clowns, and stand-up comics, Navy SEALs or Army Rangers, inventors, tinkerers, and trend setters. Among us there are self-made millionaires and billionaires; Pulitzer and Nobel prize winners; Academy, Tony, Emmy, and Grammy award winners; topflight trial attorneys, brain surgeons, traders on the commodities exchange, and investment bankers. And we are often entrepreneurs. We are entrepreneurs ourselves, and the great majority of the adult patients we see for ADHD are or aspire to be entrepreneurs too. The owner and operator of an entrepreneurial support company called Strategic Coach, a man named Dan Sullivan (who also has ADHD!), estimates that at least 50 percent of his clients have ADHD as well.

Successful entrepreneurs aren’t always the ones with the most talent. They face many of the same challenges you and I face. What sets them apart is their solid foundation of habits and daily routines.

Really, the only way to make a habit stick is to turn it into automatic behavior.

With a new habit, create a goal that’s too small to fail. Stay focused on what you need to do right now and ignore future milestones. Then make tiny, incremental changes. At first, you won’t notice a shift in your habits. However, on a long enough timeline, you’ll develop a permanent change to your routine.

Really, it starts with a shift of mindset. With a new habit, reinforce this behavior by saying things like: “I’m the type of person who ____.”  Then, follow through by doing it on a daily basis. Eventually your internal identity will match this daily routine.

Anyone who is employable would go get a job. They wouldn't be an entrepreneur.

the Indian entrepreneur Sake Dean Mahomet brought traditional Indian champu head massages and vapour baths to Regency Britain, becoming ‘shampooing surgeon’ to King George IV.

Your goal as an entrepreneur should be to be unforgettable—for

have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

Pick three areas of your life and think about the worst things that could possibly happen in those areas. Then think about what you would do if your worst-case scenarios came true. For example, you might think about what you would do if you lost a big client, lost your home or lost some aspect of your health.

Saying no doesn’t make you a selfish person. In fact, it can make you a generous person since saying no to the wrong things opens up time to say yes to the right things. Remember that whenever you agree to one thing, you are, in essence, saying no to something else that might be more important.

The entrepreneurs of this era are going to challenge the biggest industries in the world, and those that most affect our daily lives.

If one considers the characters in the plays of Shakespeare, in the poems of the Roman poet Ovid, in the Greek tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, and even in the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt, they can be recognized in our daily lives. Their actions were driven by the same motives as ours—ambition, love, pride, fear, anger, sympathy, and fun.

In Seattle, Washington, in 1971, Howard Schultz, the owner of a local coffee roasting and distribution company, noted the increasing affluence of the American public and their desire to receive gracious treatment in their daily activities. Schultz recognized that there was a market for small businesses featuring top quality coffee and an opportunity to relax in an attractive environment. To take advantage of these emerging Minitrends, Mr. Schultz initiated the very successful Starbucks chain which offers top quality coffee drinks in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere Starbucks has a long record of appreciating Minitrends, but failed to recognize the trend that more economically-stressed customers were beginning to opt for similar, lower-cost drinks offered by fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s. While still popular, in summer 2008, the Starbucks company announced the termination of 1,000 employees, and in November 2008, the company reported a 98 percent decline in profit for the third quarter of the year. To be more economically competitive, Starbucks has recently introduced a line of instant coffee.

Change, even when it seems disastrous, provides incredible opportunities if you’re able to look at seeming disasters through the lens of possibility.

As an entrepreneur you own your business, you expand your brand, you increase your impact, you live with no excuses, and you enjoy your intentional growth daily.

The man who does not read has no advantage over a man who cannot read” – Mark Twain

