A really good friend of mine and a highly respected and super successful Internet Marketer, Charles Ngo / “Dr Ngo”, made a few comments about my recent post on Focus.

I was going to post his comments anyway, but I decided to do them in a sort of Q&A format as there was a back and forth between Charles and I.

[Note - expression / grammar is not perfect - remember this was done off the cuff and then cut and pasted from our conversation! I had to paraphrase and merge some of his sentences too, so keep that in mind.]

Over to our conversation:

TOPIC: FOCUS AND STICKING WITH THINGS THAT YOU START

Charles: My theory has always been to pick something, and try to be the best in the world at it. I got the idea from “Good to Great”. For me it would be affiliate marketing which I consider my “golden egg.” With it I spend almost all my time / focus on it, and I use leverage the $ from that and put it into PASSIVE investments such as real estate, stocks, etc. That’s my way of diversifying without getting taking too much time away from my main focus.

Me: Completely agree. But what if you are focusing on say “building an agency” as I was, which has “x” profit potential and “y” effort need. But “something else” has “x+10″ profit potential and “y-10″ effort needed? Some activities and opportunities are just not as leveragable as others.

Charles: Sometimes things change, especially in the internet field. What might have been a great idea 2 years ago, might not be now due to market conditions. You just have to evaluate the potential of your course, what you have achieved and what you can reasonably achieve, and measure it against the potential of other projects. I guess the difference is how “often” you have to question your course. Some people question it on a daily basis. I would prefer to question it more spaced out such as every few months. Think of it as stocks. People that suck at stocks look at their portfolio everyday and let the natural variances affect their decisions. I only look at my portfolio every few months so I can have a more “neutral” look at things.

Lesson #1 – Do things for at least a few months to see if they work for you. Don’t fluctuate on a daily basis. Make a commitment. Weigh up other potential opportunities as and when they come up in terms of their potential relative to your current opportunity.

TOPIC: SECONDARY FOCUSES

Charles: Secondary focuses should definitely be in the same industry. I’ll always be involved in “internet market” but perhaps I’ll branch into a different aspect of it such as e-mail marketing, building a portfolio of domains, building a e-commerce product. By staying in the same space you can leverage existing knowledge, and it also creates a “synergy.” Another interesting thing is you can exchange skills with someone easily. If you’re good at affiliate marketing and you meet someone good at building products, you guys can exchange information. I have an idea, you have an idea. If we exchange ideas, now we each have 2 ideas.

Me: I think the skill exchange / knowledge exchange is one of the best things you can do period. Love this point about secondary focuses though. The question is, what if you have a passion that is unrelated to your Primary Focus. So, for example, I LOVE playing guitar, but I make money online primarily from my SEO store, product creation, as well as a few other ventures. What does someone who has some varied interests do in that situation?

Charles: What is your PURPOSE of the secondary focus? Some passions are better kept as just hobbies. I love travel and technology, but I have no interest in trying to make money from them. My secondary focuses are things that can HELP my primary purpose, or perhaps have the potential to usurp the Primary Purpose. You play guitar and miss performing? Well that’s a hobby, not a business. Whatever vs. SEO store vs. product creation. I would look at what would I enjoy doing, and what has the most $ potential. However, another idea related to Secondary Focuses would be to dedicate 2 hours a day or so to a passion project which is something that Gary Vaynerchuk did to start winelibrary.com. It’s something that you are interested in, yet the idea should also have the potential to make money one day.

Lesson #2 – It’s good to have Secondary Focuses that help your Primary Purpose. It’s OK to have hobbies, but remember that they are just that – hobbies – until they can support you. Dedicate time to them, but also improve your position in the industry of your Primary Focus.

TOPIC: PASSION

Charles: Doing something you have passion for is overrated. Someone could be really into karate, but the market doesn’t need another karate teacher. Focus on something that can make money. However, if you absolutely hate something, then you should move away. For me, I’m able to outsource anything I hate to focus on the bigger stuff.

[Note that I ended the conversation on this topic here, but there was obviously more to say on it! Let me know if you want me to ask him. This is not necessarily an accurate representation of his thoughts on the matter.]

TOPIC: MAKING A MARK IN YOUR INDUSTRY

Charles: This is the idea of being “that guy”. In my industry, everyone is known as “that something something guy”. For the longest I was either the diet guy or the media buy guy. Someone else could be that dating guy. Another person could be the email guy. Another is the mobile guy. What you don’t hear is someone being rich being described as “he’s the daily deals, email, dating, and skincare guy”. Get the point? All the big guys have tunnel vision and only focus and dominate one area. Doing too many things spreads out your energy. It’s better to dominate one thing and do $10k a day, then to do 5 campaigns making $500 a day for the sake of being “diversified”.

