Have you Encountered these Entrepreneurial Items?

Today I came across 2 kinds of Entrepreneurial ‘Items’ if I may call them, only because they behaved like typical items.

Here they are:

First one will take up the job you give to him in a hurry showing that he is very busy. He will even give you an approximate quote and ask for advance. You give advance and take a date from this ‘item’ to come back to check on the status of your job.

On the day of meeting you call his mobile to reconfirm that you will be visiting his works; this ‘item’ will pick up the phone and when you say who you are, the phone will automatically disconnect and then when you redial, the mobile will be switched off.  You try again after couple of hours and one of his sidekicks will pick up the mobile phone and give you some BS excuse. Your day is gone.

Next day you try again and you get him on his mobile, finally. He gives you some lame excuse and asks you to come on a new day and time.

On that decided day and time you arrive at his works. Looking at you he immediately will say, ‘I have given your work and half of it is done…I deliberately did not complete it because the budget is increasing.’ You argue that he had already given the budget and he will again make excuses that he had given you an approximate budge. He will start calculating the budget in front of you again and give you an increased estimate that is almost double the quote he gave you earlier. At that moment the realization will hit you that this ‘item’ was lying to you and your work has not yet started. When you confront him with this he will say, ‘…I am not forcing you to get your job done with me…you can go elsewhere…’

Don’t think twice! It is better to cancel the order and take back your advance money.

Lesson to be learned:

Never work with a person who is whole and sole of his company; i.e. a proprietary firm. Even if you have to give order to such a kind of firm ensure that they have at least a minimum team to handle the works. If the proprietor is the only person who handle all the departments run away from there. Even if he is cheap, for you he can be a pain in wrong places that is more expensive than the money you will pay him.

Now let me move on to the second entrepreneurial ‘item’.

Second ‘item’ will appear very sincere to you and talk to you very politely. You might think you have got the Right Vendor finally. But the shock is yet to come. This ‘item’ is not capable of doing your job but she cannot say it upfront on your face.

You ask why?

Nobody who is sitting to do a job in the market will say that they cannot do that job. They think it will hurt their reputation; even though they will not be having anything by the name of reputation in their lives.

So how do I know that these kinds of ‘items’ cannot deliver?

Simple! With what these kinds of ‘items’ do in such a situation, one can easily tell.

They will make you jump from your seat by quoting a big price. How big is big? Almost 7 to 10 times the market price!

When you ask how come she is charging so much? She will start giving all those useless excuses about being quality conscious and other BS. For the first time you will look at her office which is the size of a rat hole and wonder if she is charging so much money then how come the office is no bigger than a matchbox?

This is the standard style of these kinds of ‘items’ who cannot do what they claim to do.

Lesson to be learned:

Even if you can afford to pay the high price never give them your business. They will screw your job royally.

In both cases always look for the setup that the proprietor has created and the kind of people working in that setup. Just talk to the employees and you will instantly come to know whether they are sincerely working or just passing the day.

In conclusion: Any business owner who charges less or charges more will not necessarily give you the best job that you desire. Never trust them unless and until you have tested them. This is what you have to learn and develop inside you! Learning to read people who are sitting in the market to take away your money without providing any value is the best education you can give yourself.

Just one more thing: This kind of daily adventure is what makes meeting different people interesting and makes life worth living! You come back home wiser in the evening. 

Cheers!

Rakesh Prasad

5 Things to Focus on Before You Launch Your Product

You have a killer product you are eager to launch in the market. You can't wait for the customers to know and start using it. But hold on a minute. There are 5 points that you should give clarity on to your Sales Soldiers before they hit the market. These 5 points will give all the reason for your Sales Soldiers to go all out and perform thereby bringing in the profits you are looking forward to.

Here they are:

Point 1: How much will they earn by selling your product?

Point 2: Why selling this product is simple &/or easy?

Point 3: What they have to do to make the sales and 

achieve their targets?

Point 4: How they have to do? Give them the process.

