What I Learned from Richard Branson…

I hope you’re great! Just finished an event with Richard Branson in Bucharest (a city known as the “Paris of The East”) and wanted to share my takeaways with you to help you take your career and life to its next level of wow.

Richard was polite and larger than life. A pleasure to share time with. And a man who clearly adores all he does. I encourage you to read his autobiography “Losing My Virginity” as well as his book “Business Stripped Bare” if you haven’t gone through them yet. Uber-inspiring. For people who want to become Remarkable Entrepreneurs – and express their absolute best.

Anyway, I’ll get right into some of my observations as well as the ideas we discussed. Please don’t underestimate the power of these simple ideas – superbly executed, they yield brilliant results.

1. Politeness Matters. As mentioned, Richard Branson was unfailingly polite. He mentioned to me that when he was a kid, if he criticized someone, his mother would make him stand in front of the mirror at home and say, “what you’re seeing in others is really what you’re seeing in yourself. So look in the mirror.” This educated him on the key leadership habit of looking for – and then encouraging – the gifts and talents within other people.

2. Be Massively Independent. When Richard was just four years old, his mother stopped her car and instructed him to find his own way home, over many miles. When he was about 12, she told him to cycle 100 miles to Bournemouth alone, to visit a relative. He expressed to me that these childhood experiences were his mother’s way of growing his self-reliance. And building the invincible inner core that has served him so well as an entrepreneur.

3. Screw It – Just Do It. What makes a great company (and great life) isn’t so much the inspiring idea as the flawless execution around the big idea. As Edison once said: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Richard shared that much of his success came from his philosophy to disregard the naysayers and those telling him his dream was impossible and just get the dream done. (Please remember: the impossible is generally just the untried). This is a man with a giant bias towards action.

4. Lavish Praise on People. I know you know this: the bigger the dream, the more important the team. Having worked with many of the best entrepreneurs in the world, I’ve learned that every single one of them gets that you can’t do it alone. Beautiful to have a brave vision. But the real key is finding the genius-level talent to get that vision delivered into reality. And if all you know how to surround yourself with is mediocre people, you’re destined to experience mediocre results. Richard is brilliant at finding the right people that bring his targets of opportunity to life. And he confirmed that once they are on his team, “I lavish them with praise.” Our takeaway: relentlessly celebrate+develop+inspire your people.

5. Be a Radical Innovator. When he was a young entrepreneur with nothing more than the little college newspaper THE STUDENT, he still showed a lust for disregarding all the rules. He challenged the status quo. And disrupted what was considered normal. An example: he somehow was able to get John Lennon to do an original piece of music for him. He then put the song on a special disc and packaged it into the newspaper, right next to the interview he’d done on the rock ‘n roll legend. At Virgin Records, he recruited the Sex Pistols and reinvented a whole category of music. At Virgin Atlantic, he gave passengers massages on airplanes and dropped them home in limos. And with Virgin Galactic, he’s taking people into space. Very cool. Fantastically bold.

At the Bucharest meeting, he told the 2500+ people in the concert hall that “sometime in your lifetime, every one of you will have visited other parts of the universe.” And I believe it.

6. Build Your Brand. Richard Branson gets branding. He knows what he – and the Virgin name – stands for. Fun. Good Value. Strong customer service. And so at every possible opportunity, he evangelizes all it stands for. Oh, and he’s also clearly a master of getting attention. From hot air balloon adventures that made global news to showing up at a press conference nearly naked to promote Virgin mobile, this Remarkable Entrepreneur gets the value of owning a share of our brain cells.

7. Find Your Necker Island. Get this: Branson paid roughly $300,000 for his beloved Necker Island. He and his then girlfriend Joan were visiting the Caribbean on a getaway. They fell in love with Necker – but it was about $4,000,000. But he wouldn’t give up (let’s never discount the power of a ridiculous amount of persistence around your most closely loved goals). A few months later, the owner needed cash. Branson made his deeply discounted offer. It has served as his retreat away from the world for many years. Here’s the real point: in the world of so much noise and complexity, find your personal retreat (even if it’s an aged wooded bench in a public garden) where you can withdraw to think+create+renew+rest.

8. Lucky Wins. We make luck. Enough said.

9. Don’t Do It If It’s Not Fun. Branson wears a smile pretty much all the time. He laughs naturally. And radiates happiness. Zero doubt: he loves his life – and all that’s in it (George Clooney said he’d swap his life for Richard Branson’s – much to the delight of Richard’s wife). The lesson for us: life’s just too short to be doing work that destroys your soul. This is the best time in the history of the world to become an entrepreneur. Find work you adore. And get busy changing the world with it.

10. With Gifts Come Responsibilities. OK, so Richard Branson’s one of the richest people on the planet. But he gets that being good trumps shiny toys. He mentioned to me that, “with great wealth comes great responsibility.” And so he’s spending a lot of his days evangelizing Virgin Unite, his foundation that helps kids in need. Reminds me of what my amazing father taught me – using the words of the great poet Tagore – growing up: “Robin, when you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Son, live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice.”

So there you go. What the iconic Richard Branson shared with me on a sunny Wednesday in Bucharest. I hope the lessons also serve you well.

as written by Robin Sharma in http://www.robinsharma.com/blog/05/what-i-learned-from-richard-branson/

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The Characteristics Of a Master Sales Closer

1. Shows no fear: Never ‘pushy’ and does not resolve to hard sell. No signs of weakness and vulnerability to rejection. The master sales closer is confident and relaxed, and lets the conversation take its own course and move at its own pace. He wants the prospect to buy but understands the pace that needs to be at.

