Helping You Succeed!

Are You Buying Happiness?

2012-01-31T20:32:00.002+11:00

By Patrick Driessen

"The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy!" - H.H. the Dalai Lama

Are you feeling sad, depressed or lonely? Just leave your home and buy some active happiness! This is how to do it.

Psychologists have just found out that buying life experiences makes people happier than buying possessions, but who spends more of their spare cash on experiences? New findings published this week (January 30th, 2012) in the Journal of Positive Psychology reveal extraverts and people who are open to new experiences tend to spend more of their disposable income on experiences, such as concert tickets or a weekend away, rather than hitting the shopping mall for material items.

These habitual "experiential shoppers" reaped long-term benefits from their spending: They reported greater life satisfaction, according to the study led by San Francisco State University Assistant Professor of Psychology Ryan Howell.

To further investigate how purchasing decisions impact well-being, Howell and his colleagues have launched a website where members of the public can take free surveys to find out what kind of shopper they are and how their spending choices affect them. Data collected through the "Beyond the Purchase" website will be used by Howell and other social psychologists.

For his latest study, Howell and colleagues surveyed nearly 10,000 participants, who completed online questionnaires about their shopping habits, personality traits, values and life satisfaction. "We know that being an 'experience shopper' is linked to greater well-being," said Howell, whose 2009 paper on purchasing experiences, published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, challenged the adage that money can't buy happiness. "But we wanted to find out why some people gravitate toward buying experiences."

Participants' personality was measured using the "Big Five" personality traits model, a scale psychologists use to describe how extraverted, neurotic, open, conscientious and agreeable a person is. People who spent most of their disposable income on experiences scored highly on the "extravert" and "openness to new experience" scales.

"This personality profile makes sense since life experiences are inherently more social, and they also contain an element of risk," Howell said. "If you try a new experience that you don't like, you can't return it to the store for a refund."

The authors suggest that it could be easier to change your spending habits than your personality traits. "Even for people who naturally find themselves drawn to material purchases, our results suggest that getting more of a balance between traditional purchases and those that provide you with an experience could lead to greater life satisfaction and well-being."

Next Steps & Actions to Increase Your Happiness

For more info about the above and to find out what kind of shopper you are, please visit the Beyond the Purchase website at beyondthepurchase.org.

Create a life experiences wish list: write down your goals and dreams for the next weekend, the next couple of months or the next decade. Life lists are already very popular, as evidenced by the many books and websites such as '1,000 Places to See Before You Die' and 43Things.com. The movie 'The Bucket List' - a movie in which terminal cancer patients (Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) have a few last adventures - also inspired many people to create a wish list with adventures, life experiences and must sees.

Now it's time to create your own list and take action to tick off the wishes on your list to boost your happiness!

Have fun and enjoy your increased level of happiness!

Warm regards,

Patrick

Startup Lessons From a Crime Boss

2012-01-09T19:24:00.004+11:00

By Donald DeSantis

Everything I need to know about startups, I learned from a crime boss!

The door opened and into the room walked the most dangerous person I’ve ever met. He reached towards his belt and slowly pulled out his .45 caliber handgun, raised it and paused to evaluate my expression. “No disrespect, but it’s been pressing into my hip all day.” He placed the gun on the coffee table, relaxed into the leather sofa and let his guard down for the first time in a very long while.

This person, let’s call him Kobayashi (I’m a Usual Suspects fan), is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. He was a well-educated entrepreneur who ran a profitable business that employed dozens of people. He lived in a swanky downtown Los Angeles penthouse. His kids went to private school. He kept his fridge well stocked with imported beer and wine for guests even though he didn’t drink. He was, by all measures, a gentleman.

But Kobayashi ran an unusual business. He was in the business of organized crime. He started this venture quite young, expanded his operations, diversified revenue streams, and created very profitable independent business units. “I have two lawyers,” he once told me. “I keep them both because they hate each other. Neither one of them can get out of line because the other one is watching him. That keeps me safe.” Kobayashi was brilliant, witty, and dangerous. He was a friend and mentor to me during an interesting period of time in my early 20s.

Everything I need to know about startups, I learned from Kobayashi. While I can’t get too deep into specifics (would you?), I can share a few the things he taught me.

Don’t sell rocks when you can sell mountains!

Kobayashi didn’t work with small packages. His business transactions involved risk at every stage – product acquisition, transport, and distribution. But the marginal risk on each decreased with the size of the transaction. Working in large volume reduced his overall risk and rewarded him with a shrink-wrapped palette of cash rather than a suitcase of cash.

As founders and early stage employees, we go to great lengths to mitigate risk. So why do we overlook the total marginal risk?

Building a profitable small-market company is difficult and carries a high risk of failure. Building a profitable large-market company is also difficult and carries a high risk of failure. But the marginal risk in building a company decreases as the addressable market increases. While a larger company may require more total work, the relative effort is less. Make no mistake: small-market companies still come with 18 hour days, flaky vendors, upset customers, and exasperated spouses.

Thinking small increases our risk. So let’s think big!

[Notes: “Large vs. small” is a different debate than “bootstrapped vs venture-backed”, though the two are often conflated. It’s also worth noting that serving a small segment and progressively expanding outwards to serve the larger market is a totally legitimate large-market strategy.]

Cut out the middleman!

As Kobayashi’s businesses grew, he was in a position to start bypassing middlemen. Instead of dealing with distributors, he went straight to producers. Instead of hiring contractors, he purchased required equipment and moved people onto the payroll. Everywhere he saw a third party making money, he figured out a way to replace that person or bring them in-house. He reduced costs at every step. He constantly encouraged me to do the same.

Interesting things happen when we cut out the middleman. In addition to reducing cost, we often end up creating an internal byproduct that can be productized and sold to a completely new customer. (Amazon Web Services is an example of this.) Sometimes the middleman’s market is so huge, that a freaking enormous business can be built simply by providing their customers a lower cost and more efficient option. Two-sided marketplace businesses are a textbook example of this type of disruption.

Don’t shit where you eat!

“When someone’s doing something for the money, people can sense it, like a desperate lover. It’s a turnoff.” – Derek Sivers, Anything You Want

During this period of my life, I was running a couple of businesses that overlapped around the edges. One business had loyal and enthusiastic customers. This business was glamorous, but hemorrhaging money. The other business was transactional and lacked any customer loyalty or love. This business was “anti-glamorous” and a bit closer to Kobayashi’s world than I care to admit.

As time passed, I felt increasing pressure to monetize customers from the first group. I began to overlap these businesses more and more. While they included the same customer segments, there were two completely different products. This pollution of something beautiful with something cheap was my act of shitting in the proverbial kitchen. I watched as revenues increased and looked away from the damage I was causing to the customers I really cared about.

Thankfully, Kobayashi pulled me aside and straightened me out.

The lesson for us is simple. Don’t screw with your users. They are your golden-egg-laying goose. Protect them from rapacious cofounders and investors. Don’t spam them. Don’t abuse them. Don’t be a douchebag.

If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense!

“A business without a path to profit isn’t a business, it’s a hobby.” – Jason Fried, Rework

We can build an awesome product and then give it away for free. We can bolt advertising to it. We can turn it into a lead-gen property. We can even sell some virtual goods. Kobayashi wouldn’t!

He would have built Birchbox rather than Pinterest and Airbnb rather than TripAdvisor. He would have found product market fit and a viable business model before spending money on development resources. Kobayashi stayed close to the money, close to a transaction.

Kobayashi was around for the late 90’s tech bubble. He knew many of the players and saw the writing on the wall long before they did. He talked about the first tech wave as if it was a fad that had simply passed, saying things like “when dot-com went out…”

“If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense” may sound like a gross oversimplification. But Kobayashi outlasted those late 90’s startup founders. And he’ll probably outlast most of us.

Closed mouths don’t get fed!

I’ve written before about the importance of networking and moving from wallflower to evangelist. Kobayashi was adamant about the importance of this. “Closed mouths don’t get fed,” he would say. “If you want something, you have to either ask for it or walk up and take it.”

We can’t expect good fortune to fall into our lap. It’s our responsibility to create the circumstances for it and then capture that good fortune. The meek may inherit the earth, but they’ll be getting it from Kobayashi.

Be a badass!

“There’s only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that’s being so good at what you do that they can’t ignore you.” – Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

My friend Chris DeVore makes a comparison I love: pirate ships as organizational models. Pirate ships combine an “us against the world” mentality with a hunt for treasure. This crucible of chaos and ambition somehow allows unstructured groups of mercenaries to complete complex tasks without killing one another (very often). A pirate ship is a meritocracy where he/she who is most badass, leads.

I’ve met several “badasses” over the years, though Kobayashi is the most memorable. Each one of these people had a gravitational pull for talent and resources. The world reorganized itself around them as they passed through it. They were larger than life, energizing everyone in their periphery.

The one thing these badasses shared was the source of their power: influence rather than authority. This lesson is the most important and also the most difficult to implement. There’s no pill, book, or retreat that will turn us into badasses. But if we want to captain a pirate ship, we must become the most badass version of ourselves. Kobayashi taught that we lead only with the influence we earn.

Donald DeSantis is a developer and UX designer at TechStars company Giant Thinkwell. In his free time, he travels to faraway cities and helps make Startup Weekend events successful. You can find him on Twitter at @donalddesantis.

How You Can Support Young Entrepreneurship

2011-12-01T21:48:00.001+11:00

By Patrick Driessen

Entrepreneurship is the growth engine of most developed economies. To keep feeding the entrepreneurship engine, education, inspiration and motivation are key ingredients to breed new entrepreneurs. I always like to say that anyone can become an entrepreneur!

Now every country needs new entrepreneurs and that is something we can all help with, because YOU can help to breed new entrepreneurs! This overview will hopefully inspire you about how you can contribute to it as well.

How YOU can stimulate young entrepreneurship

Buy whatever kids are selling on card tables in their front yards.
Explain and teach young children that entrepreneurship is not only about making money; it's also about things like creating meaning, social relevance, team building, leadership, innovation, finance, people care, improving the environment, etc. All focused on creating a better world for all of us!
Explain that young entrepreneurs today are living in a world of constant change, and they must be aware of this fact. As the world is always in a state of change, these young entrepreneurs positively show new thinking and innovative ideas. These qualities are particularly seen in the most recent young entrepreneurs with fresh ideas and are open to try something totally different from the former entrepreneurs of the last century. Unlike generations before them, these young and modern entrepreneurs have a totally changed world view.
Share your lessons learned and insights about entrepreneurship with as many young children as possible. Especially those who do not have entrepreneurial parents! You might become their leading example, you might spark them, you might become their coach & mentor, you might become their first client, you might become their first investor, etc.
Provide young children with tips and tricks about how they can turn something into a profitable new business. Examples are:

Grow and sell organic vegetables and fruits; package it and sell it door-to-door (supported and guided by an adult);
Sell chilled lemonade and cookies in summertime, sell hot chocolate and soup in wintertime;
Design and create useful and trendy crafts-work out of paper, clay, wood, textile, etc. (e.g. bracelets, T-shirts, pots, carry bags, school gear) and sell these at a cardboard stand in the front garden and at fairs;
Create a new computer or mobile game...;
Start a new online shop;
Build websites for the new businesses of fellow young entrepreneurs;
......... (create your own examples).

Tell them about successful young entrepreneurs and how senior entrepreneurs started when they were young. A few examples:

British serial entrepreneur Sir Richard Brandson: started his first business at 16 years;
17 year old Australian serial-entrepreneur Lachy Groom sold his first business at the age of 15 and since than founded two new businesses he's still working on;
Dutch Internet entrepreneur Ben Woldering started his first successful e-business at the age of 16, thanks to a school assignment about entrepreneurship;
An overview of websites in the world run by young entrepreneurs as young as 17: 20 Young Internet Entrepreneurs Under 21.

Refer young potential entrepreneurs and wannapreneurs to specialised websites such as:

How YOU can inspire young entrepreneurs

Master-blogger and best selling author Seth Godin wrote an insightful story about young entrepreneurship in which the lessons learned from two lemonade stands were described. It's a great story to share with wannapreneurs as it will inspire them and will open their mindset when they'll think of a compelling business model to start with.

The first stand is run by two kids. They use Countrytime lemonade, paper cups and a bridge table. It's a decent lemonade stand, one in the long tradition of standard lemonade stands. It costs a dollar to buy a cup, which is a pretty good price, considering you get both the lemonade and the satisfaction of knowing you supported two kids.

The other stand is different. The lemonade is free, but there's a big tip jar. When you pull up, the owner of the stand beams as only a proud eleven year old girl can beam. She takes her time and reaches into a pail filled with ice and lemons. She pulls out a lemon. Slices it. Then she squeezes it with a clever little hand juicer.

The whole time that's she's squeezing, she's also talking to you, sharing her insights (and yes, her joy) about the power of lemonade to change your day. It's a beautiful day and she's in no real hurry. Lemonade doesn't hurry, she says. It gets made the right way or not at all. Then she urges you to take a bit less sugar, because it tastes better that way.

While you're talking, a dozen people who might have become customers drive on by because it appears to take too long. You don't mind, though, because you're engaged, almost entranced. A few people pull over and wait in line behind you.

Finally, once she's done, you put $5 in the jar, because your free lemonade was worth at least twice that. Well, maybe the lemonade itself was worth $3, but you'd happily pay again for the transaction. It touched you. In fact, it changed you.
Which entrepreneur do you think has a brighter future?

How YOU can stimulate entrepreneurship at primary schools

A great way in which you all can help to stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation is by sponsoring and supporting the BizWorld Foundation (non-profit) of which I'm a passionate Ambassador and Trainer.

With the BizWorld Foundation’s programs, primary school teachers help their students to develop the critical thinking, leadership, innovation and teamwork skills that allow them to become financially responsible, entrepreneurial and productive members of our society.

The BizWorld programs show children in grades 3-8 how they will benefit from entrepreneurship, instilling confidence to reach their goals, and helping them become part of the next generation of innovators. The programs and curricula apply to kids from all socioeconomic and academic backgrounds, providing children with valuable real-world experiences.

Help to create new entrepreneurs and companies within the next generations, by sponsoring and supporting a primary school near your business or home location! Maybe you want to become more than a sponsor and become a BizWorld trainer like myself. You'll love it!

BizWorld is currently active in:

Is BizWorld not yet active in your country? Maybe YOU can kick it off!?

How YOU can help to make young entrepreneurship work

While the world has countless enthusiastic young people with ideas, potential business skills and technical skills, there are many challenges facing these youthful entrepreneurs. These range from the natural - potential investors such as angel investors, venture capitalists (VC's) and banks disputing their expertise - to artificial, such as the age restrictions placed on credit card services that might otherwise be used to pay for start-up resources, age restrictions for the incorporation and registration of a new company, etc.

Now YOU can help them by acting as a mentor, coach and supporter!

As a young entrepreneur I have personally experienced many hurdles and tough challenges, which could have been prevented or taken away if..... I would have had an adult coach and/or mentor! Of course I used tricks to look older and more senior such as wearing glasses with fake/normal lenses, wearing a suit and a tie; all at the age of 15 years. I bet at my Dutch high school a lot of other kids were making fun at me, because I was the only one wearing a business jacket and tie...

For me my entrepreneurial life became much easier when - at the age of 16 - a friend of my father showed his belief and trust in me and my entrepreneurial ideas. I had very supportive and entrepreneurial parents, however this person was an authority within the law and corporate business community and he invested some of his precious time in me! Wow! The fact that he took me serious and acted as a mentor boosted my self-esteem, gave me lots of energy and helped me overcome many challenges. As my mentor he also prevented me from making some big mistakes, which could have negatively impacted my future.

The insights and lessons learned he gave me also helped me to further develop my passion to help others succeed, to become a coach and mentor for fellow entrepreneurs and to inspire others about entrepreneurship and leadership.

Now 24 years later I am very happy, proud and inspired to see that the mentor I was referring to is still mentoring young people as well as helping many other people and organisations to succeed. He's also a true inspirator for entrepreneurship and so can YOU be!

With entrepreneurial regards,

Patrick Driessen

Just Give Yourself to Others!

2011-11-11T22:16:00.003+11:00

By Patrick Driessen

"Life's too short not to show your love or appreciation to someone or something!" - Patrick Driessen

As I have noted in my long list of Life Lessons; giving your support to others will often help you succeed as it will increase your levels of happiness and success, plus it has a positive impact on your health.

These are some of my applicable 'giving yourself to others' Life Lessons:

#30. Make at least three people smile each day.
#63. Share your thoughts, ideas, knowledge and experience with others, so they can benefit from it as well.
#77. Buy whatever kids are selling on card tables in their front yards.
#81. Feed a stranger's expired parking meter.
#84. It is amazingly rewarding and satisfying to help someone in their time of need. It helps them, and it also helps you!
#85. The most powerful single thing you can do to influence others is to smile at them.
#101. When you help others, they will help you in return. It comes in handy.
#106. Do at least twenty hours of community work per year.
#108. Never give up on anybody.
#129. Give more, expect less from a personal perspective.
#132. What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us. What we have done for others lasts forever!
#141. You can get everything in life you want, if you help enough other people get what they want.

So...forget chocolate, sex, fresh flowers and money... caring for others can bring just as much pleasure and benefit your health!

Finally some decent scientific research has proven that:

Support-giving triggers reward-related regions of the brain!
Helping others can boost happiness and reduce stress!

Caring for friends and family benefits the giver, not just the receiver, scientists say. Confirming the proverb "It is better to give than to receive." researchers at the University of California (UCLA) say that lending support to others is a pleasurable experience which can boost happiness and lower stress.

During trials they discovered that when patients were able to help loved ones they experienced positive emotions commonly associated with chocolate, sex and money.

Lead researcher, UCLA Assistant Professor Naomi Eisenberger said: 'When people talk about the ways in which social support is good for our health, they typically assume that the benefits of social support come from the support we receive from others. But it now seems likely that some of the health benefits of social support actually come from the support we provide to others.'

During the study 20 young heterosexual couples in healthy relationships were observed. Each of the men were subjected to painful electric shocks while their girlfriends underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans which measured changes in blood flow related to neural activity in the brain.

At times, the women could provide support by holding the arm of their boyfriends, but on other occasions they were forced to watch as their partners received shocks. Findings revealed that when women were able to help their boyfriends reward-related regions of the brain were activated, including the ventral striatum and septal area. Under conditions in which no support was provided, these regions showed decreased activity.

Eisenberger said: 'One of these regions, the ventral striatum, is typically active in response to simple rewards like chocolate, sex and money. The fact that support-giving also activates this region suggests that support-giving may be processed by the brain as a very basic type of rewarding experience.'

The research findings, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, also suggest that offering support to others can help reduce stress. Scientists noted an interesting pattern of neural activity in the septal area, which in addition to being a pleasure center, plays a role in stress-reduction by inhibiting regions of the brain that process threats. Eisenberger said: 'This finding suggests that support-giving may have stress-reducing effects for the person who provides the support.' She also noted that support-giving could be a basic human instinct, aiding the 'survival of our species.'

Enjoy giving yourself, your knowledge, your experience, your love, your energy and your support to others!

Warm regards & success,

Patrick Driessen

11 Leadership Styles To Avoid

2011-11-10T23:29:00.000+11:00

By Mike Michalowicz

Leadership is one of those things that every successful entrepreneur must have in order to succeed, but identifying what good leadership entails may not always be clear-cut for everyone. So just what kind of leadership style should you have? You can weed them out by taking a look at these 11 leadership styles that you must avoid if you want to succeed.

1. Providing Too Much Info.
You look like a know-it-all. People are less likely to share their ideas, because you will just roll over them with your own “better” ideas. The Fix: Next time you have a better idea, don't just share it. Instead, invite your colleagues to build on the idea and come up with an even better solution.

2. Using "But" or "However".
These words simply mean that you don't approve. “I like your idea, but...” “I will consider what you are saying, however....” Your intention may be to try to soften the blow. But in reality you are not. Instead of jabbing a knife into their gut, you are stabbing it into their back. The Fix: Stop using those words, and don't look for another work-around to pass down your criticisms. Just stop using the words.

3. Sharing Your “Smart” Stories.
If you add to discussions by sharing the smart stuff you have done, you are pointing to an inferiority complex. You feel you need to puff out your chest in order to get noticed. No one likes a bragger. The Fix: Recognize that the most successful leaders have an “air” around them. They don't need to brag and show off. They simply bring confidence to the table.

4. Communicating When Angry.
Sharing your thoughts when you are angry can be dangerous. Emotions will cause outbursts and may do irreparable harm. The Fix: Remove yourself physically from a situation that makes you angry. Then give yourself a 24-hour break. (You need to get one sleep cycle in.) You will be in a better position to talk when your emotions are not dominating.

