Advantages of Keeping Your Business Focused and Small

I like to preach the virtues of keeping things small and simple. This also applies to businesses.

Today, I'm going to list some of the advantages to keeping your business small and focused. For an example, I'm going to use the Valence Group, which is a chemical investment banking firm that specializes in financial advice to firms in the chemicals industry.

Here are 3 advantages:

1. Ability to compete against the "big boys". In the case of Valence, investment banking is a business dominated by a few large Wall Street players. However, Valence can compete against them in the chemicals industry because (not in spite of the fact that) they are small and specialize in that industry. At first, chemical firms might be happy if they can attract a house-hold name from Wall Street but, large, general purpose firms can never give the quality of service and attention as smaller, specialized players.

2. Ability to deliver expert advice. Valence is specialized in an industry (chemicals) where financial transactions involve technical considerations. For example, in chemical mergers and acquisitions deals, plants can't be merged profitably if their processes and outputs are incompatible. Over the years, a firm like Valence, which only handles chemical deals, will have built up a lot of best practice solutions and experience.

3. Ability to attract new business. As chemical firms realize that Valence will give profitable chemical m&a advisory that saves time and money, they will seek them out and give them business. In fact, the larger firms, instead of "competing", might actually hire them as technical advisers and give them a piece of any chemical industry-related financial work they have, in exchange for their experience and know-how.

Words to Meditate On

osmosis, benign neglect
organic growth
haphazard
simple, natural, elegant, self-organizing
bamboo, jazz
tao

Execution is The Key to Success

The late Tampa Bay football coach John McKay once said: "You don't beat people with surprises, but with execution."

According to self-help expert Robert Ringer, execution consists of 3 things:

1.                  A sense of urgency.

2.                  Attention to detail.

3.                  Follow-through.

These things may not sound sexy and exciting, but they are the keys to success.

Mom told me

Content by Donny Vinson

My mom told me about www.Cabletvadvisor.com when I was complaining that I didn't get to watch the Real Housewives of Atlanta and everyone at my office was talking about. After I got the right channels I spent a whole Saturday watching a marathon of the show in catching up on all the drama from this past season. Can I just say that those women are just about the worst example of what it means to be ladylike in the South! I can't believe how they're always yelling at each other and fighting about the petty things when they all have tons of money and most of them even have children. I wonder what they imagine their kids will think when they are old enough to watch the show and realize how ridiculous their mothers were. I would be so embarrassed if I saw myself on not show and I can't believe anybody ever returns for a second season. You would think one would be enough to get the picture!

Accept and Deal With Things As They Are...

“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.”

by John Wooden

Haiku

After reading a simple haiku (just within a number of seconds) you feel
free of it. It is like a breeze, like a lightest touch of wind or flame,
so simple that you can't divide it into smaller parts, thus you can't
think of it too much. It touches you tenderly and immediately releases.

Autumn fly
I caught one
And let it fly.

Snow
Sweeping it off, again
Sweeping it off, still
Snow on my sleeves

Educational Products For Your Children

These days, parents are caught in the middle. They want to educate their children beyond what school offers - to help their kids to compete later in life. However, at the same time, parents have never been more overworked and overwhelmed from work.

On many week days, parents come back home from a hard day of work and don't have the energy and enthusiasm to teach their children.

Therefore, a company like "Mentoring Mind" thrives. They offer tools, games, and activities, along with strategies for teaching, to help mentor kids to develop thinking skills and become learners for life.

For example, one of their product lines are flip charts. They have them on subjects such as critical thinking and cyber bullying. Behind all their products, Mentoring Minds have research which parents can download. For example, they describe how bullying first became a concern in Norway in the 1960's and 70's, following several deaths.

Self-Help is Not About Stress or Strain

"No thought, no reflection, no analysis, no cultivation, no intention; let it settle itself"....Zen Quote by Tilopa.

How does this quote apply to our lives? It gets to the secret for self-development.

How many self-help books have you read? I've read a lot of them and most of them never seemed to help me - at least at first. At the time I read them, the concepts seemed overwhelming, I didn't have time to do the exercises, etc.

