If you want to be big you got to think fast

Owning a business is like sailing a ship. There are days where you sail through a nice, clear, calm day, and then there are days where your ship is about to be tipped over by the monsoon that erupts.

Thinking fast is the ability to make prompt decisions that keep your ship sailing forward at a constant speed across the monsoon.

There are countless of “how to” books written on entrepreneurship, management, and business, while those provide useful insight, there is nothing that comes close to experiencing it hands on.

Diving into any project, whether you are prepared or not, you will face obstacles. At which point you either learn how to overcome the obstacles that stand in your way or use them as leverage.

The prepared mind will learn how to leverage these obstacles.

When you learn something extrinsically you face the challenge of forgetting what you learned in times of stress or uncertainty. It is only when you move the extrinsic knowledge and internalize it that you begin to feed off the inspiration.

You begin to create a momentum that continuously propels you forward, like a wave forming in the sea.

Recently I have been rebranding my steam cleaning company. By observing everything that I have internalized being in business, I am more excited then I have ever been to bring the company to it’s fullest potential.

This comes from a deep-rooted understanding of the basics as well as the inspiration that comes from the risks, stepping into the unknown.

Doing things you haven’t done before sounds scary and it is until you understand the power that lies within the unknown. Once you get through this barrier you will elevate yourself to a new perspective.

The thing you must consider is that if you haven’t tried it before, you don’t know if it will work, and just because it worked for someone else it might not work well for you.

By not trying it you will miss the chance of finding out.

For example, many companies are scared to invest into social media because they don’t believe that it can be a useful tool for their business.

What these companies need to consider is that it isn’t about social media, advertising, or the internet.

It is about where people’s attention lies.

When you understand this, you understand business.

“The day you start talking about your audience, not about you, that’s the day you start doing business.” Unmarketing by Scott Stratten

Thinking fast comes from being prepared. A prepared mind has a vast potential to accelerate growth, notice here how I say potential. It isn’t the end all be all. Without the doing, thinking isn’t enough.

You can think of all the best ideas out there when you don’t implement them they dissolve into the ether.

You don’t have to jump all in. Taking incremental steps is key, and this leads to becoming big.

There might be confusion as to how you should think fast and be big, so let me clarify; come over here to finish the post https://karasingroup.com/2017/03/29/want-big-got-think-fast/

The power of transformative information for a mentee

The feeling you get when delivering an AHA moment to someone is memorable and shareable.

There is nothing in this world that excited and energizes me more than conveying practical information to someone who gets it, who deploys it, and who shows it in their success in making it work.

When you give someone practical knowledge which they didn’t see before, or maybe you show them a different perspective of the outcome, their expression is telling. Their mouth drops, pupils dilate and begin to look at you like you are the messiah.

That’s how I feel when I am around my mentors and even people who I don’t know, who deliver great content and shed new light and opportunity onto new theory’s and observations.

It’s those moments, will call them transformative moments, it’s not just about information being passed, but it is information that will be applied by the recipient.

I want to give you a little bit of a background to build the context on which my thesis is based on.

I volunteer for a program with an organization who lends money to young start-ups and entrepreneurs. There I have a role as a mentor to an individual who was granted a loan for his retail start-up business.

We come from two different backgrounds, not just in our ethnicity and experience but also in our business practices. I come from the service based industry and he is at the retail end.

On a side note, I have been thinking a lot about the retail business and I am thinking about penetrating it through the custom design furniture industry, more on that later.

Having no prior experience on the retail end I understand business and so does my mentee. Our relationship is formal and structured. But our conversations are seamless and fluid.

When I give him practical wisdom that I apply in my business and that he never thought off applying in his, his response is 

come finish over here 

https://karasingroup.com/2017/02/13/create-transformative-moment/

Hire as if you were never going to fire.

Remember that employee that got away with everything; Paid holidays, extended vacations, sick leave, excuses, asking for more money, more sick leave, blaming others for their own mistakes, even more sick leaves.