5. Withholding Helpful Knowledge.
Keeping secrets that adversely affect other people's performance is another sign of an inferiority complex. And when people find out you held them back, you will lose their trust. The Fix: Ask yourself what else you can share to help others. Then share it.

6. Failure to Give Individual Recognition.
This is simply another version of “all for me, none for you.” You are keeping all the credit, and others don't feel that you value them. The Fix: When a project is completed successfully, publicly recognize the individual contributions everyone made.

7. Claiming Credit Your Don’t Deserve.
This may be even worse than not giving credit to others. In this case, you are actually stealing it from them. Not only are you a jerk, you are a thief, too. The Fix: It is far better to give someone else credit for something you have done than the reverse.
Leadership style number

8. Making Excuses.
The buck stops with leaders. If a leader makes an excuse, they lose credibility and integrity. When Bill Clinton was president and had the Monica situation, what were your thoughts about his excuses and denials? (And I quote “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”) Kind of lost his credibility and integrity, right? Don't do the same thing. The Fix: Next time you are thinking of an excuse, instead make it a declaration of what you will permanently fix.

9. Refusing to Apologize.
Everyone makes mistakes. And everyone hates someone who can't admit to their own. The Fix: Apologize quickly, apologize fully, and mention an action that you are going to take to fix – or at least improve – the situation.

10. Not Listening.
This is a problem of many leaders (and something I admittedly struggle with). It is a bad problem. It says only one thing, loud and clear, to the person speaking: that you don't care. The Fix: Remove yourself from physical distractions (e.g., e-mail, crackberry, etc.), lock eyes with the person, and repeat back the stuff they tell you.

11. Punishing the Messenger.
Bad news can be reported from any source, and bad leaders attack the source. These leaders lose trust, and bad news gets pushed under the rug. The Fix: Recognize that bad news is critical to your success, because you need it in order to improve and fix problems. The next time bad news is reported to you, be extremely grateful that that person was willing to tell you.

Dancing your way through all the leadership styles that you should avoid may take some practice, but you will become a more effective leader, once you are able to do it and focus more attention on what it takes to be a great leader.

John Quincy Adams said it best, when he reminded us: “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” If you fall short of that – and many entrepreneurs make the mistake of doing so – then your business will suffer!

Note about the author:

Mike Michalowicz is the president of a behavioral web optimization firm: Obsidian Launch, he's small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal, he's a frequent television guest and keynote speaker on entrepreneurship, and is the author of the book 'The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur'.

Inspiration and Life Lessons from Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T07:14:00.011+11:00

"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected!" - Steve Jobs

By Patrick Driessen
Unfortunately - at the age of 56 - Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has lost his battle with cancer. To me and to many other people he was one of the greatest visionary maverick technology entrepreneurs of our time. A true inspirator!

Thanks to his passionate entrepreneurship, leadership and his innovative focus on excellence, both Pixar Animation Studios and Apple became very successful global companies. They both contributed to enormous innovation in entertainment, design, technology, communications and usability; rapidly adopted, used and enjoyed by millions of consumers and businesses around the globe.

As a tribute I would like to share my selection of his most inspirational quotes - full of life lessons - with you below.

"We all have a short period of time on this earth. We probably only have the opportunity to do a few things really great and do them well. None of us has any idea how long we’re gong to be here nor do I, but my feeling is I’ve got to accomplish a lot of these things while I’m young."

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.... Stay hungry. Stay foolish!" (Stanford University commencement address, June 2005)

"Innovation has no limits. The only limitation lies in one’s imagination. Innovation is the key to change and growth. One needs to begin thinking out of the box and create ideas to expand whichever work one is involved in. However, in the drive for improvement one must not overlook the fact that there are no shortcuts to excellence. One’s personality should be a yardstick of quality. A person can get right ahead of others by using one’s talents, abilities, skills and above all keeping excellence as priority. Each person should give his or her work the best shot and pay attention to the minutest details that really do make the difference!"

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary!"

"You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future!”

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works!"

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower!"

"One of my role models is Bob Dylan. As I grew up, I learned the lyrics to all his songs and watched him never stand still. If you look at the artists, if they get really good, it always occurs to them at some point that they can do this one thing for the rest of their lives, and they can be really successful to the outside world but not really be successful to themselves. That’s the moment that an artist really decides who he or she is. If they keep on risking failure, they’re still artists. Dylan and Picasso were always risking failure. This Apple thing is that way for me. I don’t want to fail, of course. But even though I didn’t know how bad things really were, I still had a lot to think about before I said yes. I had to consider the implications for Pixar, for my family, for my reputation. I decided that I didn’t really care, because this is what I want to do. If I try my best and fail, well, I’ve tried my best." (CNNMoney/Fortune Magazine, November 9th 1998)

A young Steve Jobs

3 Practical Steps to Motivate Team Members

2011-10-07T02:10:00.000+11:00

"You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future!" - Steve Jobs

For decades, Zig Ziglar has motivated and inspired millions of people to be better at whatever they do for a living. Zig's ideas about creating a sense of urgency are exemplified in his "Day Before Vacation" story. This technique can have a tremendous effect on your productivity, and the ability to motivate and inspire your team members.

Think about your last day at work before you went on your most recent vacation. Didn't you get as much done in that day as you would normally get done in two, three, or even four days? Have you ever considered how this could be used to motivate employees? Look at what Zig Ziglar says you probably do on the day before your vacation:

Two nights before your vacation, you likely sat down with a piece of paper and listed all of the things that had to get finished the following day - your gottas ("I gotta do this and I gotta..."). Then, you committed to completing them all before you left the office the next day. These principles are essential to motivate your team members.

On the morning of the day before your vacation, you arrived at the office on time, maybe even early. But you didn't head for the coffee machine. No, you headed straight for the first gotta on your list (the sign of a motivated employee). You probably also did things out of order. You took your least favourite, most distasteful task on your list and got it out of the way quickly, instead of having it hanging overhead all day long (the way you normally would...). With that tough one out of the way, you were feeling pretty good, and so you tore into the next task on your list, and then the next one after that. When someone came to chat about last night's game, you politely but firmly informed that person that you were just too busy - and then you got back to business.

As you completed each of your gottas, you felt your energy rising, so that by halfway through the day you were buzzing with a sense of accomplishment that drove your enthusiasm level ever higher. Your obviously energized and enthusiastic demeanor began to motivate employees and colleagues around you. They started to ramp up their efforts and became similarly enthusiastic. The atmosphere in the office got a little extra spark, and this lifted you even further. At the end of the day, you had all of your gottas completed. Now let's have a look at the principles behind this focus, and how you apply it to your team members' performance and implement it in your employee development program.

1st - Create a Vision
When your employee's vision gets knocked offline by events around him, he is like a $10 billion guided missile without a target! He can fly around in circles looking pretty impressive, but eventually he's going to run out of fuel and crash and burn.... Motivate your employees in an organized way that will make them more productive. Help them envision their target clearly in theirs head and then paint it in front of them every day so that you are maximizing productivity.

2nd - Formulate a Set of Goals
Having a great vision is useless unless your employee formulates clear, achievable goals to ensure that his vision becomes reality. He must plot a course to take him from where he is now to a target with checkpoints along the way that let him know when he has gone off course. Successful employee motivation is rooted in meaningful goal setting.

3rd - Make a Commitment
This is the most common stumbling block; even if its victims are used to creating compelling visions and formulating achievable goals, they fail to commit. If he has ever made a New Year's resolution he failed to complete, he knows what happens to plans that aren't backed by commitment. If there's no commitment, then his vision simply isn't compelling enough. Otherwise, the commitment naturally would follow. He knows that his vision is right when it has the same sense of urgency.

A real commitment will immediately motivate the employee to get him off the ground and in search of his target. Before he spends one more day out of focus, motivate the employee to stop and look carefully at his goals!

"If you can dream it, then you can achieve it! You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want." - Zig Ziglar

"If you don't see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform as a winner!" - Zig Ziglar

"I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can't truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles." - Zig Ziglar

Innovation Quotes

2011-08-30T23:45:00.001+10:00

To help you boost your creative mindset, Dutch innovation facilitator Gijs van Wulfen shares 25 of his favorite motivational quotes to jump start innovation.

“Innovation is anything, but business as usual.” (Anonymous).
“In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman”. (David Ogilvy).
“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there will be no hope for it.” (A. Einstein).
“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” (A. Warhol).
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” (George Bernard Shaw).
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” (Alan Kay).
“There are no old roads to new directions.” (Advertisement of the Boston Consulting Group).
“Nothing is stronger than habit.” (Ovid).
“If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” (A. Einstein).
“Organizations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation.” (T. Levitt).
“It’s tough when markets change and your people within the company don’t.” (Harvard Business Review).
“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” (Goethe).
“What we’ve done to encourage innovation is make it ordinary.” (C. Wynett, Procter & Gamble).
“To gain customer insights, we must understand that we are prisoners of what we know and what we believe”. (Mohanbir Sawhney).
“He who ask a question is a fool for 5 minutes. He who does not ask a question remains a fool for ever.” (China)
“A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.” (A. von Szent-Gyorgyi).
“Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises”. (Demosthenes).
“You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” (Anonymous).
“People who don’t take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year, people who do take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year” (Peter Drucker).
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” (R. Emerson).
“The impossible is often the untried.” (J. Goodwin).
“Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.” (Tao Te Ching).
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” (D. Adams).
“The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow” (Rupert Murdoch).
“The key to success is for you to make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear.” (Vincent Van Gogh).

I hope these quotes will inspire you as well.
Do you have other innovation quotes you would like to share? Please add them in the comment section below. Thanks!

What Determines A Company’s Performance? The Shape Of The CEO’s Face!

2011-08-28T03:38:00.002+10:00

August 27th, 2011 - Believe it or not, one thing that predicts how well a CEO’s company performs is: the width of his face!

CEOs with wider faces, like Steve Ballmer (CEO @ Microsoft) or Herb Kelleher (former CEO of Southwest Airlines), have better-performing companies than CEOs like Dick Fuld, the long-faced final CEO of Lehman Brothers. That’s the conclusion of a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Elaine M. Wong at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her colleagues study how top management teams work. But they have to do it in indirect ways. “CEOs and top executives don’t typically have time to talk with researchers or take batteries of tests,” she says. “Our research has primarily been at a distance.” They’ve analyzed the content of letters to shareholders and looked at things like how a CEO’s educational or personal background affects how well his or her company does. Wong and her colleagues, Margaret E. Ormiston of London Business School and Michael P. Haselhuhn of UWM, wanted to look at another aspect of CEOs: their faces!

Looking at faces isn’t as crazy as it might sound. Several studies have shown that the ratio of face width to face height is correlated with aggression. Hockey players with wider faces spend more time in the penalty box for fighting. Men with higher facial width are seen as less trustworthy and they feel more powerful.

“Most of these are seen as negative things, but power can have some positive effects,” Wong says. People who feel powerful tend to look at the big picture rather than focusing on small details and are also better at staying on task. She and her colleagues thought that feeling of power might also be correlated with a company’s financial performance.

Wong and her colleagues based their analyses on photos of 55 male CEOs of publicly-traded Fortune 500 organizations. They only used men because this relationship between face shape and behavior has only been found to apply to men; it’s thought to have something to do with testosterone levels. They also gathered information on the companies’ financial performance and analyzed shareholder letters to get a sense of the kind of thinking that goes on at those companies.

CEOs with a wider face, relative to the face’s height, had much better firm financial performance than CEOs who had narrower faces. “In our sample, the CEOs with the higher facial ratios actually achieved significantly greater firm financial performance than CEOs with the lower facial ratios,” Wong says.

Don’t run out and invest in wide-faced CEOs’ companies, though. Wong and her colleagues also found that the way the top management team thinks, as reflected in their writings, can get in the way of this effect. Teams that take a simplistic view of the world, in which everything is black and white, are thought to be more deferential to authority; in these companies, the CEO’s face shape is more important. It’s less important in companies where the top managers see the world more in shades of gray!

Tip for emerging CEO's: ask your nutritionist for a special diet to gain weight - thus width - in your face!

Let Your Unconscious Be Your Guide

2011-08-28T03:17:00.001+10:00

August 27th 2011 - A new University of Alberta study says when it comes to goal setting, your unconscious mind can be a great motivator!

Alberta School of Business researcher Sarah Moore and colleagues from Duke and Cornell universities say that unconscious feelings about objects in the environment influence the pursuit of long-term goals. Their study explores how the unconscious mind responds to objects in relation to an individual's goals, and how the unconscious continues to influence feelings about these objects once the goals are reached; whether or not the outcome has been successful.

In Freud we should trust?
"In the past few years, we recognized that some of Sigmund Freud's ideas on the unconscious mind were, in fact, correct and that a lot of our decision-making and a lot of our feelings are based on things that we're not really aware of," said Moore, who is an assistant professor in the Alberta School of Business. "In our study, we looked at how our unconscious feelings about objects in the environment influence how we pursue goals."

Moore notes that previous studies have shown that when it comes to short-term, finite goals, such as responding to basic needs (for example, thirst or hunger), the unconscious will evaluate objects and form preferences based on whether the object will help an individual achieve the goal. She says that in the case of thirst, items such as a water fountain or a bottle of Coke will be seen favorably, while a chocolate bar or KFC sign would not. However, she explains that, once the goal is reached, those same objects will be evaluated differently.

"Once your thirst is quenched, you don't evaluate the water fountain positively anymore because you've accomplished the goal," she said, " but there are differences when we look at long-term goals".

Win some, lose some: but your goal still is important!
Moore's research focused on longer-term goals, such as getting in shape or undertaking educational pursuits. For both types of goals, she says, the process is similar in that the unconscious identifies and responds to positively to objects and triggers in the environment that support the goal. However, the unconscious deals differently with these objects during progress towards long-term goals. Moore says that, unlike with short-term finite goals, the unconscious will continue to positively value objects related to the long-term goals even after a level of success has been achieved. She says this phenomenon points to the indeterminate nature of the goal.

"In some sense, we're never 'finished' long-term goals," said Moore. "If we successfully finish the small steps toward our long-term goals, it becomes a cycle: we take a small step, we succeed, we feel good about it; therefore, we continue to feel good about the long-term goal. This process makes us more likely to take the next small step toward achieving that goal."

What was surprising for the researchers was how participants in their study reacted to objects after a failure. While the researchers expected the participants who failed to react negatively or express dislike for objects related to their test goal, Moore and her colleagues found that failure resulted in a neutral view of the objects!

"You don't hate the objects related to the goal because that goal is very important to you in the long run," said Moore. "Your unconscious is telling you: now is not the time to pursue the goal. You just failed, let's leave it alone for awhile. We're not going to pursue these objects in the environment; we're going to switch to some other goal."

Success with applying this new scientific knowledge to help you achieve your goals smarter, faster and better!

Warm regards,

Patrick

How to Practice Innovation Leadership

2011-07-22T18:17:00.002+10:00

By Patrick Driessen

Leaders know in their gut that creativity and innovation are the lifeblood of their organization. However; becoming an innovative business organization starts with having leadership in place who initiate, nurture and effectively manage an innovative culture and who turn innovations into measurable commercial success!

As business leader and as an organization you can improve the innovation culture and innovation management process by looking at best practice and secondly by applying some of the most appropriate lessons learned. So lets have a closer look at both options.

Best Practice in Innovation Leadership

Recently Forbes Magazine published its first version of the World’s 100 Most Innovative Companies. It is highlighting the companies that investors believe to be the best at achieving consistent and profitable innovation. You can see the complete list her e.

The great insight from their work in creating this new list is that innovation is well within the reach of mere mortals not named Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos. Successful innovation requires the right culture but new or incumbent leaders frustrated with a slow pace of innovation can start making change happen by behaving differently! It starts at the top, it takes work, and may require some retraining, but the authors’ point is that any leader can innovate if they follow the 5 skills of disruptive innovators. They are:

Questioning, which allows innovators to challenge the status quo and consider new possibilities. Example: Howard Schultz of coffee-shop chain Starbucks and Pradeep Sindhu of technology provider Juniper Networks.
Observing, which helps innovators detect small behavioral details –in the activities of customers, suppliers, and other companies – that suggest new ways of doing things. Examples: Rakesh Kapoor of Reckitt Benckiser and Jean-Paul Agon of L’Oreal.
Networking, which permits innovators to gain radically different perspectives from individuals with diverse backgrounds. Example: Marc Benioff of Software-as-a-Service provider Salesforce.com.
Experimenting, which prompts innovators to relentlessly try out new experiences, take things apart, and test new ideas. Example: Bobby Kotick from Activision Blizzard.
Associational Thinking; drawing connections between questions, problems, or ideas from unrelated fields—is triggered by questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting and is the catalyst for creativity.

You'll find most - if not all - of these 5 skills in most maverick leaders. Hence why hiring a maverick leader to boost innovation within your organization makes perfect sense and has a high ROI!

Making Innovation Work From the Start

Unfortunately, while innovation is firmly on the agenda of many of today’s leading CEOs, transforming intention into reality remains a major challenge. To help you accelerate in your innovation leadership efforts, Dutch author and founder of the FORTH innovation methodology - Gijs van Wulfen - outlines 10 common innovation blunders; things which can go wrong during the process of creating new products, services or business models.

We don’t know what we want: Ideation of new products and services happens ad hoc, usually at a time when a problem arises or the turnover decreases suddenly or when a competitor enters the market unexpectedly. The question is then: What now? ‘Jack Smith create a list’, becomes the creed. At this moment it becomes clear that the existing strategic business plan hardly provides footing or direction for innovation. This lack of clear answers leads to random thought processes, which in many cases are interrupted because the management, after consideration, decided to concentrate on either a different market, product or target group or on another country. When you are suddenly confronted with this during the creative process, it causes a spanner in the wheels of the creative car, which then, under loud protest, comes to a screeching halt.
We come up with the same thing over and over again: Product and service ideas are not readily available. When there is a need for it, and at the initiative of a marketer in the organisation, a few people are invited for a brainstorming session. This session usually takes place at the end of a long and tiring day. The people who come together are usually the same group (known as the creative team) but nothing materialises, because when you try and brainstorm with close colleagues nothing new appears. Everyone automatically races towards the same goal, they are irritated with the well-known hobbies of each other and the result is that everyone leaves the meeting disappointed. At these moments they all experience a feeling of failure, which nobody is able to prevent.
We remain in the usual conventions of our market: Organisations usually have customer information at their disposal, do regular research into the market and are in contact with customers daily, but this investigative process has become routine. Companies pay more attention to their market shares and on what the competitor is doing on the same market. Therefore, products start looking alike as everyone copies each others’ successes which in turn leads to common conventions in the market while the organisation looses sight of what the customer really wants. As a result of this tunnel vision, a ‘blind spot’ develops in the management from which a new competitor can appear at an unexpected moment with another offer, which might just meet the changing need of the market.
The brainstorm is dominated by extroverts and the highest bosses: In a brainstorming session without expert facilitators not everyone is given a fair chance. In most cases either the extroverts or the highest bosses dominate it. This is extremely difficult and tactically awkward for the marketing manager who is faced with the problem of leading the meeting. It also applies when his boss has to have the final word in the brainstorm and the rest have been silenced.
Ideating and evaluating new product ideas goes haywire: There are brainstorming sessions where everyone can have their say. After all, this is the reason for the brainstorming session, isn’t it? Indeed, when you carefully listen to what is being said and build upon the product ideas mentioned by others, however, the risk involved is that the ideas are judged immediately. Remarks such as: ‘That does not work with us’, ‘We have tried it before’, ‘We will never get permission to do that’, or ‘No that can definitely not be done’, are heard. In reality, due to these negative statements, it causes such a mix up where real creativity does not stand a chance, and a spiral of negativity is created whereby everyone is silenced within a short period of time as they are trapped amongst all the creativity killers.
With hundreds of yellow post-its on the wall we don’t know what to do next: Often the person, usually the marketer who is responsible for the innovation itself, facilitates the brainstorming session. Soon product ideas are mentioned and in the end there is a wall full of post-its. But then the process stops, because what next? There might be good ideas amongst them but the question is: how do we create a product idea with a head and tail out of all of this? I must admit that in the days when I was still a manager, I did not have the answer to this question either and thought that I had to find the answers myself whereby I thanked all the participants for their input and took all the post-its to my office. Here they accusingly stared at me for weeks, until I finally threw them in the dustbin. Thus, many things can go wrong in a brainstorming session as the setting up and facilitating of a brainstorming programme is a profession. This I learned much later, luckily.
Product or service ideas remain vague: Due to the fact that everything in a brainstorming session, in the beginning, goes so well and creativity is stimulated, new product ideas are expressed in beautiful sounding marketing jargon. However, be aware as this can be a self-made pitfall. For example: ‘We are going to make an application whereby we can reach adolescents with trendy virtual mobile marketing’, or ‘It is going to become a very original product as it appeals to the primitive man inside us because it favours authenticity’. Product ideas in this stage, which can either represent everything or nothing, still have a long way to go.
Senior management is out to reject very innovative ideas: At the beginning of the innovation pipeline, product ideas are screened. This is the task of the senior management who has the chance to influence the process afterwards. Even though the task is to really innovate, the ideas, which are considered as being too far fetched, are removed first, either because they cannot relate to it or because they believe it is really too far fetched, leaving the responsible executive managers in a daze. Real innovation was after all the intention, wasn’t it?
The development team puts everything back for discussion: It is great when the decision is made to develop a good and new product idea. Subsequently it is passed on from the product inventors to the product developers – who are usually a multi- disciplinary team under the control of a project leader. It seems strange, but it is usually at this stage where most of the energy disappears from the idea. All the members of the development team now dissect the original product idea as everybody has their own vision as to which direction it should go. This is normal, isn’t it? Of course it is necessary to improve the product idea during the development process, but often the distinguished product idea starts looking more like ideas we have already had, only because we can produce something like that. The risk is that you then throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Line management always resist innovative ideas: During the development process, the product idea has to be ‘sold’ to the line management on a regular basis. The reason being that should the product reach the finish line of the innovation process, they are the ones who will be producing the product and putting it on the market. So, while you are waiting for the expected applause, you continue to receive many comments and a pile of questions to which you do not have answers. It is logical that you would ask yourself whether these comments and questions are practical arguments or whether you have become the victim of the feared ‘not invented here’ syndrome. Maybe it is even a political game. Hence, it can happen that a good new product idea is kept in the freezer for years due to a lack of internal support. The resistance from the line management team can also be caused by the fact that they have more than enough to do with their regular tasks. And if they do not have the time to work on their own ideas then they are not prepared to spend time on the ideas of others, which has been forced upon them.

