Tag: entrepreneurship

10 things that will make you a better entrepreneur

10 Things That Will Help You Become a Better Entrepreneur

We all want to become more engaged, more productive, and more successful in our endeavors, but what are the ingredients that will propel us to the results we want to achieve?  Follow these tips to achieve your dreams in whatever endeavor you choose.

1. Find your passion  –  Find something that you really love to do, and make it your mission as well as your business.  

Ideally, it should be something that you have found a talent for, but it may be something that because of your drive, will allow you to develop that talent.  If you love what you do, you will not give up on it, even when others might get stressed-out or tired of it. You will always have fuel in your tank for something that inspires you. This has also been called finding your "why". 

2. Get gritty and persevere

There will always be obstacles and difficulties in your way.  If it were easy, then everyone would be doing it, right?  Determine that you will not give up and have the guts to work through problems until you find the solution.  You will be among the top 5% and completely separate yourself from the pack in your field if you have this kind of persistence

3. Think and pray deeply about major decisions and trust yourself to make the right choices.

Pray first before you make any important decision.  Even if you don't consider yourself to be a religious person prayer can mean the difference between success and failure. Trust me on this.  Whether or not you believe in God, you have literally hundreds and even thousands of ancestors in the spiritual world that are aware of your life on earth, because your life is connected to theirs. They are concerned about your happiness and your success.  Most of all they want you to become a good and righteous person, but that doesn't mean they are unconcerned about your financial well-being.  They care about everything in your life.

Like most people living on earth, you may never have thought of this before, but it is a spiritual reality and a fact of our existence here on earth and the afterlife.  In Japan, at baseball games, the spectators bring pictures of their ancestors to assist in their prayers for their favorite team to win. It seems a little "nuts" to us in the West, and indeed it may be an example of something trivial, but your ancestors have been watching you since your birth.  They have seen your actions and they understand your way of thinking.  They know you almost as well as you know yourself.  They are uniquely qualified to give you advice if you pray to God and ask for help from them, as well as from God.  This may be the most important piece of advice I have to give in this post.

4. Overcome the fear of failure.

This can stop entrepreneurs dead in their tracks.  Calculate risk carefully, but don't be afraid of taking risks. Sometimes the greatest reward comes from taking big risks.  Just don't take foolish risks.  Consult with friends, but don't be discouraged if they do not support you.  If they are not successful entrepreneurs themselves they probably will not see the world the way you do.

5. Set concrete goals and work hard to achieve them.

I think most entrepreneurs do not set goals, and just try to deal with the day-to-day. Of course, it is important to adjust goals from time to time, but without short-term and long term goal, you are kind of adrift to whatever circumstance deals you.  It is much better to set concrete achievable goals.

6. Invest substantial time and effort

Don't dream about a lifestyle of working 4 hours and sitting on a beach somewhere sipping Margheritas.  This is a myth. No one who is really successful really lives like that.  Living like that will make you lazy and self-satisfied.  It is just a ploy to trick you into thinking that a product will make you easy money. Any successful entrepreneur has put in the time and the hard work it takes be successful.

7. Listen to your customers.

It is important to ask your customers if they are satisfied with your product or service. It is important to get a good read of how you are doing in meeting their needs.  They may even suggest modifications or additional products or services that you might offer.

8. Promote – Learn the most cost-effective and efficient time-saving methods of promotion.

Don't get stuck in any outmoded promotion method that is not effective.  This is a continuous path of learning and adjusting.  What works well today, will probably not work a few years from now. Always be open to learning new methods and techniques from more experienced and more successful entrepreneurs.
 

9. Ask for advice and Network

You can network with anyone, anytime, under any circumstance. Don't get stuck in isolation in your life where you never reach out to anyone you don't know.  Ask other successful entrepreneurs what they have found to be the keys to their success.  You can learn incredibly valuable information in this way.

10. Pay it forward by helping others to achieve.

This is very important.  Remember the Indian folktale that speaks about the restaurant in the village which was the only place where people were allowed to eat.  There was no menu there.  You just sat down and were served whatever food you deserved.  Good people were served good food, but bad people could only eat bad food., and there was nowhere else to eat.

Not only will you be helping others, but you will actually learn to identify attitudes and actions in others that are counter-productive to success.  By teaching, you also reinforce what you have learned.