Who hired him/her?

Oh, it was your executive assistant, or your HR department, recruiters? Let me guess, it’s their fault?

Okay, and who hired the person that hired your employee? If you want to go through that again we can, but I think you understand that behind all the hiring’s, you were the person who was secretly in charge of it all.

You might not admit it, that’s fine. This post isn’t about you.

I want you to understand that no matter how good your hiring intuition is, or how good a person seems to be when they start their job, there is no perfect candidate out there.

This is because life goes on.

Things change, people get married, have kids, move away, have relatives move in, or they die. Either way what seems too good to be true is.

So why am I telling you this? It’s not so you recognize that everyone at some point will be mediocre. It’s so you appreciate the things that they do well, and not dwell on the things they don’t.

I tell you this so you understand that organizations are built on people. They aren’t just a digit for when the economy collapses for them to get slashed in the figurative sense. Or literally, however, you want to take that.

Oh, wait, but your employee is extraordinary he/she is the best there is out there and has never let you down.

They will, time will come.

The point I am getting at 

Over here come finish this post https://karasingroup.com/2017/02/11/hire-never-going-fire/

When you feel right about something and you don’t know why.

You digest a great deal of information and take on unprecedented amounts of knowledge, this becomes a catalyst for new ideas, theory’s and feelings.

You begin to see things clearer. Things begin to feel right and wrong without understanding exactly how.

Only to think it is logical.

You don’t remember reading about it but you just know when something is off.

The last two years have been immense for me. I know that I digest and cover a great deal of personal and business development. (This has certainly made an impact in my well being, my business, and those who are in my circle)

Sometimes I think it’s too much.

I don’t burn out, but the amount of information that I didn’t know before is insurmountable. My head feels like it’s going to explode.

Yet, I want more.

It feels as though I am possessed by some knowledge thirsty daemon.

My routine is surrounded by inputs and outputs. Constantly reading digesting and reiterating what I learn.

Watching and reading from people who are winning. Who has it figured out, or so it seems to be that way.

Why do I digest information like a bloodthirsty hyena?

Come finish over here no strings attached 

https://karasingroup.com/2017/02/10/when-you-feel-right-about-something-and-you-dont-know-why/

Why you should stay fit so that others can benefit.

“Don’t you think you compare yourself to others?”

Written extensively about not comparing yourself to other people, and to focus on yourself. I preach this to all those around me. I do it because I believe it’s the right thing to do.

What does comparing yourself to others do for you?

It can be one of two things; self-loathing or motivating.

It can either bring about a negative perception of the self or it can inspire you to behave the same way the person that you compare yourself to.

I have written about competition and how that can also motivate you to do better than other people, but I also have said that competition should be within the self, doing better than you have previously done rather than how others are doing.

The other day my partner asked me;

“Don’t you think you’re influenced by your best friend? You always say not to compare yourself to other people, but it seems like your doing it now.”

Both, I agree and disagree with her statement.

I acknowledge the fact that I .....

If you want to find out more come finish the post over here, by clicking on this link  https://karasingroup.com/2017/02/08/stay-fit-others-can-benefit/

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Originally published at karasingroup.com on February 8, 2017.

Why you should not try to convince anyone that your ideas rock

I am terrible at convincing people because I try too hard to convince them.

I was having a debate with my partner about birthday gifts. Her friend’s birthday is tonight and she is stressing about buying a gift last minute for her friend.

My belief is that birthday gifts, or any holiday related gifts, must not be forced. Meaning that society shouldn’t tell you when the time is due to get gifts for someone rather you should be prompted to get a gift when you feel like getting the gift for that person.

It also makes it much more memorable to get someone a gift when it is least expected.

Let’s take my best friend as an example. His birthday was approaching and he has been with his girlfriend for about 2 years. His girlfriend was planning to buy him something special on his birthday and so she had contacted me for some advice.

