We live in the disposable age.We eat take out, use disposable dishes, and look for a quick and easy fix for everything.The current bestselling books talk about doing less and enjoying more like “The Four Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss (which I am all for by the way).We are bombarded with mlm (multi-level marketing), network marketing, internet marketing and many other disguises for a way to make a quick buck.It seems like most people have forgotten that the most important ingredient in becoming successful is hard work.
Gary Vaynerchuck: The Hard Worker
Being involved in social media, I am very familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk, a wine expert/store owner who has used social media to grow his family business from $4 million per year to a $50 million business.I’m mentioning Gary Vaynerchuk because he is a modern example of a hard worker.He is passionate about what he does and he may be one of the hardest workers out there.
Scalable and not so Scalable Apps
Not long ago, platforms such as the Facebook and iPhone opened up to developers so that anyone can create an application for their platform.Most people saw this as an opportunity to create a scalable app that can continue to make them money while they slept.It was a dream come true for some people.Gary Vaynerchukjumped on the bandwagon and created his own Facebook app but contrary to what everyone else was trying to do, he may have created the absolute least scalable app in Facebook history.His app “Ask Gary” was pretty much just a place for people to ask him questions about wine.Gary answered every single one of the questions himself.
Gary Vaynerchuk’s lack of scalability doesn’t end there.He also answers every single one of thousands of emails he gets every day.To top it off, he personally speaks to almost every customer that comes in to his store.Gary also manages to record Wine Library TV, a regular videocast on wine which happens to be very entertaining.
Gary on Social Media
Gary was recently asked how much time he spends on social media platforms such asFacebook and Twitter to which he responded “about 2.5 hours per day”.Shocked at the answer, Gary explained that it is a CEO’s job to make connections and get business and that he has found Social Media, the best place to make his connections.
Gary’s Research and Development
Looking at Gary and what he has done, you may think that Gary has it made and can start delegating now.He can let other people do his work for him and go relax on a beach, he can definitely afford it now.Gary feels otherwise and for a very good reason.By answering thousands of people’s questions, speaking to customers and doing research online, his mind and gut are a better R&D team than you can ever possibly hire.He can smell new trends and predict what people will want and like.The human mind can accurately crunch more information that any super computer in existence.Gary takes advantage of this and stays years ahead of his competition.
Hard work does pay off… Just “Ask Gary”.
READ: Welcome to Luckortunity!
If you liked this article, you may like some of my past posts. I suggest reading 40 Ways to Increase Your Luck next to give you a better introduction.
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Growing up my father used to tell me that every day was “the first day of the rest of my life”.He would mostly use the expression when I was starting something fresh like the first day of a new school year.The expression always seemed funny but never really had any meaning for me, until today.
As you may know, Friday was my last day at my job in a position that I occupied for the last 3 and a half years.I had a great title and I grew tremendously while I was there but at a certain point, the growth stopped and I felt like I was stuck in some sort of routine instead of being excited about each new project that came along.I had gotten all that I could have from the job and it was time to move on.
This morning, I didn’t have to get out of bed, but without an alarm clock, for the first time in a while, I got up on my own, earlier than usual, jumped out of bed and had more energy than I’ve had since I wrestled in college.I didn’t have to hit the snooze button, rush to the train or sit for an hour and a half on my commute.Instead, I took my son to school, made a real breakfast and helped my wife pack for our big move next Sunday.
All day I was full of excitement for what the future holds because for the first time in years, I felt that I was in charge of my destiny and I am taking control.I broke free of the hold that the corporate world held on me.I feel like the genie in Aladin when he was liberated and was now free to discover the world.
For the next 2 weeks I will be packing, moving, unpacking and settling into my new home in Montreal, Canada.After that I am opening up the virtual doors of Flid Media, a social media consulting company aimed at helping small businesses and non profit organizations use new technology and media to the fullest extent to improve the way they function.Since I will be making my own hours, I will have time to have breakfast with my family take my son to school and not have to rush off to the office hoping that I won’t be late.I will also be working on this blog along with a few other side projects that I’ve been playing around with.I haven’t had much time over the last month to spend on this blog but once I am settled, I plan of giving it the attention that it needs.
Back to the title of this post, I actually felt that today was the first day of the rest of my life because my future is an open book waiting to be written and for the first time in my life, I have the pen and I know how to use it.Everyone can write their own future, it just takes some luck.
Yesterday I was discussing iphone applications with a friend who just started developing them.We then moved the conversation to the web and business in general.When I suggested certain ideas, at first them were shot down because “people don’t need that” or “they already exist”.I then explained that contrary to what the people of the United States of America think, they are not the “world”.