Me: You are right. Great point. Discover a niche in your market. Have you seen this? http://www.expertsacademy.com/1-10essentials. Worth watching if you have not. My opinion is definitely that you should focus on one thing. But, let’s say you made a decision to focus on like SEO traffic back when you were doing media buys [NOTE - Charles really killed it on media buys a few years ago]. You would have missed out on the opportunity for big buys right? So how do you decide when to switch focuses? The question is “when do I pivot?” – e.g. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220302. And I quote “There is no bigger destroyer of creative potential than the misguided decision to persevere.” So how do you reconcile the undying focus, versus the pivot?

Charles: If I was focused on SEO back in the day, I wouldn’t have missed the media buy rebill days. Why? the BUZZ was too huge from the networks, aff managers, forums, etc. I would’ve been a dumbass not to throw a few tests at it. And after a few tests, I would realize the huge potential and how I needed to switch gears. I think the thing is to switch gears after you throw a test at whatever it is and can verify that it’s awesome. Too many people switch gears without testing the waters. So as for pivoting, if I do pivot it’s always from actually finding a bigger opportunity.

Lesson #3: Develop a reputation in your industry. And focus, Daniel son, focus.

Finally, he said this:

“You should sit down and think of a plan and create goals, and then execute it without fail. The reason most people screw up is when they’re executing the plan, they get distracted or lose faith in their prior plans. For example, they’re suppose to get this business up, but their friend told them about another opportunity so they switch gears. Or when he person is pushing through the dip, they start second guessing themselves.

Make a plan. Set goals. Follow through. After the plan is complete, THEN you evaluate whether to continue or to switch gears.”

Truth bombs?

P.s. As a side note, I should credit Aaron from Asian Efficiency for his note to me too. There was a lot of gold in there but this was a good one in particular - “You should stick “mission in life” 1 level above primary focus. Primary focus = where you spend your most time. Secondary focuses = other concentrations of your time. But they all lead back to the mission you set for yourself; that’s the endgame.” Aaron will no doubt have many more mentions in the months to come. They are doing some awesome things over at Asian Efficiency!

I’ve been thinking about the allocation of my time and focus lately, especially as I look into various initiatives in search of the next major project to embark on.

Your time (and thus your focus) is the only resource that you can’t get back. In this way, it’s far more valuable than money. Although money can free up your time, you can’t get the time you spend back, whereas you can get the money that you spend back. That being the case, I thought that it would be worthwhile dedicating some thought to the use and spending of time.

[NOTE - comments / feedback (by email or comment) appreciated - this is an issue which I know affects us all and I'd be interested to know what people thought about this].

Is it better to focus time on one main project, or try different things to see what hits?

On one hand, great things are usually accomplished by people who focus on one project and make it immensely successful – e.g. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg etc. On the other hand, all of these guys started with something different to what they ended up with, or at the very least, their paths were less than linear by way of focus. An example is how Steve Jobs started with Apple, went on to develop NeXt, ran Pixar and then went back to Apple. As young as he is, Mark Zuckerberg partook in quite a few other internet initiatives prior to Facebook and even Bill Gates did not intend to create Microsoft in it’s current form from the very beginning.

My experience, although obviously insignificant in comparison, mimics theirs in a number of ways. At the point in time when I started Higher Click, I was looking at affiliate marketing, the dating industry and SEO. I focused on Higher Click exclusively when I realised that it was what was the most promising venture. Up to that point, the other two projects had been my dominant focuses. It was when I started to see real traction and opportunity in the SEO space that I dedicated time and energy to it.

Now, when I did make a mental decision to focus, I was able to achieve great things (within 6 months, I spoke at Harvard, signed Atari on as a client, achieved revenues of over 50k per month etc). But this is what happened when I focused.

As part of my focus, I gave up many other opportunities that came to me at that time. There is no doubt that there is some opportunity cost to focus, but I did not allow for any opportunities to be created and I do regret this a little bit for certain opportunities. Moreover, I just didn’t decide to start a SEO Company – I saw the potential there and there was reasonably good traction already.