When I talk about kindness in business, a few people scoff. They say, “Steve Jobs and the leaders at Apple created a pressure-cooker environment but it produced category-defining products that people love and obsess over.” That is the point — the results are not worth the cost, because there is an alternative. The goal of TRM is to create a kind, sustainable, and fulfilling experience for everyone. Caring and a sense of purpose evoke better performance than pressure and fear. The idea that only obsessive egomaniacs can produce breakthroughs is nonsense. People are the most important resource for any business, and people — whether they are employees, vendors, or customers — respond best to kindness, respect, humility, and empathy. You never know what other people are going through in their lives. Many of us are under great stress, especially when business cycles shift and economic pressures build. Others are struggling in relationships. When everyone feels valued and heard, they are more likely to show up fully and bring their best each day. Kindness is the alternative to the unnecessary “business is war” analogies that are not only tiresome but borderline offensive. It is the opposite of the “outcome justified the means” mentality that drives many entrepreneurs to consider sacrificing everything (including their morals) to build $100 million businesses in seven years. It’s success without the collateral damage. This aspect of TRM creates a healthy framework for daily interactions and long-term goals and helps people avoid burnout even when they put in heavy hours over long periods of time. We are all naturally optimistic, motivated to be better tomorrow than we are today. A kind organization understands that and leverages it. Your goal is to build a product that lasts, but to do that, you must also build an organization, a work environment, and a fabric of relationships that last too. People will remain engaged and focused on achievements when they are doing something meaningful that they care about in an organization that lets them live the way they want to live. “Caring and a sense of purpose evoke better performance than pressure and fear. The idea that only egomaniacs can produce breakthroughs is nonsense.

Daily self-affirmations are a must for every entrepreneur.

Until you have your ducks in a row, hold off on hiring a bunch of salespeople. First, hire an expert to help you build a solid playbook, figure out what kind of people you want to hire, set up your daily huddle, and figure out who your customers are. That’s really what it looks like to transform into a sales-driven culture, where it’s everyone’s job to think about how to make sales more effective, from the receptionist taking a message to the software programmer in charge of the Content Management System. As companies grow, it’s easy for them to become more siloed and disconnected from other departments, but a salesdriven culture reaffirms the principle that the company exists to solve a problem, to connect customers to the solution for their problem, and to close that deal.

This is a lesson I’m still learning today. Every successful entrepreneur I’ve ever met has said this piece of advice will set you free. Don’t let the approval of another be your motivation for doing anything.

you cannot possible succeed until you start!

This is the reason it is said that that people who read become instantly wiser not because they know what to do, but more because they know – what not to do!

Ideal methods of sales prospecting generates business growth.

Daily, Mom applied hairspray to her stylish hairdo. I remember the smell and the sound of the chemicals invading her ears, nose, and throat, and mine too since I loved to hang out with her. This era marked the start of the consumer use of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), an organic compound produced as a volatile derivative of methane and ethane that affects the ozone layer of our Earth. These applications of toxins kept Mom’s hair in place until her next appointment. The CFCs from the new aerosol sprays undoubtedly contributed to my sweet mama’s subsequent poor health. But she didn’t stop using hairspray until she went bald from chemotherapy. The United States banned Chlorofluorocarbons in 1978.

Develop self-discipline in just one area of life, such as by making a habit of daily exercise. Your self-discipline in all other areas of your life will increase without any additional effort on your part.

Also, we were lucky to have Steve Blank as an investor and adviser. Back in 2004, Steve had just begun preaching a new idea: the business and marketing functions of a startup should be considered as important as engineering and product development and therefore deserve an equally rigorous methodology to guide them. He called that methodology Customer Development, and it offered insight and guidance to my daily work as an entrepreneur.

There’s an assumption out there that good leaders are decisive and clear. They know the priorities and don’t let themselves get tangled up in agonizing thoughts about details. If you’re an executive, you want others to see you this way. Decisiveness gives the impression of confidence. And confidence helps others have confidence in you. As an entrepreneur, professional or executive, you know that making decisions is a large part of your daily life. You signed up for this – making decisions, big and small. So what make it difficult for smart, driven executives to be fully decisive? Indecisiveness is not just about decision fatigue or over-responsibility, although they may play a role. It’s about your executive functioning (EF) and how you’re managing it. To make difficult decisions, you need great EF – the brain-based skills for goal-directed behaviour and everything that goes with it. By virtue of where you are in your career, your EF is already well developed. And yet, you’d like to be more decisive. So what’s going on when you feel stuck in indecisiveness? Your particular brand of EF – your brain profile – may be highly comfortable with abstract thinking. Perhaps too comfortable. And that’s what can take you into endless ambivalence. Have you noticed that when you can’t land on a decision, there’s a sense of not quite settling? If you’re accustomed to thinking in the abstract, you may find it uncomfortable to land on a choice. If you want to be muscularly decisive, look at your emotions. Are they heightened? Triggered? If so, your EF will definitely go offline. You’ll experience mental fog, poor focus, and rumination. How do you respond when you’re triggered? Do you put your emotions aside? Do you tell yourself there’s no time during the work day to deal with them? Emotions don’t go away just because you decided not to pay attention to them. They’re still there, bubbling under the surface. If you try to think past the emotions, you won’t be effective. EF functions best when the brain is calm and clear. But emotions are very useful too – when you choose to pay attention to them. They’re a gold mine of information about risks, values, priorities and self-management. You need a balance of emotional information and facts to make a good decision. The most powerful leaders make decisions with a combination of intuition, past experience, emotional intelligence and cognitive flexibility. If you cut off these valuable data sets, the result will be indecisiveness. So how do you become confidently decisive? 1. Check in. Ask yourself: Who do I want to be as I make this decision? In what way may I be too comfortable with the abstract? What might I be resisting? Recognize that No decision IS a decision. Ask yourself: How do I benefit from making no decision? What if no decision is the best decision? Commit to making a decision anyway. Ask yourself: In what way can I make this decision more clear? Who will I be once I’ve made this decision? Accept that some ‘good’ decisions will feel uncomfortable. Ask yourself: What do I believe about what makes a good decision? What will deepen my comfort with what I don’t have control over? You can be a good leader and still be indecisive from time to time. The next time you have a difficult decision to make, draw from both emotional and factual information. And don’t forget to enjoy the afterglow of clarity! With love and gratitude, Lynda

