Strength In Business

Building a business is a marathon. It requires devotion, commitment, and resilience. Mistakes, setbacks, and struggles are guaranteed. Success is not. Sacrificing everything, including your health and family, for a business idea is bad advice.

I was exposed to the entrepreneurial realm since early childhood. I used to help my grandmother sell vegetables and flowers when I was 3-4 years old. Then school and university aka “The Program” kicked in, and I was heading for a corporate career. After climbing the glorious ladder and moving between multinationals, I exited the system and let my entrepreneurial spirit continue the journey that I had interrupted after I turned six.

Over the years and decades, I’ve received a ton of amazing, as well as terrible business advice. I’ve had the opportunity to negotiate and close multi-million dollar deals, lead big teams, build my own company as well as help clients build, grow, and sell businesses. I’ve been in business for several decades and I am an avid student of sales, marketing, and, more importantly, human relationships.

As I’m training for my first marathon, I can’t disregard what I’ve learned in business and not be willing to see the similarities between building a successful business and prepping for a marathon. It starts with observing the mental diarrhea and the emotional rollercoaster and ends with adjusting the physical imprint on the body.

“Go all in”, “Burn the ships”, and “No plan B” … are some of the standard tips that get promoted by wealthy entrepreneurs and business experts who should know better.

How well have these “nuggets of wisdom” worked for the folks promulgating these ideas?

Did they adhere to their own advice when building their companies?

I’m convinced many of you have read or at least heard of Sun Tzu’s book “The Art of War.” Or maybe you’re a weirdo like me, who studied Genghis Khan’s and Napoleon Bonaparte’s warfare strategies and tactics meticulously.

They may have used the phrases above, but the execution reveals what they truly meant. You see, Genghis Khan didn’t prioritize war over his family. He planned and strategized extensively, and when he decided to go “all-in” he had his entire family with him.

How often have you heard the experts explain that “all-in” doesn’t mean to the detriment of your health, family life, and relationships?

Never?

Sacrificing your health to build a business is straight-out dumb.

Sacrificing your family life and the relationships with your loved ones to pursue a business idea is ridiculous advice.

What about the following “novel” concept:

1. Get super efficient with your time. Work at night, early in the morning, or on weekends when the phone isn’t buzzing frequently, and you can get more done.

2. Choose a business you’re devoted to. Devotion and dedication trump passion. You better love what you’re doing, as this will help you overcome the obstacles.

3. Failure is part of the game. Get up, dust yourself off, and keep going. Strengthen your mental stamina, expand your consciousness, acquire new skills, and never stop learning and growing as an individual. Your business is a reflection of you.

4. Be smart. Entrepreneurship sounds sexy, but it isn’t meant for everyone. Keep your job or side hustle until your business can cover the bills, especially if you have dependents.

5. Focus on your strengths. Outsource. Get people on board who cover your weaknesses. Double, triple, quadruple down on what you’re good at.

6. Test what works best for you. Tweak and adjust as you move along. Make this an ongoing process and habit.

Most people want the shortcut. They are wasting precious time, money, and energy, desperately looking for the secret sauce or recipe.

What if there isn’t a secret?

What if the secret to building a sustainable business is boring beyond imagination?

Would you still embark on this adventure?

Consistency, determination, discipline, perseverance, flexibility, and continuous improvement are mission-critical ingredients to building a successful, long-lasting business.

Indeed, it all comes down to mastering the fundamentals.

Trends and fads come and go. A sound foundation stays. It might be boring to build a business adhering to this principle, but it always pays out in the long run.

Building a business is a marathon, not a sprint. Choose wisely, beautiful soul.

_______________________________

Image by wal_172619 via Pixabay

_________________________________

The post Building a Business is a Marathon, Not a Sprint appeared first on StrengthInBusiness.

Preparation is a key ingredient in life. Albeit underestimated, this “task” for lack of a better word, causes division among human beings. While some see a waste of time in it, others would bet their existence on it.

In a world where duality reigns, we like to split and separate ourselves from those with different perspectives. We judge and put things into boxes to enable us to navigate this 3D maze. Some apply push strategies to various areas in their lives, whereas others rely on the state of flow, trying to make sense of the pull strategy. Few manage to stick around at the extremes; most bathe in the middle, trying to juggle the two to their best capabilities.