 

Best success in all of your endeavors.

John Lombaerde

https://markethive.com/jonlomb/page/ standard

David

What is your business plan for 2017?

employees-entrepreneurs Now is the best time to review your successes in 2016, and begin to plan for 2017. This is especially true for start-ups and part-time or full-time entrepreneurs that would like to make this coming year a breakout one.

Here are some simple steps to fine tune your plans for 2017.

1) Eliminate waste. Review your monthly expenses. If there is any expense that is not critical to your operations, it must be eliminated or reduced. It is also wise to shop around for competitive services if you have not done so already. The smaller the size of your company, the more critical it is to examine and review any and all unnecessary expenses.

You can view any unnecessary expense as if someone were reaching into your wallet and stealing your hard earned profits. The problem is that you undoubtedly gave them permission to do so. A big problem for small entrepreneurs is recurring monthly expenditures that do not contribute substantially to their bottom line.

2) Make sure that the products and services you offer are top notch and that they meet the needs of your customers. Review each of your products and services, and examine ways to improve them in terms of functionality, quality, speed of execution, etc. Ask your customers directly by phone or by email how you can improve your products, or if there are additional products that they would like to see from you.

3) Based on the input you receive from your customers, make plans to expand your product offering. Above all, do not be a one-trick pony to your customers. Even if you have a main product, see if there isn't a way to offer some kind of premium service or an extension to one of your products or services that might command a premium price that some customers would be willing to consider.

4) Consider outsourcing smaller tasks for which you may not have staff with the particular skills to accomplish the job. A good place to outsource micro-jobs is Fiverr. For a guide to Fiverr that will make your outsourcing job much easier, I have a free Fiverr Finesse – Outsourcing Guide for you.

Just send email to info@goldfinchdigitalpublishing.com with your request, and I will send it to you. It is a 250-page guide with text and data that will help you quickly locate Fiverr vendors in over 120 categories.

Here is a video that explains all about the course, but of course, you will not have to pay for it, It is completely free.

Fiverr Finesse – Outsourcing Guide video

wish you the best possible success in all your endeavors for 2017.  

Make sure you are a member of Markethive to help promote your business in 2017.  Login here —> Markethive

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David

Entrepreneurship – The Exalted and The Diminished [video]

Entrepreneurship is about being remarkable.

This is an examination of how entrepreneurship is really viewed. This article will examine an individual from America and how he is seen as an entrepreneur. Then we will look at entrepreneurship at the very bottom, the landfill entrepreneur. We will look at the characteristics of both to see what we discover.

Entrepreneurial success at the top – The exalted

Elon Musk as one of Americas top successes is one of the most remarkable billionaire entrepreneurs in America. As of January 2016, he has an estimated net worth of US$12.4 billion, making him the 39th wealthiest person in the US. [Forbes]

As an entrepreneur, most of Musk’s wealth has come from starting and owning companies, rather than salary. He is Tesla’s biggest shareholder, with a 23 percent stake, runs closely held Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and is chairman of SolarCity Corp.

Entrepreneur Elon Musk is a man with a vision. The founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity and SpaceX – all extraordinary companies in four completely different industries. Here is a short profile of the life of Elon Musk.

He grew up in South Africa without ever really considering himself South African. Like the rest of his family, he was just passing through. The Musks were a race nearly as much as they were a family, with a specialized awareness of themselves as wanderers and adventurers. Every Musk is able to tell the story of forebears whose accomplishments serve as an inspiration and whose energy endures as an inheritance — a grandfather who won a race from Cape Town to Algiers; a great-grandmother who was the first female chiropractor in Canada; grandparents who were the first to fly from South Africa to Australia in a single-engine plane. "Without sounding patronizing, it does seem that our family is different from other people," says Elon's sister, Tosca Musk. "We risk more."

Elon was born an entrepreneur into a family of entrepreneurs. His mother was a dietitian and a fashion model (and still is today) and his father, Errol, was an engineer and what a family member described as a "serial entrepreneur."

Today, he demonstrates the great drive of Entrepreneurship, his greatest asset is his will to succeed.

He takes and manages risks without concern and he does this daily. He witnesses his own failures almost every day and keeps moving forward.

Failures are those events that guide him on his path.