counter to the common belief, executives are different from entrepreneurs and are supposed to look like actors.

Would you rather be the world’s greatest lover, but have everyone think you’re the world’s worst lover? Or would you rather be worst lover but have everyone think you’re the world’s greatest lover?” Now, that’s an interesting question

In teaching your kids, I think the lesson they’re learning at a very, very early age is what their parents put the emphasis on. If all the emphasis is one what the world’s going to think about you, forgetting about how you really behave, you will wind up with an Outer Scorecard. Now, my dad: He was a hundred present Inner Scorecard guy

Now this idea of his resonates closely with Aristotle who said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it

equity investments are the riskiest and anyone should reconsider investing

Intelligent Investor

Lord Buddha, the enlightened one said, “To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear”.

Name the biggest overall lesson you’ve learned in running a business. That it is a business before all else. Regardless of the type of business it is, you must treat it as a business first and foremost. Even if you are a creative person, the daily nuts and bolts are really about honing your business sense. Without that, it is very difficult to be profitable and thus have creative freedom. It is something I have battled since I started my business.

Habit 1: Reading + Numbers Habit 2: The Principal of Compounding in Finance and Life Habit 3: The circle of competence Habit 4: Power of isolation, thinking and No Internet! Habit 5: Inner scorecard or outer scorecard? Habit 6: Do what you love – The Science of not getting bored and eventually succeed! Habit 7: Cash is King – Really? Habit 8: Invest in yourself - Pay yourself first! Habit 9: Time management: - 24 hours/1440 minutes a day

Essence of this habit is to follow what you love, irrespective of what others say and then stand your ground. The world will keep on saying a few things and then the same people would criticize you for not being original. Just do what you love and experiment. Have an inner scorecard.

The book read –“How to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie. He learnt rule no. 1 of conversation, “Don’t criticize, condemn or complain

LSC is also the answer I give to the most anguished question I often hear from entrepreneurs, or any champion of any kind of loonshot. The question usually comes up only late at night, after a few drinks, after a discussion of daily struggles winds down and the conversation turns existential, when the weariness from years of blows to the body seeps out. “How do I know when to give up?” How does one tell the difference between persistence and stubbornness? LSC, for me, is a signal.

If a great person has experienced and amassed enormous knowledge, he will most probably write it through a book.

There is no solution outside, there is information but the solution is always inside of you.

doing a job that you don’t like is like saving up sex for your old age.

You would end up with the same day in your life tomorrow if you just enjoyed these habit hacks today and then forget them tomorrow.

Only 2 things matter to get any desired result. Willingness to do and action. The majority fail in executing the second.

But no matter how unambiguous the end result of the power law, it doesn’t reflect daily experience. Since investors spend most of their time making new investments and attending to companies in their early stages, most of the companies they work with are by definition average. Most of the differences that investors and entrepreneurs perceive every day are between relative levels of success, not between exponential dominance and failure. And since nobody wants to give up on an investment, VCs usually spend even more time on the most problematic companies than they do on the most obviously successful.

