Sometimes it’s crazy to think about all the people out there who seemingly accomplish so much in a day, while a lot of us feel the clock ticking away so fast as the day goes on and it slips away on us without accomplishing a worthwhile task or goal we had planned for ourselves. Once again. We all share the same 24 hours, as Elon Musk or Evan Spiegel? Impossible. How do they do it?
The next day it seems to slip away even faster. We wake up in the morning with clear cut goals in mind and cant wait to start getting at it. We make coffee, eat breakfast, sit down in front of our laptop, getting ready to start. We are going to make connections today with people relating to our business idea, we are going to research at least two topics and write an article on them, we are going to start this or start that.
We get distracted in useless information and our minds brings us somewhere else. We accomplish one small thing and praise ourselves for it by taking a break to scroll through social media. Which lasts longer than it should have, now we are less motivated to get back to the task at hand. Inspiration is gone and the self discouragement starts to take over. What’s the point anyway? I’m never going to be as good as the other people doing this same thing.
We tell ourselves we tried, now it’s time to do the same mundane life responsiblities we must perform daily: make dinner, clean up, tend to the kids, pets or spouse, errands, maybe do some relaxing, and we prepare ourselves to start fresh again the next day with a new mindset in hopes of getting more done. And the cycle starts. We put in half ass effort, expecting grand results. Complaining when things don’t come easy. Life casually lived, brings casual results.
No Excuses
We are living in a world of such advancement that we are capable of literally almost anything and some people stay stuck in their same routine day after day. If you are okay with that, that’s cool too but if you are not okay with living a below average life and you are constantly complaining about the life you live, you should probably learn to keep your complaints to yourself. Your hardworking friends that have put in so much work and dedication to get to where they are at, do not want to hear you complain about how unfair life is for the poor and how fair it is for the rich.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Yeah, because they did something to change the way they lived. They took advantage of the system and got what they wanted in life. Everyone dreams of being their own boss, some people actually go do it, some people complain about how the world makes it hard for them to do so. Yeah, the system sucks, but no one told you you had to work a 9-5 job your whole life enabling someone elses business to strive instead of creating your own.
Anyone and everyone can be their own boss, no excuses. Some people start with money, some don’t. It’s all about that hard work and dedication every hour you are able to. When you wake up without a clear concept of what follows, somebody will chose for you. You will work for somebody else your whole life if you don’t decide to wake up and start taking those steps now.Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller–Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
Slow it Down and Stop Stressing
Try not to allow things to become so overwhelming, everything is a process, every good thing takes time so have patience. You think Jeff Bezos got rich over night? He started Amazon in 1994 as a small online book store. In the early days Jeff had a bell in the office that went off every time someone made a purchase on Amazon so everyone can gather around and see if they knew the customer. It took a few weeks until it was going off so often that they had to get rid of it. But it was only books back then, it was a bit before Jeff decided to expand his market. Imagine that bell being there now? Amazon became huge over time, making Jeff the first billionaire and the richest man in the world. That wasn’t until 2017.
Then you got Elon Musk who climbed to the top of the Forbes list of the richest man on earth a lot quicker than it took Bezos. Elon was worth $165 billion before the pandemic and has rose to a staggering $190 billion within the last 9 months, making him the richest man in the world in December 2020. (Hi, Elon want to be friends?)
Sometimes you have a opportunity that arises and you jump on it, sometimes it takes years and years of dedication, sometimes you have lots of money and go for it, sometimes you get lucky. All that matters is, it is possible.
If They Could Do it, You Can Too
There are 15 million Americans that are full-time self employed according to entrepreneurial statistics. They estimate that by 2021 we will have 27 million self-employed Americans. Which is 1 in 5 workers. There are aporoximately 582 million entrepreneurs in the world which is a signficant rise compared to any other year. More people are taking advantage. With all this time to reflect, being stuck in our houses it’s easy to click in that what you are doing right now as a career (the one that bores you and makes life less exiciting) is what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life if you don’t make the changes now. Kinda scary when you have the time to think about it isn’t it? Life seems pretty damn dull. But it doesn’t have to be my friends, I promise.
A lot of people go through lives in a sort of comfortable numbness, accepting where they are at and never changing perspective. Don’t let that be you!Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup
We all have something to offer. If its art: illustrations, design, or if it’s our way with words through writing or speech, or even just our crazy ideas, compassion, crafts or handiwork. There are small handy man or cleaning business’ to be created, people always need things fixed or cleaned right? There are post-cards, placemats, mugs, shirts that could have your art on it, websites with your designs. Bookshelves with your books or web pages with your knowledge or services. Such a wide variety of things we are able to do to bring us a source of income. Don’t know what to do? Choose something you are good at, make use of your talents. Work to develop what makes you different. No openings in your field? Tunnel under it. There are a few steps that are crucial to follow:
- Start with small but achievable tasks. Praise yourself when you reach even small goals.