2. Not selling just for the commission: Profound genuine belief in the value of what he is selling. Matching the right people to the right product/service.

3. Never gets down on herself/himself: Knows how to control his inner critic. May use errors to improve but never as a stick to beat himself with.

4. Very Organised and straightforward in asking for action: “Here’s how we will get started”

5. Understands the prospect has doubts, fears and the temptation to avoid confrontation too: A master sales closer understands their job is to close sales more than anything else. Knows the prospect wants him to be firm, convinced, and reassuring to help the prospect act rather than avoid/postpone a decision.

6. Immune to rejection: Never taking questions, objections or refusal personally.

7. Avoid all negative influences and distractions: Committed and focused on the objective

8. Master closers are competitive yet remarkably stress free: A master sales closer competes with himself and his goals, records but rarely competes against others.

9. They celebrate success: Without guilt!

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12 Commandments for Closing a Sale

Like any game there are rules to selling, especially when it comes to closing a sale. To ensure sales success in your business, whether you're a startup or an established entrepreneur, here are a dozen of my best commandments for sealing the deal.

1. Remain seated. The saying goes, present the product, service or idea on your feet, but always negotiate from your seat. Even if your prospect stands up, remain seated. Going from a seating position to standing up suggests something has changed and allows your prospect to exit and end the negotiations.

2. Always present a proposal in writing. People do not believe what they hear, they believe what they see. Always have a contract available and a writing pad. Anything offered or points of value that are included should be written down to show buyers what they get when they make a decision with you.

3. Communicate clearly. No one will trust a person who cannot communicate clearly and confidently. I practiced using recorders and video for years and then played them back to ensure my communication was coming across the way I intended.

4. Make eye contact. This is a discipline instilled only through practice, and you can perfect it by recording yourself. If you want to be believed, it is vital to make eye contact with your prospect. It suggests interest in them and confidence in yourself, your products, your services, and in what you are proposing.

5. Always carry a pen. I remember once I was closing a deal, and I reached for my pen in my jacket but it was gone. The prospect took this as sign that he shouldn't sign—and didn't. I was devastated, and now I refuse to go anywhere without my sword in hand. All agreements require signatures and that requires ink. Keep a pen available at all times. In fact, always have a back-up pen, too.

6. Use humor. Any humor that can make people feel good, inspired or hopeful is always appropriate during the close. Everyone loves a good story, and people are more likely to make decisions when they are less serious. You will close more deals if you can get your client to lighten up and laugh.

7. Ask one more time. Figuring out another way to circle back and reposition negotiations after being told "no" ultimately will make you a great closer. It is not rude to persist; it is the sign of success and prosperity. Because I continue to ask in another way for a "yes" after being told "no" does not mean I did not listen. It only means I am more sold on my view than I am the other's view.

8. Stay with the buyer. Each time you leave the customer to check on something, it creates doubt and uncertainty in their mind. It can create undue antagonism in the negotiations, lower perceived value, and extend the closing time. But keep in mind, this does not mean there is not an appropriate time to leave a buyer and use an authority for a close, as this can be very powerful as long as it is not overused

9. Always treat prospects like buyers. Regardless of the circumstances: no money, no budget, not the decision maker -- always treat the buyer like he is a buyer. I always survey the prospect for signs that demonstrate they have bought in the past. The watch, the shirt, the suit, the necklace, the car they drove, the house they live in, the credit card they use, and others. All are evidence that this prospect has actually demonstrated the ability and history of closing. I always tell myself, "Every buyer is a buyer. Treat them as a buyer and they will turn into a buyer."

10. Stay confident. I always maintain that we can come to an agreement, no matter what I am told by the buyer or those around me. The saying goes: "Where there is a will, there is a way." This mindset of knowing you will reach an agreement requires you to eliminate all negativity from your environment as though it were a disease that kills, and be assured, it does.

11. Be positive. No matter how the buyer responds, keep it light and maintain a can-do attitude throughout the negotiations. When you go negative due to the buyer being negative there is only one outcome and it's not good. Negativity always succumbs to positivity.

12. Always smile. This is not just about your attitude, but also your physical manifestation. For the next week, practice smiling with everyone in every situation you encounter. Do this until you are able to argue with a smile, disagree with a smile, negotiate, overcome objections and close with a smile. Have you ever noticed that very successful people are smiling all the time? It is not because they are successful that they are smiling, it's how they got successful. This is a million dollar tip: Smile.

Adapted excerpt from The Closer's Survival Guide by Grant Cardone (Cardone Enterprises, 2011).

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How to Close a Deal Like Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett might be catching a lot of flack these days, but I think if you want to know about closing big deals, he's still the guy to watch. Why? The man knows how to talk about money when he's dealmaking.

Buffett is famous for doing ginormous deals with as little information as a few pages of business plans and the standard financials a company would submit to a bank to qualify for a loan. What he has when he goes into any conversation is an encyclopedic knowledge of how businesses work financially. He knows "their money," "their wallet," and how investments and outcomes should work. Follow his lead and you will close more business.

Here are seven things I've learned as I've watched Buffett from afar:

1. Know the other guy's money - How they make it, how they count it, how they spend it. This is obviously much easier to do for publicly traded companies. For privately held companies, the numbers are fairly easy to estimate, at least the cost of goods sold and probably the cost of sale. These numbers are critical to discussing the possibilities of working together. Too often the discussion stops at budget. When you don't know, ask. Not the trade secrets, but at least the industry averages. This provides a basic framework for the discussion.