That method of deconstructing what works into its component elements has been the key to my success as a creator and an entrepreneur. You put the elements together in the best way you can and see what happens. Remember what works, forget the rest. Keep homing in until you’ve figured out the winning formula. Then use that formula consistently. It sounds simple, but it’s shockingly powerful: Deconstruct Emulate Analyze Repeat DEAR for short. I

As David Skok, tech entrepreneur turned venture capitalist, points out, “The most important factor to increasing growth is . . . Viral Cycle Time.”7 Viral Cycle Time is the amount of time it takes a user to invite another user, and it can have a massive impact. “For example, after 20 days with a cycle time of two days, you will have 20,470 users,” Skok writes. “But if you halved that cycle time to one day, you would have over 20 million users! It is logical that it would be better to have more cycles occur, but it is less obvious just how much better.” Having a greater proportion of users daily returning to a service dramatically decreases Viral Cycle Time for two reasons: First, daily users initiate loops more often (think tagging a friend in a Facebook photo); second, more daily active users means more people to respond and react to each invitation. The cycle not only perpetuates the process—with higher and higher user engagement, it accelerates it.

Only 2 things matter to get any desired result. Willingness to do and action.

Human beings have always been slaves of habits. You might argue that the reason it took millions of years for monkeys to walk as humans was slow genetic transformations and slow changing habits. Either you break a bad habit or the habit breaks you. Either of these two occurs at any given moment.

It is perhaps worth pointing out what criteria are not required in ordered to be considered lean in Eric Ries’ context: Bootstrapped Consuming unholy amounts of Top Ramen on a daily basis Unpaid workers Build system based on a 386 architecture Open cubicle culture Command-line interface Chairs without casters

The ultimate trick is to understand and grasp the fact that whatever we decide in life, we have to be consistent in that and ignore any short term benefits from it. Over a period of time the benefits start compounding and you fetch results for sure. So make sure you use this eighth wonder of the world – its free!

The lesson from this habit is to take a break and find your own circle of competence! And then act! Everything falls in place and you would find yourself on the right path.

Focus of what you want, invest in yourself via a course and work towards monetizing it.

There is no solution outside, there is information but the solution is always inside of you. All you need is to take a break and think for yourself.

Challenge Question What role do you let loving play in your making a living?

The system-versus-goals model can be applied to most human endeavors. In the world of dieting, losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system.

On a daily basis the venture capitalist was not concerned with historical impact; he worked to create wealth for himself and his limited partners. However, among the Benchmark partners there was awareness that framing one’s professional raison d’être in the language of financial return meant that one was hostage to the vagaries of the market—and even when the market is buoyant, there is little that is soul-quenching about mere numbers. “The really big wins are where all the rewards come from,” Bob Kagle once pointed out, before eBay had gone public. The rewards he was referring to were the emotional ones, not the financial ones, and they were rewards derived not from a game of assuming personal risk—the venture guys had a portfolio across which risk could be spread—but from being backers of entrepreneurs, the ones who commercialized new technology and introduced new products and services—and were the ones who really took on risk. “Nine times out of ten they’re taking on some big, established system of some sort.” He dropped his voice for emphasis: If the individual entrepreneur won, even for the venture guys it produced an “exhilarating feeling”—he groped for the right words—“it’s confirmation that one person with courage can make a difference.” This was the minidrama Kagle and his colleagues had seen play out triumphantly again and again. The work itself did not have any neat demarcations of beginning, middle, and end. The funds seemed to be evergreen, fresh capital materializing as soon as the till was exhausted. The calendars of the partners, revolving as they did around looking at new business plans, meeting new entrepreneurs, considering new deals, gave a feeling of perennially beginning afresh. For them, it was the best place in the cosmos to get the first peek at the future.

1979, Ron Shaich, the future CEO of Panera Bread, left his job as regional manager for the Original Cookie Company, a shopping mall–based cookie conglomerate, to start an “urban cookie store” in Boston, where he’d gone to school, that would take advantage of all the foot traffic that downtown city streets get on a daily basis. Ron had $25,000 to get started, but that wasn’t nearly enough to open a storefront in a major American city. “I had no credibility. I had no real money. I had no balance sheet to sign a lease,” he said. “So I went to my dad and said, ‘I want my inheritance, whatever it’s going to be. I want the opportunity to use it.’” And his father agreed. He gave Ron $75,000, and with that combined $100,000 Ron opened a 400-square-foot cookie store. He called it the Cookie Jar, and within two years he had folded it into the bakery and café chain we know today as Au Bon Pain.