Point 5: How doing this way is legal? Tell them what they 

are doing is Right and how it will help them to achieve 

their personal goals.

The Rupees One Lac Question

During one of my interview sessions with one of the business owners I asked, 'Irrespective of the amount you withdraw every month from your company, how much do you think your company should pay you in salary every month?'

The answer was: One Lac Rupees.

I asked the follow up question: 'Why should your company pay you that kind of salary?'

The answer was: (Silence)

Most of the business owners demand big salaries from their own company without understanding what it takes to earn that kind of money in the market.

If only more and more business owners answer the question with great sincerity and work on their answers, they can help their company prosper, themselves become more productive and can take home the salary they dream of taking every month.

The Three Act Story of Steve Jobs that Changed The Human Life

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, 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. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

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.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

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 others’ 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.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

An Entrepreneurial University

Today a different kind of Business School is required. Instead of creating job seekers the Business School should provoke in them to go out and create a Company of their own. The seed of Entrepreneurship has to be sown in them, the day they join the Business School. The purpose must be to create in students a ‘Thinking Process’ so that what today we call the dis-comfort zone becomes their comfort zone and what is known as comfort zone becomes their dis-comfort zone.

After getting a handsome paying job how many of these youngsters have a idea about creating their own Enterprise? I meet employees who want to make a transition from being and Employee to becoming an Entrepreneur, but are not ready to unlearn what they have learned. The result is they never kick start their business or even if they start they fail miserably in their venture. Every morning they walk into their new office just as they went to their office when they were employees; without any creativity, lacking the right enthusiasm and the right knowledge to run their business. They anxiously wait for everything to fall in place all by itself. This is how Entrepreneurs get into depression.

The solution lies not in teaching a fixed syllabus year after year, but in how today’s leaders are building tomorrows Enterprises.

It is never about the topics covered, it is always about the content that is covered in those topics and then how the students apply those contents in their Enterprises.

Do You Work To Keep Your Team Busy or Work To Make Money?

A thought provoking idea that every Entrepreneur should think about:

With enough raw materials, you can keep one worker busy from now until retirement.

But should you do it?

Not if you want to make money!

Making an employee work and profiting from that work are two different things. Putting it precisely - Activating a resource and utilizing a resource are not synonyms.

'Utilizing' a resource means making use of the resource in a way that moves the system towards the Goal.
'Activating' a resource is like pressing the ON switch of a machine; it runs whether or not there is a benefit to be derived from the work it's doing. So, really, achieving a non-bottleneck to its maximum is an act of maximum stupidity.

An implication of these rules is that we must not seek to optimize every resource in the system.

To Your Success & Exponential Growth
RP

Whom Do You Take Advice From?

Whom Do You Take Advice From?

We all are surrounded by people who love to give advice; all you need is to just introduce your challenge or your idea. Most of the time we as an Entrepreneurs take home their advice and start implementing it in our business.

The people offering advice are not bad people. But they are just a bunch of unsuccessful people who love to give advice on the first opportunity. Every individual knows what the other person should and should not do. But when it comes to their success they don’t have the slightest clue where their own life is headed.

The ideas that they churn out are based on their experience of what they know or on what they have read. They themselves have not done anything on the topic that they are talking about. These people can really be dangerous and we should stop ourselves from approaching these guys for advice.

We should search out and take advice from people who have achieved the success that we aspire to achieve. Listening to people who are still struggling will make you only a struggler in your business.

Look out for people who can actually take your business to the next level of growth. 

To Your Exponential Growth

Rakesh Prasad

The Maverick

Prithviraj Chauhan 2008 Animation Movie HQ Part 6

Here's How You Can Take Better Decisions

Hi, Welcome back!

I sincerely believe that you have written the thoughts that were running in your mind when you took that one decision that you thought was going to turn right, but it went sour.

Now, if our poor decisions are based on illusions that we believed in, then what are better decisions based on?

Here it is: ‘Our better decisions are based on realities that we recognized before it was too late.’

Interesting, isn’t it?

