Simply because very often what makes us not make money, is the fear of it. It might sound a little weird for a moment, but in poker there's even a term for it - scared money - what it means is that people in the game are playing for money they can't afford to lose. And if you're playing with money you can't afford to lose, the feelings start to influence your play, making you too passive or too aggressive at times when you actually shouldn't be. Scared money definition from pokerzone - "A pla... read more

The advantages of time management include reducing stress, gaining time, reducing avoidance, while promoting reviews and eliminating cramming. Another advantage is that managing time helps us to stay motivated while we avoid procrastination. The trick to successful time management is setting up goals that work, while having an awareness of those goals and prioritizing your list of goals. When you set up an effective time management plan, you are growing and upholding a personal commitment to yo... read more

Spring is a great antidote to long cold winters. It's the same with action and inaction. Action is a powerful antidote to the stagnation of inactivity. Being creatively alive involves abandoning a position of inaction in circumstances which have traditionally immobilized you. The name of the game is action. Doing. Overcoming your inertia and acting will give you a whole new lease on being creatively alive. Action is the single most effective antidote to depression, anxiety, stress, fear, worry... read more

These myths have cost companies billions of dollars in wasted payroll money. Myth #1) Structure spoils spontaneity. I once attended a two-day long disaster that easily cost over $40,000. Thirty people spent the first hour seeking an issue to discuss, then spent the next 15 hours arguing over insolvable problems. When I asked the manager who called the meeting, 'Where's the agenda?' the reply was, 'I didn't want to spoil the spontaneity by imposing a structure.' Reality: If spontaneity were a ... read more

The answer is NO. But who in his right mind would start an article with this sentence, unless there is at least some kind of BUT or HOWEVER following it. Well, there kind of is. Very few of us actually like to admit that we are in a rather bad situation. We might be in debt, even in bad debt, but as long as we can handle it *somehow*, we tend to pretend the problem doesn't exist. We put on our smiley faces and ignore any notes about our monetary situation. We hate to get into serious discussion... read more

These days all of must possess a number of skills and even more knowledge about different fields of life. While you don't always need to be a professional in any given field, some knowledge of it all gives you something extra. So often you end up being a part time cook, part time welder, part time economist. It would be suggestable that you would be all those things only in terms of knowledge not actually working on everything at the same time - as you know, that type of multitasking is never a ... read more

Are you in business of providing your clients manufacturing services? Or are you just often in need of this type of services yourself? Depending on your location, the costs of running such business could be rather high and a lot better idea might be outsourcing your manufacturing work. One good idea here is to look at Mexico manufacturers like the Entrada Group. Why would you want to look at manufacturing in Mexico? There are really a number of reasons of which one main thing is definitely the ... read more

How budding businesses can use the web to tap into new markets Starting a business requires the same qualities as it always has done - knowledge of the field, ambition, determination, imagination, and patience, as well as the capital to establish the business. But the internet now enables any entrepreneur to get a new business up and running more quickly and cheaply than ever before. Overheads are dramatically reduced by the internet; depending on the business, it can easily be run from home,... read more

Long range plans, not yours, not anyone else’s, should be taken seriously. Long range plans NEED to have the flexibility to change or you should be ready to wipe them out completely. I personally feel long range plans are extremely difficult to make, too exact plans anyhow. Thus – if anyone asks me about plans, my most regular answer during the past 5 or 10 years has been – you mean something in the longer term than 3 hours? No idea. I can’t put myself to do such plans. Of course I know that I’m... read more

Max Gunther says that the old Chinese proverb „All things come to him who waits” can’t be taken too seriously. You shouldn’t believe it as it’s total nonsense. If you wait for your bad ventures to improve you will be very disappointed very often. And just to bring in a personal thought - have you ever achieved anything in your life by waiting instead of taking action? I could write a lot of more here, but I think these couple of sentences really said it all. ... read more

Let’s continue with Max Gunther’s book. One of the axioms he brought out is hope. He has a rather good saying about that – „When the ship starts to sink, don't pray. Jump.”. The words „starts to sink” are important here. You have to be ready to take the fact that half of what you do in your life will go wrong, maybe more than half. But this isn’t as terrible as it may sound – if something goes bad, just get out in a good time. So if you make a bad decision that costs you money, the best ide... read more

I’m a keen supporter of the idea that one should not depend on emotions when making business decisions. I’m also a firm believer that life doesn’t neccessarily need to be difficult nor bad. It’s the way you want it to be. Life’s the way you make it to be. I’m going to talk about a book I recently read – „The Zurich Axioms” by Max Gunther. Many of the things talked about there do contradict my current thoughts and views on life, but we need to keep our minds open towards everything. And I mus... read more