So, what is the answer? I think that in terms of project involvement, a person should have a Primary Focus and various Secondary Focuses. Only when your Primary Focus becomes overshadowed by a Secondary Focus, or a Secondary Focus shows a great deal of more potential, then is it time to switch. I think that this is how the “greats” did it. It seems to me that Bill Gates made a commitment to Computer Programming (creating BASIC interpreters, if Wikipedia serves me correctly) as a Primary Focus, but did not intend to build the Microsoft Operating System until IBM mentioned it to him (a Secondary Focus which eventually became a Primary Focus). Mark Zuckerberg was a programmer that created applications like Facemash, Synapse Media Player and other such applications (all Primary Focuses at some point in time), before going onto Facebook (once a Secondary Focus, then a Primary Focus). The Secondary Focus for Zuckerberg seems to have been high school and Harvard! But the point is that he too realised the importance of focus on a singular project. It seems that in each of these cases, there is a Primary Focus, which enabled them to achieve great things in relation to this focus, followed by Secondary Focuses which kept them open to other opportunities.

I’ll expand on the theory of Primary and Secondary Focuses below, but one of the keys to this is that when you decide to focus, you also must come to terms with the fact that there is an element of sacrifice involved with that choice. That’s why the choice of what you are going to focus on is so important. It’s important to come to terms with the fact that time is limited and that you choose to give that time to things that you are in line with your values – e.g. significance, money, changing the world, enjoyment etc. Most of the time, this will be to the detriment of other initiatives in your life – but this is just something that you have to accept. You can’t be a doctor, entrepreneur, car mechanic, DJ and rocket maker. You have to make choices as to what your PRIMARY GOAL will be and be aware that this choice, even though it may not be forever, will mean that you will have to say “no” to quite a few things, or at least, de-focus and be aware that their growth will be stunted by your involvement. In fact, it is precisely because you say “no” or “wait” to certain things in life, that you can achieve real greatness in whatever field that you decide to focus on. Steve Jobs wasn’t a businessman, a rockstar and a politician – he was primarily just one. This isn’t to say that whatever you choose must be the only thing in your life, but rather that you have to be aware that you do, in fact, give up a lot for something to be your Primary Focus.

Can I spend my time doing something I like, rather than working?

Most people work in a job that they do not like (or at best, don’t mind). The tragedy is that they spend most of their valuable time doing it. The questions that most of these people face (and as a lawyer, I used to be one of them) are “how do I balance work and life?”, “how do I do what I love?” and “how do I escape the rat race?”.

I think the answers here is quite simple. I’ve escaped the rat race so I think I’m at least partially qualified to talk about it. Firstly, the fact is that you do have to do what you have to do to sustain yourself. So work in whatever job you have and complete your work well. However, if you really want to escape and have a complete change in your career trajectory, then you have to look outside of whatever you do that makes money, in order to develop your passion (or your Primary Focus) into something that makes money.

The time and effort that you work outside of your work will be commensurate with how badly you actually want to “get out of the rat race”. Some people won’t reach the velocity in their efforts to truly escape. Others will. But if you really want to escape, then every single second outside of your work should be spent working towards whatever life or whatever passion you are trying to create. You also want to be careful that you don’t get trapped in a “high income lifestyle”. This is where because you earn more, you spend more. This mentality does not make sense unless you have truly “made it” (and my concept of “made it” is both lump sum and passive income – not just one or the other). And unless you have, then you should live frugally and use your time and money to promote your Primary Focus, which is the thing that will get you out of this rut of doing things that you do not enjoy.

Am I doing too much, or too little, with my time?

The reality for most entrepreneurs (like myself), freelancers, bright young people etc, is that there are quite simply too many opportunities. As bright, young, capable people, we try to do a little bit of everything to see which one hits. The danger here is that we can end up dabbling in too much. We do “a little bit of this” and “a little bit of that” and as a result, end up getting nowhere “BIG”, but everywhere “KIND OF”. The questions that most of these people face are questions like “what should I focus on?”, “What am I passionate about” and “How do I make sure I’m not missing out on better opportunities?”.

I think that the answer to these questions is that to some degree, you must make a choice as to what you want to do with your life. This is when you really have to look into your soul and ask yourself what your values are. Right now, what is the most important thing for you to achieve career wise… and how bad do you want it? If you really want it, then take action towards it. But if you can, then find the passion, the hunger and then – go, go, go.

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is also that they are fleet footed in their attention. When you have made a commitment to a Primary Focus, you need to have the discipline not to initiate or focus on too many Secondary Focuses OUTSIDE of the Primary Focus industry or commitment. You must nurture the genuine love that you have for the Primary Focus. If you don’t know what you should keep your Primary Focus on, then simply make a conscious choice based on what you know and think and go for it. That is sometimes how you find your passion – by having momentum first.