But we never look at our realities because they are blunt and harsh. They stare at our face speaking the truth. They make us feel uncomfortable.

Illusions on the other hand are like fairy tales. In a world of illusion everything that happens is full of abundance and prosperity. This is the reason we are instantly attracted to it.

Let me share with you how living in illusion can hamper your life: 

I knew this gentleman who wanted to be a producer in the film industry. He met a C - Grade actor who promised to make him a producer. The actor created an illusion in the mind of the producer that he knew big financers who will join hands with the producer to launch a product. The aspiring producer believed him.

Almost every weekend this C - Grade actor would bring along with him couple of C - Grade actresses to the house of this aspiring producer and in the name of story sitting he would ask the producer to prepare lavish dinner. The poor producer from morning will get into the process of preparing dinner.

What he did not realize that he was getting trapped into a vicious web of illusion created by this C - Grade actor.

The weeks turned into months and the months into years, the financers never turned up but the party at the producer’s house and at his expense kept on going.

What wrong did the aspiring producer do?

He made a decision to believe that C - Grade actor that one day he will make him a producer of films.

His decisions were made on the illusions that his mind created for him based on the false promises that the actor gave him.

The aspiring producer thought that his illusions were going to be realities.

Realities which never materialized.

If this aspiring producer had known how to take better decisions he would have seen through the illusion and had saved his time, money and energy that he wasted running behind that illusion.

The fact of the matter is that every person at one point or other in their lives has taken a wrong decision. But they keep on taking wrong decisions because they fail to learn from their wrong decisions.

It is never too late.

We cannot undo our past but surely we can improve our future with better decisions.

We can become better decision makers.

Thereby, we have the power to convert our past loses into profits that can be even ten times the loses we incurred by taking a wrong decision.

The best way to become a great decision maker is to develop the capability to differentiate illusion from reality and take decisions based on reality. All decisions based on reality may not be true but then we are ready to commit a mistake, learn from it and then move ahead to take another decision.

So, what decision are you taking today?

Dial ‘D’ for Decision

Every day we face the challenge of taking decisions. Whether we like it or not, we have to take decisions. The decisions we take can be regarding our professional life or of our personal life. Whatever the case may be but we cannot escape from taking decisions on a daily basis. The quality of our decisions in turn affects the future of our lives.

Like, if we take a poor or a wrong decision it makes us unhappy and can lead us into severe depression.

The question that I want you to ask yourself is:

‘Why do we make poor or incorrect decisions?’

It is not that we consciously make poor decisions. Nobody likes any of their decisions to go wrong; yet most often than not it does.

Once a wrong decision is made by us what do we do?

We start looking at outside factors to blame for our wrong decisions. Most of us might even go to the extent of blaming the neighbor’s wife or even the government for the wrong decisions that we have taken.

Instead of blaming the world we can do better things that can help us grow in life.

To start with we should ask ourselves: ‘Where have I gone wrong?’; ‘What can I do now to change my situation?’; ‘What did I learn from my wrong decision and can I learn to make better decisions in future?’

The great news is that yes, we can really do something about our decision making capability by learning the right way to take decisions in our day to day life situations.

But first let us understand few more aspects about incorrect decisions.

When we go into flashback and look back at our lives, we can see some of the mistakes that we made while taking any decision that went wrong. The mistake can be of looking at just the positive side of the outcome.

Making a decision is just like falling in love with the outcome. When two people fall in love they just focus on the good things of their partner and even though they see some of the not so good traits they choose to ignore it. It is only after they get into relation the not so good traits come in the foreground and it dawns on the partner that after all the decision was not right.

But when we were on the verge of taking the decision everything seemed so right, that is the reason we took that decision. Isn’t it?

Then what went wrong?

Why did my decision fail?

While working to figure out the answer to these questions, I came across a very obvious thought.

Here it is: ‘Our poor decisions are based on illusions on which we strongly believed at the time of taking the decision.’

Just rewind and think of any one decision that went wrong in your life:

What were your thoughts before you made that decision?

How did you feel about it?

Think hard, wasn’t it all an illusion?

Once again, just stop for awhile and study one decision of yours that went wrong. Don’t pity yourself for taking that wrong decision. Analyze it.

Try to remember what was going on in your mind before taking that decision?

Write it down. Stop reading and write it down, what was that one or many thoughts that were going on in your mind before you took that wrong decision?

C’mon do it now.

You don’t have to share this with anybody. Nobody is going to judge you and punish you. So be sincere and honest with your self. Write down each and everything you thought while you were in the process of taking that decision which went wrong.

I know it is painful to remember your past mistakes. I have also gone through a lot of pain to write down what made me take those wrong decisions that almost cost me my life. But it is necessary to understand what we did, so that we are well prepared to learn what we could have done.

Once again, I ask you to stop reading this and take your diary and write down what was that one or many thoughts that were going on in your mind before you took that wrong decision?

You will have to go to my next post after you finish writing.

So, see you there!

Questions Might Be The Same But The Answers Are Always Different

Questions Might Be The Same But The Answers Are Always Different

I would like to share with you an article that changed my thought process.

Here it is:

I once heard about Albert Einstein when he was a professor. One of his student assistants who was preparing for an incoming class said, "Professor Einstein, what test are we giving 
them?" To which Einstein replied, "The same test we gave them last week." Bewildered, the student assistant replied, "But Professor Einstein, we already gave that test." Einstein simply said, "Yes, but the answers are different this week."

The bottom line is that the answers are different.

The rules have changed.

Time is running out for those who do not adapt to the new rules.

As Napoleon Hill put it so well, "Whenever a nation, a business institution, or an individual ceases to change and settles into a rut of routine habits, some mysterious power enters and smashes the setup, breaks up the old habits, and lays the foundation for new and better habits."

To Your Success & Exponential Growth

Rakesh Prasad

Are You Playing the Role of A Caretaker?

As an entrepreneur, we all have to deal with lots of people. They are our internal customers – employees; and external customers – people who give us business.

The question is: Do you take good care of everyone? Do you take pride in taking care of people around you?

In short, have you become a Caretaker?

If the answer is ‘Yes’, then you are in trouble.

I had this young guy as my assistant for more than five years. I treated him like family; I trained him and took good care of his personal needs. I became his caretaker and took pride in it. I shared my business and about my clients with him.

What did he do in return? He stole my concepts and approached my own clients with the same concepts claiming that it was his.

It was a shock for me. I reacted like a normal human being – I was angry!

But when I calmed down and started thinking about his behavior and my behavior towards him I realized that I cannot take care of everybody or even anybody for that matter. I might want the person to change for his betterment but the person might not want to change. I put in all my efforts and take out time to help a person but the person doesn’t want to be “helped”.  He feels happy with his life’s condition.

Today I no longer take initiative to help others. I have learned my lesson the hard way.

Instead what do I do?

I have changed my attitude and have become like a moving light house. Whoever comes in contact the only way I help them is by showing them the path that will lead them to their goals and then I step aside.

They have to become their own caretaker, I refuse to become theirs!!

How Regularly Do You have Coffee with Your Role Model?

Want to hang out and have coffee with Mahatma Gandhi, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

The first thing you do is go out and get their books.

Sit down with a cup of Coffee and the book of your role model and read it. Reading the book of your role model is like having a conversation with him. You get to get behind the mind of the author, learn what made him do what he did and how he became for what you look up to him.

It's like: When you enter a coal mine you cannot come out without some coal rubbing off on you. The coal will leave a mark on your body. Similar is the case with great books. The brilliance, the greatness of the book is bound to rub off on you and when you put down a great book after you have finished reading it, you will never be the same again.

Since last twenty years I have been having coffee with great minds like Anthony Robbins, Jack canfield, Jib Rohn, Zig Ziglar and many more in the comfort of my home.

And let me tell you, it really works!

So, with whom are you having Coffee today?

What is your Business?

Hi,

Rakesh Here...