- Do something that makes you crave the result. You want to love the process, not have it feel like a chore.
- Make it fun. Don’t make it something you can’t wait to get over with the same way you feel when mopping the floor or doing dishes. You want you feel passionate about what you are doing and take pride in the process.
- Invest in yourself. Your well being is the most important, keep a positive mindset, and believe in you. If you don’t invest in yourself you won’t be able to start a business, let alone sustain one.
- Like I’ve shown, there are a lot of people out here trying to be their own boss so you must stay smart about it. Do your research. Look at the future, create a market that doesnt exist based on people’s changing needs. See what consumers may need down the road, jump on that. Learn the market, make smart choices.
- Observe, adjust and adapt to circumstances and conditions in life. Realize that what you know now may change as time goes on and that you can always learn new things. Stay open-minded and fair.
- If you choose something that is oversaturated because everyone else is doing the same, make it a goal to be the one who stands out. Why would people come to you instead of all the other people doing the same thing? Don’t know what it will be but your goal is to do something to make sure they do come to you.
- Stop procrastinating and start! Don’t have much knowledge on the subject you wish to pursue? Learn more or choose a new one! Don’t know where to begin writing? Just write! Anything and everything that comes to your mind. Search writing prompts on google, the internet is a handy tool I tell ya. Don’t know if you’re good enough or if you could make it? Let me tell ya folks, you’ll never know if ya don’t try. Stop the procrastination, just do.
Living Proof That a Variety of Different Types of People are Capable of Generating Their Own Success
Let’s briefly go over the back stories on specific entrepreneurs so you could see that there are varied ways of starting and getting to a point where you acquire a good fortune.
John Ferolito and Don Vultaggio
In the 70’s two Brooklyn friends started a beer distributor out of the back of a VW bus, they did alright, they made some money and decided to try their hand at soft drinks twenty years later. They launched Arizona Green Tea not knowing soon it would be the #1 in America and distributed world-wide. The two friends still own the company today.
Pierie Omifyar
In 1995 Omifyar made a personal website in order to auction items off, he called it AuctionWeb. It was his own personal project until it started getting a lot of web traffic making it necessary to update to business internet account where he had to start charging fees. It kept on growing, his bank account increasing, it no longer was a personal website but a world wide phenomenon. We call it Ebay today.
Jan Koum
Koum was born into poverty in a small village near Kiev in Ukraine. Him and his family moved to California and Koum learned about computers in his spare time. By the age of 18 he had enough skills for Yahhoo to hire him as an infrastructure engineer in 1997. He worked for them for 10 years until he realized the huge potential of the app industry. In 2009 he started WhatsApp, by 2014 it was huge. Facebook ended up buying the app for 19billion dollars. I don’t think Jan is living in poverty anymore, my friends.
Sam Walton
Sam had no money so, with a $25,000 loan from his father-in-law he started his first general store in 1945. It became an instant retail success, and in 1962 the first Walmart store opened up. By 1976, it was worth more than 176 million.
Matt Maloney and Mike Evans
Two Chicago software developers got sick of calling restaurants in search of take-out food. They thought there should be one location where consumers were able to search through a variety of restaurants, in order to make the best decision. They created the app GrubHub which is now valued at 3 billion dollars.
Phil Robertson
Phil loved duck hunting so much that he chose it over playing pro football for the NFL. He invented the duck call and started a company called Duck Commander, which he eventually put his son Willy in charge of who spawned a media and merchandise empire for a family of rednecks known as Duck Dynasty.
Kylie Jenner
You read the name and you’re like yeah right, she was born into fame. Yes, you’re right she definitely was born into riches, she never knew anything else. Did she have to go and make her own brand building her net worth up quicker than any other entrepreneur, making her the youngest self-made billionaire? No, but she had ambition. She had the money to do something and she did it.
A vending machine gave her the idea of the Kylie lip kit. She looked at a vending machine and asked her staff to imagine this, but with lipstick. She started with a lip kit for only $29 with a lipstick and matching lip-liner. Since then she has sold 630 million dollars worth of makeup. With her makeup company which she owns 100% of, as well as her endorsing products and the TV programs she has been apart of, she is worth 900 million dollars at only 20 years old. Surpassing Mark Zuckerberg who became a billionaire at 23, and Evan Spielberg in his early twenties. (It is unknown the exact age he became a billionaire.)
