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Day-planning how & why  Some of us plan
some of us don't
some of us succeed
and some of us won't.
(.anon [me-no-poet])
Well, no, planning and succeeding definitely don't have a IF/THEN relationship, at least not necessarily. But depending on who you are, how you function, why you function, what's your environment like, what's your work like, planning or no planning can make a huge difference.
I don't have an office, neither do I need one. I can usually get everything done at home or in some cafeteria with wi... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own All eggs in one basket? We have all heard the saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" but how many of us actually act on that saying?
Without a doubt it's a smart idea not to depend on one certain thing too much. Like me an my online magazine - I got steady and pretty nice traffic from Google & Google News. In June they changed something in their algorithm and I my online magazine lost about 90% of its traffic. Not great, is it? Of course I blame Google. It's always easier to blame others, especially if it's ... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Believe in yourself - and no, it's not lame Without a doubt I have talked about this topic, directly or indirectly, before. Most likely the idea has been on those pages a lot. But that's because it's important. It IS part of the business. It DOES influence whether you will be successful or not.
How do you create self-confidence? There's no one possibility but the possibilities are endless. And that's only great. Success all by itself gives you self-confidence. Success in what? It doesn't matter! Success in life! Success in small detail... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Sponsored Post: Outsource your work and get done more Outsourcing has become more and more popular among successful businesses because it helps you to get more done and you don't have to worry about finding the people to work for you yourself.
I'm myself more of a self-doer and I can honestly say that this has, in big part, slowed down the growth in all of my projects. The reason being that I try to be the mother, the father and the baby all at once. And if you're doing all yourself, you can't really commit 100% to anything, thus all parts of y... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Do you know what your advantages are? Knowing the advantages will get you ahead, you knew that, right? Whatever your company is about, whatever your products do, usually there are at least something that your product does better than your competitors.
Yesterday I needed some glue to fix a tiny piece of by boots. I went to the shop and there was a variety of super glues available. And to my surprise the price differences were huge. The 3g Super Glue cost 10x less than Super Attack. And as far as I have understood they do pretty mu... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own The Secret? There is NO secret I think many of you have heard about or seen the movie The Secret. I agree that there's a few good points in it, but overally...huh, oh well. Here's what I have to say about it -
The Secret - there is no secret. There's only one main thing you should think about. Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe you can do something? The belief is important. That's true without a question. But it's not about the law of attraction (if you believe in such things), it's not about any waves going throu... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Thoughts on motivation, negative influences and ... Criticism is something that often disturbs us the most. In some cases we could also call it negative influences. People, who don’t believe in you, people who say you will never get anywhere. Get over it. Don’t pay attention to them. Rather, if someone is very negative towards your ideas, use it to motivate you. And rather look company from more positive people.
Think of what you want to become not what you are nor what you don’t want to become. The more you think of what you don’t want to be... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own The River & Stephen King – value points Often, different spots in the same business have different values. Eg take a river – it’s always the same river, but the value varies in different locations, locations like ford, bridges, and nice beaches. Or take producing books – the publishing agency without Stephen King is not that good. Stephen King is important, not definitely the publishing agency.
Every business consists of a number of people – leaders, employees, why not consultants and clients. They all play a different role in you... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Change? Huh! The funny thing about change is that it’s our greatest ally for accomplishment, still most of us resist change. Some of us are explicitly running away from change. When you have been doing something the same way for days, months, years, decades and then feel like doing something completely different, then at first it looks like a good idea. But then you start thinking about it. It’s a 180 degrees different life you are thinking about. And that scares the hell out of you. That’s the moment you’re... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Advertising with style? We all have seen very stylish and great looking ads, ads that are interesting to watch and that win awards. But do they sell? Do they make you remember the product they are promoting or do you remember the great ad but you don’t remember for what it was? I have really seen a lot of great ads but when I’m telling about them to someone, I seldom can remember what the ad actually promoted. That’s often the problem with stylish ads. Stylish & great looking ads do NOT equal most selling ads, these ar... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Doubble-up on your money, not enough? When you think of doubling up your money then it doesn’t really sound like anything special, right?