2. Know the other guy's wallet - How does this sale impact any of these critical numbers? The terms of the deal should be looked at from their side of the table first, then yours.

3. Start discussing the money early - You know you are going to discuss the money later. Early in the conversation, you do not have enough information for precision. Instead, you have an understanding of the economics of the prospect's industry, so you have enough to determine if a deal makes any sense at all. Use that economic information and industry knowledge to frame a shared understanding of the reality of the money for this opportunity.

4. Use ranges to qualify and disqualify - Understand early (and throughout the discussion) whether you and your prospect are in the same arena. By using ranges of prices, cost structures, yields, and performance you can both be sure that you are dealing in a shared reality rather than getting to the end and finding yourselves so far apart that there is permanent damage done to the relationship.

5. Speak the language of investment and outcomes - Every large sale is an investment on both parts in an outcome. When you move the conversation from price to investment and cost to outcomes you are focusing on the business impact rather than budget impact. This is the language of large sales.

6. Don't discount early - I regularly hear fearful "deal makers" use language like, "Let's not let money get in the way of working together." There's a word for this that is not used in polite company. This is the language of discounting before the scope has been clearly defined. The sales person believes that he is being clever by taking money off the table. What he has really done is to take margin off the table, his and his company's margin. If qualifying investment and impact has been made up front, then this point does not need to be made again.

7. Don't negotiate until it's time - Work on the deal points one at a time. Work through the investment and outcome ideas clearly, then negotiate. True, all of these points require negotiation. However, too often the conversation turns to negotiations too early before real scope and deliverables have been defined. Which means that the whole is reduced to the little parts before the shared picture of the whole has been established.

Side Note: I watched a deal unravel recently because the players did not observe these guidelines. The sale involved the installation of a point-of-sale system into a retail chain. The details are complicated as many large deals are, but the numbers were simple:

If you calculated the investment necessary for the system, the transaction cost was going to be >5% of the transaction revenue value. That's more than the cost of the charge card processing fee! Never going to work regardless of the reporting bells and whistles, speed to data consolidation and so on.

This violates rules 1-5. The selling team did not understand the fundamental money issues of their prospect. They had not asked, done their research or even estimated. They were focused on the features of their system and what they had heard the IT people say would be the selection criteria without working through the money issues. That always leads to disaster.

as written by Tom Searchy @ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505183_162-46440283-10391735/how-to-close-a-deal-like-warren-buffett/?tag=bnetdomain

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Hustlers vs Entrepreneurs : Which one are you?

Hustlers vs Entrepreneurs.  The two are pretty much the same thing, right? Wrong!  While I would say that it is pretty safe to assume that most entrepreneurs are natural hustlers, I would also say that most hustlers will never become entrepreneurs.  You see, hustlers are missing a few things that entrepreneurs seem to have discovered.

First of all, hustlers lack any real long term vision.  A car salesman is a hustler, the car dealership owner is an entrepreneur.  A person who flips real estate is a hustler, the person who owns apartments and collects cashflow is an entrepreneur. Capital Gains versus Appreciation and cashflow. The guy who sells you stocks is a hustler, the guy whose stock he’s selling because he just had an IPO is an entrepreneur. A consultant and the guy who owns the consulting company. Highest tax bracket versus lowest tax bracket (or even no tax bracket), you get the idea.  A hustler must continue hustling or his income will suffer.  An entrepreneur can pick and choose when to hustle and when to strategize for the future.  Both are after the same thing, financial freedom and wealth, but unfortunately only one will actually accomplish that.  1099 vs Schedule K-1, all you entrepreneurs already know what that means.

Hustling should be a means to an end, not the end itself.  Like I said before, most entrepreneurs were (and actually still are) hustlers, they just evolved and converted their hustle into a system that can attract other hustlers to work in for them.  Making the next sale is what is important to a hustler, building a company and leading his team is what the entrepreneur is focused on.  The entrepreneur builds the system that the hustler works in. Being a hustler is not bad, but for a hustler to not evolve into an entrepreneur is a sad shame.  Sometimes entrepreneurs fall back into the hustler mentality.  Maybe the company had a rough quarter and long term aspirations must be sacrificed in order to make payroll and pay the bills.  Sometimes the entrepreneur may feel that shortcuts need to be made in order to meet short term goals.  I am an entrepreneur that occasionally falls back into “hustler mode”.  If this happens to you too, don’t worry about it too much, just recognize it for what it is, deal with your immediate issues, and then become an entrepreneur again by focusing on long term vision.  Build a better system for that particular issue so that you don’t fall back into this short-sighted thinking (at least for that particular issue) again.  When an entrepreneur is building a startup, he must hustle, but he knows that he must hustle on building his system so he can hire other hustlers to work in the system.  This is why the first year of running a business is critical, you will either develop the system and evolve to becoming an entrepreneur, or you will forever be a hustler.  Mom and Pop store versus Corporation.

At the root of the hustler-entrepreneur dilemma is that one focuses on himself while the other focuses on others.  Being an entrepreneur requires massive humility.  To him, brand equity matters more than a quick buck or commission.  This is where customer service comes into play.  Take, for example, Zappos and a hustler-owned online (or offline) shoe merchant.  Both may carry the same shoes, however, only one has the brand equity required to get away with charging more than the other.  Brand equity, word of mouth, creating a culture of happiness, these are all long term, entrepreneurial assets that Zappos carries over their hustler competitors.  When Zappos screws up an order, they are known to send flowers, gift certificates, or even hand deliver their shoes themselves!  When a hustler screws up an order he moves on to the next customer, leaving the previous one with a bad experience.  You see, the hustler put the almighty dollar ahead of his customer. Having humility, building a system that creates brand equity , these are strange concepts for a hustler who has bills to pay TODAY.  Short term satisfaction is chosen over long term brand building.