The Theory – Primary Focus, Secondary Focuses

So, my overall theory on this is that you have to have one Primary Focus and multiple (I’d say 2-3 max) Secondary Focuses in your life.

A Primary Focus is something that you are working on that has long term implications and that you enjoy. If DOES NOT have to be the place you make money. Ideally it is. However, the important thing is that it is whatever it is that you dedicate every moment of spare time to thinking about and doing. It is your passion, the identity which you live and breathe and the thing that you have a real REASON for doing. You allow your subconscious mind to be filled by this PRIMARY focus. You do not have to do it forever (in fact, you can change it as per the below), but you do have to put a lot into it. And it has to make you happy.

A Secondary Focus is any activity you undertake which is not the Primary Focus. It can be your Primary method of work, if that work does not engage you properly. It can be some other side project/s. It can be a hobby. The Secondary Focus deserves your full engagement in certain moments. However, the decision must be made this is going to be a reasonably minor distraction and that your ultimate goal is the Primary Focus. You prioritise whatever is Primary, and then look at what is Secondary after that, if at all. Secondary Focuses are things which you put some time into in order to “keep it at bay”. You aren’t completely proactive in your approach towards it, but you don’t drop the ball completely. You can have multiple Secondary Focuses, but must be willing to let the Secondary Focuses go if you are not happy with the state of affairs these focuses.

As a side note, an idea that Chris Rose (my housemate) came up with after reading this, which I agree with, is to try to make your Secondary Focuses linked to your Primary Focus. So for example, if you are creating a e-commerce store in MMA Gear, you train MMA and that is your Secondary Focus. Or if you promote dating affiliate campaigns, then focus on start ups related to dating.

Let me give you a personal example of how this divide between Primary and Secondary Focus manifests and has an effect on your life. When I was working at full speed on Higher Click, my mind began to find ways to do certain things which I had no idea that I could do. So, for example, I managed to get a talk at Harvard, and a meeting with Pepsi to discuss SEO. For a relatively new company, this is actually quite impressive. How did I do this? Well, selling SEO became literally the only thing that I ever thought about. I remember standing at a bar with girls all around me thinking “what is the best way for me to sell SEO?”. It started to resonate within my subconscious and eventually, I figured out how to achieve amazing things for that Company. I don’t know how sustainable that was – honestly, if I were to do it again, I may take it a little more easy and learn to delegate more (and as Steve Jobs suggests is the key to growing a business – find, recruit and motivate the right people). But nonetheless, the principle stands – that thing – whatever it is – occupies as many conscious moments as you can possibly throw at it.

The reason that this approach feels so much cleaner to me is because its always so hard to balance focuses. Sometimes, it feels like you are getting involved with too much and being pulled in all directions. Other times, it feels like you are being involved in too little. The truth is that it is when you truly focus on something, that you experience fantastic results.

What if I don’t know what to focus on?

The answer to this is quite simple – make a choice based on your values. Here are a few things that may help you find your Primary Focus:

1. Answer this question – If in 2 years, you looked back and said ‘I did “x” and that was cool’, what would ‘x’ be considering all of your potential activities?”.
2. Alternatively, put the single largest goal in your life in your mind. Then ask yourself what option would you take if you knew that you HAD to achieve that goal. Then, go and do it.

Whatever the goal is, if there is one thing that my last Company taught me, it’s this – (1) make sure you do it with the right people and (2) make sure you can see yourself loving what you are doing (this involves assessing the business model, opportunity and of course, your personal fit in it).

If you do these two things correctly, it will skewer you towards succeeding.

Switching focuses

You can switch focuses. In fact, it is sometimes (often?) healthy to do so. At times, pivoting from one focus to another is one of the healthiest things that you can do with your life. When one Secondary Focus becomes distracting, you simply have to choose which is more important to your values – the Primary Focus or the Secondary Focus – ask the questions in the section above. If the Secondary Focus wins, then you have a new Primary Focus. What you really don’t want to do, is expect to become great at 2-3 complicated things at once. I believe that it’s actually a myth that someone can focus on more than one thing and become extraordinarily well known for it.

