In life, no less entrepreneurship, the questions are often more important than the answers.
Category: business ideas
Exercise your mind
Really fit people seem to be good at all sports. Really talented at all the physical things they try. They seem to eat what they like at restaurants and yet remain svelte. How?
Here’s the trick. They don’t just play tennis, swim or jog. They do it all and more. They participate in many and varied types of physical activity and sport. So they exercise their entire body. They develop new motor skills all while refining the base they already have. They stay fit and get fitter.
Our brains work the same way. It gets fitter, stronger and more flexible the more challenges we give it. To just read about business and entrepreneurship only builds certain parts of our mind. Occasionally we need to stretch it in other ways. Read something different, watch a nature documentary, undertake some craft activity, do some gardening, go bird watching. Anything.
When we do this the interconnecting synapses in our mind will develop. We’ll then better cross fertilize our ideas and experience. We’ll open up the space for new solutions….
So please click out of this blog, and do something you’ve never done. Your mind will thank you for it.
What start-ups can learn from terrorsits
Extending on one of my favourite strategy topics – terrorism, click on the little Al Qaeda dude below to read my latest Australian Anthill rant!
Enjoy!
Succession planning
Sadly Roc Kirby the founder of the Village Roadshow empire in Australia died last week. While reading an article in the Australian Financial Review the reporter mentioned how his kids had taken over the organization with great success. But we also were given another clue as to why.
As soon as his kids were old enough they worked the concession stands serving soda and popcorn and selling cinema tickets. Not in junior executive positions. They learnt the business bottom up.
No amount of explaining spreadsheets, balance sheets, P & L statements, and public company boardroom battles can prepare someone for a running a business like working at ground level can. The real understanding of any business comes from being where the money is exchanged with actual customers. This is what builds the foundations for a deep understanding of what’s important in a business – operationally and strategically.
If you’ve got a business which is succeeding and you need to think of succession. Startup blog says – think bottom up, not top down.
Have an opinion
Quite often it pays to be malleable, especially in a corporate environment. The powers that be only want to hear about incremental improvements that build on the status quo. Not change it.
Once we leave and get out there on our own. We must make sure do this:
Have an opinion, create change and go beyond the incremental.
Your school teacher was wrong
It’s not cheating, it’s collaborating
It’s Ok to draw outside the lines
Neat handwriting is not a pre-requisite
Touch typing is not a pre-requisite
You don’t have to all wear the same clothes
You can have a respectable job and wear jeans
Conforming does not necessarily lead to success
the ‘Soft’ – subjects are the most important
Talking is not evil, it’s the most important skill you ever learn at school
Having a contrary opinion is fine
You can have a future and be bad at maths
Being different is OK
Doodling on your paper is good for the mind
Daydreaming is fine
…add yours here….
School is vital to our learning. But just remember which bits to ignore.
Money follows ideas
Lacking the cash to commence a start up is a misnomer. There’s so much cash floating around western markets at present that the owners of this cash simply don’t know what to do with it.
All money in the world resides somewhere based on an idea. Let me explain:
Money in your wallet – based on the idea we’re going shopping, will need cash for lunch or maybe just for an emergency.
Money in the bank – based on the idea we’ll need it at a later date for something more significant and want to save it for this future transaction
Money in shares – based on the idea that this companies fortunes are improving and the money will grow and provide us with dividends and or a capital gain.
Money loaned to us – based on the idea that we can use this money to create something of bigger financial worth than the original loan and the cost of interest repayments.
All money follows an idea. Sometimes both parties profit. Sometimes one party profits, sometimes we all lose. But the thing which there is no doubt about, is the fact that money is out there for any idea, any time.
If our start up is that idea we ought chase it and give that idea the money it deserves. The better the idea the greater the chance of accessing the money.