Especially if you consider you have something like 5000 EUROs (or dollars for that matter). Let’s say you have 5000 and you are capable of turning it into 10 000 in a month. Generally speaking, the 100% growth is great here, but it didn’t make you that much richer, did it?
It’s the same with smaller sums, well, especially with smaller sums.. Eg. Take 1000 dollars. You turn it into 2000, b... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Selling something that doesn’t exist (yet) Entrepreneurs spend days, weeks, months in order to come up with new products which, very often, might not even sell. But what if you could see its selling power before you create the product?
This would mean you don’t spend the time nor money to create products or services that won’t sell. In a very broad view, it might look like I’m suggesting you to become a scam artist, but just think about it. You are not selling air. You are actually selling a product which you don’t have yet. But if y... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Failures are good as long as... Failures are good. Mistakes you have made, bad decisions, failures are there to teach you something, teach you what does not work, what you should not do in the future. And if you really do learn from your mistakes, then how the hell can they be bad, they gave you a lesson and you learned from them. And learning is always good.
While at first, after making a mistake, depending on what it was, you might feel pretty down, but think of it this way – how does that help you? Yes, you might have d... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Keep the consumer attached Before making the first purchase, the consumer has the power, but when making the second buy, the company has the power – because the buyer is involved with the product he bought from the company and now needs to buy add-ons from the same company. Eg phone companies – you buy internet, but now you also need to add phone, digital TV etc via the same company. Be sure to remember it and use the same idea to attach your customers to you.... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Keeping your goals in mind I must warn you, what follows, was totally unacceptable for me for years. Mainly for one reason, I didn’t understand why. It’s writing down your goals with specific deadlines, writing down your goals like you have already achieved it all. And then rewriting them twice a day, or even if not rewriting them then at least reading them again twice a day with thought.
Why? You’re a 9-5 worker or you’re not doing very well. It’s very hard to imagine and actually start believing that you can earn a ... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own What if you were your client? This is another good WHAT IF questions to ask from yourself. You have a business, you have ideas how to make your business successful, you have your own problems, you have your clients to worry about. But forget about it all for a moment.
Put yoursel in your client’s shoes. Imagine you’re your client who needs your service, productt or anything else. Only now you will start to see what problems your clients have or may have with your service or product. Only now you can see what you’d need mo... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own What if you only had a year to live? Imagine you only have one year to live. Each of us would act differently on this event. Most likely the first day or two we would be sort of depressed and spend the time thinking. But what follows is important...
It doesn’t matter whether it’s one week, one month or one year, each of us would make changes to our lives one way or another. But one week or one month would be a bit too short time to even think about money and business, thus our chosen time frame is one year.
We would want to ... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Your job is people Get your employees talk about the company they are working with – your company. Now this is already a thought on marketing but I thought I’d bring it out here as well. And note – I deliberately said “working with” not “working for”. Make your own conclusions. If your employees don’t talk about you, why would your customers/clients/readers talk about you? So go ahead and give your employees something to talk about, something great, something interesting, something weird, something unusual, give t... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Business mindset Firstly, I think both you and I are tired of people saying you need think right, you need to be positive, you need to believe in things, blah blah blah. Always the same old story. Why can’t anyone tell you something worthwhile? Something you could actually use? Well, until a short time ago I felt the same. Not anymore. Because I wanted to figure out why are many successful people saying that. Often, they say that you need to believe and so on, but they don’t say why. But the why part here is the... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Life, work and everything else Many of you have noticed my recent inactivity in posting. Not to worry, this blog isn't dead, neither is going to be dead and it's not even the problem of not having enough to write about. There is, there's lots of ideas, knowledge and advice to be shared. The reason for my recent inactivity is somewhat different.