Reading and learning is great – it makes you smarter and gives you new ideas, often you can find the ideas not in the books themselves but from between the lines when two wires just happen to get together in your brain. But like I mentioned in my previous post, in my case (I bet in case of many of you as well) reading all those books changed something, and the change wasn’t really positive. While I still believed that I believed in the same things that I believed in during my high school year... read more

In my last post I mentioned you two types of business books. Both of them have their benefits, both of them have their ugly sides. And there come me. I have always had different opinions about things than most my mates. I have always believed in the possibility of the impossible things. Impossible according to the general audience I mean. During high school I thought I could sing and have my own band. Well, actually I couldn’t. Once someone invited me to submit my music to one artist site an... read more

Internationally known business men and women have written a number of books on how to become successful. Books by Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki (author of the Rich Dad and Poor Dad) have been read by many, loved by many as well as hated. Hated mostly for the fact that they don’t contain any specific know-how most of us would love to see. General information – that’s all what they are offering, nothing useful, just a combination of their personal opinions about something they think now that th... read more

In simple words, it is the longer version of your USP (Unique Selling Proposal). Your marketing message is used to grab the potential customer’s attention. Tell them what’s unique about you or what problem(s) you can solve for them. I don’t know you, thus I don’t trust you, why should I? That’s what you should explain – why should the prospect trust you? Why should they choose you instead of anyone else? Should you speak to people’s brain or emotions? I think you know that the answer is emot... read more

Like I mentioned in my last post, you need to be unique and so does your selling proposal. And this selling proposal is your promise to your existing or potential customer. Make sure it’s specific and make sure you can fulfill your promise. How to choose you USP? In every market there is at least some needs that haven’t yet been satisfied. If you can find those gaps and then base your USP on these needs, you have great potential to become successful. While we can’t always call such needs "a ... read more

We all want to be best at something, yet to be best is often the most difficult thing to achieve. And by the end of the day, that’s not what matters at all. Instead of striving for the best, strive to be unique. In order to be heard and noticed, you need to do something differently, you don’t want to be a ‘me too’ business as at least in case of small businesses you can’t survive this way. You don’t have any additional value compared to the big guys. What people are interested in is some... read more

Looking for great people with the right know-how can be a very tedious task. Often you might find yourself in a situation where you have the great person without the know-how or the person with the know-how but not the “people-skill” (or simply put, a proper asshole you don’t really want to know…or just a boring slug). Who should you choose? My answer is simple – skills can be taught, but they way a person looks at life, the way a person works, the way they are is a lot more difficult to chan... read more

While the thought of a brand should or at least could be in your mind already from the beginning, you don’t need or even shouldn’t start with creating a brand, rather start with creating a quality product. One good example of it is Starbucks, they just started educating their customers on how to appreciate better, stronger coffee. They didn’t think about branding, now see where they are. You need to start with building your business. You can not create a brand before that. By building you... read more

Do you remember the last time when you really needed to do something, but you just couldn’t because you were constantly thinking of something else? Remember? I do. There are ways to fix that. And no, I’m not going to talk about the waves in the air or about some other mambo-jambo. And I’m not even going to use the word autosuggestion (The term autosuggestion is used for positive or negative physical symptoms explained by the thoughts and beliefs of a person.), even though it is part of the game.... read more

Some of us plan some of us don't some of us succeed and some of us won't. (.anon [me-no-poet]) Well, no, planning and succeeding definitely don't have a IF/THEN relationship, at least not necessarily. But depending on who you are, how you function, why you function, what's your environment like, what's your work like, planning or no planning can make a huge difference. I don't have an office, neither do I need one. I can usually get everything done at home or in some cafeteria with wi... read more

We have all heard the saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" but how many of us actually act on that saying? Without a doubt it's a smart idea not to depend on one certain thing too much. Like me an my online magazine - I got steady and pretty nice traffic from Google & Google News. In June they changed something in their algorithm and I my online magazine lost about 90% of its traffic. Not great, is it? Of course I blame Google. It's always easier to blame others, especially if it's ... read more

Without a doubt I have talked about this topic, directly or indirectly, before. Most likely the idea has been on those pages a lot. But that's because it's important. It IS part of the business. It DOES influence whether you will be successful or not. How do you create self-confidence? There's no one possibility but the possibilities are endless. And that's only great. Success all by itself gives you self-confidence. Success in what? It doesn't matter! Success in life! Success in small detail... read more

Knowing the advantages will get you ahead, you knew that, right? Whatever your company is about, whatever your products do, usually there are at least something that your product does better than your competitors. Yesterday I needed some glue to fix a tiny piece of by boots. I went to the shop and there was a variety of super glues available. And to my surprise the price differences were huge. The 3g Super Glue cost 10x less than Super Attack. And as far as I have understood they do pretty mu... read more