The difference between the two examples is “me” versus “my customers”.  Zappos probably loses money on that customer that they just tried to keep happy, but they don’t care because they know it will pay off in the future. Certainly a hustler can make a good (even great) living, but an entrepreneur can achieve financial independence and separate his time from his money-making ability.  A hustler remains prisoner to his own system, and once he stops hustling, he stops earning.  An entrepreneur, once he has built his own system, is able to walk away from it, come back many months later, and find it doing better than before he left.  It is not difficult to see who will reach financial freedom under this model.

I am an entrepreneur with many hustler tendencies who occasionally loses sight of his long-term vision, but always recognizes that and is able to readjust his vision.  I am on a mission to constantly evolve as an entrepreneur, build sustainable business systems, and hire the best hustlers to work for me.  If you are a great hustler, feel free to email me your resume.

http://under30ceo.com/hustlers-vs-entrepreneurs-which-one-are-you/

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2012 : Manual for conserving paths

1] The path begins with a crossroads. There you can stop and think what direction to follow. But don’t spend too much time thinking or you’ll never leave the spot. Once you have taken the first step, forget the crossroads forever or you will always torture yourself with the useless question: “did I take the right path?”

2] The path doesn’t last for ever. It is a blessing to travel the path for some time, but one day it will come to an end, so always be prepared to leave it at any moment. Don’t get too used to anything. Neither to the hours of euphoria, nor to the endless days when everything seems so difficult and progress is so slow. Don’t forget that sooner or later an angel will appear and your journey will reach an end.

3] Honor your path. It was your choice, your decision, and just as you respect the ground you step on, that ground will respect your feet. Always do what is best to conserve and keep your path and it will do the same for you.

4] Be well equipped. Carry a small rake, a spade, a penknife. Understand that penknives are no use for dry leaves, and rakes are useless for herbs that are deep-rooted. Know also what tool to use at each moment.

5] The path goes forward and backward. At times you have to go back because something was lost, or else a message to be delivered was forgotten in your pocket. A well tended path enables you to go back without any great problems.

6] Take care of the path before you take care of what is around you. Don’t be distracted by the dry leaves at the edges or by the way that others are looking after their paths. Use your energy to tend and conserve the ground that accepts your steps.

7] Be patient. Sometimes the same tasks have to be repeated, like tearing up weeds or closing holes that appear after unexpected rain. Don’t let that annoy you – that is part of the journey.

8] Paths cross. People can tell what the weather is like. Listen to advice, and make your own decisions. You alone are responsible for the path that was entrusted to you.

9] Nature follows its own rules. In this way, you have to be prepared for sudden changes in the fall, slippery ice in winter, the temptations of flowers in spring, thirst and showers in the summer. Make the most of each of these seasons, and don’t complain about their characteristics.

10] Make your path a mirror of yourself. By no means let yourself be influenced by the way that others care for their paths. You have your soul to listen to, and the birds to tell what your soul is saying. Let your stories be beautiful and pleasant to everything around you. Above all, let the stories that your soul tells during the journey be echoed at each and every second of the path.

11] Love your path. And may the Lord guide you and help you every single day in 2012

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New Paradigm

"Place an intention to be a vessel

- so wealth flows through us, 

so we can feed the poor. 

Then it means we are working for Allah 

If we are working for Allah, 

we will do whatever it takes

to sell & market our products & Services 

so we can earn the Halal way 

Allah as our Guide, 

Run to Allah, 

the wealth will run THROUGH us 

Not TO us, 

THROUGH us 

To the Poor, 

Be the Vessel 

Be the Vessel 

Be the Vessel 

Love the Poor, 

The Poor they are our CEO

We want to make lots of money for them

to feed and help them - 

Fisabillillah 

Be like Abdur-Rahman Ibn Awl

The eighth person to embrace Islam,

Starting with nothing,

he went on to enjoy tremendous success as a merchant, 

becoming the richest of the Companions. 

From his great wealth, 

Abdur-Rahman financed the Muslim armies,

contributed to the the upkeep of the family of Mohammed after the prophet's death 

and was universally renowned for his fabulous generosity.

Don't Be Wealthy, 

Just for the sake of being Wealthy

BE Wealthy to be the vessel for wealth to flow 

To the Poor 

For Fisabilillah ...

Do it with the Right Islamic Muamalah 

Islam way of doing Business

Without RIBA

Pay your zakat 

Focus on Distributing Your Wealth 

Focus on the Ummah"

shared by Suria Mohd

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Who is John Galt?

For twelve years you've been asking "Who is John Galt?" This is John Galt speaking. I'm the man who's taken away your victims and thus destroyed your world. You've heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis and that Man's sins are destroying the world. But your chief virtue has been sacrifice, and you've demanded more sacrifices at every disaster. You've sacrificed justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why should you be afraid of the world around you?

Your world is only the product of your sacrifices. While you were dragging the men who made your happiness possible to your sacrificial altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first and told them about the game you were playing and where it would take them. I explained the consequences of your 'brother-love' morality, which they had been too innocently generous to understand. You won't find them now, when you need them more than ever.

We're on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made them quit, I told them exactly what I'm telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason -- that it was right to pursue one's own happiness as one's principal goal in life. I don't consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else's life.

I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical.