The world is a very big place.It is getting smaller each day through new technologies but that doesn’t mean that one size will fit all and that anything that exists in the US will work for people living in smaller countries across the world.For example, Craigslist is extremely popular in the US and it is the first place that many people go to post or look for things they need but if you just move a little north or the border, you will find that it is not as popular and a site called kijiji.com for the same service.
Here are a few tips to keep in mind when thinking about a new web based application or business:
One Size Does Not Fit All
Just because a web service is available everywhere, it doesn’t mean that it is used everywhere.Because of cultural differences, languages, marketing and word of mouth in the other countries, the service may not catch on in the other countries.
You Can Be the Next Facebook
You may never be as big as facebook or as popular or even ever come close to having 100 million users but you can take the idea and recreate it for a country that hasn’t caught on yet and market the site specifically to them.Today, you don’t need a new idea, you just need a new place to use an old idea.
You Now Have a Global Market
Your customers are no longer just the 5000 people in your town; they are the billion plus internet users around the world. If you sell a service online for $50/month to 2000 of them, you will make over $1 million each year.
Do you have any other suggestions to add to this list?
Yesterday I wrote about my decision to start a business instead of finding a job. Taking this step is the most exciting and scariest thing I have ever done in my life.There are so many unknowns that it is so hard to plan for.I looked at buying a house in Montreal but I have no idea what I will be able to afford on a monthly basis so we’re going to rent for the first year.It’s scary because it’s a giant leap of faith into the world of the unknown.When going into a job, you know your salary and can budget according to that.There is no starting salary for your own business but more importantly, there is no cap either.
The excitement
The excitement from this leap is enough to push aside my fear and take the leap.It will mean that I make the rules, I run the business how I want to, I make the decisions, I make my work hours and I decide when it’s time for a vacation.If I want a raise, I can just work harder or find new ways to generate income.I will be able to make time to do things that I wasn’t able to do at a job.
Have you ever taken a leap of faith? If you have or haven’t yet, leave a comment.
When we decided that we wanted to move, I started looking for jobs in different cities and we would move to the city that gave us the best offer.What I found was that I wasn’t putting as much effort into job search as I should have if I wanted to get a job.I was sending out resumes but not really following up as well as I should have.I was updating my profiles on all the job sites but not actively participating in the communities.Something was holding me back.It took me some time but I realized that I was holding back because I didn’t want to get a job.
Starting a business
I have been talking and thinking about starting my own business for a while and this is the perfect opportunity.If I get a new job in a new city I will be starting the cycle all over again.Work extra hard to prove myself, learn the new systems and the business culture.It will be at least a year before I can relax a little and create some free time to work on my side projects.It will be a step backwards toward my goals and I’m not willing to take that step backward.
Have you ever been in a similar situation where you didn’t put in the full effort because you really didn’t want it?
On Thursday I wrote that Seth Godin only likes to do something if he can do it “really well” which is consistent with his message to companies to be “remarkable”.Now while that is great advice for a company to only do things well that you can be remarkable at, I don’t believe it to be true for the individual in general.
Companies, to be successful must have a mission and have everything they do fit into that mission.If they put in half efforts, they will get less than half results.It is the additional 20% or the “extra mile” that gives a company their results.
Individuals are different in that sense because people have to discover their mission in life.They don’t have a great idea one day and define their life based on that idea.They have to keep trying new things and see what they enjoy and what sticks.People go to school to get a rounded education to see what is out there and hopefully begin their journey in life.Each new day brings new opportunities to the individual.He can change jobs, careers, start new businesses volunteer, vacation and retire.Each step of the way he can try new things and adopt them or drop them on his journey through life.It is the trying new things out that will prepare him to get lucky down the line.I must say though that this advice is only when you are playing around on your own and testing out the waters.When you are starting a business, applying for a job or to a school, or giving a presentation, the individual must also be remarkable.It is the best way to guarantee that you will be successful.
For companies, every step has to be so well thought out and they can’t just pick things up and drop them whenever they feel like it.It would look terrible for a company to start a blog and not update it for a month or to get a twitter account, collect followers and never update.An individual can do these things.If he enjoys keeping the blog or updating his tweets, he can do something with it.But if he doesn’t, nobody is really going to think differently about him.
If you are a business, be remarkable and only do what you can do better than anyone else.If you are an individual, try anything and everything that even remotely interests you because it is the journey that defines who you are and who you become.
I just found this new website that allows people to share documents.You can upload as many documents as you want and also browse through other people’s documents.You can find all sorts of business templates from letters to contracts to budget calculators.There are also many finished docs that you can read or use for reference.Not only that but you can also comment, review and share the documents.You can even save your documents privately online for personal storage.
Here’s how I got lucky and found this site:
I’ve been in the workforce full time since I graduated college so I’ve got about 100 versions of my resume saved on my computer waiting for any occasion to whip it out and send it off to potential new employers.Lately I’ve been thinking very strongly about going out on my own so that I can answer to myself at the end of the day instead of another irrational person who I make rich.That’s beside the point… The point is that my wife has been staying home and taking care of our kids for the last few years and although she has tons of experience, she has no employment history and no resume.
We have been talking about her going to work for a little while so that I can dedicate some time to start something of our own to pay our bills and feed our savings.We knew that to find work, my wife needed a resume and having no employment history it wasn’t going to be the simplest task.When faced with a situation like this, I like to look at what other people have done and try and emulate the best example.In this case, it was to find a resume template for “workers returning to the workforce”.The first place I looked was on Microsoft Word where I found a nice selection of templates to choose from.The problem was that my computer is in the shop right now, I’m working on a loaner and for some reason, Microsoft didn’t allow me to download the template because it could verify my account.I’ll save my frustrations and thoughts on Microsoft for another post but for now, I’ll tell you this little challenge was good luck.
I Googled the name of the resume template I was looking, clicked on one of the top links and I was taken todocstoc.I was a little hesitant to sign up for yet another service but decided that I have not much to lose and a whole bunch to gain.The sign up process was really simple, I found the resume template I was looking for and downloaded it.Last night we put together a pretty impressive resume for a person with no “real” experience.
I didn’t pay much attention to the site until this morning when I got a welcome letter in my inbox from the Community Manager at docstoc.The subject of the email was “new docstock message from Kat”.I get these types of messages all the time from sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc… so when I saw it I decided to take a look.The message was pretty much a regular welcome letter but it was written as if Kat was just stopping by to say hello.I’m not sure why but this welcome letter hit me a way that most other welcome letters miss completely.
I went back to look at the site and I was sold. A few years ago, I would have wasted hours cursing out Microsoft and dwelling over how I couldn’t download the template that I needed.Now that I am working on my “luck”, I saw that not only was there a way around the problem, it also led to new “luckortunity”.
Next time you get frustrated at a roadblock, think of this and how you can get around the problem.You might end up being much luckier in the end.
If you have any stories like this to share, please leave a comment.I’d love to hear them.
Today is my birthday, but more importantly, it is about a year from the day that I decided to do something with my financial life and increase my financial luck.I have blogged about my decision in the past, especially close to the beginning of this blog but now I can actually look back at an entire year and see how much I have accomplished.
I wrote in my last article that it takes 6 years to become an overnight success. Just yesterday I read an article by Mobhappy who quoted Joseph Licklider that “People tend to overestimate what can be done in one year and to underestimate what can be done in five or ten years …”.He also mentions that Bill Gates wrote in The Road Ahead “People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years, and underestimate what will happen in the next ten”.With all of this, I can look back at the last year and be happy with what I have accomplished and not worry that I have not accomplished my ultimate goal of financial freedom.
In “My Goals List and the Mapquest of my Life”, I wrote that for most of my life I was just coasting by and living day to day without really thinking about the future. Around my last birthday I woke up and realized that this cannot go on forever because eventually I will want to retire and without advance planning, it will never happen.I did a lot of researched and didn’t figure what I needed to do but I did figure out that I needed to do a lot more learning and research to figure out what it is that I needed to do.During that short period of discovery, I learned that not only was retirement possible and very achievable, I also learned that If I work on it, I can get lucky, become financially free and retire really early.
Twelve months ago I was completely financially illiterate.I didn’t know how to budget, I didn’t have any savings accounts earning interest and I definitely didn’t have any passive income.The only investment I had was a government bond of a few dollars that my grandparents gave me when I was younger.
Over the last year I have probably learned more about money and finance than I have learned in my entire life up to last year.Here are some of the things I have accomplished over the last year:
1. I started two blogs, this one and Sucky Poems. Both blogs have close to 80 posts on them. I own the domain names, I host them, I found nice themes and tweaked them to my liking and added tons of features to each of them. The blogs don’t bring me in a whole lot of money (yet) but they do bring in some passive income and the learning that I have accomplished to bring these blogs to what they are now is priceless. They bring me to my next accomplishment.
2. Because of everything I have learned by building my blogs such as some basic programming but much more so, how the internet and websites work, I have had many ideas for new businesses that I am either thinking of, or in the process of starting up.
3. I learned that you don’t have to trade hours for dollars or your time for money. I realized that I don’t want to work for the rest of my life but I want to make a living for the rest of my life. This can be accomplished by creating an income that scales well such as writing a book and getting the royalties for as long as it exists or owning a rental complex and making passive income off of the renters. My businesses are all at least leaning in this direction.