I think many of you have heard about or seen the movie The Secret. I agree that there's a few good points in it, but overally...huh, oh well. Here's what I have to say about it - The Secret - there is no secret. There's only one main thing you should think about. Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe you can do something? The belief is important. That's true without a question. But it's not about the law of attraction (if you believe in such things), it's not about any waves going throu... read more

Criticism is something that often disturbs us the most. In some cases we could also call it negative influences. People, who don’t believe in you, people who say you will never get anywhere. Get over it. Don’t pay attention to them. Rather, if someone is very negative towards your ideas, use it to motivate you. And rather look company from more positive people. Think of what you want to become not what you are nor what you don’t want to become. The more you think of what you don’t want to be... read more

Often, different spots in the same business have different values. Eg take a river – it’s always the same river, but the value varies in different locations, locations like ford, bridges, and nice beaches. Or take producing books – the publishing agency without Stephen King is not that good. Stephen King is important, not definitely the publishing agency. Every business consists of a number of people – leaders, employees, why not consultants and clients. They all play a different role in you... read more

The funny thing about change is that it’s our greatest ally for accomplishment, still most of us resist change. Some of us are explicitly running away from change. When you have been doing something the same way for days, months, years, decades and then feel like doing something completely different, then at first it looks like a good idea. But then you start thinking about it. It’s a 180 degrees different life you are thinking about. And that scares the hell out of you. That’s the moment you’re... read more

We all have seen very stylish and great looking ads, ads that are interesting to watch and that win awards. But do they sell? Do they make you remember the product they are promoting or do you remember the great ad but you don’t remember for what it was? I have really seen a lot of great ads but when I’m telling about them to someone, I seldom can remember what the ad actually promoted. That’s often the problem with stylish ads. Stylish & great looking ads do NOT equal most selling ads, these ar... read more

When you think of doubling up your money then it doesn’t really sound like anything special, right? Especially if you consider you have something like 5000 EUROs (or dollars for that matter). Let’s say you have 5000 and you are capable of turning it into 10 000 in a month. Generally speaking, the 100% growth is great here, but it didn’t make you that much richer, did it? It’s the same with smaller sums, well, especially with smaller sums.. Eg. Take 1000 dollars. You turn it into 2000, b... read more

Entrepreneurs spend days, weeks, months in order to come up with new products which, very often, might not even sell. But what if you could see its selling power before you create the product? This would mean you don’t spend the time nor money to create products or services that won’t sell. In a very broad view, it might look like I’m suggesting you to become a scam artist, but just think about it. You are not selling air. You are actually selling a product which you don’t have yet. But if y... read more

Failures are good. Mistakes you have made, bad decisions, failures are there to teach you something, teach you what does not work, what you should not do in the future. And if you really do learn from your mistakes, then how the hell can they be bad, they gave you a lesson and you learned from them. And learning is always good. While at first, after making a mistake, depending on what it was, you might feel pretty down, but think of it this way – how does that help you? Yes, you might have d... read more

Before making the first purchase, the consumer has the power, but when making the second buy, the company has the power – because the buyer is involved with the product he bought from the company and now needs to buy add-ons from the same company. Eg phone companies – you buy internet, but now you also need to add phone, digital TV etc via the same company. Be sure to remember it and use the same idea to attach your customers to you.... read more

I must warn you, what follows, was totally unacceptable for me for years. Mainly for one reason, I didn’t understand why. It’s writing down your goals with specific deadlines, writing down your goals like you have already achieved it all. And then rewriting them twice a day, or even if not rewriting them then at least reading them again twice a day with thought. Why? You’re a 9-5 worker or you’re not doing very well. It’s very hard to imagine and actually start believing that you can earn a ... read more

This is another good WHAT IF questions to ask from yourself. You have a business, you have ideas how to make your business successful, you have your own problems, you have your clients to worry about. But forget about it all for a moment. Put yoursel in your client’s shoes. Imagine you’re your client who needs your service, productt or anything else. Only now you will start to see what problems your clients have or may have with your service or product. Only now you can see what you’d need mo... read more

Imagine you only have one year to live. Each of us would act differently on this event. Most likely the first day or two we would be sort of depressed and spend the time thinking. But what follows is important... It doesn’t matter whether it’s one week, one month or one year, each of us would make changes to our lives one way or another. But one week or one month would be a bit too short time to even think about money and business, thus our chosen time frame is one year. We would want to ... read more

Get your employees talk about the company they are working with – your company. Now this is already a thought on marketing but I thought I’d bring it out here as well. And note – I deliberately said “working with” not “working for”. Make your own conclusions. If your employees don’t talk about you, why would your customers/clients/readers talk about you? So go ahead and give your employees something to talk about, something great, something interesting, something weird, something unusual, give t... read more