I write on the same days when I work. And I work on my own schedule which means that sometimes I might work 18 hours a day, but then again, sometimes I might not work for a week. Th... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own The game of probabilities While this is mainly a business blog, I discovered one fine post from my old blog about investing and I thought I'd share it with you. At the time of publishing this post I felt it might be good idea to talk about the game of probabilities and stock markets (well, I still do). I have no intention to dive deep into this topic. However, I think it would be interesting to look at the market as a game of probabilities. Good poker players use the probability theory all the time. They know what is the... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own What about fresh perspective? What’s the highly unusual way you’d never expect anyone to advertise something with? Never stop looking for a fresh a perspective. To open up your creativity you need to start asking the right questions. Good question is a question for which you don’t know an answer for, where you need to be creative and come up with new, not known, ideas. When you ask the right kind of question, it triggers curiosity. “How do birds fly?”, “How much does a house weigh?”, ”How many columns of people walking into ... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Feeding the journalists I’m usually working in cafeterias. Why? Well, like I have mentioned in my previous posts, that’s where I feel I’m most motivated to work and have the least distractions. Today, after registering in a driving school (yes, have postponed it for years, enough is enough), I went to a cafeteria again (well, I’m still here) and a journalist approached me.
It turned out he was writing an article to a local business newspaper about people working in cafeterias (not as employees but people using the c... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Hire the right people I would say there’s 4 phases in everyone’s life. And more, I would say there’s 4 phases in all areas of everyone’s lives. The first is knowing everything – this is where you’re really stupid and you think you know everything. The second is knowing nothing. That’s when you have realized there’s really a lot to know about and you really don’t know anything. And that’s a good thing because this makes you learn. The third one is learning, the pursuit of knowledge. And the fourth one is…for a lack of... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own (Why) sharing your know-how does not hurt you It’s not uncommon that when someone learns about something new, he or she is not willing to share his or her knowledge. If everyone knew about it and acted on it, it would be too common knowledge, strategy or whatever else to actually work anymore. And you wouldn’t have an edge anymore. Because now everyone knows about it and everyone uses the knowledge.
Or a company is not willing to say how it does things. Being afraid that they will be copied and this copycat starts to hurt you. Taking aw... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own What can you learn from movies? I bet you’ve seen some movie where the guy playing the main role gets into some serious trouble. Now to get out of it he makes a phone call to everyone involved, he calls them all to invite them to the same place at the same time ... on different reasons course. And then the series of events start rolling open. Usually it has been greatly done, great cinema I would say.
But what can you learn from it? For one thing, do your homework and learn to know the people involved. Or people who are no... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own What problems does your product solve? Many of us already have products that we want to market. When it’s usual that you find a problem and then create a product to solve this problem, you could easily do it the other way around as well.
Imagine you have a product but you’re not sure yet how to promote it. What’s different about your product? Why is it good? What facts can we use to promote it? What problems does your product solve? Lets take an online magazine, we could use one of my own publications – The Cheers magazine (theche... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own How would you solve a problem if money was no obstacle? We often tend to tell ourselves that „if only we had” that much money or possibilities, oh then we could own the world and do the things the way we want to. Well, sometimes money is not an obstacle, even if you don’t have it, your mind is.
I’m sure you have some sort of defined problem to take from the back of your head when reading it. Or if you don’t, think of some. Imagine how you would solve it if you had all the resources you’d ever need, all the money, unlimited amounts of money to use.... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own What can we learn from con artists Marketing your new ventures might be a difficult task. But in order to make something successful you need to find all the possible ways of getting the most of your efforts. That's where some lessons from con artists might come handy.