You've allowed such men to occupy positions of power in your world by preaching that all men are evil from the moment they're born. When men believe this, they see nothing wrong in acting in any way they please. The name of this absurdity is 'original sin'. That's inmpossible. That which is outside the possibility of choice is also outside the province of morality. To call sin that which is outside man's choice is a mockery of justice. To say that men are born with a free will but with a tendency toward evil is ridiculous. If the tendency is one of choice, it doesn't come at birth. If it is not a tendency of choice, then man's will is not free.

And then there's your 'brother-love' morality. Why is it moral to serve others, but not yourself? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but not by you? Why is it immoral to produce something of value and keep it for yourself, when it is moral for others who haven't earned it to accept it? If it's virtuous to give, isn't it then selfish to take?

Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.

You know that you can't give away everything and starve yourself. You've forced yourselves to live with undeserved, irrational guilt. Is it ever proper to help another man? No, if he demands it as his right or as a duty that you owe him. Yes, if it's your own free choice based on your judgment of the value of that person and his struggle. This country wasn't built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth.

Then it began apologizing for its greatness and began giving away its wealth, feeling guilty for having produced more than ikts neighbors. Twelve years ago, I saw what was wrong with the world and where the battle for Life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality and that my acceptance of that morality was its only power. I was the first of the men who refused to give up the pursuit of his own happiness in order to serve others.

To those of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives for yourselves, you have the chance to make the same choice. Examine your values and understand that you must choose one side or the other. Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.

If you've understood what I've said, stop supporting your destroyers. Don't accept their philosophy. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, and your love. Don't exhaust yourself to help build the kind of world that you see around you now. In the name of the best within you, don't sacrifice the world to those who will take away your happiness for it.

The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath:

I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man,

nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.

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Felix Dennis - Can You Get Rich?

So can you get rich? Can you build your own business empire?

It’s true. You can be rich. You can build your business into an empire. You CAN do it.

Anyone of reasonable intelligence lives in a Western democracy can do it given sufficient motivation and application. And the first lesson is that you can only get rich if you believe, if you believe in yourself. You must believe in yourself. You must believe in you can do it. You must believe that you are the one to do it. For if you will not to believe in yourself, then why should anyone believe in you? Absolute belief in yourself is vital if you are to succeed. Absolute belief in yourself despite all your faults — many of which you will not know — all your weaknesses.

Despite what your parents and teachers told you. Despite what your colleagues and friends tell you. Despite what your lover tells you. Despite your own failures, up to now, despite everything that life has thrown at you. If you only banish fear and fear of failure to the darkest recesses of your heart and I promise you: you can do it and no one can stop you from doing it. Only you can stop yourself from doing it.

We all fear failure

I fear it still. I have always feared it but such fear itself is not the problem. It is the paralysis that comes from such fear which is the real problem. The paralysis that grows into a mountain you shrink from climbing. That fear is real. The fear of embarrassing yourself, of people laughing at you, of letting down yourself and your family, and your colleagues and maybe even your employees. The fear of losing money that you borrowed or begged or stole. The fear of failing in the open where there is nowhere to hide and no one else to blame. This is the fear you must confront, that you must entice, capture, train and eventually padlock into a secret chamber of your soul. It will still call to you. It calls to me. You will hear its echo from time to time. Believe me. But by then you will be so far up the mountain—so close to the goal of getting rich—that its cries will only serve to spur you on rather than paralyzing you with doubt and dread. Confront fear of failure. Confront it head-on. Stare it straight in its feral eye. Wrestle with it. Master it and master it as best you can. Batter it into submission and harness it into becoming your secret weapon. A ghoul a scourge to keep you working longer hours than your friend can believe, harder than your colleagues can comprehend, harder than you ever dreamt you could work. In years to come you will thank that fear. The fear that drove you to achieve what you feared was impossible.

You have to have a clear understanding what is your time to do and you must understand step-by-step how you are going to do it. “I’m going to do this. If that fails I’m going to fall back and do that.” “Now I gotta do this, then I gotta get that.” You have to have a clear methodology in front of you. That does not mean you’re creating a business in ridiculous things that I received 40 a week of. You know, business plans telling me how we’re all going to become a multi-billionaires, nevermind all that. You have got to have a clear understanding of what you’re going to do and the steps you’re gonna take to do it. Then you have to, I don’t know if you’re going in with a partner or just entirely on your own.

Go to a place

Go to a place on your own. I don’t care where it is. I don’t care if it’s in front of your chimney or if you’re going out in the middle of the new Forest swear to yourself: “I will not give in until they bankrupt me.”

While you never give in on your goal, you know, what you’re trying to reach what you’re trying to do. You know, make more money than your neighbor. You might have to change the methodology. If something isn’t working then, what sorts the man or woman that is gonna to be rich from the man or woman that I just gonna have tried it once, failed and dream about it, is your ability, as with all human activity, to adapt. So you’re going to say “okay”, you know, “this isn’t working we gotta change our methodology. We gotta change direction. We gotta do something else that’s gonna make the damn thing work!” And if you’re willing to do that and keep trying. You know, listening to everybody that you know who’s got any kind of sense, whatever, that you trust, you know within this particular industry or whatever.

And if you’re willing to change until it starts working then they cannot stop for the very simple reason that in the end you WILL get it right. And I had to do that many, many times. Many of the magazines I started were complete dogs. They were absolutely useless and we all got together and we talked about it and we started to listen to our readers and we realized that what we were doing was completely wrong. And it’s amazing how often entrepreneurs get the right idea and the wrong methodology and just go about it completely wrong.