Imagine you are at a seminar or an exhibition along with hundreds of entrepreneurs and during the break you get to network with them.

You strike a conversation with one of the attending delegates. During the conversation he asks you, ‘...and what do you do?’

What is your reply?

Do you say something to the effect-

Well... I am a dentist...

I’m a builder...

I’m a real estate agent...

I’m an interior designer...

Or whatever your job is...

Do you start describing your job when someone asks ‘What do you do?’ or ‘What is your business?’

If ‘Yes’ then what I’m going to share with you might help!

So, read on...

Firstly, if you have answered any of the above, it is not that it is wrong.

Yet, it is not right...

What you are doing on a daily basis is a job and your job is just a part of ‘what your business is.’

So, what is the right answer?

The right reply of the question is ‘Your Purpose.’

The purpose is ‘why’ you do ‘what’ you do and the answer is not money. You don’t do what you do for money. Your purpose should be way beyond money. Money is a bi-product you receive by living your purpose.

There are various steps involved in creating your ‘Core Purpose’. I will not go into the details. Yet, to start with you can ask yourself two powerful questions:

Q1. Why do you do what you do?

Q2. What happens to your customers with what you do? How is what you do for them affecting them emotionally?

That is the Purpose of your Business.

When someone asks me what I do, I say, ‘I make people happy and rich’. This is the purpose of my business and I live my purpose by doing my job of reviewing, making people think by asking some powerful questions.

Can you see the difference?

So, next time someone asks you, ‘What is your business?’ or ‘What do you do?’

You don’t say or describe your job...

You say your purpose,

‘I <complete your purpose statement>’

This will just be the beginning of a strong bonding with your clients.

To Your Success & Exponential Growth

Rakesh Prasad

The Way to Make Money in Business is to Sell People Something They Want

Hi,

The other day I was going through some notes that I have been making from all the books that I have been reading year after year. As I skimmed through the hand written notes, I came across a note that I had made from a novel that I had read long, long time ago. The novels name was ‘The Secret’ by Harold Robbins. It had a very interesting dialogue about how to make money in any business. The dialogue instantly struck a chord with me and I had immediately taken a note in my notes diary.

I take this opportunity to share this dialogue about the way to make money in business.

Here it is:

“The way to make money in business is to sell people something they want.

Sell people something they want. Better than that, make them want something they didn't know they wanted, and then sell them that.

A thousand billion dollar business had been built on selling people what they didn't know they would ever want – what, in fact, they didn’t want when they bought it, and had no need for.”

If we look at all the major products that we use today, the fact is that there was a time we didn’t know we needed any of the things which has today become an integral part of our life. In fact mobile has affected our life so deeply that whenever we forget our mobile we feel incomplete.

The dialogue is a lesson in entrepreneurship for someone who is looking forward to starting his/her own organization.

To Your Success & Exponential Growth

Rakesh Prasad

Another View on Entrepreneurship

"Entrepreneurship is about solving the problems of society, not starting a business for one's own sake."

Even if your business is not solving any problems of society yet it would be true to say that you surely must have started your business to solve one of the 'problems' for a large number of people in the society. The problem that required your attention and expertise and a solution that would make the lives of your clients easy.

 

It was out of solving 'One Problem' that your company was born.

 

If you have not yet thought about it then this is an opportunity to take stock and analyze- "What problem are you solving by being into business?"

 

And the second question to ask is, 'How well are you solving the problem? Is it better than what your competetors are offering?'

 

Answering the two questions will give you a new perspective to your business.

 

To Your Success & Exponential Growth

Rakesh Prasad

 

What A Common Man Taught Me About Business

Hi,

Friday morning started with a one hour long journey to one of our entrepreneur client's office for a review meet.

As I was returning back, I decided to take a walk for atleast a couple of kilometers. (I love to walk.)

On the way I saw a senior person walking ahead.

As I was new to the area I decided to ask him for directions to ensure that I was walking in the right direction.