I think I restrained from giving her my usual spiel about birthday gifts, so I told her which one of the options he would like that she had chosen.

When the day came, my partner surprised me with some news. As least expected my best friend, whose birthday it was, ended up getting his girlfriend a gift. Talk about spontaneous. This is memorable. So memorable that two years later I still remember it vividly.

No one knew that my best friend was going to surprise his girlfriend with a gift on his own birthday. That’s what made it special. That is thoughtful.

What is not thoughtful is getting someone a gift along with 30 other people on the same day. Guess what, it’s like hitting a piñata to get the prize inside only to find 100 of the same candy’s fall out.

Your gift along with the other meaningless gifts get tossed at the back of the pile with a reciprocation of some fake smiles and gestures of gratitude.

Talk about cliché, getting gifts that actually become meaningless and thoughtless.

How can a gift be thoughtful if there is an external reason to get the gift? I am sure it comes from a place of wanting to do the right thing, but sometimes the right thing isn’t what it made out to be.

I was called cheap, and that I shouldn’t be pushing my beliefs onto others.

I am okay with the insults, what I am not okay with is the realization that the harder I try to convince someone of my beliefs the less convincing I do.

I don’t think my beliefs are right, I believe their right for me.

So how can I carry on?

This boils down to the art of negotiation, even though I am not negotiating anything material, I am still negotiating something of substance; values.

For this, I will turn to Herb Cohen a negotiation expert. He deals specifically with negotiation strategies for government crisis and commercial dealings.

He explains in his tactful book You Can Negotiate Anything that there are three logical factors to consider when negotiating with someone:

1. Help the other person understand by using analogies that they understand.
2. Your Evidence must be overwhelming that it can’t be disputed.
3. In believing you, you must meet their existing needs and desires.

It is also wise not to tell the other person what to think or how to think, but rather give them a theory and let them construct their own thoughts and solutions if they choose too.

People are guarded because being wrong doesn’t feel good, and in this case, no one is wrong. It’s not wrong to get someone a gift when the occasion arises.

I learned that its best not to make the person feel like their wrong because that’s when the wall goes up.

And we know what the German’s said when the berlin wall came down. “Walls don’t work.”

Okay maybe that’s out of context, but talking about unexpectedness and walls I felt it was appropriate timing to put that in there.

Some experts will agree that whoever is stonewalling it will be difficult to persuade them. There are tactics around that, but I want to stick to my main thesis.

In conclusion, get gift’s when you feel it’s right to get them, surprise works well when it is a good surprise.

Negotiation is an art and should not be taken lightly, even when your negotiating ideas and beliefs.

If you want to be calculating care less not more. The more you show you care the more you have to lose.

And lastly, I learned from Herb that change and new ideas need to be introduced in bite sized pieces consistently. It is when ideas become familiar that they soon become acceptable.

Thank you for reading this post, my purpose was not to convince you of anything but to give you practical advice in your next negotiation debut.

To be continued….

Image copyright by Think Progress

Learn how to be bored

Boredom is the new frontier

I was visiting my parents when we were celebrating my nephew’s birthday. Something struck me that I didn’t pay attention prior to. My nephews were distracted with their own imagination. I was thinking to myself; boys will be boys.

Then a topic of substance arose between my sister and the family.

Only until then did she announce that the boys were restricted to the use of their video games. I found this peculiar since I was observing the boys and they seemed to be occupied by their imagination and their Lego toys.

This topic intrigued me enough that I felt compelled to share it here. What I discovered was astounding at the same time not surprising.

Recent studies have concluded that in this ever so distracting environment our attention span has lessened to that of a goldfish.

Kevin McSpadden a contributor to TIME wrote in a neuroscience article in 2015;

“Researchers in Canada surveyed 2,000 participants and studied the brain activity of 112 others using electroencephalograms (EEGs). Microsoft found that since the year 2000 (or about when the mobile revolution began) the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds.”