So, can you get rich?

Can you build your own business empire? Is it a delusion to believe that so-called ordinary men and women can within not so many years do what I did? And what did I do? I went from being a failed blues musician and an art student living in a crummy bed sit. Didn’t have the price of a pint of beer in my pocket, let alone the money to pay my landlady the rent into becoming one of the richest men in Britain or so the Sunday Times Rich List tells us. I went from being a highschool dropout without a penny of capital or the benefit of a university education to owning my own business, flying around in private jets, purchasing massive homes in the states with thousands of acres of land around the world, being chauffeured in a fleet of rolls royces and maybachs and drinking the finest wine that money can buy from my own cellars.

In the end if you want too much money, then make the decision that you do want it and go out there and get it brother and nothing can stop I swear that to you. Nothing in this earth can stop you, apart from death, nothing. Most of the people that got fantastically rich in the western world in the last couple of hundred years were not very clever. They don’t have to be clever.

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What Makes an Entrepreneur? Four Letters: JFDI

by MARK SUSTER on NOVEMBER 19, 2009

I had a picture in the office of my first company with the logo above and the capital letters JFDI.  (In case it’s not obvious it’s a play on the Nike slogan, “Just Do It.”)  I believe that being successful as an entrepreneur requires you to get lots of things done.  You are constantly faced with decisions and there is always incomplete information.  This paralyzes most people.  Not you.

Entrepreneurs make fast decisions and move forward knowing that at best 70% of their decisions are going to be right.  They move the ball forward every day.  They are quick to spot their mistakes and correct.  Good entrepreneurs can admit when their course of action was wrong and learn from it.  Good entrepreneurs are wrong often.  If you’re not then you’re not trying hard enough.  Good entrepreneurs have a penchant for doing vs. over-analyzing.  (obviously don’t read this as zero analysis)

I spent nearly a decade building software for large companies and then advising companies on the same.  I didn’t have to make many serious decisions.  So I was surprised at the sheer volumes of decisions that had to be made when I became a startup CEO.  Most of them are completely mundane such as choosing which:  bank,  office space, 1-year lease vs. 2-year lease, logo, URL, pricing structure or which VC.

The technology team disagrees on direction and wants resolutions.  Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody.  You need to decide whether or not to launch at TechCrunch50.  Somebody asks whether you plan to set up 401k’s and do contribution matching.  I think this paralyzes many people.

I learned quickly that I needed to just do things.  Yet I initially had a team full of people that seemed to either over analyze things or more likely wait for a higher source within the company to make the tough decisions for them.  You’re sales person is getting blocked by the CTO who says she shouldn’t go above him but the CTO isn’t approving the deal.  Should she take a chance and potentially ruffle feathers?

Yes, I know it’s my job as the CEO to be the coach for people and that’s fine.  But if everybody is looking for me to make their decisions we’ll never get anything done.  I felt like I had done the hard bit and chosen people that I truly respected and I would rather empower them to make decisions and accept consequences.

Sometimes you need to break some eggs to get things done so if that’s what it takes I wanted my team to go for it and I wanted to symbolize that it was OK with me.  I would far rather have some messes to clean up than to never have them cross the line trying.

So I took on the motto JFDI to symbolize this.  And I think my team did a great job and rose to the occasion.  Maybe it helps that I love controversy and pushing the boundaries so people felt it was OK for them to do it as well.

Another side of JFDI is finding ways to get stuff done that seem impossible.  Entrepreneurs have a way of doing that. Getting suppliers to accept terms that they said they never normally agree, getting accepted to speak on a panel when the conference organizer initially said “no,” getting people to moonlight for you until you have the cash to bring them on board.

A couple of quick stories / examples:

1. Making Things Happen

There’s a guy in Los Angeles that I met at several tech networking events.  He was a really nice and personable guy who had deep domain knowledge in an industry that he’d worked in for 10 years that is in need of technological advancement.  He wanted to be the guy who did it.  So we discussed his ideas several times.  I usually try to avoid getting stuck reviewing people’s PowerPoint decks (I get this request too often and frankly I’m already behind on my own work!) but there are some people you just take an (extra) liking to and want to help.  This was such a guy.

So over several months I went through a few iterations on his idea.  He was stuck on capital raising.  He wanted to know how to get started and “Could I intro him to a couple of local angels?”  One night after a DealMaker Media event we got 20 minutes together after the event ended.  I was blunt (warning: that sometimes happens with me) and told him not to bother and that I wasn’t prepared to help with angels.

“Why?” he asked.  I told him he wasn’t a real entrepreneur.  He looked stunned.  I said that he had been talking about doing this for too long.  He still had no website and no prototypes.  But “he didn’t have the budget to hire a developer until he had raised money!”

I said that was my point. “A real entrepreneur would have done it anyway.  He would have found somebody technical and inspired that individual to work for equity or deferred payment.  Real entrepreneurs are contagious.  They are filled with ideas and they get those ideas onto paper.  That paper can be in the form of wireframes or in the form of a PowerPoint plan.  Or worst case your ideas can be conveyed verbally.  But they GET THINGS DONE.  You have the skills and knowledge to do that.”

I walked away kind of feeling bad.  I don’t like to intentionally crush people’s hopes.  But I always view my job as being honest so that people don’t waste time, money or both if their ideas aren’t good or the positive execution isn’t likely.  But then something awesome happened.  He took my comments as a challenge.  He went out and found a developer and built a product.  He refined his business plan and he got commitments for $150-200k but needed some lead angels to commit first.  When he re-approached me he had a much better plan and he had a prototype!  I introduced him to some angels and his round was OVER SUBSCRIBED!