I was just watching a documentary about a swedish...I think he was swedish, con artist...Richard smth. He was pretty much able to do anything - sell fake information to Syrian embassy, pretend to be an airplane pilot with engine problems causing an evacuation of ... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Quality surveys – huh, the bad and the nasty In order to get feedback about your services or products you often ask people to fill in different kind of long and nasty surveys. Surveys nobody really feels like filling because they are so long and boring. And by the end of the day you might have a handful on answers but nothing useful. There’s actually only one main thing you should ask your employees, clients and potential customers - what am I afraid to find out? ... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (1) or add your own In search of motivation In order to become and stay successful, motivation is one of the most important thing. Because if you’re not motivated enough, you stop working, start working on useless things or just start killing time.
In order to stay motivated you need to keep the big picture in mind. I know how easy it is to lose the big picture, even if just for a day. But even one day is one lost day.
Be sure to have a set of goals written down and never forget them. If necessary, read them out loud every day or e... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Why is summer the best time to launch a new project? Many business experts claim that summer is not a very good time for coming out with a new project. While partly they might be right, it’s far from the full truth. Let me explain.
Why summer might not be so good?
People are taking a rest during the summer; different people working in various industries might not be able to answer your emails or phone calls. So if it is important to get in touch and talk with people in order to get your project up & running then it might be a bit problematic. ... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Client is the KING (and you are a shoe) Everyone knows the expression but not many people act on it. To start with, you may be the boss of a large organization, you may be the project manager, you may be the one doing the actual communications with clients and potential clients. But what you really are is a shoe. And in order for anyone to buy a shoe it needs to fit. If it doesn’t fit or if it leaves a bad impression or if there’s no guarantee or if you just don’t like the salesman, you don’t buy the shoe and you go to another shop. R... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Different ways of making profit Every company is different, but often the same theories can be applied to them. The most general one that is used is simple – you have a product and you sell it. But if that’s all you do, you are not taking advantage of the tremendous potential you’d have if you’d do something more.
#1 Lets imagine you have one product that you sell. If you’re narrow-minded, you might think that here’s not too much extra you could do. But you are wrong, very wrong. You can have one product, but if you vary m... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Why do so many businesses fail? There’s always a great number of reasons for that. Many are very obvious and practical ones. But there’s one main thing you should think about – do you even want to succeed? Many people, even if just unconciously, don’t want to succeed. Sounds weird? Yes. But think about it for a second. Why people prefer failure to success? Because failure is often tried and usual, it’s what people have got used to. And success would bring changes. And people are often afraid of changes. So they rather go on do... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (2) or add your own Long-term plan is an illusion Now, I have never been fond of long planning. I mean planning ahead, too far ahead. And there’s a good reason for that. While certain people claim they can predict the world – eg financial analysts, business advisors and so on, the world is not predictable.
Think of the biggest stock market crashes, those analysts who are giving advice or who claim they know the future in some field, they did not expect these crashes. And at other times, they expected certain things, but before they actually... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Risking what you can't afford to lose? The lower the risk, the lower the possible outcome.
The old saying that you should only bet what you can afford to lose is wrong. Unless what you can afford to lose is something big, maybe 100% of your fortune? Okay, that’s usually too much but I hope you get the idea. The thing is that usually the amount you can afford to lose is too little to do you any good even if you manage to doubble or even tripple it. You play on stockmarkets with 100 bucks, you win 100 bucks extra. Did it really mak... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Technorati test post Don't mind guys, just making the technorati test - Technorati Profile
Cheers
Siim... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Learn to appreciate failure Many business owners do not appreciate failure. But the problem with this approach is that there can be no failure only if you do what you have always done or what others have always done and what you know that works; sometimes somehow anyhow.
And this means that you will never try nor let your employees try anything different that might bring failure. So the only way to go is to encourage people to use their creative potential. And if someone fails, if someone makes mistakes, it’s only norm... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Keep your employees creative & happy It’s not very difficult to get new people with know-how to work with you, all you need is a great project and a great sales pitch. But it gets more difficult when you already have the people – now you need to keep them going, keep them motivated and let them have a lot of fun on the way.
People need to have fun. Whether it’s you, your co-workers or your employees, to keep you all motivated you need to be doing what you like and you need to make and keep the work enviroment fun. When you are... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Getting creative Creativity in its self-being is basically problem solving. And in order to solve a problem, you must define a problem that you need to solve.
The worst enemy to creativity is your current knowledge. You think you know and thus you keep trying and coming up with ideas based on what you know. Let go of what you know and free your mind to discover new and better ways to do something.
„Imagination is more important than knowledge” – Albert Einstein
Generate problems
In order to become cr... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Would you buy what you sell? Marketing your company or product right can do wonderful things to your business. But only if done right. Not all advertising is good. All advertising do not increase sales. Good advertising can increase sales 20 times, however, bad advertising that costs millions can make people buy less than no advertising at all.
In order to market something right, you need to start with the most basic questions. What your product DOES? WHO is it meant for?
What sells a product?
There’s no one right a... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Business Q & A section open If you have a question that relates to the topics of this blog then feel free to send me your questions (address can be found when you turn your eyes to the right side of this site now). I try to answer everything within couple of days. Or if you don't have any questions, feel free to look around the site. I think you might find some worthwhile reading there. ... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Hmm, growth? There’s different ways to look at growth. Potentially more profit, more problems; 1 point growth means 1 point more profit means one point more problems and work. Or is it? While that’s how the general theory could look like, it actually isn’t the full truth. By making new products with the old machinery/resources you can expect to take 60% profit. So - in case of increasing the number of trades or projects, expenses grow slower than income.
But there’s one thing to keep in mind though. Gene... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Expose yourself to risk & worry Everyone wants to win big, in business in life, in sports or whatever else. However, most people want to win without betting. Without risking. We don’t want to take any big risks, whether neccessary or unneccessary. Life is a gamble, you know it. And in order to win, you need to place bets. Most of us however try to place as little and few bets as humanly possible. But that’s not the way to go. In order to get something you need to risk something. And that’s the often overlooked universal rule. ... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own Open your mind to new business opportunities You are doing good. You have made the first step towards changing your life. Don’t get me wrong here – reading this blog will not change your life. Only you can do that. But it will definitely give you lots to think about and hopefully, after going through it all couple of times you will manage to change your mindset, your view towards life, towards business, towards how things are done.
I must apologise if the wording here somewhere ain’t the best, as this is my first and only business blog... read more If you like it - Digg it | Add to My Yahoo | Add to Google Reader | Add to Del.ICIO Read comments (0) or add your own |
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Business blog | Free business advice 
 All questions are answered in the Q & A section within couple of days after I have received them.
About this siteFirstly, thank you for your interest and I do hope you will find a lot of useful information from th...Learn more all submissions » Open your mind to new business opportunities » Expose yourself to risk & worry » Hmm, growth? » Business Q & A section open » Would you buy what you sell? » Getting creative » Keep your employees creative & happy » Learn to appreciate failure » Technorati test post » Risking what you can't afford to lose? » Long-term plan is an illusion » Why do so many businesses fail? » Different ways of making profit » Client is the KING (and you are a shoe) » Why is summer the best time to launch a new project? » In search of motivation » Quality surveys – huh, the bad and the nasty » What can we learn from con artists » How would you solve a problem if money was no obstacle? » What problems does your product solve? » What can you learn from movies? » (Why) sharing your know-how does not hurt you » Hire the right people » Feeding the journalists » What about fresh perspective? » The game of probabilities » Life, work and everything else » Business mindset » Your job is people » What if you only had a year to live? » What if you were your client? » Keeping your goals in mind » Keep the consumer attached » Failures are good as long as... » Selling something that doesn’t exist (yet) » Doubble-up on your money, not enough? » Advertising with style? » Change? Huh! » The River & Stephen King – value points » Thoughts on motivation, negative influences and ... » The Secret? There is NO secret » Do you know what your advantages are? » Sponsored Post: Outsource your work and get done more » Believe in yourself - and no, it's not lame » All eggs in one basket? » Day-planning how & why
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