Moreover, you can also give a Primary Focus a set length of time. For example, “I am going to try affiliate marketing for 3 solid months to see if I can get any traction”. There are a number of factors that can impact how long you stick with a Primary Focus:

• The more complex the industry, skill or activity, the longer you have to dedicate and the harder you have to work at it.
• The ease of access that you have – e.g. mentors, contacts, unique situations etc
• How compelling your Secondary Focus becomes
• Your changing value system

Summary

Anyway, the big takeaway here is that I believe that success comes from having a Primary Focus and various Secondary Focuses. A Primary Focus is important because it allows your subconscious to be completely absorbed in an activity and give you the potential for massive achievement. Secondary Focuses are important because they give you perspective and also keep you open to opportunities.

This blog (notyouraveragelawyer.com) is written as a personal diary for my own reflection and so I don’t forget what I’ve been through and so I take the time to reflect on what I have done. So, a message to me – if I am reading this in future, be sure to read the unedited .txt version entitled “2012 in review”. Just search for it on the mac Finder application.

—-

2011 has been a big year. How can you tell? Because I haven’t been posting as I was way too busy working! So apologies for that, to both readers (who are most likely my friends) and my future self, for whom I write this!

What I Accomplished This Year

Looking back on this year, I:

• Built up and subsequently sold my shares in my Company Higher Click.
• Lately, created an App called 14 Seconds with my friend Dominic Knight, based on his best selling book “Pushing To The Front” – it’s still in dev but should be launched at some point soon.
• Worked harder than I ever worked before but sacrificed my social life for it.

What I Learned This Year

The takeaways from this year are:

• Hire Fast, Hire Well. Business is all about the people. Get good people. Get them working with you. And reward them well for their efforts. This is something that I did not do as well as I would have liked in my last business. I took the burden largely on me, rather than find people to help me. I need to better isolate my strengths and weaknesses and hire and partner around those.
• Reward well and motivate correctly. Reward people who you are working with and reward them well. Don’t be stingy on rewards. Be careful about how you spend your time and energy, but if you are making money, then be generous with rewards (not necessarily monetary rewards either). Remember that motivation has to do with leadership, vision, belief and how you structure work for people… as well as the people themselves – not just money.
• Your ambition and drive has to be nurtured. Don’t abuse your ambition and / or drive. Should something go wrong, you need to be able to lick your wounds, learn and move forward (or sideways). Think of ambition as a fragile super weapon. It is extraordinarily powerful, but if you over use it, or if you do not nurture it, it can exhaust. Take time out to ensure that you nurture your energy and your ambition. I didn’t “recharge” enough in my last business.
• Failure is a part of success. Don’t take it personally or to heart. Sometimes you get a LOT right, and only a few things wrong . These experiences can bitter you to things, or can make you wiser. In my last business, I got a lot wrong and some right. Luckily, it was enough.
• Hard work pays off… but comes at a price. The price is that it takes your time… and time is extraordinarily precious – more precious than money, in fact. The price is worth paying if you build or are building something that you believe in, are passionate about and if there is a true financial reward at the end. But you take the risk either way that you may come out with nothing. I almost came out with nothing.
• Choose the people that you work with carefully. This is a fairly obvious one, I would think, but cannot be emphasised enough. Trust your gut on this.
• Choose your opportunity carefully. There are “heavy” businesses and there are “light” businesses. Usually, the best indicator of a “light” business is a “100% gross profit margin” business (I’ll explain this on another blog post). Questions that I have been asking myself are – What are the characteristics of the business that I want to next start? What is the profit potential of that business? How does it scale? Interestingly, these are questions my mentor Shak told me to ask before starting my last business! I wish I had listened. Moral of the story – choose the vehicle well, or you will have built a business which gives you money, but headaches, that you cannot sell and that does not make you happy. It’s like being married to a wife that is 25% awesome and 75% horrible.
• An almost psychotic focus on what you are trying to achieve leads to success. Focus is the key, but as I said above, it comes at a price. You quite simply have to say “I am willing to pay this price”. I’ll write another post on my thoughts on this in future.
• Choose your opportunities and market wisely. My time could be spent doing any number of things that will be successful – one of the most important things is that you choose the right vehicle for this success. Ideally, this should also be an industry in which I enjoy, with work that if scaled, would be very enjoyable to me.
• Create circumstances which create luck. Luck, I have discovered is when you put each of the right elements together for you to achieve what you want to achieve. For example, if you want to be in tech, hang around tech circles. If you want to be rich in real estate, find ways to foster real estate connections etc. There are a whole raft of ways to develop these connections, but this is not the topic of this point (maybe some other time, I’ll discuss this).
• Life is about trade offs. With maturity, you realise that to do “x”, you can’t do x, y and z too. You have to walk into these trade offs willingly, or blindly, but they will just… happen. Again, another blog post soon about this.
• There may be a trade off between what you are passionate about and what will make you the most money. So, for example, you may want to be a famous rockstar. However, the reality is that you also want to make a lot of money. The truth is that you have to weigh up your values. What is more important to you? The fame, or the wealth / security? I think that this comes down to your overall goal. What is the overall goal in your life? My overall goals are: (1) Happiness (2) Freedom (3) Wealth (4) Women. Currently, I have freedom. I am on my way to wealth but have not achieved it to my absolute satisfaction yet. Getting there though!
• Focus On Traction. I actually learned this from building Switching Together – a website which I decided to toy with building. Build it and THEY WILL NOT COME is what I learned!! When you assess a business the two most important questions are (1) where will your first customer come from (2) how will you get your next customers.
• Allocate resources to things that make you happy. Deferred gratification is important, but don’t do things in life which you don’t enjoy, just for the money. Do things which make you money, but you can also look back on and say “that was cool”. As you work towards those things, you will have to work hard, but the overall idea / focus will inspire you and be worth it.

