Tuesday 16 April 2013

What makes a millionaire?


The Director’s Centre, which aims to help businesses become more profitable and fun to run, ran a survey called the ‘Magic Million Survey’ to try to get to the bottom of what makes one person able to become a millionaire and another not.


High achievers had a strong sense of self belief and a tendency to take responsibility for themselves and the factors around them. Whereas, those who got stuck in a rut and failed to progress and grow their businesses tended to blame external factors and have self-limiting beliefs.

They identified attributes, traits and characteristics of successful business people and discovered that the biggest difference between achievers and wannabes was the approach to success.

Fear is often the main factor in a lack of success, as people are afraid to risk losing what they have, are afraid of failure or are afraid to relinquish control of any aspects of their business (critical for a truly scalable business).

On the other hand, successful entrepreneurs are usually more self-aware, and know that they are often the bottle neck, holding the business back from even more success.

The successful business owners who took part in the survey all presented the following traits in one combination or another: charismatic leadership, a ‘can do’ attitude, a fast-moving, exciting business environment, motivational rewards systems for staff, a good body of staff… and luck.
You can read the original article here.


For more information about Chelsea Singh as an business investor, visit his website.

Tuesday 9 April 2013

Principles for Strategy


To fail to prepare is to prepare to fail.

But having a strategy is no guarantee of success. External factors are always changing and new information becomes available and the environment changes.

So what makes a successful strategy? Below are three principles that underlie a good strategy.

Keep it Simple


A good strategy will have a very simple objective at its core, that can be described in a single sentence and instantly understood, such as Steve Jobs’s ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ for the iPad. By having a clear centre, the strategy will be solidly grounded and anchored to this concept.

Be flexible


It’s a tricky balance to know when to stick to your guns and when to change tactics. But this is one of the most important skills you can have as a strategist, as no plans survive first contact intact. The strategy should have flexibility built into it, with some of the most likely changes in scenario accounted for.

Avoid assumptions


The biggest pitfall of strategies is making incorrect assumptions. When developing a strategy, you should question everything you think you know and make sure you get solid facts. Even better, make sure your strategy relies on as few assumptions as possible – that way it will be as strong as it can be. For more on this, look up ‘Occam’s Razor’.

Tuesday 2 April 2013

More Entrepreneurship Quotes


A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

– Winston Churchill, British Politician


The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake – you can’t learn anything from being perfect.”

– Adam Osborne, American Author


Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.”

– Henry Ford, American Industrialist


The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”

– Vince Lombardi, NFL Coach


Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

– Winston Churchill, British Politician

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree I would spend six hours sharpening my axe.”

– Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States


The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning – to create a product or service to make the world a better place.”

– Guy Kawasaki, Entrepreneur, Investor, Author


Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

– Confucius , Thinker and Philosopher


Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.”

– Richard Branson, British Industrialist
 

Some people dream of great accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them.”

– Anonymous

The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities.”

– Michael Gerber, Author and Entrepreneur

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

– Albert Einstein, Theoretical Physicist


Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”