The Entrepreneurial Spirit: Starting a Business

The Entrepreneurial Spirit: Starting a Business

The Entrepreneurial Spirit

Starting a business is exciting, and scary. Let’s explore how to tap in to your Entrepreneurial spirit​!

I’ve started more businesses than I’d care to admit. In my experience, it’s a bit like driving through a heavy fog where you are only able to see a few feet in front of the windshield — you don’t know what’s up ahead until it’s upon you. However, the longer you are an entrepreneur, the better you can navigate through that fog.

As I’ve been driving through the fog for over a decade now, I thought I would take today’s post and boil down 15 of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the past decade of building and growing businesses. Consider these tips “stuff I wish I had known when I was young and stupid.” This is what has allowed me to develop my Entrepreneurial spirit  Let’s get to them.

1. Don’t listen to statistics. People love to throw around the statistic that 95 percent of business fail. Don’t listen to that — it’s an excuse to make you feel comfortable about giving up. If that number is even correct, it’s because most people don’t commit, they don’t follow through to the end or they are stupid in how they manage their money.

2. Do something you like. Don’t start something you won’t want to do in five years. Because if you are successful, you’ll still be doing this in five years.

3. You are not going to know everything.In fact, you probably won’t know anything when you first start. Start anyway. When I first got into real-estate investing, I had no idea how to buy a property, rent a house, or evict a tenant. I figured it all out “on the job.” You will too.Entrepreneurial spirit 

4. Finish what you start. Nearly every entrepreneur I know suffers from the same curse: we like to start things more than we like to finish them. In other words, if you are a good entrepreneur, you’ll have a lot of great ideas. Most of them would probably work out well and make you a lot of money. However, that doesn’t mean you should pursue them. Pick one and go with it until it dies or it makes you rich enough to buy a private island.

5. Never partner with someone because it’s convenient, think like an entrepreneur. Partner with someone because it makes you stronger. The wrong partner will drive you crazy, make you hate your work and end up causing more problems than they solve.

6. You are going to suck at managing people.It’s OK, we all do at first. However, this is one task you must get better about. Hire an assistant right now, even if it’s only a virtual one for $3 an hour. It will give you some great training on managing, with little downside.

7. Social media probably isn’t that important. We just pretend it is so we can look at cat pictures on Facebook. I’d recommend installing a Facebook newsfeed blocker.

8. Stop designing business cards, logos, business plans and stationeryThey don’t matter right now. Go build your business and stop doing busy work that makes you feel like you are accomplishing something.

9. There is a fine line between dedicated and obsessed. Screw the line. Trample right over it. You need to cross that line continually, so never let anyone tell you that you are too obsessed with your idea. I’m completely and overwhelmingly obsessed with real-estate investing — and it’s OK. This is one of the best ways to know that you have developed that Entrepreneurial spirit!  What are you obsessed with?

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10. Don’t quit your job too soon. Yes, you’ll have more time to build your business, but let’s be honest: there are 168 hours in a week, only 40 are consumed by your job and another 50 by sleep. You have plenty of time if you would just hustle and turn off Netflix. But don’t be afraid to quit your job if you can afford it.

11. Focus on your higher paying tasks. Divide up your tasks and determine what your “$10 per hour” tasks are and what your “$1,000 per hour” tasks are. Focus on doing more “$1,000 per hour” tasks and fewer “$10 per hour” ones. For more on this, read Want to Make $1,000 or More Per Hour? And yes, you do a lot of $1,000 an hour tasks, even if you don’t realize it. Just do more of them.

12. Your spouse and kids matters more than your business. Never forget that.

13. Read — a lot. If you don’t have time, listen to audiobooks. And not just business books. Read motivational books, self-help books, success books, fiction books, biographies — whatever. This was one of the best ways to develop my Entrepreneurial spirit

14. Get up earlier. Yes, you can, and you should. I don’t care if you are not a morning person. That’s an excuse lazy people use. For more advice on this, read The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. It’s life changing.

15. Don’t worry about raising money. Focus on building a business so incredible people throw money at you.

Like driving down a lonely highway on a dark, foggy night, entrepreneurship can be a little scary. But hopefully at least one of the above tips will help you navigate through the fog a little easier with more confidence. If you are just getting started with your business, just remember this: keep driving through the fog. Your future self will thank you.

Do you have any additional tips you’d like to add? Or something you’d like to expand upon? Leave your comments below and let’s continue the conversation. I would love to hear your story on developing your Entrepreneurial spirit.

 Skylab apps CEO & Founder, Dean Grey, has excelled at identifying business opportunities and staying focused on the positive aspects of these opportunities. Realizing how networking is your greatest strength, Grey decided to take this idea and apply it to one of today’s most commonly-used technologies: mobile applications.

Finally, if you think this post could help one of your family members or friends, share it on your favorite social-media channel. You never know whose life you might change.