Habits To Change

As with any change, once you make the change, your habits tend to change. This is what happened to me - I made a huge change around 3/4 of the way through my year, by selling my shares and travelling. Since then, bad habits have crept in again. So here is what I need to fix:

• Focus. Starve your subconscious of things to distract it – give it something laser to focus on.
• Touch it once.
• Email only 3-4 times a day.
• Facebook twice a day.
• Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, Friday reflection.
• Stop eating out unless its a networking thing.

FACEBOOK and EMAIL are my biggest addictions. So from now on:

• Check email only 3 times per day. When you feel like you want to check email, go to the 3 MOST IMPORTANT THINGS (the rule of 3’s)
• Facebook only 3 times per day too. When you feel like Facebook, go again to the rule of 3.

The way I want to live in 2012

In 2012, I want to live with the following principles:

• Work HARD – just like 2012. It was worth it. Just remember to be a bad ass at the down times. Work hard, play to do it. Live inspirationally.
• Create COOL THINGS.
• Be PASSIONATE and infect others with that passion.
• Focus on two things – ACHIEVING RESULTS and THE  APPROACH
• Use and partner with the right PEOPLE
• INSPIRE
• CREATE GREATNESS
• Live PEAK EXPERIENCES
• KEEP IMPROVING

I importantly want to not slow down on my path to wealth. I have to realise that yes, I need to give up a few things, but that I am creating great things by doing this. And that the things that I work on are things which me and my friends would think is cool.

This year, I want to consolidate hard work. Yes, that means I focus on work and on working hard on making money with the opportunities that I have.

What Am I Willing To Sacrifice:

Succeeding is less about “what I want” and more about “what I am willing to give up to GET what I want”. I’m willing to give up the following:

• Travelling
• Living large
• Nights out
• Spare time e.g. on things like movies etc. I have to remember to focus on the rule of 3’s when I do this
• Bad habits / procrastination
• Hooking up all the time

Questions I Should Ask Myself Through 2012

• Is what you are doing RIGHT NOW taking you closer to your goals?
• What is your worse peptide addiction?
• What are your 3 main goals today that woud make the biggest difference? It’s the rule of three’s – find 3 goals every day and work towards those goals. Be results orientated – not task focused!

Year In Summary:

In 2011, I made a lot of mistakes. And I got a few things right too.

Over this year, I will improve. I will:

1. Hire the right people to help me from Day 1 and focus on RESULTS
2. Partner with the right people
3. Set aside time for my relationships

Wow. When I think about it, it was quite a year. I am quite critical (or “thorough in self analysis”), but I also think that I’ve done a pretty good job at making this year count.

I’m ready. I’m hungry. I’m ready to commit, work hard and to give up to get up. Let’s go 2012.

———-

Other Random Thoughts while I was writing this (which may make nice fodder for future posts), but are on the whole, quite interesting!

• Live frugally. Even if you have money – unless you have truly “made it”, live frugally and reinvest into creating value – for both yourself and others. Definitely a blog post on this at some point in future.
• I’d rather be dead then a nobody. Self explanatory. Go for all or nothing.
• Time and energy - the most precious commodities of them all.
• Focus on APPROACH, not on activity. Don’t feel like you have to do more. Simply focus on results and then the activity will come.
• Environment for success. Try to be put in situations where you are most likely to succeed in whatever field you want to succeed in.