I like to look at the preparation state as a train station. You can dress fancy, bring all your beautiful suitcases, purchase your ticket and still not feel prepared enough to jump on the next train. Then, some sit at the train station watching trains pass by but never dare to embark or haven’t got a clue where to go. Sitting at the train station in a familiar environment keeps them safe, so they think.

Of course, you also have those who come with a light bag and jump on the upcoming train confident that they will figure out how to buy a ticket on the go and face the adventures at their destination head-on.

Balance in a world of duality is a challenge. Some say you can never be over-prepared, whereas others argue that being under-prepared allows the individual to tap more fluidly into their resourcefulness, thus leading them to come up with new ideas created from the depths of the unknown.

Here’s what I’ve observed on my journey so far:

1. Recognizing an opportunity when unprepared is challenging. If you’re not prepared, chances are, you won’t recognize an opportunity waiting for you on the other side.

2. Squeezing the max out of an opportunity requires preparation. If you’re not prepared, however, you recognize there’s an underlying opportunity, you won’t be able to reap the rewards and capitalize on it because you don’t have what it takes to get/ do it.

3. Preparation takes energy aka life force. You can shorten the period to acquire certain skills and hone in on your sacred gifts and talents, but you’ll still need to exchange time, money, or other resources.

4. Obsessing with preparation kills momentum. There comes a time when you’d better jump on the opportunity train. If you keep your focus and single point of attention on over-preparing and obsessing with all the details, you’ll miss several opportunity trains that might get you closer to your destination with a little less preparation.

5. Preparation will help you when the unexpected occurs. There’s one thing in life that comes uninvited: it’s the unexpected. You can’t plan for it, but you can definitely prepare to be able to wither a massive storm.

“Opportunity does not waste time with those who are unprepared.” – Idowu Koyenikan

The word “balance” gets thrown around a lot these days. I like to use the words “zeroing in” and “alchemizing” to express how I deploy preparation to meet opportunities.

First off, preparation doesn’t exclude inspiration, nor does it exclude creativity and intuition. You can still achieve a state of flow while preparing.

Second, preparation has helped me uncover some of my sacred gifts, thus enabling me to knock on the door of opportunity more courageously and confidently.

“Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.” — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

I’m a lucky overnight success of several decades of preparation. What about you?

Several trains filled with opportunity wagons come and depart from the station. Some opportunities are massive, others appear smaller but can be foundational elements towards bigger opportunities. The question is whether you’ll put in the necessary work to max out on those opportunities.

Preparation is key. Be exceptional; don’t settle for less.

_______________________________

Image by Jeshoots.com via Unsplash

_________________________________

The post When Preparation Meets Opportunity appeared first on StrengthInBusiness.

High-performance mentors will push your buttons and trigger you to ensure you raise your standards, crush your limitations, and bring forth the very best version of yourself. As you grow and evolve, upgrading your mentors will help you unlock even more hidden resources and navigate to shores others deem impossible to reach.

When equipped with the proper tools, information, and mindset, playing the game of life becomes an amazing adventure. You can opt for the hard route by letting the ego be in the driver’s seat or invite several masters to help you navigate the journey smoothly. The nuggets of wisdom these beautiful souls can share with you will catapult your experience so that you can enjoy the crazy ride on this magical planet we call Earth even more.

If you want to thrive, unlock your maximum potential, and play your A-game, you might want to consider upgrading your mentors.

Here are my high-performance mentors from the following three “categories” for lack of a better word: business, mindset, and spirituality. I’ll provide an in-depth example using the third category as it gives a special flavor to the insights I’m about to share with you.

When it comes to acquiring, merging, and selling businesses my high-performance mentor is none other than the Trillion Dollar Man, Dan Pena.

To squeeze the juice out of my marketing campaigns, I turn to my marketing mentor Dan Kennedy. Dan’s copywriting teachings have helped me craft incredibly successful and highly profitable Facebook advertising campaigns that I used to set up for my clients, train corporate teams, and also teach inside my Advertising Academy for a decade.

Those of you familiar with my story, know that I’m a passionate scuba diver and a huge advocate of constantly increasing and strengthening my mental stamina. Being a rescue diver and experiencing the “not-so-fun” part of this amazing sport that I love, requires among other things, a mind of steel. Therefore, learning from the best is a must for me.

So, who are my teachers?

Of course, I turn to three Navy Seals legends to train and sharpen my mind to the maximum. These gentlemen are ruthless in their approach to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible for a human being. Their no-BS mental strategies and techniques have enabled me to surpass tumultuous situations efficiently, gracefully, and elegantly.

The three Navy Seals gentlemen are Michael Jaco, David Goggins, and Jocko Willink.

You might find the following two posts that I’ve written of value as they are about Jaco’s and Goggins’ latest book releases.

Life is a Mind Game – This one is about David Goggins’ book “Can’t Hurt Me”.

Awaken Your Spirit with The Intuitive Warrior by Michael Jaco

I added this “category” of mentors to my vita only a few years back. To say that I’m a newbie to the spiritual space is an understatement. However, I’ve always been an avid student of quantum physics and everything related to harnessing the field to upgrade my life on this beautiful turquoise planet we call home.

After diving into the spiritual community, I found a mentor who was highly proficient in explaining and demystifying the notion of the quantum and putting it into scientific terms. On this journey, I learned how to pull my mind out of the body and explore the depths of the quantum even more. In 2022 I attended a life-altering event that catapulted me out of my current trajectory and opened my mind to a multidimensional realm that I could tap into with ease.

While trying to understand what happened at the event and decipher the codes that I downloaded during the different meditations and healing experiences, I noticed a lot of similarities between the spiritual and business communities.

Going deeper down the rabbit hole and pulling back the layers of that particular “awakening” that I went through to find the answers to my questions, I quickly realized that I needed a mentor who was equipped to navigate me through the “spiritual” maze quicker, more efficiently and effectively.

The two main things that bothered and pushed me towards seeking out a high-performance spiritual mentor to navigate the quantum track were as follows:

1. At the event, the field was wide open and there was no protection whatsoever put in place. This is super dangerous and an absolute no go!

2. The staff at the event lacked the required skills and didn’t have the necessary qualifications to offer professional help to those downloading vast amounts of information from the quantum field.

For example, when you’re being told that you need to hold onto a chair, breathe, take your shoes off, or stop wearing sneakers to ground yourself, you should run in the opposite direction.

In January of 2024, I upgraded my spiritual mentor and I haven’t looked back since.

Today, setting up shields to protect my space while interacting with the quantum field and traveling multi-dimensionally takes less than five seconds. Grounding myself takes less than ten seconds and I don’t need to adhere to a certain posture, use a fancy breathing technique, or hold onto something. I don’t have to envision the roots of a tree growing out of my feet, nor do I have to go outside and hug some random tree. Obviously, I can wear whatever the heck I want to wear.

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” – attributed to various wise masters, including Buddha and Lao Tzu.

I used the example above to showcase the vastness of false and disempowering information that is being perpetrated by numerous teachers, mentors, influencers, gurus, you name it.

You will encounter similar experiences all across the different realms. Whether it’s spirituality, health, sports, or business, you better stay present, observe the space, and use discernment.

Pick your mentors carefully and upgrade them as soon as your frequency rises and the information stops resonating with you.

Listen to your innate intelligence and learn to spot ridiculous advice and tips quickly. Stay flexible and be ready to drop the old ways of thinking and approaching things in life. Pivot instantly.

Remember, conventional wisdom is almost always wrong, as I mentioned in my previous blog post “Celebrated for Your Uniqueness Or Punished for Not Conforming.”

You are powerful beyond measure. Approach life boldly. Be fearless. Upgrade your mentors and teachers. Connect to your higher self and let it help you upgrade your life.

_______________________________

Image by dlsdkcgl via Pixabay

__________________________________

The post Upgrading Your Mentors appeared first on StrengthInBusiness.

Conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. If you take a different route from where the masses are heading, chances are you’ll be on the right path. Your uniqueness makes you stand out if you accept the challenge and embrace the perks that come with it. Remember, you can’t borrow enthusiasm.

If you live in a big city or travel to one and happen to take public transport, you’ll be mesmerized by the sheer number of drained characters dragging their bodies through the day while pouring all their life force into a device.

This one-way energy exchange fills the pockets of shareholders hanging out at country clubs and other Elite gatherings while focusing on what matters most: RELATIONSHIPS. This my friends is a two-way exchange that often catapults one’s wealth and induces exponential growth on a personal level.

Looking into someone’s eyes and greeting them, having a brief conversation with a “stranger”, smiling while you walk in and out of the underground, meeting a beautiful soul, and discovering you have more in common than keeping your phone locked inside your pocket has become a rarity in today’s human-made chaotic environment.

If you are mentally strong, emotionally stable, and not addicted to all the tech gadgets and apps cleverly marketed as lifeboats, you have already ticked the “uniqueness” box in a matrix where non-playing characters are celebrated and held on a pedestal.

How do we best navigate this illusion where everything is twisted, manipulated, and flipped upside-down?

Get comfortable with pushing the limits and boundaries of what’s possible for you.

Get comfortable with being healthy and full of vitality, when your friends are obsessing about medical checks, and taking all kinds of pills and supplements.

Get comfortable with being super successful in business and choosing to hang out with a different breed of high-achievers.

Get comfortable with having lots of free time on your hands, when others are caught up in the rat race program.

Get comfortable with having lots of money and investing into assets, when others focus on buying the latest XYZ liability.

Get comfortable homeschooling your children, when others put them into public or private schools.

Get comfortable with taking care of your parents and grandparents, when your friends and relatives advise you to put them into a nursing home or assisted living center.

Get comfortable living without a TV, turning off your WiFi after a certain hour, and leaving all gadgets outside your bedroom.

Get comfortable with not using WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and Co. as the masses do.

Get comfortable with living outside the norm.

To recap:

Conventional wisdom is almost always wrong.

When I tell people I don’t have any traditional social media and messaging apps installed on my phone, they look at me as if I just landed from Mars. The same applies to my laptop which runs on Linux instead of Windows or macOS.

Do I care about people’s good opinion of me not using one of the mainstream apps?

Nope.

I am super comfortable with interacting and living outside the norm.

Those genuinely interested in connecting and keeping in touch with me will install the open-source messaging apps that I use or will call me.

This basic and simple example reminds me of what one of my mentors always said to me:

Eagles fly alone!

If you’re an avid student of the art of sales like I am, you know exactly what I’m referring to. There are times when you go out and hunt alone because nobody else can see and envision what your third eye and intuition do.

To many, this scenario is frightening because it’s all on you and there’s no one else to blame if things don’t work out as planned.

Get comfortable with taking full responsibility for your actions and mistakes. Fail your way forward. Prepare yourself for super success.

Life is full of amazing adventures when you increase your standards and start living outside the norm. Capitalize on your uniqueness, celebrate your way of looking at life from different perspectives that keep changing and evolving, and stop giving a flying you know what about other people’s opinions.

_______________________________

Image by Petar Avramoski via Pexels

____________________________________

The post Celebrated for Your Uniqueness Or Punished for Not Conforming appeared first on StrengthInBusiness.

A couple of weeks ago I published my first fiction book. It’s been a magical adventure bar none. Although I’ve written several business books over the past two decades, creating the mystical and galactic pieces that are part of “Spiritual Harvest” has been a blast.

What led me down this path? How is writing a fiction book different from publishing business-related insights?

First things first. “Spiritual Harvest” is a collection of stories and poems inspired by the quantum. The book includes more than fifty exclusive pieces that haven’t been published elsewhere. For those of you who want to have a quick taste of my poems and short stories, I invite you to jump over to the decentralized Hive blockchain at @KriszRokk.

As I mentioned in the intro of “Spiritual Harvest”, I wrote my first story at the age of 7. After that, my gift laid dormant for several decades until September 2022 when I crafted my first poem. Since then, I’ve written over 200 poems and short stories. Some of these creative pieces are included in the book. Others, such as the fiction series “The War on Sirius B” are waiting for a proper director to be turned into a movie or 3D video animation.

What a beautiful and mystical ride it has been to put together all the creative pieces that are now part of Spiritual Harvest. It’s been a wonderful journey into the depths of my soul, a self-discovery trip par excellence. This book helped me remember who I am and reactivate many components of myself by connecting to my innate intelligence. I continue this path as it’s so rewarding thus pulling back the layers of the ego while enabling the trifecta brain, heart, and gut to stay balanced and in coherence.

I witnessed a lot of similarities between the creation process of Spiritual Harvest and the German edition of my business book about podcasting, “Die Podcasting-Goldgrube” which became an Amazon best seller.

It took me only five days to write the podcasting book but that’s not where the commonality lies, as it required several months to create the stories and poems that are included in my fiction book. The way I’ve written the podcasting book AKA the way the information flooded my senses which I now know happened by intuitively tapping into the quantum field, is where it’s at. I was the vessel for the information. I received a “massive download” for lack of better words.

Writing the business books except the one mentioned previously, was more of a mechanical job. I would sit down and write from experience. It was a logical process guided almost entirely by the left brain. Today, I’d say it was more of a mental push strategy rather than letting the inner wisdom guide me. I wasn’t in a state of flow although my mind tricked me into thinking I was.

Quite the opposite is true for the podcasting book and my newly released fiction book.

I remember sitting down in front of my laptop at 8 AM and starting to type at my podcasting book. I would go on writing until 4 or 5 PM without breakfast or lunch. I would get up briefly to go to the bathroom and have a glass of water but that was about it. This writing pattern continued for five consecutive days after which my book was done. I was in awe as I could barely remember how everything came together.

Some of us meditate, others practice yoga, go for long walks, hitchhike, or do some other type of activities to quiet the mind.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having a clear mind. While trying to “empty” the mind can cause mayhem and increase the power of the ego, reconnecting with the heart enables us to tap into the creative frequencies and vibrations effortlessly.

Amazing things emerge from stillness.

We are powerful beyond imagination when we’re in a total state of flow.

I’m grateful for bringing the gift of writing stories and poems back into my life. Only when we follow our inner compass do we realize how much has atrophied inside of us. Bringing those parts back to life is the real treasure hunt. This is when you finally innerstand (that’s not a typo!) the deep meaning of the proverb “All the answers are within you”. The moment this imprint touches you on a cellular level, the shift is imminent, and there’s no going back.

Invest time into getting to know yourself. It’s the most precious adventure you will undertake and the best part of life on this beautiful blue planet we call Earth, as there is no one else that can do it for you, except you.

I invite you on a deep dive beyond the realms of your physical and electric light body to uncover your amazing gifts. We all have them. The question is: Are you brave enough to bring them forth and shine your light?

Grab a copy of my new fiction book “Spiritual Harvest” and enjoy the majestic journey into the depths of the quantum. The book is available on Amazon.

The post When Business Meets Fiction appeared first on StrengthInBusiness.

Your product or service was rejected? Was the answer to your proposal a resonating “no”? How about the deal you’ve put your heart and soul into didn’t close as expected? And what about your date that didn’t even bother to show up?

If you’re playing this human game on Earth right now, chances are that you’ve been rejected at least once thus far. I don’t want to spoil the enthusiasm, but I’m convinced most of you reading this have learned to cope with rejection.

Whereas some beautiful souls feed from rejection and have learned to transform this low-frequency vibration into something powerful, such as mental strength, emotional stability, and heightened awareness, others continue to suffer and deploy a variety of tools and strategies to alleviate the pain that surges from the word “no.”

YES and NO are the most powerful words, aka spells, in the universe.

When you innerstand (that’s not a typo!) on a cellular level what I’m about to share with you now, you can alchemize all the “NO’s” that come your way.

YES and NO are the same thing. They reside at the end of the same spectrum. When we collapse the wave of “NO,” we get a “YES.”

Therefore, the million-dollar question in this 3D reality is this:

How do we collapse the wave? How do we turn a “NO” into a “YES”?

Here’s my short and sweet answer to that:

We do it by zeroing in on “push” and “pull”.

Now, let me elaborate on the concept mentioned above:

We live in a game of duality: Up, down. Left, right. Dark, light. Inside, outside.

While most of the time, we find ourselves bouncing around from one extreme to the other, there are those magical times when things seem to flow easily and effortlessly. This happens when we’re in balance. The chatter in the mind slows down or dissipates entirely, and we start to attract things into our lives at a fast pace. Unfortunately, these moments only last briefly as we are thrown back into the craziness of everyday life, paddling against the tides.

I’ve been in sales for as long as I can remember. As a child, I accompanied my grandmother to the local market, where we would sell seasonal vegetables and flowers. At this very young age, I was fortunate enough to experience first-hand the pros and cons of both push and pull strategies/techniques. Rarely would a customer show up who was a master of balancing the two.

Later, when I joined the corporate world, I witnessed the push strategy being deployed to the utmost extremes, harming sales and profits and destroying business relationships. When I transitioned to the entrepreneurial realm, I expected a more careful approach to the push strategy and a better integration of pull methods. My expectations were partly met. Both realms excel at the ends of the spectrum, and there is little understanding of the importance of balancing the two.

The most spectacular results are accomplished when zeroing in, aka balancing both push and pull. This goes beyond business; it applies to sports, dating, and life in general.

While push requires a lot of effort and willpower, it ultimately burns out the individual and the business in the long run. Pull is associated with magnetism and a clear intention of where one wants to go and take the business. A state of constant magnetism might seem desirable from the outside, but the act of “doing nothing” deprives the human mind, body, and soul of fully experiencing life on this beautiful blue planet.

Hence, it is essential to zero in on push and pull and thus achieve that state of flow the wise often speak about.

Of course, this isn’t a one-shot approach; we do it once and reap the rewards forever. It’s an ongoing process. It requires a growth mindset and the willingness to go deeper down the rabbit hole and uncover the essence of who we truly are.

Know thyself.

Easier said than done. It’s a process, beautiful soul.

Learn to weave your magical wand and transform the “no” into a “yes” or vice versa.

Play with the plethora of terminologies, colors, and vibrations across the entire spectrum of yes-no-yes. Lean into the zero point. Embrace the beauty of the entrepreneurial journey and all the amazing adventures you can experience in your human avatar.

_________________________________________

Image by Pexels via Pixabay

__________________________________________

The post Rejected? So What? appeared first on StrengthInBusiness.

I failed many times in the past and will continue to do so in the future. I’m addicted to failing fast, readjusting my approach, tweaking the strategy, and moving forward. Does this make you (if you do the same) or me a failure? NO!

You must move out of the comfort zone bubble to grow and accomplish your dreams. The moment you do that, your rate of failure will increase exponentially. The trick is to fail quickly and learn from those failures. Another trick is to learn from other people’s failures.

Will you repeat certain “mistakes” or “failures” (for lack of a better word) over and over again? Probably. I do it until my biological computer inside this physical avatar gets it on a deep subatomic level. The moment the cells integrate the information and lesson that comes with it accordingly, I will stop repeating the so-called “failure.”

This is what people get entirely wrong. They associate failing with being a failure. And that my friends is very dangerous.

… more specifically, they are one and the same thing.

What I just wrote is very difficult for the human mind to comprehend. In a world of duality and separation, it’s hard to bring across a concept based on unity.

Good and bad, young and old, female and male, up and down, left and right, light and dark are all part of everything and, consequently, nothing. We thrive when we are one and struggle when fighting our perceived enemy in the mirror, which merely reflects who we are at the core.

Let’s take this quantum physics law and apply it to business as it’s one of the most straightforward fields to dissect based on quantifiable metrics such as revenue, profits, company size, number of employees, etc.

In business and entrepreneurship, we link success to money and failure to lack of it. Obviously, through the rise of social media networks, we added a few more “blurry” components and labels to success, such as influencers or number of followers, to add a couple; however, the main pillar remains money.

Unless you inherited loads of money from a generational endeavor or married a wealthy fellow/lady, chances are you’ll fail your way to success and, if all goes well, to money and wealth.

The following quote by Winston Churchill comes to mind:

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

You’re a Diving Spark, a beautiful soul, a quantum architect, and a powerful being.