Firstly, I think both you and I are tired of people saying you need think right, you need to be positive, you need to believe in things, blah blah blah. Always the same old story. Why can’t anyone tell you something worthwhile? Something you could actually use? Well, until a short time ago I felt the same. Not anymore. Because I wanted to figure out why are many successful people saying that. Often, they say that you need to believe and so on, but they don’t say why. But the why part here is the... read more

Many of you have noticed my recent inactivity in posting. Not to worry, this blog isn't dead, neither is going to be dead and it's not even the problem of not having enough to write about. There is, there's lots of ideas, knowledge and advice to be shared. The reason for my recent inactivity is somewhat different. I write on the same days when I work. And I work on my own schedule which means that sometimes I might work 18 hours a day, but then again, sometimes I might not work for a week. Th... read more

While this is mainly a business blog, I discovered one fine post from my old blog about investing and I thought I'd share it with you. At the time of publishing this post I felt it might be good idea to talk about the game of probabilities and stock markets (well, I still do). I have no intention to dive deep into this topic. However, I think it would be interesting to look at the market as a game of probabilities. Good poker players use the probability theory all the time. They know what is the... read more

What’s the highly unusual way you’d never expect anyone to advertise something with? Never stop looking for a fresh a perspective. To open up your creativity you need to start asking the right questions. Good question is a question for which you don’t know an answer for, where you need to be creative and come up with new, not known, ideas. When you ask the right kind of question, it triggers curiosity. “How do birds fly?”, “How much does a house weigh?”, ”How many columns of people walking into ... read more

I’m usually working in cafeterias. Why? Well, like I have mentioned in my previous posts, that’s where I feel I’m most motivated to work and have the least distractions. Today, after registering in a driving school (yes, have postponed it for years, enough is enough), I went to a cafeteria again (well, I’m still here) and a journalist approached me. It turned out he was writing an article to a local business newspaper about people working in cafeterias (not as employees but people using the c... read more

I would say there’s 4 phases in everyone’s life. And more, I would say there’s 4 phases in all areas of everyone’s lives. The first is knowing everything – this is where you’re really stupid and you think you know everything. The second is knowing nothing. That’s when you have realized there’s really a lot to know about and you really don’t know anything. And that’s a good thing because this makes you learn. The third one is learning, the pursuit of knowledge. And the fourth one is…for a lack of... read more

It’s not uncommon that when someone learns about something new, he or she is not willing to share his or her knowledge. If everyone knew about it and acted on it, it would be too common knowledge, strategy or whatever else to actually work anymore. And you wouldn’t have an edge anymore. Because now everyone knows about it and everyone uses the knowledge. Or a company is not willing to say how it does things. Being afraid that they will be copied and this copycat starts to hurt you. Taking aw... read more

I bet you’ve seen some movie where the guy playing the main role gets into some serious trouble. Now to get out of it he makes a phone call to everyone involved, he calls them all to invite them to the same place at the same time ... on different reasons course. And then the series of events start rolling open. Usually it has been greatly done, great cinema I would say. But what can you learn from it? For one thing, do your homework and learn to know the people involved. Or people who are no... read more

Many of us already have products that we want to market. When it’s usual that you find a problem and then create a product to solve this problem, you could easily do it the other way around as well. Imagine you have a product but you’re not sure yet how to promote it. What’s different about your product? Why is it good? What facts can we use to promote it? What problems does your product solve? Lets take an online magazine, we could use one of my own publications – The Cheers magazine (theche... read more

We often tend to tell ourselves that „if only we had” that much money or possibilities, oh then we could own the world and do the things the way we want to. Well, sometimes money is not an obstacle, even if you don’t have it, your mind is. I’m sure you have some sort of defined problem to take from the back of your head when reading it. Or if you don’t, think of some. Imagine how you would solve it if you had all the resources you’d ever need, all the money, unlimited amounts of money to use.... read more

Marketing your new ventures might be a difficult task. But in order to make something successful you need to find all the possible ways of getting the most of your efforts. That's where some lessons from con artists might come handy. I was just watching a documentary about a swedish...I think he was swedish, con artist...Richard smth. He was pretty much able to do anything - sell fake information to Syrian embassy, pretend to be an airplane pilot with engine problems causing an evacuation of ... read more

In order to get feedback about your services or products you often ask people to fill in different kind of long and nasty surveys. Surveys nobody really feels like filling because they are so long and boring. And by the end of the day you might have a handful on answers but nothing useful. There’s actually only one main thing you should ask your employees, clients and potential customers - what am I afraid to find out? ... read more