Today I came across a few crucial concepts of entrepreneurship that I just had to share. Read together, they are extremely powerful principles of entrepreneurship:

1. The concept of the PIVOT - i.e. continually changing the concept, idea and vision of the company to adapt to what customers want. See the video here: Mike Maples on Thunder Lizards and Pivots. An example of a pivot is how Twitter was originally an audio blogging software, but then pivoted to micro blogging and became hugely successful.
2. The concept of applying Lean Startup - i.e. manufacturing principles to the process of innovation. Basically, this means that instead of committing significant resources to build a start up idea, you launch it immediately and cheaply. The aim is NOT to succeed, but to get as much customer feedback as possible and then to PIVOT. Then you continually refine. See:

Amazing stuff, particularly for those interested in .com startups.

Hey guys

It’s been a while since my last post, for which I apologise. I’m working on a new start up which is exciting but taking up every spare second. I’m stockpiling my profound ideas and thoughts though and will be posting them soon, so subscribe to the RSS or just check back in a week or two. Currently, I have a few developers that I am working with 24/7 and am getting ready for launch. I don’t know if it will hit like some of my other ideas have (and have not), but boy it’s exhilarating. In the meantime, I hope you will all take inspiration from this:

Lately, I haven’t had to think about motivation very much. I’ve been working 17 hours a day without any difficulty at all. I’m feeling as fulfilled as I’ve ever been doing this. In the past, I had to really force myself to dive into work (using an extreme amount of self discipline). Now, no more.

I must admit I don’t exactly know what the change is 100% – I’ll try to break it down in this post. However, I find myself working until 6:00 a.m. in the morning, sleeping for 5 to 6 hours, and then continuing to work for the rest of the time. I occasionally take breaks to go to the gym (for 40 minutes), shoot the shit with my housemates (for 40 seconds), or hang out with friends (probably at around 4 hours). The rest of the time, I am pretty much working.

The issue right now isn’t that I have difficulty working, it’s that because I spend so much time working, I am trying to be more effective and efficient with my time. I’ll get to this point in a second, but I first wanted to explore the reason behind this surge in motivation.

Firstly, I believe that this ’surge’ is because of a few factors:

• I am seeing momentum in the things that I am doing. This is a big one. The brain responds to dopamine. Dopamine comes from incremental success in the actions that you take. I have been becoming more and more successful (despite the path being all ups and downs). When you taste just a little bit of success, or you can see it on the horizon, it changes just about everything. Your motivation level shoots up. Especially if it is in line with your goals. As I have previously said on this blog, my goal is $5 million in 2 years.
• It stopped becoming about ‘just do it’ and it started becoming about ‘this is just what I do’. What I mean by this is that I stopped having to push myself to work so hard. The fact that I work just ‘became’ me. I now thoroughly enjoy it and it gives my life purpose. It’s helping me to achieve the things I want to achieve.
• Having a continually motivated peer group. I don’t have this peer group around me, but I do have them online. And they work just as hard, if not harder, than I do. This has an incredibly powerful motivating effect. Last night, I spoke to one of my ‘masterminds’ (although he’s almost like a mentor) and he told me how he was working 20 hour days, but about to launch a product that could potentially take Google on. I was literally blown away. That motivated me to work very hard myself.

The thing is, because I am spending so much time working, I really need to have a look at the way that I spend my time to make sure that I am spending it effectively and getting the most out of my working hours. I jotted down the things that I don’t think that I am doing well this morning and they were:

• Do the two most important things every day first (when you wake up).
• Write a list of things that you want to do every day and prioritize them at all costs. Currently, I simply go about my day being pulled in all directions by what comes up on my chat or my email. I have to stop this.
• Get tasks done in ’sprints’. This is similar to the Pomodoro. If you don’t know what the Pomodoro is, google ‘pomodoro technique’ and you will see. – it’s basically a 25 minute block of work.
• Work when you are the most efficient. I’m strangely most efficient when I first wake up and in the middle of the night. Because I have been sleeping so late, I find that I will wake up around 11:00 a.m. What I need to do is work from 11:00 until 1:00 on the most important things, and then do the ‘fun stuff’ from 1:00 to 3:00. Go to the gym at 3:00. Come back and continue to work on ‘fun stuff’. Then start really knuckling down as it gets later in the night. I think this would be a good idea to increase my productivity.