That is a true story.  I don’t know whether the entrepreneur feels comfortable with my saying who he is so if he does and he reads this perhaps he’ll put his details in the comments section.  But I  bring up this story for a reason.

2. Analysis Paralysis

I used to sit on the board of a company (for which I DID NOT invest) with a very smart and very likable CEO.  This person was educated at the best US schools and had worked for a top-tier strategy consulting firm – one of the big 3.  The CEO led every board meeting with vigor and the board members (sans me) were always wowed.  The CEO had 60-page Powerpoint presentations analyzing every micro detail of the business.  The company had less than $5 million in revenue yet we had a multi-tab spreadsheet doing activity-based costing on our customer service staff, operations and technology.

We had every chart every invented by man (or McKinsey) showing failure rates of our product, mean-times-to-repair, detailed sales forecast charts, etc.  Charts.  What lovely charts!  I know they would have been very useful in dissected the woes of General Motors.  I was the only unimpressed board member.  I was the one pointing out that we were behind on our sales targets and our “Elephant Deal” that had been promised was 6 months late.

After a few board meetings I finally spoke up.  I was a bull in a china shop.  I said (out loud), “I sure wish that some of the time that went into these PowerPoint slides would have gone into meetings with the COO, CFO or CMO of [Elephant Customer].” The CEO had never met with any of them.

With a CEO that likable, smart, educated and accomplished it made board members squirm that I was willing to call bullshit.

I’m sure you know what happens next.  We missed our sales target by more than 66% for the year but we had great slides explaining why.  The next year we set the sales budget equal to the previous year’s sales budget that we had missed.  We missed the next year by more than 33%.  Nobody seemed shocked.  The company has burned through serious cash.  I complained the whole way.  It was not fun.  No “independent” board members seemed to care (or even comprehend the lunacy of the whole situation).

To this day I’m sure they see the situation differently.  Beautiful slides by top-tier consultants have hoodwinked large companies for years and I can see why.  They are intoxicating, complex, insightful and tell a great story.  But in the end they’re usually just that – a story.  Sometimes a fantasy.

I still really like this CEO and have deep respect for this person outside of the role of being a CEO.  The “Peter Principle” says that “everybody rises to their level of incompetency.”  Read this as some people who are great at analyzing to not make great doers and therefore do not make great entrepreneurs.  I think many VCs have learned this the hard way when they step in to temporarily run companies as I have seen happen.

The problem with the company that I described above was that there was somebody willing to fund ongoing losses and the board continued to believe that good times were just around the corner.  Maybe they’ll be proved right some day.  I certainly hope so.  But in the UK we used to call this “promising jam tomorrow.”  I was tired of jam tomorrow.  I left the board.  The company never JFDI.

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How to Pitch a VC: 5 Tips from ‘Shark Tank’

By Steve Strauss | October 3, 2011

What does it take to not only get the attention of VCs, but actually get them to invest in your business? This, of course, is a question that vexes many an entrepreneur. Sure, you can read books and articles and watch videos, but let me suggest a different path:

Watch TV.

Specifically, turn on the show “Shark Tank” on Friday nights. If you have never seen it, here’s a quick recap: Entrepreneurs and inventors come before a panel of multi-millionaires and billionaires (like Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran) and pitch their businesses. If the sharks (the investors) like the idea and think it is a market-worthy product, they will offer the entrepreneur some or all of the money the person is seeking in exchange for an equity stake in the business. If they strike a deal, the shark and the entrepreneur are in business together.

It’s fascinating to watch, from both perspectives. Sometimes you see entrepreneurs go up there with a dynamite idea but no clue how to execute on it. Or they have no sales or no team. Sometimes the sharks battle each other for a piece of the pie when an idea seems too big to miss such as Toygaroo, a company that rents toys to parents of young kids for a monthly fee — sort of like Netflix for toys. Brilliant.

But for us entrepreneurs in the audience there are a lot of lessons on how, and how not, to approach and get money from a VC. Here are five:

1. Know your numbers cold and be able to back them up: How many times have I seen someone on the show come in and say they need, say, “$100,000 for a 10% stake in my company”? The sharks immediately note that that means the entrepreneur values the company at $1 million. They ask:

What sales do you have to back that up?

What assets do you have?

What is your profit margin?

If the entrepreneur has no proof that the business is really worth what he says it is, then it’s over. Know your numbers.

2. Have some sort of secret sauce: There is no shortage of great ideas out there. What distinguishes yours? Why should a VC invest in your idea over the hundreds of others he or she sees every year? You have to offer something different and special and unique.

As one of the sharks, billionaire Kevin Harrington says, “A good business idea is a product or service that solves a problem that is not already being solved in the marketplace. The product or service should be unique enough that it’s not something already readily available.”

3. Have a great team: VCs love to see that you have surrounded yourself with people who can execute on the plan, and who have experience and a can-do attitude. That said, Barbara Corcoran notes, “Always choose attitude over experience. When I hire people I make a habit of never looking at their resume because most people spend most of their life in the wrong job. I never hire complainers or excuse-makers because they’ll find a way within my company to do more of the same. People with a can-do attitude are a pleasure to work with.”

4. Put your best foot forward: Not a few times on the show have the sharks said that they are investing in the person more than the idea. You have to come to the meeting with the VC and be impressive — a leader, a visionary, articulate, confident, and bold, all rolled into one.