Howard Schultz
A trip to Milan gave marketer Howard Schultz, who was working for Seattle Coffee bean roaster, an idea for upscale espresso cafes all over town, just like in Italy. His employer had no interest in owning various coffee shops but he agreed to finance Schultz endeavor. He even sold him their brand name, Starbucks.
Aaron Krause
We got this dude who created a damn sponge with a smiley face on it and became rich. I’m sure you’ve seen it advertised or seen it on Shark Tank the reality TV program with investors and inventors. The ScrubDaddy?
Aaron Krause started in the 90’s with a small car washing business which grew into a sizable US based company which also sold car buffing pads worldwide. In the early 2000’s while he was fixing his warehouse machine he developed an idea. His hands were always dirty because of his job and the lotions made for mechanics never worked, they were awful and nail brushes too small to clean your hands. He figured out a way to make a material from urethane foam which could scrub hands clean in seconds. There was a German Company who contacted him with details of a foam which hey developed years ago as filter but it never fufilled what they needed it to. Krause took advantage of this because he knew he could sell it. It worked perfectly for scrubbing hands clean.
He got discouraged when he realized that the niche market for mechanics with dirty hands was small, plus no one wanted to buy an expensive piece of foam that may or may not work. So, Krause put the product away on a shelf and gave up.
Years later his wife asked if he could clean up some of their outdoor furniture when he came across the box and decided to try it out on the furniture. It worked so well so he decided to bring it inside to try it out on the dishes. It was then he realized that it worked so well in water. Warm water made it soft and flexible, cold water made it hard and scrubby. He now was convinced again he could sell this product. He brought it to TV shopping channels such as QVC which gave the product notoriety and a little bit of popularity. He wanted more. He applied for Shark Tank where he ended up making a $200,000 deal with investor Lori Greiner. Revenues are now over US 30 million, US 107 million in sales.
“We’ve already done about 100,000 units on shopping television in Australia and we have a full-time distributor on the ground. We’re expecting it to be a multi-million-dollar market in a few years,” Straus says.
You Can Do It Too
You know those times you are just sitting there just thinking how this or that would be easier if only this existed or that? There are people out there putting their full efforts into creating things to make these things easier to do. You can also be that person.
Getting out there and experiencing things makes it a lot easier to expand your mind to new ideas and innovation techniques. The more you experience, the more you know, the more you grow, the more you think, the more knowledgeable you become. You won’t think of any ideas worth while if you’re sitting at home day in and out, stimulating your brain with video games, TV programs or just noise in general. Stop distracting yourself and go experience life.
Yes, risks are damn scary but man, are they worth it when you reap the awards from your hard work. No more boss telling you what to do, or having to be somewhere at a specific time in order to make an income for yourself. No more rules, you set the deadlines. There is so magic short cut to success it is hard work. Things do not just get handed to you. Entrepreneurship is real people, who provide real products or services to real customers. No short cuts or in betweens.Entrepreneur Mindset: 100 Key Lessons To Learn Their Beliefs, Characteristics & Habits: Books For Business And Life
NOW, Not Tomorrow
A lot of us work a 9-5 at our real jobs, and some of us come home and work 6-10 on our goals, so that we can get rid of the 9-5. Some of us quit the 9-5 because they know they have the potential to make it on their own. Some of us come home from the 9-5 and do nothing but unproductive things to distract ourselves until work the next day to repeat it all again. As time slips away as we never change a thing, wondering why life was unfair to us opposed to others.
It’s up to YOU. When you are sitting there on your phone scrolling, just stop. Just close it before you get too far in and instead go do something productive. Starting is the hardest part but once you do it’s easy to gain a sense of pride and accomplishment which only makes you wanna go further with your progress. Trust me, just start one day, whatever it is you want to do, make that first step even if it’s something as little as doing research and taking bullet notes, do it! It may set off that switch in your mind and get that creativity juice flowing. Either way, it will make you feel good and most likely give you inspiration to need to keep going.
Just remember guys, it really is all on you (no pressure) what sort of life you wish to live. Anyone can have this, or that, or whatever the hell it is they desire so, do not say I can’t because that is your first step to failure.
How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs
If you are interested in reading about a variety of different subjects such as mental health, inside the minds of disturbed artists, the importance of being an introvert, importance of body language and non-verbal communication, the importance of mental rehearsal and imagery, the power of our minds, mindfulness, metaphysics and the cosmic world and how all the great genius’ of the past have tapped into this power to achieve seeming miracles, addiction, abuse, the effects loneliness and so much more, please check out some of my other posts:
