How to 'ACTS' like an Entrepreneur

I was sitting there at the meeting as part of the audience. It was a meeting of perhaps 25 persons, mostly consisting of small but budding entrepreneurs from rural areas across Jamaica – each with (what I thought) was an excellent skill at creating at least one unique product. They were great at creating the product, but they were there eager to learn how to make money from it, and at the same time to showcase their fabulous inventions.

As the meeting began, I was approached to speak for a few minutes to this audience and hopefully offer some tips from my own experience as a serial entrepreneur. As it turns out, being forced to formulate thoughts in an extremely small amount of time, forces one to think about the top most important things that would be relevant to a budding entrepreneur. I later thought to myself, that had I time to prepare, the context would have been more eloquent, but perhaps less actionable.

What I jotted down in those final minutes before making my way to the podium were four letters representing an acronym for what I thought were the four words that I would want to leave this audience with at the end of my presentation. Fortunately for me, these four letters spelt A-C-T-S which then led me to begin speaking about the first of those four words, “Action” (don’t you love it when things work out like that).

Action

I am not sure there is a more important point than this. They say that 70% of success is just showing up, and I have rephrased that in my mind to say that 70% of success is just doing something. I often talk to persons that have what I think are very brilliant ideas, which I have yet seen them act on. Often, they are perfectionists waiting on all the stars to align before taking a few steps. I believe that they might be waiting for quite a long time.

It is important in business not to always over think things – especially at the start – as business isn’t just science, but also somewhat art. Diving in, getting your feet wet- this is the most important aspect to getting that heavy ball rolling. Once a ball is rolling, it is far easier to tip the ball in different directions. Once you’ve jumped in the pool, you’ll be surprised at how you will learn to swim because you have to. It is more important to do something with 70% effectiveness or correctness, than to have it 100% perfect in your mind but never act on it.

Act. Jump in. Keep moving.

Common Sense

I knew for most of my life I wanted to eventually be a business owner. And I use to believe I needed to receive some sort of professional training to do this, leading me to a Masters Degree in Business Administration. Several businesses later, I look back and realize that most of the decisions I made on a daily basis all came from using everyday common sense. While I didn’t have formal Entrepreneurship training, what I have been was a customer my whole life, and hence I could always think from the mind of a customer in many of my decisions. We don’t need to know about everything about our business – that’s what hiring people who are better than you in different areas are for. What we need is a passion for what we are doing, the willingness to do it, the decision to take forward actions, and the rest will follow – one common sense decision at a time.

Time

They say you become an expert at something after doing it for 10,000 hours. Now, while I haven’t fact checked that, it is certainly evident to me that once “diving in the pool,” and being in the world of your business as much as you can, that you WILL become an expert at it. Wherever we put our energies, we tend to expand these areas of our lives. If we are constantly thinking about our business for example, in random discussion with strangers, we might tend to lead a conversation towards what’s on our mind all the time, and pick up a few things from them we never thought about.

It wasn’t about the formal training. It wasn’t about the perfect planning. The idea is, after we have dived in, and continued to swim for hours and hours, we eventually become an expert swimmer. Business, as in life, teaches us from our mistakes. By practice, we become better.

Subconscious

It seems as if children of entrepreneurs often make an easier transition to becoming an entrepreneur.

Our subconscious mind plays a major role in who we become, and recognizing this powerful elephant is extremely important in making our first steps in business. Many may grow up with an influenced belief, for example, that entrepreneurship is taken on exclusively by the extremely smart or the extremely rich. Or that it is something unattainable or too difficult to attain.

And so many settle for the mental safety net of mediocrity.

Recognizing fear, or the power that your mind can be having over your progress, is not always easy - as we are not trained for this. The part of your brain that is reading and understanding this writing is our conscious brain, and that can only take us so far. The more powerful part of our mind is our subconscious, and that part is more of an influence over our actions than any other single thing. It can be holding us back in ways our conscious mind has yet to recognize. This therefore, is an extremely important area for us to focus on in our goal to become an entrepreneur, or even just better people.

So how do we retrain our subconscious? Firstly, we must take quiet time to self-reflect and recognize the various ways it might be holding us back. Recognizing this alone will give us half the success. The other half will be actively taking steps (using our conscious mind) to fight the tendencies that our mind has to tell us we are not good enough or smart enough or rich enough or that it will be too much work for us to handle or that the business will fail. By taking daily steps against this tendency, and constantly and consciously practicing this, we will eventually start retraining our subconscious mind.

Let us say a fear of failure is holding you back. Recognizing this will be extremely important in your process. The next step is to mentally visualize the worst case scenario if the business fails. Are you prepared to live with the consequences? Once you have consciously visualized this worst case scenario and moved past it, you have essentially told your subconscious to shut the ____ up!

As with all entrepreneurs, I am in a constant learning experience of life and business. And as I have taken those “first steps” many times, it is my hope that I can share with you the few pointers I have learned therein, with a hope that somewhere in that you may gather some useful tips.

So dive in and take the first (even if not perfect) steps. Spend some time and energy in the field you are interested in and you will be surprised at how far that goes in making you an expert in that industry. Tap into your common sense, and as part of that, use that common sense to fight the elephant of your subconscious mind!

As always, Godspeed.

Temporary Abode

“I think you’re depressed,” this (Medical) Doctor once said to me over drinks. I laughed and laughed. He had stumbled across and read my blog in full and was of the opinion that I was sad. I wasn’t surprised, as society seems to prefer to not have to think about and question different aspects of life as I often do in my (writing) thinking, but rather to flow with the strong tides of what is always accepted as normal. That would therefore lead to anyone thinking against the grain, to be viewed as crazy – or at the least, most tend to associate deep thinking with sad thinking.

Fortunately, I have already come to terms with my non-acceptance of what is considered normal. And while I am sure I am not depressed, I do accept that since my first inclination is always to think about things from a blank slate rather than a society-directed version of it – that I am either a touch of crazy, or the majority of the world is. But whichever is true, there are often good things that can arise out of “avoid-the-box" thinking.

I do remind myself I am going to die and write about it a lot more than what would seem normal, and I can see how that could seem a bit morbid. On the contrary however, for those thoughts to be morbid, the central theme of those thoughts would have to be about death itself, which it is not. In fact, the reminder that we are going to die, is completely about only one theme, and that is - Life. The fact that we are going to die should remain the main influencing factor in our daily lives and decisions. Hence, the concept of Death and it’s subsequent impact on life, is a topic which will continue to intrigue me.

I once asked a friend a simple question, “If I could tell you the exact date when you are going to die, would you be living any differently now?” He was pretty sure he would be. My next question was “What difference does it make now that you don’t know when it will be?” I believe I am still awaiting that answer. It is easy for us to live our daily lives within the confines of where our conscious brain is guiding us. The concept of death, because it seems to be something which will be a distant occurrence, coupled with it being a concept which is not entirely “digestible” by our mental processes – causes for it to be a concept usually held within the subconscious area of our brain. Almost to the extent that we somewhat  “forget” about it often, as our everyday lives play out.

Many times, in the moment of hearing about someone’s sudden death, or even while attending a funeral for example, one tends to question the meaning of life, if even for that moment. They are given a reminder that life is not permanent. This periodic nudge pushes the concept of death from subconscious to conscious mind, and we take some time to “consciously” think about it. Days later (sometimes weeks) those thoughts move back to their more permanent residence.

During the time the thoughts remained in your conscious brain, would you have made any decisions in those times differently? If so, should it not be that we are thinking the same way all the time? Sometimes I want to shake people (most times myself) and shout “Hello! Remember to live! This isn’t a rehearsal! Let’s do this!”

In everything we do, let us remember to "Live Consciously."

What I Learned as I entered my Thirties (Part One)

It seems to me, that the 30’s is indeed a very interesting decade in the life of someone. Certainly, it has began to seem that way for me already in my early ventures into it. For me, it has appeared to be a sort of “Transition Decade,” between what society would probably call “Young Adults” (Your 20’s), and…well…”No longer young adults?” (your 40’s).  After completing “being young,” your thirties is that decade that will prepare you for the “rest of your life.” That decade that will serve as a catalyst for what you will likely settle into thereafter. It is the decade when you begin to shake off SOME of the “youthful” activities, and start to look forward to more “mature” enjoyments. To put it simply, here are a few things I learned about as I entered my thirties:

·        I cared less about what others thought. I have never been one to care much about this, as I preferred to enjoy the freedom of not being a “football” of other people’s opinion. Thinking against the grain without fear of image has in many instances brought me a great deal of success as well, thereby concretizing my stance on this. I am human though, and hence I can’t say I was anywhere near 100% free of this worry. I would say my teens and my 20’s did have it’s share of wanting to be liked by as many as possible, being bothered by what persons thought of me, etc, and in many ways as humans we never really escape this 100%. But I must say that as I entered my thirties most of what was left in this area began to shake off a bit more. By now, I have started to figure out who I am as a person and am more comfortable accepting myself rather than seeking acceptance from others. Once again, this is a freedom I quite enjoy.

·        I tended to have less, but more meaningful relationships. My 20’s was a series of constant lessons about people. How people, in their desire to look out for themselves first, will often betray you. It was a decade of lessons about trust, and as the decade closed out, I trusted less. As a result of trusting less, I veered to valuing persons I could rely on a lot more. Also, because I started figuring out who I was more and more, I knew the kind of company I no longer enjoyed, and conversely, those few that I did. This led to much fewer, but closer ties, as I entered my thirties.

·        I made a decision to become a Morning Person – As I approached late twenties and into my early thirties, I was in a constant cycle of dragging myself out of bed every morning to go to work and subsequently not being able to sleep early enough in the night as a result. I decided one day that I would end the suffering. Surely enduring this torture everyday needed to stop. I envied others who awoke with a big burst of energy to start their day. Then, just like that, I made a decision to become a morning person and I did. Ever since then. The first morning I did endure the notorious morning alarm. But that night I set a rule – If I could read one page of a book right now (didn’t matter if I’d actually be reading, but if I did…) and would fall asleep, then I would go immediately to sleep. Some nights that was early, and others that was late. But I responded to my body’s requests and I have never woken from an alarm since. I hope for everyone to end this great unnecessary human suffering. More on this in a later article.

·        I became more confident in my thoughts – My teens and early twenties saw me having many strong views on varying topics. However, a self-acceptance of my inexperience kept me in a bit of doubt as to the accuracy of those thoughts. After all, how could I be right if so many humans are continuously doing things a totally different way? As time passed, and I could have first hand experience with these thoughts and others, and see what worked for me in my life and what didn’t, I started to become more confident thinking about things in certain ways.

·        I became more tolerant of others – Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t like people that much. It’s just that before, I use to get annoyed a lot more easily when people thought differently than I did. As I grew as a person, I developed further, what I think, is one of the most valuable traits one can possess – Being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand their perspective, and even if you don’t, accepting that people have different experiences in life and hence the “lens” through which they perceive things can make them see things a lot differently than you will. This single understanding changed a lot of things for me, and increased the depth of my relationships.

·        I became more aware of my Mortality – Don’t get me wrong, I knew from I had even little sense as a kid, that humans eventually die. But that isn’t the same thing as being aware of my mortality – not to me anyway. And in my early thirties, it isn’t yet that “mid-life crisis I’m now counting down the clock lets drive a sports car” phase. It’s more of a phase where, having experienced a few episodes of death from persons you are connected to, and also attending a few funerals by now, you become aware that death isn’t something that we don’t need to worry about for now (as we thought as kids). It is real. It is inescapable. It is happening sometimes to 30-somethings as well, and well, it makes you contemplate what it is you really want out of this one life. While we are on the topic of death I heard a quote once on it that speaks to why we shouldn’t fear it. It was simple yet profound, and I have never been able to forget it. “Death is not an experience in Life: we do not live to experience death.” It seems to me that so many of us live “unconsciously” instead of living “consciously.” Knowing you are going to die and living accordingly isn’t morbid, it is reality. It allows you to live AWAKE.

·       My Ambition became to be happy – This was perhaps, one of the most important lessons of my life. In my early twenties, my ambitions usually consisted of future success defined as a function of material wealth and position. As time went by, I realized that once people were above the basic level of poverty, they really derived no additional benefit in overall happiness from vast material wealth. Do we feel happy when we buy that new car or new house? Certainly. But just as when you enter a room with a distinct smell, you can only really notice it until you get accustomed to it, it is the same with material possessions. Once you have adjusted to what you have, the net benefit in overall happiness is almost nonexistent. Instead, I have realized that it is the Mind which translates how we see external things. And since we know life will be a series of ups and downs in life, it seemed far more important for me to focus on the mind, in order to be able to enhance the level of experience I get with the outside world. The outside world of events, over which I have little control over many areas anyway.

I left this article incomplete for quite some time, as really, life teaches us so many things, and hence I could never really complete an article on “what I have learned.” This realization allowed me to end this article where it reached today. Sharing information never stops, so as I do with many of my articles, I end Part One.

Why Training an Elephant can make you a lot Happier

Wow…it seems as if it was the other day when I wrote the last article on my blog. The date stamp shows one and half years ago, and the disbelief reminds me how life passes by in an instant. It makes me wonder if the thoughts that occupied my mind so much during the last 18 months, to the point where I had not even the clarity of mind to write, were even important. I am reminded of a quote from some dude (can never remember the name and not important enough anyway) “I have had many problems in my life. Most of which never happened…”

I awoke this beautiful Sunday morning and sat outside in the shade - the clear blue skies, the cool breeze and the hills around me reminding me of some of the simple wonders of life. I took a sip of Blue Mountain Coffee, and for that moment, I was living in the present. My thoughts were no where else, besides listening to the chirping of the birds, feeling the cool air on my face, smelling the freshly cut grass, and savoring sip by sip, one of the world’s greatest discoveries. Happiness, they say, is found most within the moments that force us to be in the present, and least in the moments which cause us to think away in distance. Once again, I don’t remember who “they” is, but I’m sure you will find it if you search. “They” also referenced activities that were tested, for example Showering and also Sex. Showering showed signs of the least happiness as persons’ thoughts tended to wander the most. Activities like Sex and exercise, and even spending time with family and loved ones, showed the highest signs of happiness as subjects were the most “in the now.” One thing I started to do after reading that was to begin each morning with a focus on savoring every sip of my coffee. Let’s hope it kick starts a trend for me for the days ahead.

I had a plan for my next article to be on the topic of “Tipping,” (which I will eventually get to – hopefully not in another 18 months), and truth be told, I opened the blank sheet today with the intention to write about this. The moment I checked when I last wrote made me start to think about the last 18 months, and my fingers took over the rest. For me writing is easiest with a clear mind, and I am in disbelief I had not possessed this clarity for that long. Were my activities during that period so important that I could not stop to smell the roses (grass)? Will they matter at the end of my life?

I find that humans, including myself, do the strangest things. We live everyday as if we will live forever. If I could somehow tell you the day of your death right now, would you live the same way? If not, does it matter that I can’t tell you? They say two things are certain – Death and Taxes. But there are two more I’d like to add – Days and Nights. Every man (or woman) born of a woman, WILL have a life of Days and Nights. Literally and Figuratively. Every person will experience their share of good times (days) and hard times (nights), and no man (woman) – rich, poor, smart, ahh not so smart, white, black – will escape. It is certain. Everyone has a past and a struggle story. And everyone has a series of moments where life was near perfect for that instance. So here it is. There you have it – your life ahead WILL have struggles. And it WILL have moments of sheer awesomeness, and they WILL follow each other. Every day will be followed by night and every night followed by day. How will you choose to capitalize on the days, and get through the nights? Surely knowing and expecting the nights in advance should better allow us to cope with it – if even a little. A life of someone who was able to enjoy the days to the fullest, and make the most of the “night situations,” will surely have the best outcome.