Is he remarkable? Yes, in a billionaire sort of way. He is obsessed with succeeding. His mission is to succeed in manifesting his “ideas”, not personal success and not the money, succeeding. Money is just a tool for chasing his ideas to successful completion.

Entrepreneurial success at the bottom – The Diminished

The most diminished of all Entrepreneurs

The Remarkable Landfill Children.

They are inspirational. They inspire because they too are born into entrepreneurship but they don't have entrepreneurial parents or homes or schools or safety or security. They have nothing but their own creativity and drive and their will to survive.

For those of you that are not familiar with what a landfill entrepreneur really is, let me introduce you to the members of the Landfill Harmonic, as an example.

“Their Instruments May Be Garbage, But the Music Will Bring Tears to Your Eyes.”

Ever heard of a town built on a garbage dump? We hadn't until last year when I discovered a community on the outskirts of Asuncion, the capital of the tiny, impoverished South American country of Paraguay.

It's called Cateura and there is trash everywhere — in its streets, its rivers, in people's backyards — but I decided to take you to Cateura tonight, not because of the poverty or the filth, but because of the incredible imagination and ingenuity of the people who live there. This story is also a reminder that, ultimately, music will triumph everywhere and anywhere.

Garbage is the only crop in Cateura and the harvest lasts 12 months a year. It is Cateura's curse, its livelihood and the only reason people live here, providing hundreds of jobs to peasant farmers who were kicked off their plots by large land owners.

They are the Trash Pickers. It is their profession. They sift through the stench 24 hours a day, scrounging for anything they can sell — 10 cents for a pound of plastic, five cents for a pound of cardboard.

Cateura didn't exist before Paraguay's capital Asuncion started dumping its trash here. The town grew up around the garbage and became one of the poorest places in South America.

Twenty-five hundred families live here now. There is hardly any electricity or plumbing. The drinking water is contaminated. Many of the children move from broken homes to crime and drugs.

The residents of Cateura, Paraguay, don't just make a living from the massive garbage heap in their town. They also make music and the instruments to play.

You'll be amazed at what else people here are doing with this trash…just look and listen.

The "Landfill Harmonic"

(Landfill harmonic – La armonía del vertedero – Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados de Cateura)

An orchestra for kids with instruments made from trash?

A cello made from an oil can and pieces of wood, that were thrown in the garbage; a saxophone made of spoons and buttons. These instruments are crafted by Nicolas, a 'recycler' with no previous experience making musical instruments, who is living 'hand-to-mouth' by the garbage dump in Catuera, Paraguay.

Inspired by this initiative and creativity, Maestro Luis Szaran, director of "Sounds of the Earth," formed the 'recycled orchestra,' with children living near the dump. "Our main goal isn't to form good musicians, but to form good citizens." Now 30 members strong, (and looking for more, for a full orchestra) listen to the sweet sounds of these 'recycled' instruments and the hopes and dreams of the children who play them. … Be Amazed and Inspired!

 




 


As demonstrated, entrepreneurship when viewed from this perspective, is a common essence that exists in all man kind and it is inextinguishable.


Elon Musk, the exalted, the remarkable, sees it as a step by step path to accomplishment, failures are just another step on the path to succeeding.


The landfill children, the diminished but remarkable, see no path nor do they have options to a path. The options for these children are very limited. Once in a great while an opportunity presents itself and is taken immediately and completely.


The children work hard each day to succeed as well, only they call it survival.


Both ends of this spectrum have the same qualities; inspiration, creativity, imagination, action, vision and risks. The Children of the Landfill are the most remarkable because they succeed in the most ”basic” way, through the veils of waste.


One attribute all successful billionaire entrepreneurs have in common is that they are willing to put everything they have on the line any time of the day. To them its all luck and risk. Its the same with the landfill pickers every day they put everything they have on the line, their survival.


Green Fire has a mission to improve the lifestyle of these amazing people and this amazing community.


Green Fire is preparing a crowd funding campaign for the implementation of Children of the Landfill – Village Project.


Note: Just in case you may have missed any of my previous blog posts, I post here on one of my active projects. It is a new social network for entrepreneurs, completely free, and very unique. It could be a great thing for your business. It is called MarketHive. Just click —-> HERE <—- to find out more.


If you are interested in participating in this effort to lift these children to inspiration, please join me in the Markethive group “Green Fire”. It is from here that we will start a crowd funding campaign to aid Green Fire in its mission.