4. I bought my first stock last year and in the last few months have built up an impressive portfolio (at least for me). I have watched my stocks go all the way down and then soar higher than I could have imagined and then back down again but I have been learning about the stock market every step of the way. I am confident that in the long run, my portfolio will do me well.
5. I set up savings accounts that give me significant interest, at least in this market. I also set up regular automatic transfers from my checking account to my savings to keep increasing my savings.
6. I started measuring my net worth monthly in December and have since almost doubled my net worth. I found out that for something to increase, it must be measured. By measuring my worth every month, I am more conscious and careful about where my money goes.
These were just some of my accomplishments.Have they made me successful overnight? NO!Have they made me financially free in a year? Not even close!Have they built a solid foundation for becoming an overnight success in 6 years? I hope so!
One way or another, I will continue to learn and trek along the road to financial freedom.If I take what I learned this past year and add the compound interest of the time spent, who knows where I will be next year, five years down the line or ten years in the future.I can honestly say that this has been the best year of my life.I’m also expecting my third child in a couple months with the most wonderful wife I could have possibly asked for, which makes everything worthwhile.
We often look at companies and people and say “wow, that guy made millions overnight”.There are plenty of companies who were not heard of for years and then all of a sudden, they are the talk of the town.They are in the news, at the top of digg.com and somehow connected to everyone’s facebook profile.We look at these people, get inspired and decide that we are going to be the next overnight success.We think of an idea, put it to work and hope for the best.The unlucky person has little success and after a while gives up.The lucky person has very little success but continues to push through and work harder at every stage of the game.It can take years but in the end hard work pays off and if you give up too early, you will never know the meaning of success.
I don’t know if six years is an accurate amount of time or if it is some sort of average but the number does make a lot of sense.If you want proof that it takes years to become an overnight success, just do a little research.Go to Google and search for all of the overnight successes you can think of and you will learn the truth about how long it takes for overnight success.It doesn’t have to be a company, it could be actors too.Jim Carry was an overnight success but it took years of failed stand-up comedy and living in his car to finally achieve his “overnight success”.Now getting over $20 million per movie for playing with his rubber face is natural.
I decided in July 2007, almost exactly a year ago that I want to be successful.I’m not exactly there yet but I am an infinite times closer that I was back then.Now I have ideas that I am putting into place, I have goals that I am working toward and I have a drive to get there.I don’t know if it will take another 5 years but I am most definitely willing to put in the time.
Are you willing to put in 6 years of hard work to be successful or make it big?
After posting this, i read Brian Armstrong’s most recent post on Startbreakingfree where he talked about Ronald Jenkees, “an “average” guy in small town America who happened to really enjoy playing music” and started posting his songs to Youtube and then selling his cds. Brian mentions that it takes 7 years to become an “overnight success” but more importantly, the only reason that Ronald stuck it out was because he enjoyed doing it.
Find something you enjoy and stick to it for your 6-7 years. Best case, you will be the next overnight success and worst case, you will have spent 6-7 years doing something that you love.
When you have a great idea that you are sure is going to be a success, the first thing you want to do is tell the whole world.You usually start with the people who are closest to you such as your family and friends.You would think that these people who hold such a dear place in your life would want you to succeed and would root for you but this is not always the case.Although they might actually want you to succeed or say that they do, something else is going on in their subconscious.
Deep down, whether they know it or not, something registers that really scares them.They realize that if you go along with your new idea and you are successful, you are going to change and in turn, so will your relationship.If you go for a higher degree, you may be more educated and they’ll feel that you won’t have your intellectual conversations with them anymore.If you start a diet, they may not have those snackfest pigouts that you have every Saturday night at the movies.If you start a successful business, you may be too busy for them or even worse, start to socialize with a higher class of people.
Without knowing it, they will start to find all sorts of flaws with your idea and try to convince you not to go ahead with it.They may seem supportive but they may also be a little hesitant with their support.These friends and family members can really kill any drive you have for success and then you will be stuck in the same place that you have always been with no chance of growing and reaching for the stars.
Lucky people don’t usually have this problem because they make friends or already socialize with people that are where they want to be.If they want to be rich, they will hang out with rich people.If they want to be in good shape, they will hang out at a gym.I don’t remember who said this but there was one wealthy man who said that if he ever lost all his money, he would work hard to buy himself a nice suit and then go hang out at a country club with rich people.
When you have a great idea and you are really motivated, try to keep the idea to yourself for a little bit while you put together a plan and figure out how you are going to do it.If you tell anyone about it, make sure they are someone who is already where you want to be.After all, if you get advice, the person who is already there is the best person to get it from.Just remember, never take advice from someone who has never successfully done what you want to do.If you take their advice, you will end up exactly where they are.
This self improvement blog is full of advice on how to increase your luck and improve your life. You can start off by reading 40 Ways to Increase your Luck.