In general though, I’m getting a lot more done these days. It seems to be the accumulation of a lot of effort to try and be more productive. Still need to improve on many things, but I’m happy about the way things are going. I just have to keep pushing.

In summary, I’m finding that because I have internalized my motivation (i.e., I don’t have to manufacture it as much, it just comes naturally now that I have been working so hard on projects which I’m interested in), very easy for me to work long hours and not even feel it.

I sat down at my desk today to look at the statistics of some of my companies and advertising campaigns. As I stared at the screen, I became a little daunted at the extent of quantitative analysis that had to take place for me to get an accurate picture of the profitability of my companies. I felt like that this would be ‘boring’ work. I actually was not looking forward to doing it.

Then I had a bit of a paradigm shift. I thought about how innovative products like the Apple keyboard,  Budda Bag (a product which is a bean bag with memory foam in it), Bucky Balls, etc., are innovative and remarkable pieces of “art”. They could not simply be “products” – they’re simply too inventive / functional / clever. Taking this line of thought a little further, fund managers who consistently earn returns of over 10% per annum (for example) are creating a form of ‘art’. It’s a different type of “art” to what we typically understand by the word, however, this does not change the fact that it is a work of creative genius. The fact is, that these people (people like Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, Tony Hsieh and the other innovators of our time etc) are not just going through the motions. They are creating something special by dedicating their time and effort passionately into an endeavor and really caring about the outcome…

So here was my reframe – I could do this statistical analysis as ’something that I have to do’, or I could see it as a chance to create art. I could design a spreadsheet (for example) that truly gives me incredible insight into the status of my campaigns and my companies, or I could just throw something together. The former perspective allows me to really work passionately for my companies and be truly interested and involved in what I am doing. The latter perspective, just ensures that I go through the motions.

In his book ‘Linchpin’, Seth Godin talks about how in order to become a linchpin, you have to be the person who creates ‘art’. You can’t just be the factory worker who churns out what he is being told. You have to stand up, stand out, and risk being different and failing. Read that last sentence again.

How does this apply to my life? I’ve got to stay away from the paradigm that I ‘have’ to do things. I have to be more in line with the paradigm that ‘I am creating art’. If I start to see my companies like that, my focus will change from purely financial gain to the desire to create amazing things.

I wrote the blog post below a while ago and never posted it because I thought it was too negative, but I think it’s important to see how rough and tumble trying to make it on your own can be…

Blog post in bold, below…

“I’ve been working like 16-18 hour days for the past month – Monday – Saturday. I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not. It’s close to 3am on a regular Thursday night and I’m damn near exhausted. Wind taken out of my sails.

I wanted to describe the way I’m feeling now, at 3am on a Thursday morning after a serious few months of hustle, because because I think it’s important to see the lows as well as the highs to choosing this path.

And so that one day I can reflect on these moments.

Right now, I seem to be working hard but not seeing any results. I’m hustling. Burning out. Then hustling some more. People all around me are making big money. Me? Not yet. Why? Many reasons that I have gone, and will go, through in my blog. But that’s not the point of this post.

The point of this blog post is…

(more…)

Today, a close friend of mine received the good news that his business would be funded by a venture capital group. This is huge. It basically means that he is going to be able to scale his business and grow rapidly. He has to give away a certain percentage of his company, but the science behind it is that it’s a small piece of a bigger pie. It’s a big leap for him.

I wrote an older post on how money was leverage. In this post, I talked about how I should and could use my money more effectively to create value and leverage of my time. Since that time, I have hired an outsourcing team from India and the Philippines, and it has completely streamlined my business. It has allowed me to get more done in a shorter period of time. I am now looking at hiring more qualified talent, such as copywriters. I have the capital to do this and the workflow to actually use these people… (more…)

There are a number of differences between people who achieve financial success and those who don’t. I want to address one in particular – the “giving mentality”.

A little while ago, I read a book called ‘The Go-Giver’, by Bob Burg and John David Mann. The Go-Giver is about an ambitious young guy who works hard, but doesn’t seem to get anywhere . He seeks the advice of a mentor who subsequently introduces him to other entrepreneurs. These people educate him in the art of giving. You see, initially, Joe was a ‘go-getter’, but not a ‘giver’. He thought mostly about himself, and then secondarily about others. Counter-intuitively, this makes the path to success harder, rather than easier.

The theory of ‘giving’ goes far beyond just simple notions of ‘karma’. There actually is an evolutionary reason why the more you give, the more you get. (more…)