In fact, this topic not only spawned in Time but also in every other business and science journal; Inc, Entrepreneur, Psychology Today, New York Times, IFLscience just to mention a few.

I suppose this is the new standard to which we measure ourselves up to.

The sad reality isn’t that goldfish have a greater attention alertness, but that the amount of attention we do have keeps decreasing.

I can spin this post into several ways;

On what basis is this occurring?

Why is your attention dropping and should you be worried?

Who or what can be blamed for this injustice?

How can you improve your attention awareness?

“How can you teach focus in a world that is constantly drawing our focus elsewhere?”

Or what my sister suggested and implemented with her children.

“The art of being bored.”

What does it mean to be bored?

It requires you to be aware and creative. To draw from imagination. To put aside distractive elements.

Okay, but isn’t everything a distraction? If you read a book instead of going on your iPhone to check how many likes you have on Facebook, doesn’t that cause a distraction?

Some will say, well this is a good distraction because you are stimulating your brain.

Isn’t all distraction stimulating?

I suppose the argument could be that you form a new neural connection by various applications.

For example, I just heard my phone ping and this is a distraction so I turn it on silent, but my mind is racing to find out who it was, what they wanted, and how could I serve them.

My best strategy that I implement and I think you should too, is; take control of the situation. How?

Turn all the notifications off. I was at one of my business partner’s studio and we were editing my latest Givers Group video. My partner and his business partner are working on a project, they are doing a Vlog, for those of you who don’t know what that is; video blog.

They asked me to subscribe and so without hesitation I did, then they asked me to turn on my notifications so I can be updated with their latest vlog releases, I refused. I wouldn’t turn my notifications on for anything because I watch it on my time.

Going back to my sister’s philosophy, and one I think we can all learn something from.

“I want them to learn how to be bored.”

This I found to be ever so powerful and it makes me proud to know that my sister implements full self-awareness into this topic.

Sometimes life just takes control of your actions, everything is predicated on speed and consistency.

I believe my sister wants to get rid of that zombie-like state that my nephews get into when they are playing video games.

There are benefits to playing video games, you can read about them here. Her fear is certainly not the benefits, it’s the lack of control that my nephews exhibit when they want to win another level in their episodic playing time.

Of course, the upside to being bored is tapping into the world of your imagination. It is only limited to your experience. Which means it has the resources to tap into unchartered territories.

I find myself in a rut when I apply my attention to social media, I always think to myself as did Oliver Twist in Charles Dickens production;

“Please sir, I want some more.”

Her solution; set a time once a week to play video games. This way the boys have something to look forward too. In the meantime, leave them to create their own distractions with physical toys, themselves, and each other.

It seems to be that anything digital is the enemy.

I would argue that it is the mind that is the enemy, and that needs to become a frenemy. Accept what is and deploy self-awareness.

Teaching young children self-awareness could possibly be the defining moment of their success in life.

The only blame that should be going on is not on the external surroundings but in the way that you think. In a nutshell; Change your thinking and you change your perception which changes your attitude and in turn changes your behavior.

Embrace boredom because that might be the last frontier to your creativethought and entry to your imagination.

To reinforce how bad it’s getting, Larry Rosen Ph.D. conducted a research study on 300 students to find where their attention was going when they studied their school work. Get the drum roll out; an average of 3 minutes of 15 minutes was going to their study, the rest, well, it was focused on nonschool work.

Of course, in his conclusion, he blames Steve Jobs for creating technology that is desirable to further manipulate and distract from our potential.

And of course, for all of you entrepreneurs, it isn’t as simple as putting your phone away and not having any distractions because your phone is the lifeblood of your business. Understand your limitations and understand that you need to put time aside to do deep work.

Any work that you do on your business is good work, and that doesn’t mean everything you do has to have an ROI. So, if it means for you to get bored in order to spark creativity without technology distractions then do so.

Thank you for reading this post on learning how and why boredom should be embraced.