And how much of it will matter in the final moments? But we know all this, and yet still somehow manage to get caught in the day to day, somehow believing we are invincible, and forgetting about our temporary visit here, and what truly matters to us as a result. I believe that as humans, our subconscious plays a much bigger role in our lives than we give it credit for. The powers of the Conscious and Subconscious brain was best described to me as a man riding an elephant. The Man representing the Conscious brain, and the Elephant representing the Subconscious. The Man thinks he is in control of the Elephant and where it is going, but really the Elephant is a much more significant element of his destiny.

Perhaps therefore, there might be more benefit in attempting to re-train our Subconscious. How do we do that? More on that in a future article, but suffice it to say for now that constant practice of differing and desired routines will eventually do the trick. If I tell you to lock your fingers of both hands in each other, you will no doubt automatically have the same thumb over the other thumb – even if you did this one million times. Yet there is no reason why that particular thumb needs to be on top in a symmetrical situation. Your subconscious chose this. In order to change this you must practice to do the opposite over and over a thousand times till you have retrained yourself. Now considering this is a decision our subconscious made for us without us even realizing, can we even imagine how many decisions it is making for us daily that are actually significantly affecting our lives? If you didn’t do the exercise in this paragraph, I would strongly suggest you try it. It may change your life and how you look at your decisions, forever.

Once again, I’m not a man of answers, I’m a man of questions – and usually that question is “why.” But sometimes I find, the answers are in the questions themselves, and if not, the questions lead us to them on their own. And if you think all this talk of death is morbid…well….you’re probably right. Maybe I just don’t think about it that way. I find usually that reminding myself that one day I’m going to die, is probably the single biggest motivational factor for many of the actions I take that give me the most happiness.

Until we meet again, may you live a life of LOVE and HAPPINESS and enjoy every sip of your coffee. As for me, I think I’ll have a refill…

New Year's Cogitation

January one two thousand and thirteen.

Today I contemplated for the first time what this date really means to me. I mean, it is the first day of the Calendar. I get that. The start of a “new year.” But, according to which calendar? If we think about it some more, a calendar is just a system of organizing days for various reasons. It isn’t that the world starts over every 365 days. It continues. Time moves on. January 1^st is one day further into the future than December 31^st. Also, what if several centuries ago, a certain number of days weren’t dropped off the calendar we now use? Would new year’s actually be next week in time?

For me, a “new year” won’t be a new year because it represents the first of 365 days on an invented calendar. It won’t be a celebration of a new Calendar Year. But it will maintain a very important aspect of my life.

Several days when things just don’t go the way I’d prefer, the day can become a series of negativity and mood kills. Days like those, I often simply, go to sleep. For many times, the next day offers me a fresh perspective. A chance to refresh. A chance to start over. A chance for a new approach. A chance to be the person I wanted to be yesterday.

So today, January 1 2013, I will start over. I will be the person I wanted to be in 2012. Today I have been given another chance. Today I will choose to reset internally. Today I will choose to make this day, January 1 2013, the day I will awake again, on the dawn of a new “year.”

Or more specifically, on the dawn of a new “me.”

Happy “New Years” Day.

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What I learned from the Elections (and why I'm not watching)

I must say, the excitement of the last couple weeks leading up to the 2012 US Elections has been quite interesting. And not necessarily because I care about the outcome…because I don’t. But because it has been quite remarkable to see where the energies and interests of so many lie. Truth be told, I probably would care, if I knew how one result over the other, would impact my life in any way. But I am not even a US citizen, albeit if I were, I would probably be wondering the same thing.

Let me be clear about something. If I were a US citizen, I should ensure I am adequately informed, and also ensure I do my part in influencing the outcome, based on my acquired information. An outcome that could potentially affect my life and those around me. This thought leaves me a bit concerned.