The old gentleman explained to me that I was on the right path and could get a mode of transportation just ahead. I thanked him and he suggested let's walk together as he was also going in the same direction.

After awhile we got into a converstation and the dialouge shifted to the rising prices and then to business. He shared that only job cannot suffice to lead a life, with prices shooting for the sky. He gave me an example of a young man coming to the city from a remote place and working in a huge retail shop from morning till evening. In the evening after his office hours, the young guy puts up a stall of vada pav near his house.

Initially he faced few challenges but today he earns about a thousand rupees in the evening selling vada pav. He made hiumself stand out from the herd of employees.

The old gentleman sharing the story concluded:

"...in order to succeed in business or in life you should not be shy to do any work."

Even though there was nothing new in this statement yet it came back as a important point. I realized that most of the entrepreneurs or would be entrepreneurs want to make it big in life but they shy away from doing certain jobs that is required to be done. They take it on their ego and think that doing this kind of job was below their dignity.

In this story the young man too could have given the excuse of not selling vada pav as he was working in a big retail shop. His pride would have stopped him. But he did not give excuse neither did he feel shy or think what will others say when they see him selling vada pav.

How many of us can do this? Not many, that I'm sure of.

Are you ready to do certain jobs in your business or additional income generating tasks that can make you feel shy or make you think, 'What will people say?' and focus on your goals?

If you have answered 'Yes' then you are on the right track!!

To Your Success & Exponential Growth

Rakesh Prasad

Do You Have The RIGHT Foundation?

If you are in business or are wanting to start one, then one thing you should keep in mind and live by it:

In the game of business you cannot afford to loose. You have to play your game to Win!

And how do you win the game of business?

Focus on your STRENGTHS! Develop them, use it to your advantage. Don't think about what is your weakness...think what you are good at and how to maximize it.

This one change in thought will make you stand above your competition leaving them way far behind.

This one tool is the RIGHT Foundation for going from being Good to becoming Great and Ultimately becoming an Enterprise!

Build this one Foundation of 'Focussing on you Strengths' into your Business and you will open the door to Great Wealth!

To Your Success and Exponential Growth
Rakesh Prasad

The Awesome Power of Process

A few days back I met an entrepreneur and he shared, ‘Rakesh, I have the knowledge about what I want to achieve in my business. I also know what and how to do it...yet I don’t do it.’

Does this sound familiar?

I asked him why he did not do it.

He replied, ’I don’t know...maybe I procrastinate...’

After I returned, my mind started racing and asking the question, ‘Is the real reason really procrastination?’

I was not convinced. How long can an entrepreneur procrastinate keeping the growth of his company at stake?

Actually, he cannot afford to procrastinate! Then why doesn’t he do what he is supposed to do?

He knows what systems to put in the organization but he misses out on a very simple yet very powerful tool to implement the system.

An entrepreneur knows that to increase sales he needs to have right sales people. He also knows what he is looking in a sales person. Yet he doesn’t get the right sales person.

Reason?

He doesn’t have that one tool that will help him get that right sales person.

What is that important tool?

The tool that I am leading you to is:

PROCESS!

There is a difference between a system and a process. System is a tool that you put in your organization to smoothen the functioning of your business.

Process is a tool that will enable people to live or follow that system.

For example, you can put an attendance machine as a system to monitor the time your employees report for work and leave.

The process can be that every day when the employee reports for work he/she has to put his/her finger impression on the machine so that the machine can record that person’s in time. The employee follows the same process while leaving the office.

So, by following the step by step process, an entrepreneur is able to implement any system in his/her organization.

Why I personally love ‘process’ is because in designing any process nothing can be taken for granted. Each step has to be explained how so ever basic or commonsense it maybe.

Once you start getting involved in making the process it will become like a game of solving puzzle. The most interesting aspect of the whole exercise will be that you will start enjoying the process of designing your process.

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In my one day workshop on ‘The Awesome Power of Process’ I share the fundamentals of making a process in anything and everything that you plan to do in your business or your personal life.

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To Your Success

Rakesh Prasad