To be continued….

Focus on your work and your employees will follow suit.

What does it mean having control over your employees?

There is no magic or secret formula or a 5-step manual on how to inspire your employees. There is only one thing to keep in mind, and that is; focus on your work.

Just to be clear I am not referring to mind control or the control of their behavior. What I am referring to is for your employees to complete the tasks you ask of them.

Your employees not completing what you ask them to do can be bothersome for some employers, and not only that but, it also leads to resentment and further negative emotions.

To put it bluntly, it ruins your day if you’re an employer.

I have felt this way many times. I begged, accused, assumed and fought to get the tasks that I felt had priority to be completed.

Once I came to the realization that it was only me who was getting frustrated, I got even more frustrated.

How could my employees not be bothered by this? Do they not understand how important this is? Why don’t they listen to me?

These are the thoughts that run through my mind.

How did I overcome this rut I was in?

It wasn’t that I started to care less. In fact, I cared more, but the difference was that I didn’t care more for what they weren’t doing and producing, but rather for what they were.

Okay, this may sound like the glass half full, or half empty analogy, it’s not the case and I’ll explain why.

And by the way, the glass is always half full and half empty.

I realized quickly that it wasn’t my words that were being ignored, but rather the actions I parlayed. My employees weren’t inspired by what I was saying, the inspiration came from my doing.

The more I performed, the more results I witnessed in my team.

As the adage goes, “Lead by example”, it hit me smack in my face when I started to work on myself and my work.

Your employees already look up to you, if you don’t think so then you need to check on your self-confidence.

When they come to you for help, guide them, don’t tell them how to solve their problem, ask them to come with solutions. They are more than capable of solving the problem, they just need a theory to go on.

“A good theory doesn’t change the person’s mind, it’s a general statement of what causes why.” How to Measure Your Life by Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon

When I stopped complaining about why my employees would ignore me, I became focused on my own work and me not only inspired my employees but all the people around me as well.

Just do you, everything else will fall into place when you stop worrying about it.

Thank you for reading my post, Now I need to get back to work.

To be continued….

How a self evaluation has made me second guess my persona

I wear twelve different faces.

Who am I?

The more I think about this the more I realize I am not actually one face or one person. I mean yes, I reside in one body and I have one brain and two legs and one heart. But I have several different personas.

Let me ask you; when you interact with your parents, do you act and talk the same as you would with your peers or even your sister? Do you think the same?

Sometimes I think to myself; am I a fraud? Do I pretend to be someone I am not? If the answer is yes, then who am I?

I am the guy who tries to convince his friends to follow his wisdom, intellectually challenge my girlfriend, empathize with my sister’s growing pains of having children, behave as appropriately as possible to be seen as a poster child to my girlfriend’s parents, be seen as a giving selfless human being in my philanthropy projects (yet being as selfish as can be when it comes to my own wants).

Am I all of those things? Yes. Am I non-of those things? Yes. Sometimes I feel as though pretending is all I have to go with. Pretending that I am a good person, that I am perfect in the literal sense, that I love everybody and care about everybody. The truth is I care about myself too, maybe more, does that make me sinister?

I don’t know if this is wrong or right. I know that I haven’t met any person that portrays the same emotions and the same attitudes towards different persons.

Some of the people in my circle of friends (I can think of one in particular as I am writing this) personalities when they are with their girlfriend or parents. It’s almost like a Clark Kent and Superman, except they don’t save any lives or fight villains, aside from deceiving people from who they actually are.

But that’s it, is Clark Kent Superman or is Superman Clark Kent? Some will argue and say; he’s both, and they would be right.

That’s how I feel.

I seems as though I am being deceitful for all the right reasons, however, that silver line of distinguishing from right and wrong sometimes becomes a duality. I do it not to hurt people, I do it to be liked, to be understanding and understood.

So, I guess that would make me selfish? Karasingroup.com can find more about this story here.