The author Steve Wolf is a serial entrepreneur and currently the Director of Sales and Marketing at Skylab Apps. Along with the CEO of Skylab Apps Dean Grey Contributed to the article. If you are interested in finding out more about what Skylab Apps is all about and the entrepreneurs that make up this company, please check us out at www.Skylabapps.com

How I made $1,200 in 15 Minutes from a beach in Nicaragua

How I made $1,200 in 15 Minutes from a beach in Nicaragua

It is not everyday that you really get to feel all of your hard work pay off. When I started currency trading 3 years ago, it was hard. There was a learning curve, and at times it seemed daunting and elusive to actually be successful at trading.

I really believe that when attempting anything new, there is going to be a period of time where you just suck at it. When you are a person who really likes to win, it can be difficult to attempt new things. The trick is that you simply need to accept the fact that you are a rookie, a noob, a kook or whatever and that you are not going to be killing it one month out of the gate.

Trading currencies has been a game changer for me. Coming from the sales and marketing world, investing in general seemed to be for brainiac types who were really good at numbers. I knew that I could always make money in a situation where there was something to sell, but could i have the same success as an investor, or as a FOREX Trader?

When I first found the Forex market I was vacationing in Bali Indonesia on a surf trip. On a day where there wasn’t any surf to be had, I started looking for ways to make money from a laptop…. (Watch the video, it will explain the rest so I can get on with my story)

Once I found the market and made my first couple hundred dollars before the sun came up one random morning, I was hooked! Unfortunately I never took in to consideration that in order to win at trading, you are going to take losses, and I was a guy who didn’t like to lose. I proceeded down a losing spiral of lost profits and nearly decimated my entire trading account in less then a months time.

I took a break from trading and was feeling pretty beat up by the market. Losing can really screw with you when catch a bad streak like I did. I was not prepared for the emotional turmoil that ensued. Unlike anything I had attempted before, currency trading required me do adopt a high level of emotional intelligence in order to be successful at it. So I got back up, dusted myself off, and got back to it.

I went back to  the school where I had originally learned how to trade. I went through the course again with no expectations and a new willingness to learn. 

The curriculum didn’t change, my perspective did. This time around, I was a lot more humble. After all I got my ass kicked. After putting in 6 months of hard work in, I starting to see some positive results in the form of substantial equity growth in my account. I was ready to take the show on the road, and see if I could really do this from anywhere in the world.

I headed down to Nicaragua with my girlfriend with 3 goals in mind:

  • Propose to my girlfriend
  • Surf some big waves
  • Pay for the whole trip currency trading from my laptop

I scored big time. The surf was macking, and I was pretty sure my girlfriend was going to say yes to marrying me. I was just waiting for the right moment to propose. I started doing my pre-sessions & technical analysis on the market looking for some trades one morning, and then just like that, a couple trade set ups presented themselves and I pulled the trigger!

— I was sitting in a youth hostel using their shotty wifi and hoping to God that the internet did not go out before I closed my trades. With in 15 minutes of trading I managed to pull 7 scalped trades netting me $1,272.96 after commissions. —

I closed my laptop, ordered an iced coffee and just sat for 10 minutes staring at the ocean and feeling like I had just pulled off a huge victory! I soaked it up, I proved 15 minutes of tradingthat not only could I trade, but I could do it from a shitty hostel with bad wifi in Central America. Later that evening, I asked my girlfriend to marry me and she said yes.

So I got 2 out of 3 of my goals done. Even though $1,300 was not enough to cover the entire trip, I felt like $1,300 for 15 minutes of my time was well worth taking the rest of the trip for myself and to celebrate my new engagement. Besides, the surf was macking remember!

The moral of the story is that If you put your mind to something and stick with it, you can do it. The path to success is not linear, but it follows a trend!

If you want to know more about how you can become a currency trader and make profits in the market from a lap top anywhere in the world click the logo below and find out more about the FX365 Institute!

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The Joys and Freedoms of Working Remotely

The Joys and Freedoms of Working Remotely

Do you ever dream of being able to run a business from anywhere in the world? Have you ever found yourself looking online for different ways you could travel abroad and somehow make an income while you were half way around the world.

Over the past decade I have been perfecting this skill. The truth is that it is not as easy as it sounds. This is especially true if you are used to a 9 to 5 standard day job. The dream of one day quitting that job and breaking free from the chains of the corporate world can be elusive and fleeting.

When I was 22 I left the country for the first time. I had always wanted to travel but I was a troublemaker growing up and spent the later part of my teen years in rehab getting sober. By the time I was 20, I had been sober for a couple of years and my life was back on track, so I decided to leave America and embark on an adventure.

I signed up for a study abroad trip to Spain, paid the money and prepared to leave home. To be perfectly honest, this trip wouldn’t be my first time out of America, I frequently went to Mexico in my teen years growing up in San Diego. None of my trips to Mexico had any real cultural importance. In fact, I don’t even really remember what transpired during most of those trips and never really made farther the the Tijuana bars on Revolution Blvd. This trip was going to be different, I was with college kids, and there was some structure, so I figured that was a good place to start.