It is possible that you have recognized the above-mentioned situations, but do not despair because you are not the only one. Wisdom is: If you take these 10 lessons learned into consideration, you can jump-start the innovation process! It all starts with pro-active and serving innovation leadership, because as you can see in the 10 points above and under point 8 & 10 in particular: to make innovation work you'll need supportive leadership and management with a mandate to make firm decisions!

If you don't innovate effectively, you'll get tougher competition and more negative pressure on your bottom-line.... Hence why innovation leadership is a must do for any result driven business leader!

With innovative regards,

Patrick

Startup & Investment Considerations

2011-07-03T01:03:00.009+10:00

By Patrick Driessen

“High achievers spot rich opportunities swiftly, make big decisions quickly and move into action immediately. Follow these principles and you can make your dreams come true!” - Robert H. Schuller

"Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire!” - Andrew H. Glasow

On a regular basis I receive questions from fellow entrepreneurs if I can please help them with their startup, early-stage venture, or later-stage venture. Often their request for advice and support is based on their need for fund raising, to get through the startup phase or whether they should start their business or not.
To help many emerging entrepreneurs in these area's, I'll share many of my insights, lessons learned, tips and experience; allowing you to make the best startup and investment considerations!

Below you'll find an overview of insights, questions and actions allowing you to make the best considerations whether you should start or expand your new/existing venture or not and as a next step to allow somebody else to consider whether to invest in your venture or not. It's a mixture of qualifying questions, insights and actions, which I use myself as entrepreneur and as angel investor, mixed with the investment considerations from fellow entrepreneur Tim Davis.

STEP 1: The Investment Considerations (TIC) for your New Venture

Getting Investor Ready

The questions below will help you to define the required actions, answers, stories, strategies and next steps, giving input to all the paperwork required to convince potential investors. Most of this information will be used for the creation and optimisation of the following documents:

1-page Investment Summary
Information Memorandum
2-10 page Business Plan
Draft Shareholder Agreement
Investment Term Sheet.

Go/No-Go Decision

The answers to the questions below will allow you to identify and define all the possible roadblocks and key challenges in getting your new business venture up and running. If you list these challenges and define strategies and actions on how to prevent and/or overcome them, you have the ideal input to make a GO or NO-GO decision. For example:

To successfully start and grow our new business venture, these are the key challenges:

Secure $50-150k in seed funding and potentially $500k in a Series-A round;
Find and hire an exceptional CFO and COO within the first 6-12 months;
Allocate sufficient working capital to bridge at least 9 months to get to break-even;
Sign an exclusivity agreement with X strategic partners;
Protect our brand name and other IP by xxxx before xx-xx-2011;
Create complete beta version of our new product/service within xx weeks;
Etc.

If you can positively overcome these challenges, including creating a Plan B(ackup) for any one of them (always expect the unexpected...), than you could decide to give it a GO, otherwise it’s back to your drawing board or give it a NO-GO and walk away from it.

TIC - Company Product or Service

What is the Clarity of Purpose: Summarize the company's business on the back of a business card.
What's new about what you're doing? What are people forced to do now because what you plan to make doesn't exist yet?
How did you come up with your business idea?
What is the Growth Opportunity?
What is your Competitive Advantage?
What can you offer that others cannot?
What are the Customer Benefits? (both performance and psychological benefits?)
Why would ‘you’ use your service? Why would others?
Why would ‘you’ pay for your service? Why would others?
What stage of development are you in?
How will you make money?
What is the social proof for your venture/business idea? E.g. are any "known" people from the industry involved in your company? If so, what is their role and what makes the person(s) impressive?
Is the new product or service ready? Demo? If not, what is the time-line for development and market launch?
Do you have any ideas/products/services you’d consider patentable?

TIC - Services and/or Product Strategy

What is the “value equation”? That is, Customer Value = Seriousness of Current State + Benefits of Proposed Future State -/- Cost of Solution.
What is the product or service ‘really and simply’; in one statement or word?
How will you improve your product or service?
How will these improvements allow your company to expand into other markets?
What is your “dream vision” of the product or service? That is, if I gave you a bottomless pit of money – what would you do? Why?
Is there any ‘uniqueness’ in terms of IP, etc?

TIC - Market

What is your target market?
What do you understand about your market that other companies in it just don't get?
What is the “bottom up” market view (i.e. entry level, segments, industry, country, global, etc.)
What is the “top down” market view? (i.e. above in reverse)
What is the current market state?
Who are the current market leaders (if any)?
What will differentiate you from the market leaders?
What is the market size and opportunity?
How much of the market are you wanting to penetrate?
How are you taking market share off existing players in this market?
How is your industry changing and what is the impact on the niche market(s) you focus on?
What are your “expansion axises”? I.e. what markets do you want to expand into?
What are the barriers to market entry? What are some mitigating factors?
How are you going to “increase” market share?
How many target audiences are there within your target market(s)?
What are your key target audience(s) per product/service, per country, region, etc.)?
What is/will be the average spending on a service/product in your target market(s)?
How can you increase the share of wallet?
Are there any organisations or competitors in the market you’d consider to acquire to accelerate your growth?

TIC - Risks

What are the risks? Now, what are the real risks?
What are future and/or potential risks?
Operational Risks?
Human Capital and Retention Risks?
Financial Risks?
Legal Risks?
Political Risks?
Foreign Exchange Risks? Etc.
Which risks are Systematic (undiversfiable) and which are Unsystematic (diversifiable)?
What are your ‘personal risks’ in the business? Are you taking risks? If not, why should investors invest?
What are your teams ‘personal risks’?

TIC - Management

What is your level of experience?
If it’s limited, what are you doing about it to reduce investor risk?
What are your qualifications?
What is your previous business or operational experience?
Who is in the team? What are their levels of experience/qualifications/operational experience, etc.?
Is the team well diversified?
Does your team cover off a broad range of business disciplines? (i.e. financial, legal, marketing, sales, etc.)
What are your projected salaries? Why? Are they too high/low? Are they realistic?
Do you have any previous start-up experience? If so, what was this business? Did you sell it? Was the product/market/etc.?
Which key players have you lined up or identified to help your grow the business?

TIC - Sales & Marketing

What is your marketing strategy?
What is the forecasted marketing spend?
The ‘what, where, why, how, who’ of your branding and promotion?
What is your sales strategy?
Direct sales vs. channel sales?
What will be the cost of sales to acquire a new client?
How will pricing fluctuate and is it market sensitive? What factors make it so? How to mitigate?
What is your projected growth?

TIC - Financials

What are your financials (real and/or projected)? I.e. Burn Rates, Gross Margins, Earnings, Cash Flow, Debts, Break-even, etc.
What are your (forecasted) startup costs?

TIC - Investments

What is your investment? Financial, sweat equity, etc.
What is the realistic valuation of the business?
What is the Capital & Legal structure of the business?
Why do you need investment?
What will you use the investment for?
Why should investors choose ‘you’ over ‘another’?
What % equity are you offering?
What is your ‘forecasted’ ROI (return on investment)?
How long will you take to pay the investment back?
Is your Risk vs. Return fair?
How can the investors help without injecting money?

TIC - Random Questions

What is the problem you are solving? I know of other services in the same space. What’s the differentiator?
Competitor ABC is the market leader in this field by X% margin. How are you going to compete against them?
Is your market size really reasonable?
Where did you pull the data for your projected growth and revenue streams? Sales etc?
Are your direct sales vs. channel sales strategies sound? Why not focus on just direct or just channel?
I want to know more about how you are going to market? What are some of your other strategies?
Is there any defensible IP? What stage is this at?
How will people associate your product with the industry segment?
I want to know more about you and your team? Tell me.
I have had 2 other people pitch me a similar idea – why ‘you’ and not ‘them’?
Do you think the amount you are asking for is reasonable? Can you do more with less? Can you do less with more?
What are the largest obstacles you foresee in order to secure a greater market share?
You investment terms aren’t really reasonable? X% for %X million at % revenue – is this realistic?

STEP 2: Additional Actions & Next Steps to Become Investor Ready

Have / get signed official contracts and agreements in place for every possible partnership, alliance, employment, etc.
Create a compelling website with at least 5 pages (about, services, team, partners) to run a beta-test pilot case with.
Buy domain names for the company (e.g. com/net/org/tv/eu).
Get a signed Letter-of-Intent (LOI) in place with future business partners, clients, etc.
Design of new corporate structure & legal entity.
Get agreements with suppliers, manufacturers and service vendors.
Create a risk management matrix for all business areas.
Create biographies for all exec team members.
Create a work-flow overview for all business processes.
Create pictures to describe the commercial / production process.
Gather, analyse and consolidate all relevant market research.
Gather and select the best and most relevant quotes about the market by industry analysts (e.g. Forrester, Gartner, Frost & Sullivan).
Create a detailed financial plan for the startup phase 3-12 months and a high level / solid 3 - 5 year financial forecast.
Create a video demo & presentation à select best producer & editor or DIY and create a storyboard for video shoot.
Apply for a brand name and business name Trade Mark.
Select the best candidates for the Advisory Board.
Create a clear and compelling Unique Value Proposition.
Describe various use cases.
Create a demo in which a live use case will be demonstrated (i.e. how potential clients will buy, use and experience your product or service).

STEP 3: Get Ready for Due Diligence

Various categories with information which needs to be presented/handed over to a potential investor for their due diligence process:

Financial

Detailed P&L and balance sheet;
Ensuring the current accounts are in order;
There are no unaccounted liabilities;
Debtors and creditors are under control;
Systems are in place to deal with all management and compliance obligations;
Sound processes are or will be in place for authorising payments;
Corporate governance standards, etc.

Legal

Reviewing all current and relevant past contracts (commercial; employment);
Intellectual property protection (patents; trademarks);
Corporate structures (providing clarity and simplicity for incoming investors);
Shareholder agreements (terms and conditions that may impact incoming investors);
Supplier and customer agreements;
Trading terms and condition, etc.

Commercial

Unique Value Proposition;
Detailed Go-To-Market Strategy;
Business plan including future development roadmaps;
Overview with new business initiatives;
Marketing strategies, cost-of-sales per target client, sales/profit forecasts;
HR structures and resource requirements;
SWOT analyses;
Supplier/customer interviews to establish reputational bona fides and quality of the core value propositions;
Disaster recovery plans, etc.

Technical

Blueprint of the proposed technical architecture;
Infrastructure / technical architecture review & audits;
Technical details of all applications, websites, products and services, which will need to be created;
Specifications of all technical assets which will be required to enable the go-to-market strategy.

Management

Biographies of all the founders and/or management team members;
Resumes of the key team members;
References and endorsements of the key team members;
Employment agreements and shareholder agreements of founders and/or management team.

As the quality of the management will be your most important key to success AND will be the most important selection criteria an investor uses, you might want to include additional content along the following lines:

Why and in what way(s) you and your founders are exceptional and what kind of exceptional things you are capable of?
What is the experience of each founder in starting up a new business and/or leading a business?
How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet?
How would you describe the relationship between each of the founders (e.g. close friends, best friends, former colleagues, etc.)?
For each of the founders: please describe at what age did they start earning money.
If the founders have worked together in the past; please explain about one or two challenging cases in which your co-operation led to joined success and/or victory.
Share the management and leadership experience of each of the founders and include the number of direct reports and indirect reports they have had (if any).
What has your team (including the founders) accomplished in the past that would make investors and/or potential clients think you will be successful?
Write 2-4 paragraphs on why you want to be a (leading) entrepreneur.

Note: The above points are all insightful suggestions and it might not be necessary to adopt all of them to succeed in your fund raising case.

Tip: As most investors get bombarded by many investment opportunities, it’s their challenge to select the most exceptional and most potential ones. So.... dare to stand out and dare to be different, but don’t overdo it or take too much risk!

STEP 4: Accelerate!

If you’ve read all of the above and thought “Yes, I can do all of this”, than it’s time to accelerate the process!

In the olden days it used to be costly and time consuming to create a beta version of your new venture, but thanks to social media, crowd sourcing, offshore development and advanced technology; it’s not only simple and fast to create the basics for your new venture(s), it’s also very affordable... as long as you know where to go and how to get what you need in the best possible way. A few tips:

Get your new logo, website design and/or mobile app design via crowd-source platforms such as: www.99designs.com, www.DesignCrowd.com or www.CrowdSpring.com. If you just start with mock-ups of your new website/application than you can create a compelling story-board to cover the visual side of the story you’ll tell them.
Get your website, mobile app and other tech stuff developed using a market place with quality control process; allowing you to manage the outsourced development for the lowest possible cost. You can use platforms such as: www.Freelancer.com, www.eLance.com, www.Odesk.com, www.RentaCoder.com or www.Guru.com.
There are various apps on the market, which will allow you to create, cut and edit your own video, without the need of hiring a professional video recording expert. Especially if you have an iPhone4 you can DIY the video editing. Alternatively it often pays off to spend a few extra bucks on an expert. E.g. I was happy to spent $500 on a full day of recording + editing because the 2 minute video the expert had created had a massive impact on anyone who saw it!
Get lessons learned from fellow entrepreneurs via the various startup- and business websites and communities such as: www.VentureBeat.com, www.StartupLessonsLearned.com, www.Kauffman.org, www.Inc.com, www.StartupNation.com, www.BusinessInsider.com or via www.YouTube.com.
Use proven funding platforms to source and select the best potential investors such as: www.Gust.com, www.AngelList.com, or www.TheFunded.com.

I hope these insights will enable you to start and fund your business venture faster and more successfully, thus allowing you to accelerate your business growth, while mitigating operational & financial risks.

"Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't." - Anonymous

Entrepreneurial regards & success,

Patrick Driessen

When Work Interferes With Private Life

2011-07-01T18:06:00.003+10:00

"Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live!" - Margaret Fuller

By Patrick Driessen

Yesterday I was catching up with a Dutch friend from Sydney, who's enjoying a holiday in The Netherlands. When I asked him how he was doing, he told me that he had just passed a major crossing in his life, which was revealed by the leadership coach I had introduced him to last year.

His coach had made him realize that he was spending most of his time and energy on his work and even more importantly; that he had lost his focus on living a healthy and valuable life... He got up with work on his mind, he went to bed with work on his mind and even in his sleep he thought of his work... Instead of a corporate athlete he had become a corporate slave...

This must sound familiar to a lot of you because apparently as many as 50 per cent of people bring their work home with them regularly, according to research out of the University of Toronto that describes the stress associated with work-life balance and the factors that predict it. The researchers measured the extent to which work was interfering with personal time and asked participants questions like:

How often does your job interfere with your home or family life?
How often does your job interfere with your social or leisure activities?
How often do you think about things going on at work when you are not working?

So, how do YOU answer these questions?Are you balanced and stress-free enough?

The researchers found several surprising patterns: People who are well-educated, professionals and those with job-related resources report that their work interferes with their personal lives more frequently, reflecting what the researchers refer to as 'the stress of higher status'. While many benefits undoubtedly accrue to those in higher status positions and conditions, a downside is the greater likelihood of work interfering with personal life.

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important!" - Bertrand Russell

From Slave to Athlete
There are a lot of useful insights and lessons learned to be found in the article 'The Making of a Corporate Athlete', written by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz for the Harvard Business Review. I've heard it's one of the most popular HBR articles ever!

In their article they conclude that if there's one quality that executives seek for themselves and their employees, it's sustained high performance in the face of ever-increasing pressure and rapid change. But the source of such performance is as elusive as the fountain of youth! Management theorists have long sought to identify precisely what makes some people flourish under pressure and others fold. Authors Loehr and Schwartz maintain the view that they have come up with only partial answers: rich material rewards, the right culture, management by objectives.

The problem with most approaches, Loehr and Schwartz believe, is that they deal with people only from the neck up; connecting high performance primarily with cognitive capacity. In recent years there has been a growing focus on the relationship between emotional intelligence and high performance. A few theorists have addressed the spiritual dimension: how deeper values and a sense of purpose influence performance. Surprisingly almost no one has paid any attention to the role played by physical capacities.
A successful approach to sustained high performance, Loehr and Schwartz have found, must pull together all of these elements and consider the person as a whole. Thus, their integrated theory of performance management addresses the body, the emotions, the mind, and the spirit. They call this hierarchy the performance pyramid. Each of its levels profoundly influences the others, and failure to address any one of them compromises performance.

High-Performance Pyramid

The Corporate Athlete approach has its roots in the two decades that Jim Loehr and his colleagues at LGE Performance Systems spent working with world-class athletes. In the early nineties Loehr and Schwartz began to develop a more comprehensive version of these techniques for executives facing unprecedented demands in the workplace. In effect, they realized, these executives are “corporate athletes.” If they were to perform at high levels over the long haul, Loehr and Schwartz posited, they would have to train in the same systematic, multilevel way that world-class athletes do. They have now applied their model on thousands of executives around the globe. The executives dramatically improved work performance and they enhanced their health and happiness!

Corporate Athlete Rules

Launch each day by revisiting your personal and professional mission in life, reconnecting to your deepest values and beliefs.
Establish concrete physical, emotional, mental and spiritual objectives.
Develop mental preparation and visualization rituals to sustain high-level performance under stress. Example: Like an athlete before a competition, carefully rehearse desired actions before an important meeting.
Institute precise personal recovery rituals to decompress and renew energy every 90 to 120 minutes. Example: Have something to eat or do deep breathing exercises.
Perform a highly specific exercise routine at least three to four times a week that expands physical capacity and stimulates mental and emotional recovery.
Stabilize blood sugar and energy levels by consuming five to six nutritious small meals and 48 to 64 ounces of water daily.
Be consistent on sleep patterns, focusing especially on going to bed and waking up early.
Implement clearly defined rituals for positively connecting with co-workers to facilitate more effective communication and leadership. Example: Take opportunities to compliment a worker each day.
Build effective rituals for truly separating work life from personal life. Example: Take a walk or work out to decompress before leaving work for home.
Conclude each day by holding yourself accountable for the progress made in achieving your desired mission and behaving consistently with your deepest values.

To read the Corporate Athlete methodology in full detail, please click HERE.

Countries With the Best Work-Life Balance
In case you're out of balance, what would be the best country in the world to achieve the ultimate work-life balance? Based on data from 34 countries, the OECD chose three indicators to measure work-life balance. These include a.) the amount of time devoted to personal activities, b.) the employment rate of women with children age 6 to 14 and c.) the number of employees working over 50 hours a week.

Not surprisingly, Northern European countries fared better when it came to leaving the office on time. For instance, the Netherlands and Sweden both only have 0.001% of their respective populations regularly working over 50 hours a week.
As for working mothers, the best country to live is Denmark, where 78% of mothers jump back into the workforce after their kids head to school. Turkey is at the other end of the spectrum, with only 24% of women with children also holding down a paying job.
If you're looking for the most personal time, relocating to Belgium might be a good idea. Belgians have an average of 16.61 hours a day of time off, compared to the combined OECD average of 15.46 hours.

Here are the Top-10 countries with the best work-life balance.

Denmark
Norway
Netherlands
Finland
Belgium
Switzerland
Sweden
Germany
Portugal
France

"The mark of a successful man is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it." - Author Unknown

Warm regards & success,

Patrick Driessen

Insights for a Perfect Brainstorm

2011-06-29T21:28:00.001+10:00

"Creative thinking is not a talent, it is a skill that can be learnt. It empowers people by adding strength to their natural abilities which improves teamwork, productivity and where appropriate profits!" - Edward de Bono

Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which a group tries to find a solution for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members. A brainstorm session often is a good way to find possible solutions to solve an urgent problem, think of new products/services/brand names/business models, a new go-to-market-strategy, etc. Often the brainstorming is done in free format, using a set methodology, tools and/or with a facilitator. There are lots of ways to brainstorm, and lots of tools to help you, including brainstorming software programs, useful mobile apps and handy mind-mapping tools. However, in most cases brainstorming as a tool can be used much more effective....

"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires a creative imagination and marks the real advances in science." - Albert Einstein

Over the years researchers and creativity experts have made modifications or proposed variations of brainstorming in an attempt to improve the productivity of brainstorming. The best brainstorming insights I recently came across have been developed by Dutch innovator Gijs van Wulfen, who's the founder of the FORTH Innovation Methodology. His brainstorming advice and views are as follows:

Every one of us has experienced failed brainstorms. Because 300 ideas hung on a wall and nobody knew how to go on. Or one of your vice-presidents disapproved of every idea so after a short while everybody kept his mouth shut. Or because at the end of a long day at the office you could only recycle old ideas and there was nothing new under the sun. But do not get discouraged. The perfect brainstorm exists. I have experienced several in practice. And was in the position of facilitating some of them.

So, what finally gives that 'WOW feeling'? I’ve discovered that this simple question cannot be easily answered. I do not think there is one dominant success factor. It is much more the right interplay of many small factors. It is all in the details I experience. Perhaps the metaphor of a puzzle is most striking. There are many small pieces needed, and if you lose one, the puzzle is worthless. In my practice as facilitator I have found twenty-five pieces contributing to the perfect brainstorm, which I like to share with you.

Highly Relevant

1. Define a relevant subject, which is a challenge for the organisation and the people you invite.
2. Create with the sponsor a concrete and s.m.a.r.t. brainstorm or innovation assignment.
3. Create momentum for the brainstorm. Something important must happen now!

Diverse Group of Participants

4. Invite people for whom the assignment is personally relevant.
5. Invite both people for content as for decision-making reasons.

6. Invite also a couple of outsiders as outside-the-box thinkers.
7. Get a good mix between men and women, young & old, etc.
8. Let the internal top problem-owner (vice-president) participate.
Special Setting
9. Look for a peaceful and special environment (special place, special music, special food, etc).
10. Create an (emotional) safe environment where you can be yourself.
11. Do not allow ringing and flashing iPhones and Blackberry’s.
12. Never, I really mean never, brainstorm at the office.
Effectively Structured Process
13. Take at least two days for an effective brainstorm for concrete new concepts.
14. Spend twice as much time on the convergence process as on the divergence process.
15. Plan and prepare an effective combination of idea generation techniques.
16. Be open to suggestions from the group to adapt the process. Do not always try to stick to the programme you have set.
17. Make sure it is enjoyable. Fun promotes good results.
18. Time box. Make sure everybody knows what the time limits are for the different assignments. And stick to the time.
19. Hire visualisers or cartoonist to visualise the results
20. Keep the pace going; otherwise it becomes long-winded and boring.
Facilitated by a Professional
21. Hire an (internal) expert facilitator, hardly noticeable, with light controls.
22. Gives the opposite energy to the group. If the group is too active: be calm. If the group is too calm: be more energetic.
23. Don’t lose sight of sub groups, constantly check how they progress.
Concrete Output
24. Make the output very concrete and clear to anybody. Also to those who did not participate.
25. Creating the new concepts with your own colleagues generates maximum internal support.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating of course. Try to deploy the 25 rules, and you will notice that the participants will share the WOW-feeling and support the outcome. So when you organise or lead a brainstorm, check out if you’ve complete the puzzle.

Do you need to make an extra effort to 'sell' the importance of Idea Management and brainstorming within your organisation? Than I'd advise you to read the article 'How to Communicate the Value of Idea Management' for some useful insights and tips.

"Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world!" - Joel Arthur Barker

Creative regards & success,

Patrick Driessen

34 Kick-Ass Rules for Maverick Entrepreneurs

2011-06-22T21:04:00.005+10:00

"The kind of people I look for to fill top management spots are the eager beavers, the mavericks. These are the guys who try to do more than they're expected to do - they always reach!" - Lee Iacocca

In line with my previous blog post 'Mavericks Explained', I'd like to provide you with some useful entrepreneurial insights; Yanik Silver has done a superb post at his blog titled: 34 Rules for Maverick Entrepreneurs. These are:

It’s got to be a BIG idea that you, your team and your customers can “get” in seconds.
Strive to create 10x – 100x in value for any price you charge. Your rewards are always proportionate to the value you provide.
You must charge a premium price so you have a large margin to provide an extraordinary value & experience.
Provide a ‘Reason Why’ customers should do business with you and pay you a premium.
Get paid before you deliver your product or service. And when possible figure out how to create recurring revenue from transactions.
You get to make the rules for your business. Don’t let industry norms dictate how you’ll work or who you’ll work with.
Create your business around your life instead of settling for your life around your business.
Consistently and constantly force yourself to focus on the ‘critically few’ proactive activities that produce exponential results. Don’t get caught up in minutia & bullshit.
Seek to minimize start-up risk but have maximum upside potential.
Get your idea out there as fast as possible even if it’s not quite ready by setting must-hit deadlines. Let the market tell you if you have a winner or not. If not – move on and fail forward fast! If it’s got potential – then you can make it better.
Find partners and team members who are strong where you are weak and appreciate being paid on results.
Your reputation always counts. Honor your obligations and agreements.
Never, ever get paid based on hours worked.
Leverage your marketing activities exponentially by using direct response methods and testing.
Measure and track your marketing so you know what’s working and what’s not.
Bootstrap. Having too much capital leads to incredible waste and doing things using conventional means.
Your partners and employees actions are their true core – not what they tell you.
Keep asking the right questions to come up with innovative solutions. “How?”, “What?”, “Where?”, “Who Else?” & “Why?” open up possibilities.
You’ll never have a perfect business and you’ll never be totally “done”. Deal with it.
Focus most of your time on your core strengths and less time working in areas you suck at.
Make it easier for customers to buy by taking away the risk of the transaction by guaranteeing what you do in a meaningful way.
Always have something else to sell (via upsell, cross-sell, follow-up offer, etc.) whenever a transaction takes place. The hottest buyer in the world is one who just gave you money.
Always go back to your existing customers with exceptional offers and reasons they should give you more money. It’s 5x less expensive to sell to happy customers than go find new ones.
However the flip side is: fire your most annoying customers! They’ll be replaced with the right ones.
The marketplace and competitors are always trying to beat you down to a commodity. Don’t let that happen.
Develop and build your business’s personality that stands out. People want to buy from people.
Create your own category so you can be first in the consumer’s mind.
Go the opposite direction competitors are headed – you’ll stand out.
Mastermind and collaborate with other smart entrepreneurs if they have futures that are even bigger than their present.
Celebrate your victories. It’s too easy to simply move on to your next goal without acknowledging and appreciating the ‘win’.
Make your business AND doing business with you FUN!
Do the unexpected before and after anything goes wrong so customers are compelled to ‘share your story’.
Get a life! Business and making money are important but your life is the sum total of your experiences. Go out and create experiences & adventures so you can come back renewed and inspired for your next big thing.
Give back! Commit to taking a % of your company’s sales and make a difference. It this becomes a habit like brushing your teeth pretty soon the big checks with lots of zeros won’t be scary to write. If you think you can’t donate a percentage of your sales simply raise your price!

"The whole world loves a maverick and the whole world wants the maverick to achieve something nobler than simple rebellion!" - Kevin Patterson

Have fun in applying these entrepreneurial maverick rules to accelerate the growth of you and your business!

Entrepreneurial regards,

Patrick

30 Overlooked Acts of Leadership Courage

2011-06-22T19:50:00.005+10:00

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail!" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

By Mary Jo Asmus
We often think of leaders as exhibiting big acts of courage – overcoming huge obstacles and saving lives, metaphorically and literally. Yet I’m amazed and humbled at the courageous things leaders do that we don’t think of as brave. The small courageous things that we overlook every day are the stuff that make up the character of great leaders.

You exhibit leadership courage daily in a lot of unnoticed ways like these when you:

Speak up when you know you’ll be judged harshly.
Shut up and let others have their say even if you think you are right.
Give critical feedback to someone in power when you know it might have unfavorable consequences.
Receive critical feedback from others with grace.
Develop others without fear even when you know they may become smarter than you are.
Be kind to those who disagree with you because they might teach you something.
Coach and mentor others even if it’s not part of your job description.
Say no when everyone else is saying yes.
Say yes when everyone else is saying no.
Accept responsibility for the shameful or embarrassing things you’ve done.
Take the high road when you know how difficult it can be.
Walk away when the fight isn’t worth it.
Stay and fight for the greater good when everyone else is running away from it.
Reflect deeply when you really just want to take action.
Love your followers even when you’re unhappy with them.
Forgive others’ failures when you know they’ve learned an important lesson.
Give others credit even when you’d like to take it for yourself.
Keep going when the going gets really, really tough.
Connect with your heart when your head wants to rule.
Connect with your head when your emotions are threatening to take over.
Ask “what’s right” when you prefer to be critical.
Be curious when you’d rather be judgmental.
Step out of your comfort zone when you hate stepping out or being uncomfortable.
Listen to others deeply, without giving advice.
Ask when you really want to tell.
Do things a different way even though it’s “always been done this way”.
See the potential in others when everyone else sees what’s wrong with them.
Admit your failings when you think you’re supposed to be perfect.
Control your impulses and desires when the temptation is greatest.
Reduce suffering because you can!

What unexpected acts of courage will you act upon today?

"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." - Warren G. Bennis

"Not the cry, but the flight of the wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow." - Chinese Proverb

Mavericks Explained

2011-06-14T22:09:00.020+10:00

"The whole world loves a maverick and the whole world wants the maverick to achieve something nobler than simple rebellion!" - Kevin Patterson

By Patrick Driessen

A lot of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders, such as Steve Jobs (Apple) and Richard Branson (Virgin) are often marked as 'mavericks'. However; apparently most people do not fully understand the term 'maverick', so in this blog post I'd like to explain it in more detail.

What is a maverick?
The word maverick is defined by Wikipedia as “an unbranded range animal”, “One who does not abide by rules” or “one who creates or uses unconventional and/or controversial ideas or practices”.
The word derives from Texan rancher and politician Sam Maverick, who allowed his unbranded cattle to roam semi-wild instead of branding them and penning them in fenced-in ranges. That sort of independent spirit describes the companies, entrepreneurs and business leaders being qualified as maverick.

What are maverick leaders and entrepreneurs?
Mavericks are talented, truthful to the point of bluntness, visionary with an uncanny ability to exactly see the hole in the argument that is being presented to them, and how to fix it. Mavericks break rules, not out of spite but because the rules don't work. They are highly goal orientated, charismatic, and will question anything and everything!

Mavericks do not compromise their standards to fit in, and therefore cannot be managed conventionally. Despite the fact that they often do not fully utilize their talents effectively, mavericks tend to be the top performers in companies and within business.

Mavericks are those individuals who eagerly make business decisions that fly in the face of business-as-usual. They deliberately turn traditions up-side-down or shut them out altogether, looking instead for new "disruptive" ideas and creative people, and in doing so find themselves on a joyous ride to success.

The maverick comes from all types of professions from professional partnerships like accountancy or law, corporate life or individuals running their own business.

A maverick personality is one where they are wilfully independent all the time and in all circumstances. They are keen to make their mark and do things their way and often blaze innovation and lateral thinking to the projects and problems that they are working on. They often exasperate the people around them and peers can feel that they can’t keep up or hurt if an objective comment from a maverick is delivered in their usual blunt and brutally honest way.

They may challenge the status-quo and insist that the company works from a strong sense of integrity. They take risks that conformist employees shirk at, and push harder and seek challenges that others feel are ‘insane’ or 'impossible to achieve'.

These mavericks deal with the same four timeless challenges that face organizations of every size and leaders in every field: setting strategy, unleashing new ideas, connecting with customers, and helping their best people achieve great results. It is HOW mavericks do it that makes the real difference!

Maverick's Unique Value
When it comes to thriving in a hyper-competitive marketplace, "playing it safe" is no longer playing it smart. In an economy defined by overcapacity, oversupply, and utter sensory overload -an economy in which everyone already has more than enough of whatever it is you’re selling-, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for a truly distinctive set of ideas about where your company and industry can and should be going. You can't do big things as a competitor if you're content with doing things a little better than the competition.

The best way to out-perform the competition is to out-think the competition. Maverick companies aren't always the largest in their field; maverick entrepreneurs don’t always make the cover of the business magazines (they tend to be witty and often media shy). But mavericks do the work that matters most: the work of originality, creativity, and experimentation. They demonstrate that you can build companies around high ideals and fierce competitive ambitions, that the most powerful way to create economic value is to embrace a set of values that go beyond just amassing power, and that business, at its best, is too exciting, too important, and too much fun to be left to the dead hand of business as usual!

Mavericks are always focused on rethinking competition, reinventing innovation, reconnecting with customers, and redesigning the workplace, thus accelerating the growth of businesses and the human capital within and around the organizations they work with.

How Mavericks Work
Mavericks are easily bored and need to be given constant challenges to ensure that they are as productive and engaged as they could be! They tend to come up with innovative solutions and their way of working didn't fit the established corporate norms. The maverick is unafraid to question authority, buck trends or do what is 'expected' and understands that they are a square peg in a round hole.

The maverick selects and hires exceptional people directly to work with them. They are keen to keep the fact that they are working with these exceptional individuals confidential from their employers.

Mavericks are truly talented individuals and are able to drag the world forward with their insights and abilities!

How To Work With Mavericks
Hans Finzel in his book “The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make” provides the following ideas to assist organizations in working with Mavericks:
* Legitimate mavericks who can bring you into the future:

care not just for their own ideas but for the goals of the organization;
are making a difference in their position;
are willing to earn the right to be heard;
are influencing others and producing good results.

* How to encourage the true mavericks who can help you:

Give them a long tether – they need space to soar.
Put them in charge of something they can really own.
Listen to their ideas and give them time to grow.
Let them work on their own if they wish.
Leave them alone and give them time to blossom.

* How to stifle the mavericks in your midst:

Create as many layers of management as possible for decision making.
Keep looking over their shoulders.
Make your policy manual as thick as possible.
Send everything to committees for deliberation
Make them wait.

Mavericks are essential in every organisation. Giving them the encouragement and space to contribute makes all the difference. Mavericks matter… because they bring us the future.

“Organizations change of necessity and for a variety of reasons. But the single biggest impetus for change in an organization tends to be a new leader in a key job… someone with a fresh perspective who sees that the status quo is unacceptable.” - John Kotter (“What Leaders Really Do”)

Inspiring Mavericks
To me inspirational maverick leaders and entrepreneurs are:

Guy Laliberté (Cirque du Soleil)
Steve Jobs (Apple)
Jack Welch (General Electric)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
Michael Dell (Dell)
Bill Gates (Microsoft)
Richard Branson (Virgin)

50 Compelling Brain Facts

2011-05-17T21:06:00.012+10:00

"The brain gives the heart its sight. The heart gives the brain its vision." - Kall

By Patrick Driessen
Achieving success in something often depends - to a large degree - on how smart and fast you use your brain power! Thus understanding, training, expanding and nurturing your brain capacity might help you to succeed more often.

Over the last week I did a little ‘brain test’: I asked 10 adult friends and 10 children (10-16 yrs) to tell me everything they knew about their brain. Funny enough most of them really struggled trying to answer my ‘simple’ question. Most of the answers I got were quite general and could be qualified as ‘no-brainers’... My test audience admitted that they were lacking in-depth knowledge and facts about our brain.

To help all of us to increase our knowledge and understanding of our brain, please find below 50 compelling and proven facts about our mysterious brain:

You btteer bleivee it your biarn is clever, jsut try and see if you can raed tihs, most likely you can. Tihs is bcuseae the mind deos not raed all lteters, only the word as a wlhoe aoccdring to rscheearch at Cmabridge Uinvresity. – Great isn’t it? According to the research, as long as the first and the last letter of a word are in the right place, it doesn’t matter if the rest of them are jumbled up: most people will still be able to read and understand the text.
One human brain generates more electrical impulses in a single day than all the world's telephones put together. Every thought and pattern of light, sound, movement, smell and sensation is converted into a sequence of electric pulses, which is received and translated by your brain.
Your brain needs a continuous supply of oxygen. A 10 minute loss of oxygen will usually cause significant neural damage. Cold can lengthen this time, which is why cold-water drowning victims have been revived after as much as 40 minutes — without brain damage.
Your brain uses a fifth of all the blood in your body. It needs it to keep up with the heavy metabolic demands of its neurons. It needs not only the glucose that is delivered by the blood, but of course, the oxygen too.
Your brain uses 20% of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream. The brain only makes up about 2% of our body mass, yet consumes more oxygen than any other organ in the body, making it extremely susceptible to damage related to oxygen deprivation. So breathe deep to keep your brain happy and swimming in oxygenated cells.
Your brain feels no pain. There are no nerves that register pain within the brain itself. Because of this, neurosurgeons can probe the brain while a patient is conscious. By doing this, they can use feedback from the patient to identify important regions such as those used for speech or visualisation. Although the brain itself does not have pain receptors and cannot feel pain, that doesn’t mean your head can’t hurt. The brain is surrounded by loads of tissues, nerves and blood vessels that are plenty receptive to pain and can give you a pounding headache.
The cerebellum is sometimes called the “little brain” and weighs about 150 grams (a little over five ounces). Found at the lower rear of your brain. Your cerebellum enables you to maintain posture, to walk and to perform coordinated movements. It may also play a role in your sense of smell.
Not gray, but pink! Your brain isn’t the firm, gray mass you’ve seen on TV. Living brain tissue is a squishy, pink and jelly-like organ thanks to the loads of blood and high water content of the tissue. So the next time you’re feeling dehydrated get a drink to keep your brain hydrated.
An elephant's brain is huge; about six times as large as a human brain. However, in relation to body size, humans have the largest brain of all the animals, averaging about 2% of body weight. A cat's brain weighs about one ounce, a little over 1% of body weight. I wonder if an ant has a brain. They’re quite clever, I think.
The brain is much more active at night than during the day. Logically, you would think that all the moving around, complicated calculations and tasks and general interaction we do on a daily basis during our working hours would take a lot more brain power than, say, lying in bed. Turns out, the opposite is true. When you turn off your brain turns on. Scientists don’t yet know why this is but you can thank the hard work of your brain while you sleep for all those pleasant dreams.
The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Or any other encyclopaedia for that matter. Scientists have yet to settle on a definitive amount, but the storage capacity of the brain in electronic terms is thought to be between 3 or even 1,000 terabytes. The National Archives of Britain, containing over 900 years of history, only takes up 70 terabytes, making your brain’s memory power pretty darn impressive.
New connections. Every time you recall a memory or have a new thought, you are creating a new connection in your brain.
On average you have about 100 billion neurons. Pity they’re not always in action. However, you'll be happy about that after reading the next item.
You loose approximately 85,000 neurons every day of your life. Fortunately, this goes unnoticed due to the superfluous supply of neurons with which we are endowed; and the fact that even after three years this loss adds up to less than 1% of the total.
Recent research proves that your brain continues to produce new neurons throughout your life. Scientists refer to this as brain plasticity or neuro-plasticity. It has also been proven that neuro-plasticity increases in response to stimulation.
Dream! Scientists say the higher your I.Q. the more you dream. While this may be true, don’t take it as a sign you’re mentally lacking if you can’t recall your dreams. Most of us don’t remember many of our dreams and the average length of most dreams is only 2-3 seconds–barely long enough to register. Most people have an average of 4-7 dreams each night. Five minutes after a dream, half of the dream is forgotten. Ten minutes after a dream, over 90% is forgotten. Write down your dreams immediately if you want to remember them.
Create associations. Memory is formed by associations, so if you want help remembering things, create associations for yourself.
When you are stressed, feeling hostile or angry, your brain releases a chemical known as Cortisol, which inhibits learning. So to learn effectively, you will need to be stress free within a stress free environment.
Laughing. Laughing at a joke is no simple task as it requires activity in five different areas of the brain.
Food and intelligence. A study of one million students in New York showed that students who ate lunches that did not include artificial flavors, preservatives, and dyes did 14% better on IQ tests than students who ate lunches with these additives.
Music. It is proven that music can synchronise your brain waves, improve your mood and help you to learn more efficiently. Music lessons have shown to considerably boost brain organization and ability in both children and adults.
Boredom. Boredom is brought on by a lack of change of stimulation, is largely a function of perception, and is connected to the innate curiosity found in humans.
Brain size at birth. At birth, your brain was almost the same size as an adult brain and contained most of the brain cells for your whole life. A newborn baby’s brain grows about three times its size in the first year. (FYI: Your brain stopped growing at age 18).
Yawning keeps your brain cool. It is thought that a yawn works to send more oxygen to the brain, therefore working to cool it down and wake it up.
Stimulation. A stimulating environment for a child can make the difference between a 25% greater ability to learn or 25% less in an environment with little stimulation. So this investment has a high return on the learning investment!
Reading aloud stimulates child brain development. Reading aloud to children helps stimulate brain development, yet only 50% of infants and toddlers are routinely read to by their parents.... Missed opportunity!
Every brain has a soundtrack. Its tempo and tone will vary, depending on mood, frame of mind, and other features of the brain itself. When that soundtrack is recorded and played back - to an emergency responder, or a firefighter - it may sharpen their reflexes during a crisis, and calm their nerves afterward.
Working memory stores 7 digits. It's no accident that telephone numbers in many countries are seven digits long. Our working memory, a very short-term form of memory which stores ideas just long enough for us to understand them, can hold on average a maximum of seven digits. This allows you to look up a phone number and remember it just long enough to dial.
Physical illness. The connection between body and mind is a strong one. One estimate is that between 50-70% of visits to the doctor for physical ailments are attributed to psychological factors.
Blinking. Each time we blink, our brain kicks in and keeps things illuminated so the whole world doesn’t go dark each time we blink (about 20,000 times a day).
Reading faces. Without any words, you may be able to determine if someone is in a good mood, is feeling sad, or is angry just by reading the face. A small area in the brain called the Amygdala is responsible for your ability to read someone else’s face for clues to how they are feeling.
Decision-making. Women tend to take longer to make a decision, but are more likely to stick with the decision, compared to men, who are more likely to change their mind after making a decision.
Tickles. You can’t tickle yourself because your brain distinguished between unexpected external touch and your own touch.
Baby talk increases their vocabulary. A study showed that when mothers frequently spoke to their infants, their children learned about 300 more words by age two than did children whose mothers rarely spoke to them.
3 = the weight of your brain in pounds (1.360777 kilograms). Albert Einstein's brain may have been smaller than yours, because he was smaller than average. There is a general correlation between body size and the size of our brains. (FYI: Your skin weighs twice as much as your brain).
273 Kilometer per hour: Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 273 km/170 miles per hour. So if you have ever wondered how you can react so fast to things around you or why that stubbed toe hurts right away; it’s due to the super-speedy movement of nerve impulses from your brain to the rest of your body and vice versa, bringing reactions at the speed of a high powered luxury sports car.
4 to 6 = the number of minutes your brain can survive without oxygen before it starts to die. No oxygen for 5 to 10 minutes will result in permanent brain damage. Don’t test it!
8 to 10 = the number of seconds you have before losing consciousness due to blood loss.
10 to 23 = the number of watts of power your grain generates when you’re awake (that’s enough to turn on a light bulb!). Don’t save your brainpower to much, it will fuse!
Information travels at different speeds within different types of neurons. Not all neurons are the same. There are a few different types within the body and transmission along these different kinds can be as slow as 0.5 meters/sec or as fast as 120 meters/sec.
75%-80% of the brain is water.
160.000 KM / 100,000 miles: total length of blood vessels in one human brain. If they were stretched out, they would circle the earth more than four times.
1.000 to 10.000 = the number of synapses for each neuron in your brain.
Each person has about the same number of brain cells at birth as in adulthood, but those cells grow, reaching maximum size at about age six.
Using brain imaging data, it is possible to tell whether a person is thinking about a face or a place.
Bilingual brains. Children who learn two languages before the age of five alters the brain structure and adults have a much denser gray matter.
Your brain is composed mostly of fat and needs the right kind of that fat as fuel so that it can function efficiently. This is why oily fish or fish oil containing Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) is so important in the diet; your brain needs it to run smoothly, but cannot produce it. Especially the Omega-3 fatty acid is an important ingredient for optimal brain function: It is a rich source of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), a fatty acid that is found in high concentration in the gray matter of the brain. DHA is instrumental in the function of brain cell membranes, which are important for the transmission of brain signals. By making cell membranes more fluid, Omega-3 fatty acids, especially DHA, improve communication between the brain cells. Hence the healthy advise to take food & supplements containing Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids.
Brain Bank. Harvard University maintains a Brain Bank where over 7,000 human brains are stored for research purposes.
Thoughts. The average number of thoughts that humans are believed to experience each day is 70,000.
Keep exercising your brain, because mental activity stimulates the creation of new neurons throughout your whole life. For useful insights and tips, please read Boost Your Brain Power!.

When you have finished reading about these fun facts, please take this short brainpower quiz and see how much you learned about the human brain.

"Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Warm regards & success,

Patrick

9 Things Successful People Do Differently

2011-05-09T16:19:00.009+10:00

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail.
The intuitive answer -that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others- is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call?
Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers. To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.").
Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%!!!

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress—if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently—weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence.
Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.

Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong—abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking…well, there's no way to put this nicely: you are wrong!
As I mentioned earlier; effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body—when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.

To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother—don't.
Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur ("If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

8. Don't tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don't put yourself in harm's way—many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind.
The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.

If you want change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.

It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on.
Remember; you don't need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It's never what you are, but what you DO!
Provided by Harvard Business Review—Copyright © 2010 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School.

How to Stay Unhappy!

2011-05-06T22:53:00.015+10:00

"Whoever is happy will make others happy too. He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery." - Anne Frank

By Patrick Driessen
It's one of the fundamental goals of most human beings: becoming and staying happy. Happiness is a feeling, a state of mind; it's something you create in your own brain.

Over the years I've watched various friends search tirelessly for happiness by changing jobs, moving to new cities, pursuing intimate relationships, buying fancy cars and/or expensive boats, and tweaking all sorts of other external factors in their lives. And guess what? They are still unhappy! Because they spend all of their time, energy and money adding positive externals to their lives when their internals are still in the negatives...

So with that in mind, here are 80+ ways to stay unhappy forever! Of course, I would highly recommend you read each bullet point and then move swiftly in the opposite direction...

Dwell on things that happened in the past.

Obsess yourself with all the things that might happen in the future.

Complain about problems instead of taking the necessary steps to resolve them.

Fear change and resist it.

Work hard, do your best and then condemn yourself for not achieving perfection.

Belittle yourself.

Hang out with other people who belittle you.

Try to control everything and then worry about the things you can't control.

Lie to yourself and those around you.

Keep doing the same thing over and over again.

Be lazy and follow the path of least resistance.

Hold onto anger. Never forgive anyone.

Always be right. Never let anyone else be more right than you.

Compare yourself unfavorably to those who you feel are more successful.

Let small issues snowball into big problems.

Never learn anything new.

Never take responsibility for your own actions.

Blame everyone around you.

Don't ask for directions and don't ask questions.

Don't let anyone help you.

Quit when the going gets tough.

Be suspicious. Trust no one.

Don't smile whenever you can.

Get four hours of sleep every night and convince yourself that it's enough.

Never throw anything way. Even if you don't use it, hold onto it.

Say "yes" to everyone. Fill all your time with commitments.

Try to be everyone's friend.

Multitask, multitask, multitask! Do everything at once.

Never spend any time alone.

Don't help others unless you have to. Do only the things that benefit you directly.

Never spend your precious time on teaching other people something new.

Hang out with people who complain about everything.

Focus on what you don't want to happen.

Do not build valuable relationships with friends and family.

Fear the things you don't fully understand.

Always seek external validation before you consider yourself good enough.

Take everything and everyone in life seriously.

Spend your life working in a career field you aren't passionate about.

Focus on the problems.

Think about all the things you don't have.

Never show your appreciation for somebody or something.

Read or watch lots of depressing news from broadcast media.

Set lofty goals for yourself and never do anything to achieve them.

Never exercise.

Only eat junk food and fried food.

Never check-up on your health.

Setup your lifestyle so it revolves around money.

Spend more than you earn and rack up lots of financial debt.

Don't say what you mean. Don't mean what you say.

Frown.

Never tell anyone how you feel or what you're thinking.

Make sure everything you do impresses someone else.

Always put your own needs on the back burner.

Get involved in other people problems and make them your own.

Make others feel bad about themselves.

Never waste your energy on coaching or mentoring somebody else.

Keep all the financial assets you have to yourself and never give anything away.

Watch TV for several hours every day.

Gamble often.

Stay in the same place. Don't travel.

Don't play, just work.

Let your hobbies go.

Let your close relationships go.

Never finish what you start.

Take everything personally.

Do lots of drugs. Drink lots of alcohol.

Never say, "I'm sorry." Never say, "I love you."

Don't work hard at anything.

Put money high on your list.

Always wait until the last minute.

Believe that, no matter what, you are entitled to things.

Let others make decisions for you.

Never read an inspiring book about self-development.

Remember the insults. Forget the compliments.

Let it all bottle up inside.

Always compare yourself to others.

Rely on others for everything.

Fail to plan.

Don't dream.

Don't think about the future at all.

Always disregard other people's opinions and suggestions.

Make promises you can't keep.

Don't decide on anything, ever.

Just keep going and going and going. And never ever stop!

And now that you know what NOT to do, let me tell you a little secret about happiness. Nobody is happy all of the time! It's perfectly normal to experience considerable fluctuations in your level of happiness from day to day, month to month, and even year to year.

In fact, according to a German/American scientific study, overall levels of happiness decline from one's teens until one's 40s and then pick up again until they peak in one's early 70s. So the chances are that your happiest days are yet to come. Hopefully that gives you something to smile about.

Do you need more eye-openers about happiness? On this blog I've published articles to increase the awareness and understanding about happiness , give you useful tips on how to increase your own happiness and even on why and how to smile. Most of these happiness tips are based on my own experience and insights. I can assure you they have a positive impact on your state of mind, thus enabling you to increase your level of happiness.

"The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does." - James M. Barrie

Success and enjoy creating a higher level of happiness for oneself!

Warm regards from a sunny Amsterdam,

Patrick

Visionary Leadership: Predicting the Future

2011-04-23T01:58:00.009+10:00

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind." - William James

How does a leader cultivate an attitude that will cascade throughout the entire organization to get results? It's a tradition to begin each new calendar or fiscal year by taking stock of our business and thinking about how we want it to grow. Altering the life of the business starts here, and if employees are truly engaged, it sets the tone for the year.

In every industry there are businesses that really stood out in recent years. The ones that weathered the fluctuating economic landscape and pressed on to produce growth were driven by flexible people who were able to adapt as events unfolded. These leaders held themselves personally accountable for managing the changes that impacted their organization. This is the attitude that leads to innovation and profits!

How a business handles change is more important than ever, and will be in the future. Change is pervasive, thanks to the stream of technological advances that will continue to benefit every aspect of our lives. And change comes whether we're ready or not.

"The best way to predict your future is to create it." -Abraham Lincoln

Leaders need to be personally accountable for truly engaging and inspiring employees in moving the company forward. Resist focusing on the economy, because it casts your company as a victim of circumstances and distracts you from the elements that you do have the power to impact. To move your business in the right direction, build an organization that can roll with changes as they come your way.

Successful 21st century businesses, like their employees, thrive by cultivating continuous learning and flexibility so they can do more than just respond to change-they can lead it. Continuous learning is not a once a year event, it's an every day, every week, keep-the-information-flowing-attitude. Leaders who recognize this provide books, magazines, trainings, mentoring and other growth opportunities for their people. They make sure their team is empowered to be on the leading edge of their industry. When employees who want career advancement get a chance to grow, they're motivated to make the most of it. And the company is rewarded with performance results that lead to increased innovation and profit.

"Here's the way to engage your employees in growing the business now: involve them in continuous learning. Most jobs today require it for superior performance. It doesn't make sense to have positions in your company that require continuous learning and not have a budget for it. Management needs to set the attitude from the top." -Bill J. Bonnstetter

The substantial, both-feet-on-on-the-ground components that build success in any business are the competencies of the company's leaders and staff. Skills like flexibility, personal accountability and continuous learning can be cultivated as part of the strategic plan.

"At the center of the universe is a loving heart that continues to beat and that wants the best for every person. Anything we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision must continue against all odds! Life is for service." - Fred Rogers

Success with leading your team members beyond the visible horizon!

Warm regards,

Patrick

3D Brain Circuits

2011-03-11T18:43:00.012+11:00

As you might know or have seen by the number of stories about it on this blog; I'm facinated by the human brain!

Especially because there is still so much to explore, discover, research and develop about the brain. The more we learn about our brain (e.g. how it functions, how to increase the volume of it, how to create an artificial brain, how to improve brain functions, how to boost it, how to integrate brain power with new technology, how brain music works, how to create robots with human brains, how to get the best out of it), the bigger the impact it will have on the advanced development of medical science and technology, which in the end will impact all of us as soon the new technology is being applied in consumer products & services.

So what is the brain? The brain is a black box. A complex circuitry of neurons fires information through channels, much like the inner workings of a computer chip. But while computer processors are regimented with the deft economy of an assembly line, neural circuits are impenetrable masses. Think tumbleweed.

The latest compelling brain development I heard and read about is a new '3D-type' of technology developed by the Harvard Medical School's Department of Neurobiology. They have developed a cool new technique for unraveling our complex brain masses. Through a combination of microscopy platforms, researchers can crawl through the individual connections composing a neural network, much as how Google crawls Web links.

"The questions that such a technique enables us to address are too numerous even to list," said Clay Reid, HMS professor of neurobiology and senior author on a paper reporting the findings.

The cerebral cortex is arguably the most important part of the mammalian brain. It processes sensory input, reasoning and, some say, even free will. For the past century, researchers have understood the broad outline of cerebral cortex anatomy. In the past decade, imaging technologies have allowed us to see neurons at work within a cortical circuit, to watch the brain process information.

But while these platforms can show us what a circuit does, they don't show us how it operates.
For many years, Reid's lab has been studying the cerebral cortex, adapting ways to hone the detail with which we can view the brain at work. Recently they and others have succeeded in isolating the activities of individual neurons, watching them fire in response to external stimuli.
The ultimate prize, however, would be to get inside a single cortical circuit and probe the architecture of its wiring.

Just one of these circuits, however, contains between 10,000 and 100,000 neurons, each of which makes about 10,000 interconnections, totaling upwards of 1 billion connections -- all within a single circuit. "This is a radically hard problem to address," Reid said.

Reid's team, which included Davi Bock, then a graduate student, and postdoctoral researcher Wei-Chung Allen Lee, embarked on a two-part study of the pinpoint-sized region of a mouse brain that is involved in processing vision. They first injected the brain with dyes that flashed whenever specific neurons fired and recorded the firings using a laser-scanning microscope. They then conducted a large anatomy experiment, using electron microscopy to see the same neurons and hundreds of others with nanometer resolution.

Using a new imaging system they developed, the team recorded more than 3 million high-resolution images. They sent them to the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center at Carnegie Mellon University, where researchers stitched them into 3-D images. Using the resulting images, Bock, Lee and laboratory technician Hyon Suk Kim selected 10 individual neurons and painstakingly traced many of their connections, crawling through the brain's dense thicket to create a partial wiring diagram.

This model also yielded some interesting insights into how the brain functions. Reid's group found that neurons tasked with suppressing brain activity seem to be randomly wired, putting the lid on local groups of neurons all at once rather than picking and choosing. Such findings are important because many neurological conditions, such as epilepsy, are the result of neural inhibition gone awry.

"This is just the iceberg's tip," said Reid. "Within ten years I'm convinced we'll be imaging the activity of thousands of neurons in a living brain. In a visual circuit, we'll interpret the data to reconstruct what an animal actually sees. By that time, with the anatomical imaging, we'll also know how it's all wired together."

"How the brain works is one of the greatest mysteries in nature," Prof. Reid added, "and this research presents a new and powerful way for us to explore that mystery!"

For a verbal explanation of the research by Prof. Clay Reid on video, click HERE.
For a YouTube video about untangling the brain, click HERE.

Amazing to know that one of our vital organs is still a big mystery to science!

Warm regards,

Patrick

How I Turned a Jazzy Dream Into a New Hallmark Event

2010-12-18T20:23:00.016+11:00

"The truest expression of a people is in its dance and music." - Agnes de Mille

By Patrick Driessen
Early October I had an exciting dream about organising an indoor jazz festival, which would bring thousands of people closer to some of the best jazz and blues artists from around the world!

My dream was based on some of my own past experiences; as a child my parents took me to many jazz festivals in Holland and I witnessed some of the biggest musicians and vocalists in the world perform at the famous North Sea Jazz Festival; the world's largest indoor jazz festival.

Keeping the dream alive, I gave it some more thoughts during the day. Soon I realised that in Australia (where I live since the end of 2005) a large scale international jazz festival was missing, causing many people to miss out on unique and long-lasting entertainment experiences and musical inspiration.

After interviewing various people about their personal experiences in attending the North Sea Jazz Festival (Netherlands), Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland) or Montreal Jazz Festival (Canada) I gained enough insights: these festivals had a deep, inspiring, positive and long-lasting impact on their audiences!

For a lot of young musicians the artists they saw performs at these festivals gave them the inspiration to invest even more time and energy to become a better musician whether as amateur of professional. These live jazz festivals also had a very positive social impact and further research showed the commercial viability of a large scale international jazz and blues festival. So why had nobody ever dared to do it in Australia?

In pitching my festival vision to various jazz experts and music festival organisers I received a common feedback: this concept is a gap in the Australian market and will potentially create massive meaning to thousands of people; festival patrons, industry experts as well as young musicians and professional artists.

So actually this was about inspiring, educating, entertaining and helping other people! Perfectly in line with my personal beliefs, passion and drive! Hence why I also organise the successful bi-monthly Sydney Startup Networking Party series, the legendary Holland House events during the FIFA World Cup and various other regular parties and events; all focused on helping people succeed by bringing them together, inspiring them and entertaining them!

I knew enough and was starting up a new mission! Inspired by the idea of creating a new large scale international jazz festival, I turned myself into a festival director! After creating and optimising the vision and goals for my new international jazz and blues festival, I teamed up with various passionate musicians and festival experts to create a strong core team, allowing me to quickly turn my dream into reality.

From day one my biggest supporter has been my American - Dutch speaking - friend Steve Clisby who – as musician, vocalist and composer – has performed at many concert venues and festivals around the world with the likes of Tina Turner, Chaka Khan, Level 42, Carlos Santana, Hot Chocolade and the Crusaders. He immediately understood and supported the vision and bigger picture for the creation of my festival as new Australian hallmark event.

Still the question why nobody else had done or tried to do this before kept floating through my mind.... I started asking other people this same question and all I could find out was that most likely nobody had ever tried to do it because of the risks involved in staging such a large international live music festival, the lack of vision, lack of funds to make the required investments, etc.

This motivated me even more and I started to kick some real ass! Now a few weeks further down the line and after having spent most of my time on it, I managed to turn my dream into reality!
So far only a few people in the world know about it, because they have become part of it.... Besides this small group of people you're the first ones to know! In January we'll tell the rest of the world about our international jazz festival in Sydney. So here we go!

The Opportunity
Sydney has not had an international jazz festival in name since the 1990s. The Sydney Global Jazz & Blues Festival will be the first large scale - truly international - jazz and blues festival being held in Sydney since that period.

The Sydney Global Jazz & Blues Festival will help challenge for the title of Australia's jazz capital and will put Australia and Sydney on the global map with other prestigious international jazz festivals such as the North Sea Jazz Festival (Netherlands), and Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland).

Creating a New Original
Our festival will be setting new trends and quality standards in each and every aspect. It will be the most prestigious, most exclusive and most sophisticated jazz and blues festival in the world! Instead of trying to copy the leaders in the global market place, we will create a new industry leading original, which can be qualified as new international hallmark event and ranked as ’super premium’; serving the top-end of the market.

The Key Drivers
The key principals and drivers for the organisation to stage these events are to:

Inspire
Educate
Unite
Innovate
Entertain.

Our Unique Value Proposition
The annual Sydney Global Jazz & Blues Festival will provide a broad and compelling range of the contemporary jazz music scene incorporating funk, soul, big band swing, blues, jazz-rock, jazz-fusion, gospel, R&B and New Orleans jazz sounds, brought to you by a selection of some of the best musicians and vocalists from around the globe. It will potentially be the largest indoor jazz & blues festival in the Australasian region ever.

The specially created indoor Jazz Village festival venue will have 8 performance stages for over 125 live acts and can cater for over 50,000 guests over the three festival days.

The festival starts with the Sydney Jazz Gala on Wednesday evening followed by three vibrant festival days (Friday – Sunday) and the Kids Jazz Festival taking place on Saturday and Sunday morning.

The Artistic Program
Musicians, vocalists and entertainment acts will come from Poland, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Israel, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Canada, United States, Chile, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt, South Korea, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. A true global program!

We will mix five different programs with artists and acts:

World-class Hero’s & Legends
Up & Coming Overseas Stars
Best Australian Professional Artists
Young International & Australian Talents
Australian & International Entertainment Acts.

Festival Venue – Jazz Village
All festival performances will be staged at existing venues and specially build temporary marquis tents within the Entertainment Quarter and Hordern Pavillion premises in Sydney’s Moore Park; allowing us to create Jazz Village!

Jazz Village will be the largest and most intimate indoor festival venue possible; incorporating existing heritage listed buildings, existing modern buildings and specially build marquis tents. Between all these venues, large tents will be build to create a huge indoor Jazz Village, which can cater for thousands of festival patrons per day.

International Young Talent Program
One of the key drivers of our global jazz & blues festival is to create an artistic program in which we give selected young talents the opportunity to perform for a large audience, perform together with professional artists from around the world and attend workshops and master classes hosted by some of these great international artists.

Part of our Young Talent Program is the creation of a Young Talent Big Band, for which the selection already has started. Our artistic team and festival ambassadors are sourcing the best overseas and Australian based talents, so they can mix various generations of talented musicians, resulting in some of the most compelling performances on the stages of our festival.

"Jazz does not belong to one race or culture, but is a gift that America has given the world." - Ahmad Alaadeen

With musical and entrepreneurial regards,

Patrick

3 Questions for Increased Happiness

2010-10-06T05:54:00.004+11:00

"Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within your control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental role and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible." - Epictetus

By Brian Tracy
You already have everything you need to create a wonderful life for yourself. You know everything you need to know to be your own best friend, a gentle guide, a teacher and a helper to yourself so you can be truly happy and fulfilled.

You can learn how to become your own psychotherapist for life, and how to resolve the difficulties that stand between you and personal joy.

Be Honest With Yourself
The starting point of becoming your own best friend is for you to be perfectly honest with yourself and your relationships. Refuse to practice self-delusion or hope for the best. For example, when something is making you unhappy, for any reason, the situation will tend to get worse rather than better.
So avoid the temptation to engage in denial, to pretend that nothing is wrong, to wish and hope and pray that, whatever it is, it will go away and you won't have to do anything. The fact is that it probably will get worse before it gets better and that ultimately you will need to face the situation and do something about it.

Deal With Your Problem at a Higher Level
There's an old saying that you can't solve a problem on the level that you meet it. This means that wrestling with a persistent problem is often fruitless and frustrating. For example, if two people who are in a relationship together are constantly fighting and negotiating and looking for some way to resolve their difficulties, they may be attempting to solve the problem on the wrong level. Dealing with the problem on a higher level, those people would ask the question, "In terms of being happy, is this the right relationship for us in the first place?"

Find the Right Job For You
Many people work very hard and experience considerable frustration trying to do a particular job. However, in terms of their own happiness, the right answer might be to do something else, or to do what they're doing in a different place, or to do it with different people-or all three.

Here are a few questions for you to answer in this arena of happiness. Write them down at the top of a sheet of paper, and then write as many answers to each one as you possibly can.

What Would It Take?
The first question is: "What would it take for me to be perfectly happy?" Write down every single thing that you can imagine would be in your life if you were perfectly happy at this very moment. Write down things such as health, happiness, prosperity, loving relationships, inner peace, travel, car, clothes, homes, money, and so on. Let your mind run freely. Imagine that you have no limitations at all.

What is Holding You Back?
The second question is a little tougher. Write down at the top of a page this question: "In what situations in my life, and with whom, am I not perfectly happy?" Force yourself to think about every part of your day, from morning to night, and write down every element that makes you unhappy or dissatisfied in any way. Remember, proper diagnosis is half the cure. Identifying the unsatisfactory situations is the first step to resolving them.

Determine Your Happiest Moment
The third question will give you some important guidelines. Write down at the top of a sheet of paper these words: "In looking over my life, where and when have I been the happiest? Where was I, with whom was I, and what was I doing?"

Decide What to Do
Once you have the answers to those questions, think about what you can do, starting immediately, to begin creating the kind of life that you dream of. It may take you a week, a month, or a year, but that doesn't matter. Every single thing you do that moves you closer to your ideal vision will be rewarding in itself. You'll become a more positive and optimistic person. You'll feel more confident and more in charge of your life, and you'll achieve true peace of mind.

Action Exercises
Here are three steps you can take immediately to put these ideas into action.

Examine your business and personal relationships carefully. Is there any situation you wouldn't get into again if you had it to do over?
Make a list of every single thing in your life that would make you happy and then think about what you could do to begin achieving them.
Allow yourself to dream and fantasize about your ideal life, what it would look like and feel like, and then do something every day to make it a reality.

For further reading about how to increase your happiness, please see:

High Testosterone Levels Causes Self-Destructive CEO Behaviour

2010-09-09T05:32:00.004+10:00

By Patrick Driessen

Being involved in a lot of M&A activities myself, I am often reading about negotiating, dealmaking, psychology and the science behind human emotions to help me improve my knowledge and skills. As you might know; continues learning is an important key for success and happiness!

This week I was laughing out loud (LOL) when I read the new Management Science Study, which concluded that high testosterone levels in CEOs negotiating mergers and acquisitions are linked to a higher rate of dropped deals and an increase in hostile takeover attempts!

Again it gives evidence of a couple of weak spots in our male behaviour, which can be used to your benefit if you know how to drive and/or manipulate that same behaviour. Some of the conclusions in this new study are in line with what I wrote in a previous story titled "The Power of Female Beauty".

According to the study (titled “Deal or No Deal: Hormones and the Mergers and Acquisitions Game") published in the September issue of Management Science, one might expect M&A bids to follow analysis of business advantage. However, the authors of the study find that more human factors are also at work...

The researchers found a strong association between male CEOs being young (under 45 yrs) and their withdrawal rate of initiated M&As, characterizing these rejectionist younger executives as showing dominance-seeking behaviour. “High testosterone responders tend to reject low offers even though this is against their interest", one of the study authors stated.

Younger CEOs are 4% more likely to initiate an attempt to acquire another company than older men, the study finds. In a more marked finding, male CEOs’ relative youth increases their likelihood of withdrawing a merger/acquisition bid by as much as 20%.

The authors also found out that when companies being approached about a merger or acquisition have younger CEOs, there is a greater likelihood – by 2% - of a tender offer. Tender offers are used by bidding companies to bypass targeted companies’ leadership and directly contact stockholders to purchase controlling shares.

In the study, the main effect of high testosterone was upon CEOs on the bidding side of negotiations to acquire another company, not the CEOs of the target company. Nevertheless, target CEOs’ testosterone levels featured prominently when their refusal to continue negotiations led to a hostile takeover attempt.

Since the authors categorized CEO’s under age 45 as young for the purposes of this study, I am sure it does apply to many exec leaders with high levels of testosterone.

A tip for those who want to select the best female and male team members for their winning M&A team: a compelling behavioral study from 2008 revealed that men with high testosterone are attracted to women with feminine faces and women with high testosterone levels were more attracted to masculine men. Or..... to succeed in your M&A deals you just select a bunch of seniors with grey hair!

I hope you can use this wisdom to your benefit and will allow you to optimise your M&A dealings, resulting in more successful and fruitful deals!

Warm regards & success,

Patrick

How To Become An Entrepreneurial Millionaire

2010-08-17T06:07:00.004+10:00

By Jason Baptiste

"I move forward the only direction. Can't be scared to fail in search of perfection!" - Jay-Z, On To The Next One

Some key things to focus on to become an entrepreneurial millionaire and/or a millionair entrepreneur within a short time frame:

Market opportunity: A million dollars is not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly is a lot if the market opportunity is not large enough. Even if you put Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as founders in a new venture with a total market size of 10 million, there is no way they could become too wealthy without completely changing the business (ie-failing).

Inequality of information: Find a place where you know something that many undervalue. Having this inequality of information can give you, your first piece of leverage.

Leverage skills you know: You can go into new fields such as say Finance, but make sure you’re leveraging something you already know such as technology and/or product. Someone wanted to start a documentary with me. I said that would be fun, but it would be my first documentary regardless of what happened. There was a glass ceiling due to that. If I do something leveraging a skill I know, I’m already ahead of the game.

Look in obscure places: We’re often fascinated with the shiny things in the internet industry. Many overlook the obscure and unsexy. Don’t make that mistake. If your goal has primarily monetary motivations, look at the unsexy. One example would be email newsletters, which I’ve profiled before.

Surround yourself with smart people: Smart people whom are successful usually got there by doing the same and have an innate desire to help those do the same. It’s the ecosystem that’s currently happening with the PayPal mafia and can be traced all the way back to Fairchild semiconductor.

Charge for something: Building a consumer property dependent upon advertising has easily made many millionaires, but it isn’t the surest path. It takes a lot of time and scale, which due to cash flow issues will require large outside investment probably before you are a millionaire. Build something that you can charge for. That’s how business has worked for thousands of years prior to the 1990s. Make something, charge for it, and repeat it. David Heinemeier Hansson explains this really well at Startup School '08.

Information products are valuable: E-Books, screen casts, and anything that can teach others to be good at something is a very lucrative business. Look at guys like Peepcode… they’re killing it. There are also things like Parrot Secrets, which make 400k a year. Bonus points if the information helps a person make money (directly or indirectly) or improves their self image. FYI: this doesn’t mean sell snake oil eBooks. That may get you a somewhere in the 5 figures, but word will spread that your shit smells.

Your primary metric shouldn’t be dollars: If you’re going after a big enough market and charging a reasonable amount, you can hit a million dollars. Focus on growth, customer acquisition costs, lifetime value of the customer, and churn.

Get as many distribution channels as possible: There is some weird sense, that if you build something they will just come. That a few “like” + retweet buttons and emails to editor@techcrunch.com will make your traffic explode + grow consistently. It fucking won’t. Get as many distribution channels as possible. Each one by itself may not be large, but if you have many it starts to add up. It also diversifies your risk. If you’re a 100% SEO play, you’re playing a dangerous game. You’re fully dependent upon someone else’s rules. If Google bans you, you will be done. You could easily replace the SEO example with: App store, Facebook, etc.

Go with your gut and do not care about fameballing: Go with what your gut says, regardless of how it might look to the rest of the world. Too often we (I) get lost in caring about what people think. It usually leads to a wrong decision. Don’t worry about becoming internet famous or appearing on the major blogs. Fame is fleeting in the traditional sense. Become famous with your customers. They’re the ones that truly matter. What they think matters and they will ultimately put their money where their mouth is.

Be an unrelenting machine: Brick walls are there to show you how bad you want something. Commit to your goals and do not waver from them a one bit regardless of what else is there. I took this approach to losing weight and fitness. I have not missed a single 5k run in over a year. It did not matter if I had not slept for two days, travelling across the country, or whatever else. If your goal is to become a millionaire, you need to be an unrelenting machine that does not let emotions make you give up or stop. You either get it done with 100% commitment or you don’t. Be a machine!

If it’s a mass market “trend” that’s all over the news, it’s too late: This means the barriers to entry are usually too high at this point to have the greatest possible chance of success. Sure you could still make a lot of money in something like the app store or the Facebook platform, but the chances are significantly less than they were in the summer of 08 or spring of 2007. You can always revisit past trends though. Peter Cooper and I clarified some of the semantics about what is a trend over here.

If you do focus on a dollar amount, focus on the first $10,000: This usually means you’ve found some repeatable process / minimal traction. i.e.- if you’re selling a $100 product, you’ve already encountered 100 people who have paid you. From here you can scale up. It’s also a lot easier to take in when you’re looking at numbers. Making 1 million seems hard, but making $10,000 doesn’t seem so hard, right?

Be a master of information: Many think it might be wasteful that I spent so much time on newsyc or read so many tech information sites. It’s not; it’s what gives me an edge. I feel engulfed.

Get out and be social: Even if you’re an introvert, being around people will give you energy. I’m at my worst when I’m isolated from people and at my best when I’ve at least spent some time with close friends (usually who I don’t know from business.)

Make waves, don’t ride them: There was a famous talk Jawed Karim gave from YouTube. He described the factors that made YouTube take off in terms of secondary/enabling technologies. I think they included (1- broadband in the home 2- emergence of flash, so no codes required 3- proliferation of digital cameras 4- cheap hosting 5- one click upload 6- ability to share embed). Find those small pieces and put them together to make the wave. That’s what YouTube did. The other guys really just rode the wave they created (which is okay).

Say no way more than you say yes: I bet almost every web entrepreneur has encountered this: You demo your product / explain what you’re doing and someone suggests that you do “X feature/idea”. X is a really good idea and maybe even fits in with what you’re doing, but it would take you SO FAR off the path you’re on. If you implemented X it would take a ton of time and morph what you’re doing. It’s also really hard to say no when it comes from someone well respected like a VC or famous entrepreneur. I mean how the fuck could they be wrong? Hell, they might even write me a check if I do what they say!!! Don’t fall for that trap. Instead write the feedback down somewhere as one single data point to consider amongst others. If that same piece of feedback keeps coming up AND it fits within the guidelines of your vision, then you should consider it more seriously. Weight suggestions from paying customers a bit more, since their vote is weighted by dollars.

Be so good they can’t ignore you: I first heard this quote from Marc Andreessen, but he stole it from Steve Martin. Just be so good with what you do that you can’t be ignored. You can surely get away with a boring product with no soul, but being so good you can’t ignore is much more powerful.

Always keep your door/inbox open: You never know who is going to walk through your door + contact you. Serendipity is a beautiful thing. At one point Bill Gates was just a random college kid calling an Albuquerque computer company.

Give yourself every opportunity you can: I use this as a reason why starting a company in Silicon Valley when it comes to tech is a good idea. You can succeed anywhere in the world, but you certainly have a better chance in the valley. You should give yourself every opportunity possible, especially as an entrepreneur where every advantage counts.

Give yourself credit: This is the thing I do the least of and I’m trying to work on it. What may seem simple + not that revolutionary to anyone ahead of the curve can usually be pure wizardry to the general public, whom is often your customer. Give yourself more credit.

Stick with it: Don’t give up too fast. Being broke and not making any money sucks + can often make you think nothing will ever work. Don’t quit when you’re down. If this was easy then everyone would be a millionaire and being a millionaire wouldn’t be anything special. Certainly learn from your mistakes + pivot, but don’t quit just because it didn’t work right away.

Make the illiquid, liquid: I realized this after talking to a friend who helps trade illiquid real estate securities. A bank may have hundreds of millions of assets, but they’re actually worth substantially less if they cannot be moved. If you can help people make something that is illiquid, liquid they will pay you a great deal of money. Giving you a 20-30% cut is worth it, when the opposite is making no money at all.

Productize a service: If you can make what might normally be considered a service into a scalable, repeatable, and efficient process that makes it seem like a product you can make a good amount of money. In some ways, I feel this is what Michael Dell did with DELL in the early days. Putting together a computer is essentially a service, but he put together a streamlined method of doing things that it really turned it into a product. On a much smaller scale, PSD2XHTML services did this. It’s a service, but the end result + what you pay for really feels like a product.

Look for something that is required or subsidized by law: Motorists are required to have insurance, public companies have to go through Sarbanes Oxley Act legislation, doctors get tens of thousands of dollars for EHR systems, etc. Look for something that is required by law and capitalize on that. Usually things that are required and/or subsidized by law are mind numbing with complexities. Find a way to simplify that process.

Make sure you’re robbing a bank: When Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he said: "because that’s where the money is!". Make sure whatever you’re going after is where the money actually is; i.e. a customer that will pay you. Consumer markets are tough, especially with web based products. People expect everything to be free. Businesses are usually your best bet.

Don’t be emotional: Emotions can let you make stupid decisions. It can make you not walk away because you’re attached to something. Most importantly it will lead to indecision and a loss of confidence. Put your emotions into your product or save them for your lover, family, friends, etc.

Don’t leave things up to chance: People feel that things will just work out due to carpe diem. They usually don’t! People can be unreliable, deals can fall through, and shit will always happen. Prepare for multiple scenarios and contingencies. You can mitigate this by working with smart AND reliable people.

Raise revenue, not funding: Everyone is always so damn fixated on getting funded because it’s the cool thing to do. Focus on getting people to pay you at first and then scale things outwards with funding IF and WHEN you need it. If your goal is to make a million dollars in three years, funding probably isn’t the way to go. VCs won’t let you take a salary of ~300k per year. Selling a company in <3 style="font-weight: bold;">Don’t get comfortable: You will probably get comfortable somewhere around 200k, maybe less or more, but it will certainly be before 1 million dollars. If you get comfortable you start getting off balance and having the hunger to move forward. Reward yourself a little bit, but live as frugally as possible. I have friends who have made some okay money, but blow it all away on stupid shit because they got comfortable.

Look for those who are comfortable: Who is comfortable in a certain industry? Go in and knock them off their hammock so they spill their mojitos on themselves. This can also be considered stagnation. Industries often mature and people get comfortable keeping the status quo. Stagnation is the mid-life crisis for a former trend. This is usually a good point to come in with something.

Don’t skimp on the important things: When it comes to things that need to be reliable such as infrastructure, delivery, or even your own personal tech equipment – don’t skimp out. These are the tools that ensure reliability and your product being delivered. You can skimp on the office space, the desks, coach airfare, budget motel in Mountain View, etc.

Companies spend just as much or more on services as they do on software: Paying for the ERP, CRM, or custom built system is just the first step. There’s the maintenance, training, and service contracts.

Keep the momentum going: I’ve had projects where things were moving a million miles an hour, then BOOM, they just lost a lot of momentum. That is the worst possible thing you can have happen. Keep moving the ball every day!

Listen (or read the transcriptions of) to every Mixergy interview you can: Most of my audience will probably know about Mixergy, but I can’t let a single reader leave without making sure they know it exists. It is by far the most practical resource on the Internet if your goal is to do well. Andrew has interviewed entrepreneurs from all walks of life with varying levels of success. Most of them had real business models and bootstrapped. Most importantly, he finds out what specifically led to their success. Link to Mixergy.

Last, but not least: learn how to filter: I just wrote upwards of 2,200 words. Some of the points are even contradictorily. Start adding in other sources of information and you will feel like you’re being pulled in a five million directions. You then become indecisive. Take in information and then filter the good bits while synthesizing them to be a part of your overall plan. What works for person A doesn’t always work for person B.

"Entrepreneurs average 3.8 failures before a final success. What sets the successful ones apart is their amazing persistence. There are a lot of people out there with good and marketable ideas, but pure entrepreneurial types almost never accept defeat!" - Lisa M. Amos

Make this a Happy & Fruitful day......unless you’ve made other plans!

Thanks, warm regards & success,

Patrick

Worst Impact of Climate Change Caused By Our Reaction

2010-08-11T06:03:00.001+10:00

Food for thoughts:
The worst impact of climate change may be caused by how humanity reacts to it!

The way that humanity reacts to climate change may do more damage to many areas of the planet than climate change itself unless we plan properly, an important new study published in Conservation Letters by Conservation International's Will Turner and a group of other leading scientists has concluded.

The paper 'Climate change: helping nature survive the human response', looks at efforts to both reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and potential action that could be taken by people to adapt to a changed climate and assesses the potential impact that these could have on global ecosystems.

In particular it notes that one fifth of the world's remaining tropical forests lie within 50km of human populations that could be inundated if sea levels rise by 1m. These forests would make attractive sources of fuel-wood, building materials, food and other key resources and would be likely to attract a population forced to migrate by rising sea levels. About half of all Alliance for Zero Extinction sites – which contain the last surviving members of certain species – are also in these zones.

Dr Turner said: "There are numerous studies looking at the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, but very little time has been taken to consider what our responses to climate change might do to the planet."

The paper notes that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by constructing dams for hydropower generation can cause substantial damage to key freshwater ecosystems as well as to the flora and fauna in the flooded valleys. It also notes that the generally bogus concept that biofuels reduce carbon emissions is still being used as a justification for the felling of large swathes of biodiverse tropical forests.

The report also reviews studies examining the complex series of outcomes in historical examples of climate change and environmental degradation, and humanity's efforts to adapt to changing circumstances. Migration caused in part by climatic instability in Burkina Faso in the late 20th century, for example, led to a 13 per cent decline in forest cover as areas were cleared for agriculture, and a decline in fish supplies in Ghana may have led to a significant increase in bushmeat hunting.

Dr Turner added: "If we don't take a look at the whole picture, but instead choose to look only at small parts of it we stand to make poor decisions about how to respond that could do more damage than climate change itself to the planet's biodiversity and the ecosystem services that help to keep us all alive!"

Although the challenge of sustaining biodiversity in the face of climate change seems daunting, the paper notes that we must – and can – rise to the challenge! Turner adds: "Climate change mitigation and adaptation are essential. We have to ensure that these responses do not compromise the biodiversity and ecosystem services upon which societies ultimately depend. We have to reduce emissions, we have to ensure the stability of food supplies jeopardized by climate change, we have to help people survive severe weather events – but we must plan these things so that we don't destroy life-sustaining forests, wetlands, and oceans in the process.'

The paper concludes that there are many ways of ensuring that the human response to climate change delivers the best possible outcomes for both society and the environments, and notes that in particular, maintaining and restoring natural habitats are among the cheapest, safest, and easiest solutions at our disposal to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and help people adapt to unavoidable changes.

Dr Turner said: "Providing a positive environmental outcome is often the best way to ensure the best outcome for people. If we are sensible, we can help people and nature together cope with climate change, if we are not it will cause suffering for people and serious problems for the environment."
Source

STOP Losing Your Hair!

2010-08-06T06:29:00.001+10:00

By Patrick Driessen

"A hair on the head is worth two on the brush." - Irish Proverb

As you might know, I always like to share my lessons learned, experience and insights to help others succeed. So here are my hair loss tips!

Yes, I also was suffering from losing my hair and getting a bit bald on my scalp.... Runs in the family... Getting older and a busy lifestyle took their toll on my scalp as well: emotionally I was suffering... I don't want to get bald!

Based on my own experienced on how to prevent or even stop losing my hair, I can hereby reveal the secret ingredients, which you'll need to stop losing and even start growing the hair on your scalp again!

On the advise of several friends of mine (two are GP's) I started taking Propecia pills and using a special hair gain lotion. The result is that I now dare to reference this process as it is also working for me: I stopped losing hair and I started gaining more hair!!! After 3 months I do not have empty or thin hair area's on my scalp anymore!

What is it and how does it work?
1. Propecia, Finnacar or Proscar (Finasteride) pills (for men only) are the only once-a-day pill for the treatment of certain types of male pattern baldness (androgenetic alopecia). Finasteride acts in the body to significantly lower levels of dihydrotestosterone (DHT) by inhibiting the type 2 5 Alpha Reductase enzyme which is responsible for the conversion of testosterone into DHT. High amounts of DHT contribute to prostate enlargement as well as hair loss in individuals with a genetic pre-disposition to it.

For more information on Propecia, please see:

http://www.propecia.com/finasteride/propecia/consumer/index.jsp
For all information on Finasteride, please see the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finasteride

2. Minoxidil Topical Application lotion: Minoxidil is used to stimulate hair growth and to slow balding. It opens up the hair veins and enables hair growth. In combination with Finasteride it has the highest effect. It is most effective for men whose hair loss is recent. Unfortunately Minoxidil has no effect on receding hairlines.

Why use both?
A clinical study has shown that a combination therapy of Minoxidil and Finasteride (Propecia, Finnacar or Proscar) shows great promise in the treatment of hair loss. It may potentially become the main stay therapy in this condition. Please see: http://www.regrowth.com/hairloss-remedy/remox/promox-study.cfm

How and how often to take?

You take one Propecia (1mg) or one Proscar/Finnacar (1.25mg or 1mg) pill once a day. Preferably take on an empty stomach (officially Propecia and Proscar can be taken with or without food) with a glass of water or grapefruit juice. Grapefruit juice contains substances which inhibit certain digestive enzymes that break down Finasteride thus boosting (more or less doubling) your bloodsteam uptake of the drug.
Every morning and every evening you drop 1ml of Minoxidil Topical lotion on your dry scalp and just lightly rub it in. It's that simple and easy!

How long to take it?
The advise for a long lasting result is to take both for at least 12 months.

What are the risks/side effects?
Risks and side effects will differ per person, so always make sure you consult your GP, doctor or another qualified medical specialist first. My own experience with side effects:

My GP told me that when taking Finasteride pills there is a risk of getting a lower libido and decreased sex lust…. Fortunately, so far that did not happen to me. I've not experienced any negative side effects. OK, just one: some hair started growing on my chest… For known side effects, please see: http://www.propecia.com/finasteride/propecia/consumer/possible-side-effects/
Minoxidil Topical lotion may cause side effects like: scalp itching, dryness, scaling, flaking, irritation, or burning. If it happens than most often in the early stage after start of using the lotion. Personally I have not experienced any negative side effects so far.

What does it cost?

Monthly doses of Propecia (Finasteride, MSD) pills is approx. $80. Cost-conscious customers usually buy Proscar® or Finnacar® (Finasteride) and cut the 5mg tablet into fourths (1.25mg) or even fifths (1mg) therefore getting all the benefits of Propecia at a dramatically reduced pricetag. If you cut Proscar or Finnacar into fourths (1.25mg) you only need 3 boxes to save your hair for the entire year! Compare that to 12 boxes of Propecia and you will realise that Proscar or Finnacar is the cheapest way to save your hair and your save your bank balance. For more info, please see: http://hairloss.cyberatlantis.com/proscar.php
If you manage to buy the lotion online or at a discount pharmacy the price per box with 3 to 5 bottles of 60ml will vary between $129 and $249. It just depends on what kind of brand/packaging it has…..I shopped around and found a package with 5 bottles (enough for 5 months) for $129. The average cost per month for 1 60ml bottle of lotion will be approx. $25.

How to get it?

Propecia, Finnacar or Proscar pills can be obtained with a prescription from your GP. For Propecia pills, please ask your GP for repeat prescription of at least 6x or 12x (1 per month).
Minoxidil Topical Application lotion can be obtained at most drugstores (again; my advise is to shop around for the best price. It could save you $50-$75 per package!). The Minoxidil Topical lotion I'm using is Hair A-Gain. See: http://www.keypharm.com.au/products/what_is_hair_a-gain.php

Other tips?
Yes, these are proven ones as well (at least for me):

Stop using fancy shampoo's. Just use baby shampoo! The best you can use is the Johnson & Johnson: 'Johnson's baby shampoo plus conditioner' (red/pink bottle). It is scientifically proven to be less harmful to your hair.
Stop washing your hair every day. Just wash your hair bi-daily, which will be less harmful to your scalp and your hair.
Stop using gel, spray or foam to model your hair. Start using men's hair wax, hair paste, or hair creme to model your hair. The difference is that gel, spray's and foams will often affect your scalp and can also negatively impact the quality of your hair. Wax or hair creme will "sit" on your hair and will not touch your scalp, nor impact the hair veins or quality of the hair.

"Experience is a comb that is given to you, when you have already lost you hair." - Giorgos Zambetas

I hope my experience helps you as well, as it works well for me!

Thanks, warm regards & success,

Patrick Driessen

Love it or hate it, PowerPoint shapes strategy-making

2010-05-27T07:08:00.002+10:00

It’s a staple presentation tool in most businesses. It’s been banned as a productivity killer. It’s even been recently criticized by a U.S. military General as “dangerous” for over- simplifying sophisticated problems of warfare.

Say what you like about PowerPoint, the computer software that presents business cases like a slide show, but one researcher at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management says that such critiques ignore the ways the technology is used to shape idea generation and build corporate strategies.

“It’s easy to say that PowerPoint is taking over and that’s terrible … but what I observed is that the day-to-day use of PowerPoint is much more complex,” says Sarah Kaplan, a Rotman professor of strategic management who studies strategy making in uncertain environments.

An eight-month examination of strategy making at a telecommunications company showed Prof. Kaplan that PowerPoint was more than just an omnipresent tool.

It allowed for greater collaboration because more people had access to PowerPoint documents;
It affected the parameters of the discussion (depending on what information was included, or excluded from the PowerPoint slides);
It even shaped the influence individuals had in the strategy-building process (those with less facility using the technology lost status, those who possessed the “deck” of PowerPoint slides had greater power).

By studying the daily use of PowerPoint in strategy making, it was possible to see how meanings were negotiated through PowerPoint use, as a means for both collaborative efforts to generate ideas and cartographic efforts to divide up territories and pursue individual or group interests.

“This is not the first strategy-making technology. Before PowerPoint, there were 35mm slides and viewgraphs,” Prof. Kaplan points out. But because PowerPoint is easily available to anyone with access to a computer, it “has radically changed who can participate. It has the potential to democratize strategy-making!”
The complete study is available here.

The Best To-Do List You'll Ever Make

2010-05-27T06:05:00.002+10:00

By Rick Broida

Ever get to the end of a day and feel like you didn’t really accomplish anything? Or, worse, discover that the really important tasks didn’t get done? I think this happens when we have too many distractions, too much miscellany pulling us in different directions all day.

I’m a big believer in to-do lists, but beware the Dark Side: a list that’s too long will seem overwhelming, and may actually do more harm than good. (”Ahhh! I’ll never get all this done!”)

That’s why I’ve become a religious practitioner of the three-item to-do list! Here’s how it works:

Each morning, starting with a small, blank sheet of paper, write down three important tasks that need doing.
Do the first task. Cross it off.
Do the second task. Cross it off.
Do the third task. Cross it off.
Crumple up your to-do sheet and throw it away.

I find this entire process immensely satisfying. For starters, a three-item list seems very manageable. Doesn’t matter how busy I am, I know I can accomplish at least those three things.

What’s more, it may sound silly, but drawing a line through a completed task feels really good — much better than clicking a checkbox in Outlook or an online to-do list. And at the end of the day, crumpling up that sheet makes me feel accomplished — even if I have 10 other tasks that didn’t get done.

I’ve also found that this lowers my overall stress level. It makes the day seem less…insurmountable. Try it every day for a week and see if you don’t become a convert.

Successssssssssss!

Success Ingredients For Emerging Entrepreneurs

2010-03-19T00:29:00.011+11:00

By Patrick Driessen

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary!” – Steve Jobs

Having started, run and led various companies as an entrepreneur since I was 15 years old, I have learned many things about being an entrepreneur; often the hard way…. Some of my own business ventures were very successful, some unsuccessful, and one even resulted in my personal bankruptcy (at the age of 21), however all of them made me very rich and happy! They made me rich and happy in enriched knowledge and experience; my failures and success allowed me to learn more, build new valuable relationships, get new ideas, get more insights & inspiration and apply my lessons learned to become more successful!

A lot has been said, written and published about the key qualities of successful entrepreneurs: e.g. passion, creativity, leadership, vision, self-confidence, relationship building, innovation, organization skills, communication and coordination skills. Based on my own experience I would like to share and highlight some other key qualities and insights that will help an entrepreneur to succeed. Just ask yourself the following questions…

1. What is your personal mission statement in life?

As Stephen Covey wrote in his popular book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, the second habit he talks about is “Begin with the End In Mind”. He recommends formulating a “personal vision statement” to document one’s perception of one’s own vision in life.

What do you want to accomplish in your life? One effective way to write your personal mission statement is to visualize the day when you die. What do you want your loved ones and friends to say and remember about you? Another approach is to write your own obituary.

Without a clear personal mission statement, you will quickly lose focus and direction in your business. Without a personal mission statement, you won’t be able to find a passion or desire for success. As one of my fellow coaches and friend Denis Gianoutsos likes to state: “There are two important days in your life: the day you were born and the day you knew why!” So what do you want your life to be about? What’s your mission and what’s the big picture?

For more insights into your positive self-direction, please see: ‘This is Your Wake Up Call!’

2. Are you self-motivated?

Perhaps one of the most crucial qualities for people who are self-employed to succeed. Without self-motivation, you will always find yourself putting things off. You won’t be able to accomplish anything as there is no one there to motivate you or watch over your shoulder when you’re your own boss. So if you are not a self-motivated kind of person, working for yourself or being an entrepreneur is definitely a risky business for you. You can mitigate this risk: get a business partner, get a coach & mentor or ask a close friend to help and stimulate to motivate yourself!

If you think you are not self-motivated enough, make it part of your self-development plan: coach yourself to improve in self-motivation! Success guaranteed!

3. Are you persistent?

Understand that there is no “instant gratification” when you’re running your own business. You won’t get a pay check every month like you do in a 9 to 5 job. Initially, you may need to work very hard for little reward.

If you’re not persistent or don’t fully believe in yourself and in your business, you will find yourself giving up very quickly. Of course, it is possible to earn good money by running your own business, but you need to remember that it will take hard work, time and persistence to achieve true success and happiness!

Like Sir Winston Churchill said: “Never, Never, Never Ever Give Up!” So whenever you fail or make a mistake; take the lessons learned, get back on your feet to apply them and use your enriched experience to succeed faster and better!

4. Are you financially responsible?

A very important quality for all business owners. When you’re your own boss, you’re a CEO, accountant and finance manager. You’re fully responsible for managing and controlling your business budget. When you start making profits, you will need to know how to manage it wisely. Often times, you will want to put a portion of your profit back into your business to help it grow and expand further. Or you want to build up a solid cash position to finance a possible acquisition.

Successful entrepreneurs actively manage their P&L (Profit & Loss) balance sheet, and especially their cash position! They focus on two things to improve their financial performance:

A) Increasing their profits. This is only possible through either:

Increasing revenue, or
Cutting costs and cost avoidance.

B) Growing their business. This is only possible through the following 4 methods:

Increasing acquisition of the right type of clients (through organic growth or mergers & acquisitions)
Increasing margins
Increasing the frequency of purchase of your clients
Reducing the attrition of the right types of clients.

5. Are you hungry for success?

If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to think and behave like one! You have to think and act as a leader, as a CEO and as a warrior! Understand that business is not the same as a hobby where you can take it lightly. If you treat your business like a hobby, you will never be able to achieve true success. A business needs to be worked at seriously and professionally, you can’t allow personal things to get into your business. Remember what the headline in Donald Trump’s Apprentice show says? “It’s Not Personal – It’s Just Business!”.

6. Do you have the required health and condition?
Being the founder of a startup business means that you will have to put most – if not all – of your time and energy in your new venture to make sure you’ll succeed. It’s like top sport and playing in the Premier League. Only the founders with a good health and great condition will make it to the finish and only the ones with the best health and balanced condition will be able to win the race. As a founder of a startup you will need to turn yourself into a top-performer; a top athlete!

If you are still smoking; based on my own experience I can advise you to give it up before you start your startup!

Become your own health coach and build up a regular exercise schedule, practice meditation and make sure you’ll develop an on-going health & well-being program for yourself. If you need someone else to help you do it, make sure you build up a trusted (health) relationship at an early stage, because he or she will become your secret weapon in assisting you to overcome all kinds of mental and physical challenges.

If at present you are on a somewhat unhealthy diet, you’d better change your nutrition intake now, because what you eat and what you drink has the biggest impact on your level of energy. While working your butt of on your new venture, it will often be challenging for you to eat healthy and stay off junk food. Make it easy for yourself to stay off high GI food, which will negatively impact your energy levels and your overall health.

Here are some health and nutrition tips based on working with many startups:

Eat at set times; no matter how busy your daily schedule is, make sure you feed your engine at set times. If not, it might negatively impact your energy levels, your biorhythm, your stomach and your metabolism.
Practice meditation as it will allow you to rapidly relax your body and mind, re-energise, and re-focus.
Food: start your day with a health breakfast full of fibres (tip: muesli). Make a special and long-term deal with a local restaurant or caterer at which you can pick up a daily fresh cooked dinner for approximately $7-$10 per meal.
Snacks: have a bowl with fresh fruit in your office, which you fill up weekly and buy a big jar which you fill up with healthy mixed peanuts (including almonds and walnuts), which do not only provide you with new energy; they are also good for your brain and heart function.
Drinks: try to limit your coffee intake to 3 cups a day, drink green tea, drink plenty of water (>2 litres) and limit the intake of alcohol.

7. Can you become the king or queen of sleep?

Getting enough sleep often is a neglected challenge for emerging entrepreneurs. It can also be a hidden risk, as sleep greatly impacts your health and your energy levels. Becoming a sleeping expert will help you to succeed in your entrepreneurial challenges. Here are some insights and tips based on my own experience:

Sleep enough and sleep a consistent number of hours. What I never expected is that my lack of sleep and irregular sleeping pattern resulted in huge weight gain.... I became pretty fat, although I was exercising and eating healthy... When I did some research I found the scientific evidence that poor sleep results in weight gain....
Power naps: to cope with an irregular sleep pattern and often a lack of sleep, make sure you practice power naps; it will allow you to quickly revive and refill with new energy.
Practice day dreaming! It is proven that a type of dreamy sleep that occurs more frequently in the early morning is important for solving tough problems that cannot be easily answered during the day.

8. Do you have enough supportive friends and family?

Being an entrepreneur often means having to deal with tough personal, financial and emotional challenges. Often almost everyone around you will have doubts about your plans, your vision or your growth strategy. Will it stop you or de-motivate you?

A lot of people think that startups and being an entrepreneur sucks, and they are always happy to explain to you why! Other people will tell you that you are ‘crazy’ to be an entrepreneur instead of working as employee for a well-established organisation, which offers you security, a compelling salary, bonuses, 20+ holidays, etc. Will it stop you or de-motivate you?

Often you will make mistakes, sometimes having a big impact on your business, your team, your financial position and… on your emotions! Will it stop you or de-motivate you?

Being an entrepreneur sometimes means being very lonely. It’s tough, it’s challenging and for many it’s the best thing ever…. But…not always! For all those very tough and lonely moments in which you could get depressed you will need a small group of close friends and family members who will help you get through these difficult moments. They will kick your ass when you will need it the most! Who are they? How can you get their full support and how do you make them part of your entrepreneurial journey, so you can rely on them when you really need to?

9. Can you create enough sources of funding?

Starting, building up and expanding your own business not only requires time, lots of energy, experience, knowledge, an exceptional team, strategic partners, many supporters and paying clients; it usually also requires lots of money!

In the startup phase you will need to bootstrap and fund yourself and your new venture with your savings, and possibly cash flow from your side job(s) or day job. Once you’re a full-time entrepreneur (which is the best way to kick-start your venture), you will soon realise that you will need additional funding. Maxing out credit cards, taking a second mortgage or selling some of your assets are all viable options, but maybe you will need even more money to fund the growth of your business.

The big question is: before and while starting your new business, have you created enough access options to funding sources in case you require more money?

Have you got access to trustworthy friends and/or family members who are willing to lend you money or take an equity stake in your business? Have you got access to angel investors and have you been actively building a relationship with them? Do you personally know the loans and/or branch manager at your bank? Do you know someone who can introduce you to an outstanding venture capitalist? Have you built up a valuable relationship with some of your clients and are they willing and able to help fund some of your growth without requiring an equity stake?

All practical options, which usually only will work successfully for you if you have planned for it, invested time and passion in it and took enough action on it.

10. Are you a people leader?

Building up a new venture is like a rat race; only the best, smartest and fastest will win! It’s also like an endurance race in which the best TEAM will win.

To build up your winning team, you will need to be able to select, hire, retain and utilise the best people. As leader of the gang, you will often be the linking pin between people who do not know each other, do not like each other, but will need to work together with each other as one unified, motivated and ambitious team.

Once your team starts growing you will need to unite, inspire, motivate and lead more and more people. First maybe 5, then 10, rapidly growing to 50 and then following that successful acquisition your team grows to over one hundred team members! Can you still lead this team without losing the personal touch and while maintaining valuable and personal relationships with many of your team members?

Even if you have never had direct reports before and even without ever having lead a team before, you can become a great leader! All it takes is leadership development: education, training, practice, coaching, mentoring, reading, changing your mindset, changing your behaviour and often changing your emotions….

Yes, becoming a true leader takes a lot! But to become a leading entrepreneur it’s a necessity!

For some useful leadership insights, please see: ‘The World’s Shortest Leadership Course’.

11. Can you deal with failure and fight depression?

Running a startup is like a rat-race in which only the fittest, fastest and smartest will win! Although you might think your new business is unique, it is very likely that there will be at least 10 to 12 other teams, companies and/or individuals trying to do the same thing at the same time somewhere around the world. Although nowadays founders can receive all kind of support and join incubation or startup acceleration programs not every startup succeeds. Just assume these numbers: over 50% of the startups will fail, over 25% will do so-so, over 20% will become successful and less than 5% will become very successful.