I need to be adequately informed. What do we mean by this? We need to ensure we have accurate information about how one particular candidate being chosen will affect various matters of economic concern, as one important example. The issue is, that most of our information comes from campaigning. What the candidate SAYS he is going to do. Frankly, I would be afraid to vote. God forbid I was the deciding vote who put a candidate in power who ended up negatively impacting the country, and more importantly, my life.

It is amazing to me to see how many spent COUNTLESS hours in and around matters and publicity concerning this election,  often with much to say, many of whom either don’t qualify to vote, or just didn’t bother to.

What fascinates us so much about the election to spend all this time watching tv, reading social media sites, reading the newspapers? Is it that we feel that the person we want to win is definitely the best choice for ourselves, our loved ones, and the country on a whole, from an objective standpoint? Or is it an emotional draw to one particular candidate, or against one? Is it that their speeches are better? They are better speakers? That we have an attachment to a minority (or the opposite of a minority in this case - whatever that is)? That we have an attachment to the underdog in an election? What really represents our affiliations? The Elections will be determined shortly after I finish this paper. How will your day tomorrow be different? How will your year be different? No doubt it will be, but do we know how?

What I find at play also, is what I call the “Depend on the Lottery” effect. We all know those few who perhaps don’t take matters of their financial success in their own hands. Some probably will give statements like “when I win the lottery, I will have money,” and simply do little much else about that. Their life’s determination is moved from a dependency on their control of their life to that of a random draw. Perhaps an election is a way for us to hope for better and expecting these results to come from the outcome of an election. If he wins, life will be better, and so on.

I care about the outcome of my life, my friends and family, and the human population on a whole. And I also think that we ARE RESPONSIBLE to make the world a better place in the best way we see fit. Perhaps I have played devil’s advocate tonight (yet once again), but it is merely in the hope that we start thinking about the very system that is the process in which we determine our future leaders, and by extension, future results.

The goal was to provoke thought. And I look forward to your comments.

Follow @m_ramchandani

Why a Camera is Bad for your Life

A wise person once told me, that the mind is a constantly oscillating pendulum between the past and the future. We are always thinking either about things that happened in the past, or we are worrying about the future. When we think about the past, it often comes with regret and pain. When we think about the future, it is often coupled with anxiety and worry.  "Now" is all that matters (to which he snapped his fingers repeatedly to reinforce us being there now). The Past is Dead. The Future is Unborn. The Present is all we have.

Live for the now.

I have no doubt that much of your past is happy. The point is, it is the past. Every moment you spend thinking about the past is a moment you stop seizing the present. Mind you, sometimes thinking about the past IS you enjoying your present. And thinking about the future has importance in planning. After all, I don’t want you spending all your money today and waking up tomorrow blaming me. I think the moral of the story here is don’t overdo it. Don’t lose out on now because you you are busy living in the past or future. Now is all you have. Quotes I love on living now:

“Yesterday is History. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a Gift. That’s why they call it the Present.”

“If you live everyday as if it were your last. One Day you will be right.”

(And my personal favorite) “You have enough time to sleep when you’re dead.” (Granted sometimes I do feel dead).

It took me this long to get to my point on purpose. I find I get a lot of heat on many of my ideologies, including this one, so I ensure to exercise great caution in making things clear before my brutal statements. Here goes.

Cameras in moments like vacations should be banned. “Spend less time capturing the moments and more time enjoying them” (I actually made that one up. Can you tell?)

I absolutely hate cameras on vacations. I find my companions to always be spending so much time capturing the moments for  future playback, than actually enjoying those moments fully. The most amazing thing could be occurring in front of me, and they are watching it through a digital lens, thinking about the angle of the shot. Most times, the playbacks don’t even occur as often as we think they will, neither can it provide the true multi-dimensional experience. Let your eyes be your camera, and your memories be your playback.  (Yes, I made that one up too.)

Damn I should write this down. Oh wait…