Again, Barbara Corcoran is instructive, “My most important criteria when making the decision to invest are: 1) Do I trust the individual? and 2) Do they have the fire in their belly to bring the business to the finish line?”

5. Show them the money. Investors invest to make a profit. Be able to prove that you will make them a big one.

In the end, whether you get the money or not, depends on all of these things. Harrington puts it this way: “Your presentation needs to convince potential investors and business partners that you know what you are doing, have a background in your business, and have put together a good team. It’s important that you show them as little risk as possible, and convince them that they will not only get their money back, but also a high return on investment.”

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6 Lessons We Could Learn from Steve Jobs

By Margaret Heffernan | October 6, 2011

Tracking the achievements of Steve Jobs isn’t a difficult thing to do. They’re big, public and - especially in technology - remarkably long lasting. More tricky but, I think, more interesting, is eliciting from those achievements the lessons we could learn from his successes if we tried.

1. Style is Content

From the outset, Jobs and Apple believed in style: in fonts, in graphics, in industrial design and in marketing. It’s easy to under-estimate how eccentric this was at the time - and how eccentric it remains today. While most organizations believe that style is the exclusive purview of marketing, few achieve it even there. Most hardware and software remains remarkably clunky, ugly or simply derivative. (The Kindle is hideous; the Fire a pale imitation.) When I first started working in technology 15 years ago, style was dismissed as frivolous and that’s the status it still holds in most companies today. Anyone who imagines that Apple’s success derives entirely from what’s inside the box  (and there are more than a few) has missed a very obvious point.

Conventional wisdom divides thinking into the left brain and the right brain. The left is all systematic, rational, linear while the right is more emotional and creative. What Jobs demonstrated was that success lies not in emphasizing one over the other but in bringing them together. The physical representation of this was clear when he took over Pixar. The new campus planned 3 separate buildings: for creatives, for producers and for business people. He insisted that they be brought under one roof, with toilets at the center - because that’s where everyone meets and talks.

2. Patience Beats Speed

For all that Apple is known for fast product development, the truth is that Jobs was very good at waiting. After his return to Apple in 1997, when the company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, he did what any smart CEO would do: slashed product lines (15 desktop models to 1) cut software and hardware engineers, eliminated peripherals, reduced inventory and retailers and moved most manufacturing offshore. There is nothing brilliant about this; it’s textbook stuff. But asked in 1998, by Richard Rummelt, what he was going to do next, in order to move Apple beyond its fragile niche position, Jobs had a gutsy answer: “I am going to wait for the next big thing.”

Wait? In a technology business? That took courage. Of course, once he’d figured out what the next big thing was, Jobs was methodical and patient - again - in putting in place everything he’d need to take advantage of the seismic shift in the environment when the U.S. market moved to broadband.

It’s also worth remembering that, during the three years he did this, he was remorselessly hammered by industry analysts not one of whom understood what he was up to.

3. Drama Trumps Romance

Jobs’s product launches were famed for their drama. But one thing they didn’t offer was romance. The products did what they said they’d do. Marketing commentary around them didn’t promise fantasies, illusions or daydreams. Apple promoted its products but didn’t hype them. This may seem a lackluster quality but it built trust. Apple said its products were easy to use not because (like many of its competitors) it hoped that was true, or because it was true for the PhD engineers who’d invented them, but because it was true. It seems peculiar to celebrate a company for truth in advertising but that’s one reason why Apple customers, once smitten, stayed loyal.

4. Nothing Beats a Good Mistake

Jobs’s career isn’t without its mis-steps. Losing control of Apple was the biggest and most obvious but there were plenty of minor slip ups along the way. The suicides at the Foxconn plant that manufactures iPhones was just one of these. But Jobs didn’t try to deny that they had taken place or that they mattered. He was swift to point out that Apple’s scrutiny of its suppliers was more rigorous than most - but he still moved quickly to understand what was going on and try to find remedies.

Every company makes mistakes. But, treated right, they can be treasure troves of learning. Moreover, people loved Jobs not because he didn’t make mistakes - but because he learned from them.

5. Technology Isn’t All About Youth

In the age of fast companies, built not to last, Apple offered ample proof that you can be innovative and cool after the age of 25. Experience, know how and skills counted for something. While the products were cool, they weren’t all built by pre-adolescents oblivious to the constraints and needs of normal human beings. That Jobs continued to be as innovative in his 50s as he had been in his 20s is something most companies should take time to consider at length.

6. Business Doesn’t Have to Be Bad

Earlier this week I was teaching a class of new MBA students. A strikingly international group, they came from Thailand, India, Korea, Colombia, Russia, Canada, Taiwan, China and the U.S. I asked them who their heroes were. As usual, the list included their parents, various heads of state and Nelson Mandela. But topping the list - regardless of age or nationality - was Steve Jobs. More than anyone else alive, he was the person who inspired their love of business and their desire to try their hands at it.

In an age when the streets are full of anger and violence at the havoc wreaked by one part of the business world, that there is such an inspirational figure as Jobs is important. We need smart men and women, young and old, to have high ambitions for the world of work, someone who believed passionately and articulated brilliantly how much good business can achieve. Now that Jobs is gone, who can fail to be concerned that no one else adequately represents his rich synthesis of intellect, imagination and passion?

The lessons we could learn from Steve Jobs aren’t all that remarkable. Many of them contain wisdom that we already know — we just don’t apply it. Why not? Is it that we lack courage? Or is it that we find it hard to believe that tenets so simple can prove so effective? Surely that’s the moral of the Apple story: there is genius in simplicity. But simple is hard.

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