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I remember getting off the plane in Madrid. I was bustled away from the group with my host mom who didn’t speak a lick of English and was given a room in her little apartment. I was super jet lagged and had never been on a flight that long in my life so I passed out immediately.  When I woke up it was dusk outside. I walked down the 4 flights of stairs and sat out on the side walk in the neighborhood I was staying in listening to all of the sounds of the city and taking it all in. The smells, the cars, the food, everything was different, I didn’t know anyone around, and I was far from home. I was in LOVE.

This first encounter of Wanderlust was intoxicating to me. I vividly remember it and I was so grateful to be in that moment experiencing life again in a new way for the first time.

I thought to myself, what if I could do this all of the time, what if I could just travel a lot? It was sometime on that trip that I decided I was going to need to find a line of work that was going to allow me to do this. About a week before the program ended, I told my professors running the program that I wouldn’t be accompanying them back to America, and stayed in western Europe an additional 4 months traveling around Spain, Italy and France.

Once I ran out of money, I came home. At that time I was running a Mortgage office which surprisingly was still standing after my almost 5 months of me being gone. It didn’t matter though because I came home in September 2008 just in time to watch the housing market collapse completely. I was screwed. I had done really well for a kid who dropped out of college to get rich but it was all back firing now and traveling was the last thing on my mind.

After the dust settled I was about $190,000 in debt and in need of a new career. I had decided to go back to college a year earlier and had about a year and a half left for my undergrad degree so I figured I would spend the next 2 years finishing college and finding a career that would set me up to travel the globe and make money while I was doing so.

The first business that I found that worked really well for me was multi-level marketing. It seemed like a great fit, I was recruited in to a company being sold the dream that if I spent a couple years working hard at building an organization, it would eventually take off and continue to pay me residually. This was PERFECT. I could build the business for a couple years to about $100K per year then disappear to Indonesia

For a first timer in MLM, I did incredibly well, and I build that $100k per year income in a short amount of time but it was short live. The first company I was with asked me to leave and the second company I joined eventually went belly up. Also every time I would leave the country on a trip, I found myself on my phone or laptop the whole time putting out fires and that was just plane stupid.

When I finally walked away from the industry I decided to put my entrepreneur hat back on. I had raised some money for a tech start-up and was actively learning how to trade currencies in the FOREX market.

I never lost site of my desires and dreams of being able to make money from a Laptop; I just needed to be a little more resourceful. I found that as long as I can offer real value to a client even being a great distance away, that my capability to earn money anywhere where I was in the world would be there.

So over the past 5 years I have been doing just that. Most of the consulting work that I do is never from an office, maybe my home office. I do keep an office at the Currency trading school that I have a long-term contract with but they have always been cool with me leaving and making my own schedule. Again, I attribute that leniency to the results I am able to deliver. The moral of the story is that there is a million ways to make money and add value to a person, place or business, however you need to be resourceful if you are going to do this from a laptop half a world away.

I have put together my top 5 tips to finding your own way to take your business on the road with you for good. Read “Top 5 Tips to Working remotely.” To see what it’s all about

It’s a wrap we’re married

It’s a wrap we’re married

 

It’s a wrap, we’re married!

Keeley and I want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for sharing this chapter of our life. The wedding was absolutely amazing. Better than Keeley and I could have ever imagined or anticipated. We hoped and planned for the best, but what transpired over the week in Costa Rica went far beyond our expectations.

All of this could not have been possible without the love and support from our friends and family who graciously made the journey from all over the world to join us on our special day. Our hearts are filled with gratitude and we are so elated over the entire experience. We rode zip lines in the jungle, surfed in the warm Central American water, did lots of yoga and got married on the beach with our toes in the sand and an amazing Costa Rican sunset as our backdrop.

The most amazing part of our wedding week in Tamarindo was how everything just flowed. The weather called for pouring rain on our raining day, it didn’t rain a drop. We were able to spend time with all of our guests who came which was important to us because everyone made a long journey to get to Costa Rica.

To top it off, not only did our guests get along, they all made friends with each other which is so cool. I don’t know if I can attribute that to the quality of friends Keeley and I have or if we just got lucky on when it came to personalities that just jived. Either way, I have never seen a group of people in my life get along and engage with each other so well especially with such a diverse group of people from so many different walks of life. It was just really neat to experience that!

I am writing this final newsletter/blog from Santa Teresa, Costa Rica (about 4 hours south of where we got married). I have finally had some down time to take in the entire wedding experience. As I look through the photos, and see the posts coming through on Facebook and Instagram, I am filled even more with gratitude. I can honestly say that this wedding was the best day of my life. To be able to share this beautiful country and our wedding day with our families and closest friends meant the world to me.

We were able to capture this experience in time and essence of the entire week through photos and video of the wedding and all of the activities leading up to and after the wedding. As a result of this, I am going to make a very cool video outlining the entire trip. Look out in the next couple of weeks for that as I will put it up in another blog post along with links to download all of the photos from the wedding.

Also, keeley and I have decided to have two different receptions sometime this summer in San Diego and North Carolina for all of the guests who simply could not make the trip. We will send out a newsletter announcing that when we choose the dates.

Until then, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for everyone who came, it was absolutely magical!!!

Love Steve and Keeley.

 

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