Many of the books conflicted with one another, and my ego "infected" the information. My mind would over-analyze the information, think about reasons why it wouldn't work, and find ways to reject the book, and procrastinate in applying its principles.

At the time, I thought I had wasted a lot of time and money on the books. Then, one day, boom! I started to get it. Nothing from any particular book. I just started to think differently - less ego-driven, more process-oriented. I was more optimistic, more centered, more focused in the present moment.

I attributed my breakthrough not to books, but to an technique. A walking meditation technique I called present moment awareness, where I walk around, concentrating on the present moment.

But, did I have my breakthrough because the books made me ready? Did they work like a primer - getting me set-up to experience a change in consciousness?

Even now, if I go back to the books, I'll start getting confused and sliding back. So, I try to avoid most self-help books now.

So what does this all mean? I think that books point to the truth, but they carry a lot of excess intellectual baggage.

Read the books, but don't treat them like text books from which you will be tested. Just read them as a pleasant exercise. Read self-help information wherever you find it, but approach it in a light-hearted manner. Don't try too hard to apply their principles. Don't expect the books to change you directly. They are setting you up for a breakthrough.

You Will Screw Up

No matter how careful you are, no matter how much stress you place on yourself, no matter how many hours of practice, you will eventually screw up somewhere. You are imperfect, and will always be flawed.

If you travel with a map, you will go off course from time to time. Your writings will contain typos. During speeches, you will stammer, hesitate, and mispronounce words. You will irritate and fight with your family.

Everyone else on the planet is the same way. Even Superman has his kryptonite issues.

Is this knowledge pessimistic, dark, and depressing? No - it is liberating! You are human! Do your best, then learn to live with the results and forgive yourself and others.

Drown Right Now Into Life

Living your life in Zen means to exist in this moment. Not the past or the future. If you've read anything about Zen, you have heard that time and time again - but what does that actually mean?

It means that the past and the future don't exist - only Now. Listen to life right now - this is all there is. What is it saying? What is it teaching? Don't overlay it with regrets about the past or fears about the future.

Slow down. Focus on what is going on around (and in) you. Let yourself drown in the sensations and experiences that envelope you.

Getting An Online Education

A great gift of self-improvement you can give yourself is to go back to school and learn something new - either for personal enrichment or to start a new career.

As an alternative to physically taking a class, you might want to explore online learning. It is a cheaper option that is much more advanced then from even a few years ago. Online education also has the advantages of wiping out geographical distances and making it easier to juggle work and family obligations.

Here is a resource that can help you explore online degree programs:

1. OnlineDegree.com - this is one of the best online degree search portals that let you search for accredited online degrees, schools, and courses. Using this specialized search tool is much more efficient than researching schools through a general search engine - you won't get results unrelated to education, and you can easily limit the domain over which you search, so that your search is tight and efficient. For example, if you are interested in studying to be a medical technologist, you can confine your education search to the domain online degree programs in healthcare.

Mental Success Tool #1: Constant Value Investing

It might seem strange that my investment Technique, Constant value investing, should be considered a mental tool for success and happiness.

However, I consider it similar to a martial art like Tae Kwon Do, Karate, Akido, etc. When practiced properly, they not only allow you to defend yourself and develop physical fitness, but their practitioners achieve confidence, peace of mind, and loss of self.

This is exactly what happens when I practice constant value investing. At the outer level, it is a simple, but powerful trading system that anyone can use to build their portfolios and save for retirement. At a higher level, constant value investing teaches the philosophical concepts of cycles, rebalancing, and "ready, fire, aim" self-correcting feedback loops.

You develop the confidence to trust yourself, and be patient. Let success come to you. For example, instead of procrastinating on a stock purchase (waiting for the "perfect" price), you buy an initial position in a good stock at a reasonable price, then use market feedback (i.e. prices) to trade around the core position - buying more shares as the stock drops and selling if the stock rises.

Here are all 7 mental success tools.

Life Lesson

"And maybe that's the lesson here: Find what you love to do — what you would do even if you didn't get paid — and DO it."

- Jeff Goins