To make it to the 25% of successful startups you will have to face and overcome many tough and often unexpected challenges. You’ll have to learn how to accept and overcome failure, how to forgive others and how to keep believing in yourself and in your business venture. Being the founder of a startup means that you are the leader, so no matter what happens you will have to take the tough decisions and accept full responsibility for whatever consequences. It often can be very lonely at the top... Even very successful entrepreneurs can suddenly become depressed!

Please read about depression and learn about the insights so you can recognise the symptoms and know how to fight against it. Surround yourself with trusted friends, fellow entrepreneurs, a coach and a business mentor, so they can all help you to fight against any form of depression!

12. Can you continue to learn and develop your personality?

As a founder of a fast growing business you will have to be multi-functional and become multi-talented. While growing your business you will need to develop various new skills and strengthen existing ones to successfully cope with all kinds of leadership and management challenges.

Continues learning is critical for survival and success! Although most of your time will be taken by leading and growing your business, you will also need to allocate time to lead and further develop yourself. Besides getting the help of a leadership coach to accelerate your personal development, you will need to create an on-going and custom (time)flexible education program for yourself, which is focused on developing and enhancing skills and capabilities.

We're all busy building up our business and attending training courses/conferences/seminars is most often a challenge to combine with your business and private life.... So why not teach yourself using an easy and more flexible way? e-Learning!

Learning new skills and expanding your knowledge doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. There are loads of free resources on the Internet that can help you to find compelling instructional videos, tutorials and classes to learn a wide variety of skills from improving your leadership skills, developing new sales skills to speaking another language.

13. What is your exit strategy?

As successful entrepreneur you will need to lead your business from start to finish. So where do you draw the finish line?

When and how do you want to exit your company? Do you want to sell it? If so, when and to whom? Do you want to list your company? If so, when and at which stock exchange(s)? Do you want to merge it? If so, with which company? Do you want to hand it over to one or all of your children? If so, when and to which one(s)?

For what price and under which conditions will you hand your baby over to someone else?

What’s behind the finish line? Imagine you have set your exit strategy and then… you’ve successfully executed your strategy: you’ve exited your company! Then what? What’s next? As part of your exit strategy I advise you to dream/imagine/decide what you want to do with the successful experience and reward(s) of growing and selling your own company. It will drive, inspire and motivate you to create your follow-up plan! Make it part of your bigger picture!

14. What is your company worth?

Are you good at maths? A successful entrepreneur knows the value of his/her company at any point in time! He/she also knows what kind of unique value he/she wants to create, which is often based on their exit strategy.

Why is this so important? Knowing what your company is worth versus your ideal exit strategy, timing and desired sales price, will determine if the time is right when you have an opportunity to sell/merge/list your company at any point in time. If you know that there still is huge growth potential to create more unique value, you might decide not to sell or you could include this value in your desired sales price. As long as you know what your baby is worth.

Knowing what the value of your company is also drives you to focus on creating and maximising value. This could be your brand value, goodwill, revenue, profit, client base, intellectual property, market share, market capitalisation, etc.

For each industry and market there are specific metrics and criteria which can be used for calculating the value of a company. I advise you to research and analyse these and then to use them to optimise the unique value of your own company.

15. Who is your coach and mentor?

Successful entrepreneurs, leaders and CXO’s often have one thing in common; they have a coach and mentor! A coach and mentor can help you to get the best out of yourself. A professional coach can help you with your self-development to deepen your learnings, increase your performance and enhance your quality of life. A senior and seasoned mentor can help you to succeed in your particular industry/market by sharing some of his/her lessons learned, experience and by leveraging his/her network.

A coach and mentor can be one and the same person. Preferably they are two persons: you find yourself the best certified coach and an experienced mentor. Your investment? Mainly time and brain power! Return on Investment? Huge!!!

You can find passionate coaches and mentors who will help you for free or for a reasonable hourly/monthly fee. See also: ‘Can You Afford NOT To Invest In A Coach And Mentor?’.

I hope these insights and qualities will help and inspire you to succeed as entrepreneur faster and better! Of course there are many more qualities and insights which can lead to success as entrepreneur; find them, explore them and use them to succeed!

“To attract attractive people, you must be attractive. To attract powerful people, you must be powerful. To attract committed people, you must be committed. To attract innovative people, you must be innovative. Instead of going to work on them, you go to work on yourself. If you become, you can attract!” – Brian Tracy

Thanks, warm regards & success,

Patrick

To Explain Myself (a bit)

2010-03-18T14:47:00.010+11:00

By Patrick Driessen

“I’m not crazy, I’m an airplane!” - Unknown

Not to defend myself, but to explain myself so more people will get a better understanding of who I am, I’d like to share the following with you. Why? Because quite often people misunderstand or misjudge me based on what they see or hear about my behaviour and character.

I always like to make the impossible possible and go the extra mile in everything I do. I like to do things smarter, faster and better. I can not just do one or two things at the same time; I need to have at least 5-10 projects/activities on my mind, otherwise I get dissatisfied with myself.

But if I’m doing 5 to 10 different things at the same time, other people around me will often try to force me to focus on just one thing; because they think ‘otherwise nothing can be accomplished’. If I'm working hard and am having big fun 20 hours a day, they often try to slow me down; because otherwise 'it is not normal and very unhealthy'. If I'm actively dancing like I'm in heaven, a lot of people think: 'he must have taken XTC....'. The truth is: I don't do drugs;, I can do with little sleep and I can multi-focus; the enormous level of energy and drive I have enable me to do so.

Please let me explain some things in more detail, because there are many other people like me, who often need to defend themselves if they act hyper-active without using drugs. We are not perse ADHD and if we are, it does not have to mean anything negative. I personally see it as something very positive! It's a gift!

These are some of the characteristics most of my friends, team members and family members will recognise and are now a bit used to:

Cannot sit still
Hyper-active
Tends to get a nervous and unsatisfied feeling if not enough actions have been taken in a day
Always positive and opportunistic
Loves leading people
Genuinely interested to understand and help other people
Can do with 3 – 5 healthy hours of sleep
Rapid fire mind
Eager to learn & explore beyond boundaries
Dyslectic
Highly creative
Ability to hyper-focus
Dreaming day & night
Brain constantly produces new ideas
Good at brainstorming
Thrives on innovation
Intuitive
Visionary
Great in a crisis (since it is often a very familiar environment)
Addicted to multi-tasking
Able to see and quickly take advantage of business opportunities.

So what’s causing all of this? Well something natural inside my brain and inside my body. It’s a gift; it makes me rich as it allows me to use my energy and skills to help other people and to make lots of things happen! It’s not the use of drugs or drinking Red Bull! It’s me, myself and I!

What’s the affect of my behaviour on other people? Some people get very nervous; some get suspicious and fortunately most enjoy the fruitful benefits of it!

What drives me and gives me lots of energy? The love and affection of other people, inventing new things, helping other people succeed, leading people, teaching people, mentoring people, making things happen, and organising many things for other people.

So if you see me or someone like me in action and think ‘that person is not normal’ or ‘he/she must be on drugs’, then please try to see the positive side and enjoy their energy and out of the box thinking!

"Don't stop me now, I'm having such a good time!" - Freddie Mercury (Queen)

Make this a Happy & Fruitful day......unless you’ve made other plans!

Thanks, warm regards & success,

Patrick

PS: For a view on how team members, clients and business partners perceive working together with me, please check the endorsements on my LinkedIn profile.

The Power of Naps

2010-02-23T06:27:00.005+11:00

"Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness, but, at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap." - Dr Matthew Walker, UC Berkeley

By Patrick Driessen
People in Latin America, Southern Europe and Greater China have been doing it for generations: taking a relaxing nap during the day. Funny - but also sadly - enough in most other countries and in the work environment it is still not done to take a power nap. Hopefully that will change soon, because taking a nap at work has many benefits!

When I am on a high and am fully focused to finish a certain project, I'll spend as many hours as possible on it. To keep me going I take power naps: 15-20 minutes complete relaxation and I'll be revitalised and full of energy again. A power nap is a great investment of your time with a very high return in new energy and a (re)focused mindset!

A couple of years ago when I was taking a power nap under my own desk at my office in Amsterdam, a colleague walked by and saw me sleeping on the carpet floor underneath my desk. He thought it was hilarious, so he invited over 50 colleagues to my office who had a big laugh and took pictures of me. I didn't notice any of these visitors because I was fully asleep. When I woke up and they told me what had happened, I tried to explain the benefits of a power nap, but few would listen or understand....

Well.... maybe this new research from the University of California at Berkeley will help to change the perception of taking a power nap. The claim of the US scientists: a nap during the day improves the brain's ability to absorb new information; it boosts your leaning power! So who's been missing out?

This latest study suggests that the brain may need sleep to process short-term memories, creating "space" for new facts to be learned. In their experiment, 39 healthy adults were given a hard learning task in the morning - with broadly similar results, before half of them were sent for their siesta. When the tests were repeated, the nappers outperformed those who had carried on without sleep.

Checks on brain electrical activity suggested that this process might be happening in a sleep phase between deep sleep, and dreaming sleep, called stage 2 non-rapid eye movement sleep, when fact-based memories are moved from "temporary storage" in the brain's hippocampus to another area called the pre-frontal cortex.

Dr Matthew Walker, who led the study, stated on the BBC website: "Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness, but, at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap. "It's as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full, and, until you sleep and clear out all those fact e-mails, you're not going to receive any more mail. "It's just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder."

What you need to know about the benefits of sleep and how a power nap can help you:

Less stress.
Increased alertness and productivity.
Improved memory and learning.
Good for the heart.
Increased cognitive functioning.
Get motivated to exercise.
Boost your creativity.
Make up for midnight tossing and turning.
Protect yourself from sleepiness.
Better health.

Are you convinced as well? Many of us could use a nice long nap many days but very few have (take) the time to get one in. Here are some useful tips to help you succeed:

The first consideration is psychological: Recognize that you’re not being lazy; napping will make you more productive and more alert after you wake up.
Try to nap in the morning or just after lunch; human circadian rhythms make late afternoons a more likely time to fall into deep (slow-wave) sleep, which will leave you groggy.
In the hour or two before your nap time, eat foods high in calcium and protein, which promote sleep.
Find a good place to nap: a clean, quiet place where passersby and phones won’t disturb you.
Have caffeine right before you nap. This may sound counter intuitive since caffeine is a stimulant, but it won't kick in immediately. The caffeine has to travel through your gastro-intestinal tract, giving you time to nap before it kicks in. Taking a "caffeine nap" in which 200mg of caffeine are consumed right before a 20-minute nap will not only improve your performance, but it will also lessen how sleepy you feel once you wake up. Skip the caffeine, however, if it's late in the afternoon; you'll have a hard time falling asleep later in the evening.
The best way to consummate coffee: Get a cup of coffee wherever you can get one. Add ice and stir until the coffee is nice and cold. Why the cold coffee works best is beyond me, but it seems to. Drink 1/2 a cup to a cup of the iced coffee and close your eyes for 20 minutes. The important thing is to rest and relax. You may even catch a 5-10 minute cat nap. Once the 20 minutes is over, the coffee is ready to do its job. You'll feel as refreshed and ready to go as if you had a 2 hour nap!
When you're close to finishing your coffee (or your green tea, or your caffeine jello shot, etc.), set an alarm to go off in 15-20 minutes. This is only true if you are one of those people who will fall asleep immediately. To know how much time it takes for you to fall asleep, take a look at the clock when you are very tired and sense you will fall asleep soon at night, and subtract the time you got into bed from that. Generally, you should set your alarm for twenty-five minutes.
Outside of your office/nap location door, which should be closed at this point, post up a sign that says you are power-napping and can be contacted at a certain time. Do a little bit of research and present the crucially of power-napping if needed.
Try to darken your nap zone, or wear an eye shade. Darkness stimulates melatonin, the sleep- inducing hormone.
Remember that body temperature drops when you fall asleep. Raise the room temperature or use a blanket.
Get up as soon as the alarm goes off. Sleeping for any longer than 20 minutes will be counterproductive. A half hour can lead to sleep inertia, making you feel sluggish and more tired than ever.
To make your office and nap life easier: create a business case for your leadership to invest in nap equipment! Links to examples are at the bottom of this post.

How long is a good nap?

THE NANO-NAP: 10 to 20 seconds. Sleep studies haven’t yet concluded whether there are benefits to these brief intervals, like when you nod off on someone’s shoulder on the train.
THE MICRO-NAP: two to five minutes. Shown to be surprisingly effective at shedding sleepiness.
THE MINI-NAP: five to 20 minutes. Increases alertness, stamina, motor learning, and motor performance.
THE ORIGINAL POWER NAP: 20 minutes. Includes the benefits of the micro and the mini, but additionally improves muscle memory and clears the brain of useless built-up information, which helps with long-term memory (remembering facts, events, and names).
THE LAZY MAN’S NAP: 50 to 90 minutes. Includes slow-wave plus REM sleep; good for improving perceptual processing; also when the system is flooded with human growth hormone, great for repairing bones and muscles.

For more power nap details & tips: http://www.wikihow.com/Power-Nap
For power nap office solutions: http://www.metronaps.com/
For the Nappak Sleeping Cube: http://www.nappak.de/

Warm regards & success with your power naps,

Patrick

Asia Will Remain The Best Growth Region

2010-02-07T00:18:00.006+11:00

By Verne Harnish (The Growth Guy)

Where will the economic growth come from in the next couple of years? Asia! According to growth expert Verne Harnish, Asia will continue to boost its regional and the global economy. "China does no longer mean low labour cost and low quality."

One of India's wealthiest business leaders, Anil Ambani, invests $325 million in Steven Spielberg's movie studio DreamWorks - something unimaginable just five years ago. In turn, Warren Buffett invests $230 million for a 10% stake in Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD, the same investor who shunned technology investments earlier this decade. It's obvious the top entrepreneurs and investors understand that India and China are the future of our global economy. Do you?

With over 1 billion people moving into the middle class, effectively increasing the global market for products and services by 50% over the next decade, can your firm afford to ignore the single largest market opportunity in the history of business? It's time you consider "going east" as part of your 2010 strategic plan. And it's as critical for small to mid-size firms to make the move as it is for top investors and large corporations.

Made It In China
Two entrepreneurs helping others make the leap are Graham Jeal and Simon Cann, authors of a new book series entitled Made It In.... Graham, a British-born entrepreneur who has been building companies in China since 2001, is the former president of the Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) chapter in China. Cann, a prolific writer, has been a management consultant to companies spanning the music, entertainment, and broadcast industries.

I met Graham and Simon on my last trip to China and was impressed by their enthusiasm and initiative to encourage others to leave the comfort zone of their own markets and venture out into some of the leading business hotspots around the globe.

In their first book, Made It In China, they feature specific lessons learned from nine entrepreneurs including Graham, who have built manufacturing plants, launched internet businesses, started hotels and restaurants, and created large sales organizations within China. One of the entrepreneurs was even the first foreign participant on China's equivalent of "The Apprentice." In all cases, these entrepreneurs left their home countries and built businesses in a culture different from the own - and their stories are both inspirational and instructive.
Other countries in the series include Vietnam, Russia, and Kazakhstan with more in the works. I encourage you to go to their website www.madeitin.com to learn more.

Coming with Quality
Another must read book for growth firms wanting to dominate their industry is Hermann Simon's Hidden Champions of the 21st Century. I was speaking with Hermann Simon upon his recent return from China. He brought news that Chinese firms are focused on building competing quality products that will challenge even Germany's lead in many export areas - and that they are building factories in Germany and the U.S. and other parts of the world. They want to get "in our backyards" before we get in theirs! And with over $2 trillion in surplus cash vs. a projected U.S. 2010 $14 trillion deficit, they have the financial muscle to do it.

No longer will the "Made in China" label mean low cost or low quality. Their entrepreneurs are hungry to learn from the best and bring their business models, products, and services to other countries!

India is aiming for the same upgrade to their brand. Seen primarily as a cheap supplier of back office functions, they are building global brands and bringing their products, like the $2500 Nano car, to the developed world. And with one of the youngest populations in the world, India is well poised to incubate entrepreneurs that will be hungry to get into other markets. Again, it will be crucial for established businesses to plan their India strategy for next year and beyond.

Wholly Owned Subsidiaries
Hermann Simon notes, based on his research of the world's top mid-market companies, that they almost always set-up wholly owned subsidiaries vs. licensing or joint venture relationships. It's been critical for these firms to control their brands and have their own people "on the ground" in other countries. And they tended to expand into one or two different countries each year, with many now having operations in over 50 countries.

When these "hidden champions" are asked which countries they're focused on for the next decade, it is India and China. And while it might be too late for manufacturers outside these countries to make inroads as quickly, the customer service models and cultures of the west will not be easy to imitate by the eastern entrepreneurs. This is the distinct advantage, plus a long history of good management practices, that entrepreneurs in the west have as they pursue these eastern markets.

Read the two books mentioned above and make 2010 the year you focus on the east!

Patrick's Tip: Another good book about China and India I can recommend is: The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us, written by Robyn Meredith.

Mixing Passion, Technology and Coaching

2010-01-28T06:57:00.001+11:00

By Patrick Driessen

I am always looking for new innovative ways to improve things. Often it's just a matter of combining existing things with a couple of new things.

In this case I found a great tool which is combining my passion for helping others succeed, my passion for coaching and my passion for technology: Disciplanner! It helps you to get disciplined and succeed in meeting your personal goals! How cool is that!?

Normally I do not like to advertise something on my blog, but in this case I'm happy to make a positive exception: Disciplanner.com is an application for tracking long term personal goals and bad habits. No hourly schedules, just commit to weekly goals and record time, that's it. The basic Disciplanner account is free and the Disciplanner iPhone application will be released in the coming months!

So what's stopping you to try it out? If you use this innovative tool well, I am sure it will enable you to succeed faster & better!

Thanks, warm regards & success,

Patrick

How to Live Your Life Twice!

2010-01-23T06:33:00.001+11:00

TAU psychologist busts a myth and offers useful tips to counter a mid-life crisis!

Elliot Jacques coined the term "mid-life crisis" 40 years ago, when the average lifespan was 70 and "mid-life" came at age 35. Individuals could expect their quality of life to decline from that point forward, Jacques argued, so some extreme reactions to encroaching mortality were to be expected, such as having extra-marital affairs and buying a Porsche.

Not any more, says Prof. Carlo Strenger of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychology. In an article co-authored with the Israeli researcher Arie Ruttenberg for the Harvard Business Review last year, and another in the journal Psychoanalytic Psychology, Prof. Strenger posits that the mid-life years are the best time of life to flourish and grow.

Citing research based on empirical evidence and studies from the field, Prof. Strenger says that adult lives really do have second acts! "Somehow this line has been drawn around the mid and late 40s as the time for a mid-life crisis in our society," says Prof. Strenger. "But as people live longer and fuller lives, we have to cast aside that stereotype and start thinking in terms of 'mid-life transition' rather than 'mid-life crisis.'" He dismisses the prevailing myth that reaching the years between the 40s and the early 60s means adapting to diminished expectations, both internally and from society.

Thirty-five years of learning
"If you make fruitful use of what you've discovered about yourself in the first half of your life," Dr. Strenger argues, "the second half can be the most fulfilling."

Most people make many of their most important life decisions before they really know who they are, he says. By age 30, most Americans have already married, decided where to live, bought their first home, and chosen their career. "But at 30, people still have the better part of their adult years ahead of them," Prof. Strenger says.

The good news is that extended life expectancy, better health practices, education, and a greater emphasis on emotional self-awareness and personal fulfilment have reversed the chances that one will have a mid-life crisis. Neurological research has also disproved the notion that the brain deteriorates after 40. "A rich and fruitful life after 50 is a much more realistic possibility," he says.

Four tips to avoid a mid-life crisis
How can you transition smoothly through the best years of your life?

"First, and most important," Prof. Strenger suggests, "invest some sincere thought in the fact that you have more high-quality adult years ahead of you than behind you. Realize what that means in planning for the future."
Second, he says, think about what you've learned about yourself so far. Consider what you've found to be your strongest abilities and about the things that most please you, not what your parents or society expected of you when you were young.
Third, don't be afraid of daunting obstacles in making new changes. "Once you realize how much time you have left in this world, you will find it is profoundly worth it to invest energy in changing in major ways. A new career choice is not an unreasonable move, for example," Dr. Strenger advises. And you may now have a better chance of succeeding, because your choices will be based on knowledge and experience, rather than youthful blind ambition.
Finally, Prof. Strenger says it is absolutely necessary to make use of a support network. Individuals should discuss major life changes with their colleagues, friends and families. The people who know you best will best be able to support you in the new directions you want to take, he advises, and a professional therapist or counsellor can also be helpful.

Prof. Stenger's book on the subject is The Designed Self, published by The Analytic Press. His latest book, Critique of Global Unreason: Individuality and Meaning in the Global Age, will be published by Palgrave this year.

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