 




David

	


	





	

		
		
How to gain more MarketHive subscribers on a daily, weekly and monthly basis?
	


	
	
	

		
How do you increase your number of MarketHive subscribers, or "children" if you will?


I think LinkedIn is one of the best ways to accomplish this.  It seems at though, I may have finally cracked the LinkedIn code to do this, well sort of.  I have been studying every LinkedIn training course I could get my hands on in the last six months. Today, I got 12 new invitations to connect with me this morning in my inbox, and I have added 981 connections so far this month.  This is a fairly rapid increase, that I believe few people are currently doing now, on LinkedIn.  


In addition, all of those new connections have been invited to join MarketHive.  (I am currently getting nearly a 1% response rate on invitations to MarketHive). I am actively trying to find a way to increase that percentage, but it is resulting in nearly one new MarketHive sign-up per day.


I don't know how many entrepreneurs realize that their first level connections are already in their sales funnel?  Everyone looking to market on LinkedIn needs to think this way.  Ok, it may not be exactly the same, but it is very close to it.  Everything depends on what you do with those connections.  


Some kind of automation is needed here for sure.  The manual way of messaging in LinkedIn will take you nearly forever (well, not exactly. but it could easily take 3-4 hours perday) to send invites, messages, shares, posts, and all of the tasks you need to do on a regular basis.  Even if you send messages to your 1st level connections and you have 1000, it will take several hours a day and 4 days to complete the task. 


Btw, the LinkedIn limit for invitation requests per day is 40-50 maximum with a free account or a paid account, (Sales Navigator has a limite of 100 per day).  There is a limit of 250 messages per day to your 1st level connections on all LinkedIn accounts.  If you do that every day manually, it is a very time consuming process, for sure!


I am in the process of setting up a step-by-step training program on how to use LinkedIn to promote Markethive.  I may also expand it to a complete LinkedIn training as well, depending on the level of interest.  In any case, this is something anyone can do.  It can be done, even with a free LinkedIn account.  With additional low-cost automation software solutions, the process can be greatly accelerated.  


All for now.  Thanks for your interest.  


Best possible sucess in all your endeavors!


John Lombaerde




David

	


	





	

		
		
How are Elon Musk and Orbital Velocity like the life of an Entrepreneur?
	


	
	
	

		









 


 


Strange title, this one, I know. I remember a famous tweet by Elon Musk saying that getting to space is relatively easy. He explained that you need to achieve Mach 3 to be able to reach space and escape the earth's atmosphere. Then you would come back down to earth again.


In order to stay in orbit, however, you need to be going much, much faster. You need to be traveling at Mach 30 in order to propel yourself fast enough to stay in orbit around the earth.


Here is a link that provides some explanation about this phenomenon.


https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/


I thought, this is similar to many Internet Marketing hype headlines. You know, the ones that say "Newbie Internet marketer makes $20,117.30 in 60 days with no previous Internet experience!" Well, maybe this headline is all hype, but again, maybe this person did achieve this result in 60 days.


Ok, sounds good, but what happened after that? Did that person fall back to earth again, after achieving that success and never managed to make a dime again after that? No one wants that kind of "one-hit wonder" success, right?


The headline would be so much more impressive if it said, "Newbie Internet marketer achieves 6-figure sustainable income, within 60 days, and is still going strong after 3 years". The headlines never say anything like that do they? They are always about the push-button, easy way to success, right?


So don't bother to open that email with a fantastic rags to riches headline. Who cares about flash in the pan success? To be truly successful, any start-up must exceed their intial altitude and achieve a self-sustaining orbit. Isn't that the goal?


In his book Startup Leadership: How Savvy Entrepreneurs Turn Their Ideas into Successful Enterprises – Derek Lidow has studied this phenomenon, and currently teaches Entrepreneurial Leadership at Princeton University. He uncovers the gems of principles that can be applied universally across industries, cultures, and geographies. He separates those that are merely entrepreneurs from those that can be considered entrepreneurial leaders that are able to create self-sustaining businesses.


There are unique skills required to nurture a start-up, and there are additional skills needed to navigate any company beyond the initial phase into continued success. Derek Lidow's book is highly recommended. (Available on Amazon and elsewhere)


Best of success in all your entrepreneurial endeavors!


John Lombaerde






David