Stop associating failure with you.

Stop believing all the narratives cleverly perpetrated throughout various mediums and networks. They are meant to keep you small. Their primary purpose is to make you drop into the low-vibrational frequency of fear so that you allow your precious energy and life force to be sucked out of you.

Remember who you are. Know that you are amazing, a supersonic beacon of light with stellar capabilities.

Step up to the game of business and life. Fail forward, fail fast, and get up. You’ve done this for billions of years. Trust your innate intelligence. Own your outcomes.

___________________________________________

Image by the blowup via Unsplash

___________________________________________

The post Failing Doesn’t Mean You’re A Failure appeared first on StrengthInBusiness.

Test, iterate, and retest. Testing the variables, and refining a product or service through repeated adjustment cycles is in essence marketing and this is what people get wrong.

I’ve been operating in this space for more than two decades now and whenever I’m asked what precise code will unlock the treasure trove, I humbly reply with: “We’ll need to test it.”

There is no recipe for success to be replicated 1:1 to achieve the same results. Variables differ across businesses, time, ecosystems, economies, etc. Everything is in a constant flow and therefore you’ll need to test what works best for you in that specific time frame.

Yes, there are key ingredients to success that are the foundation aka the main pillars required to attain a certain outcome. Those should be included in the recipe. Apart from that, you’ll encounter a plethora of variables that add a specific flavor and a unique spice to what it is you’re offering.

Indeed, success leaves clues, and there’s a lot of wisdom in adhering to core principles that enable you to mirror processes and fast-track the learning curve.

However, testing will reveal the good and the bad to help you understand where you’re at.

So then, what’s marketing all about?

Here’s the non-academic and non-mainstream approach to marketing:

This gives you a fair insight as to what blueprint my team and I follow when we embark on a new marketing adventure with a client.

Marketing is not your brand, story, tagline, website, or some fancy ad on Facebook.

If we reverse-engineer the concept of marketing we end up with testing.

Big retail companies continuously test the store layout. They even have a department in charge of this task; it’s the category managers. Ecomm shops always test their color palette, the position and size of the search icon, and how related products and bundles are displayed to ensure their marketing enhances and influences customer behavior.

Furthermore, marketing works in tandem with sales. Those who understand the power of this lethal combination rarely think and design campaigns in silos.

So, what’s it going to be? Will you adhere to the mainstream narrative of what marketing is supposed to be, or are you open to new perspectives that embrace the notion of marketing as a gigantic pool of testing?

_____________________________________________________________

Image by Mikael Blomkvist via Pexels

_____________________________________________________________

The post Marketing is a Fancy Word for Test appeared first on StrengthInBusiness.

In the world of entrepreneurship, uncertainty prevails. The journey is chaotic, full of traps and pitfalls thus adding a special flavor to the adventure while shaping the individual accordingly.

Embarking on this journey, putting on the solopreneur or small business owner hat, requires resilience and a strong willingness to learn. While increasing mental stamina, knowing how to juggle with numbers (e.g. cash flow), and being a visionary and avid salesperson are key ingredients, there’s always room for someone to bring on the team to help you with most of the above.

However, there is one component, you won’t be able to outsource and that’s your ability to deal with or better yet, embrace uncertainty.

If I say to you, that you’ll have to learn to dance with uncertainty, you might laugh at me.

But think about it:

Can you predict your future?

Yes, you can set time aside to strategize where you want to take your business.

Obviously, it’s wise to have money parked in the business to grab an opportunity when it shows up or cover certain losses when they arise.

Indeed, you can hire top people on the team to help you scale the business and increase your base line but at the end of the day, there’s always going to be a blind spot, a space I like to call mystical that will surprise you and take you to places you never thought existed.

Therefore, instead of dwelling and torturing yourself with the notion of the unknown, rather giving in and embracing the magic of uncertainty is an interesting way of approaching challenges in business and life in general.

We see and know so little about our business, life, and the universe, and yet we think we have it all under control. What a fallacy.

Over the years, I’ve come to understand, appreciate, and value the importance of bouncing ideas back and forth with people who have a different perspective on business and life.

Realizing that I can’t see the picture when I’m in the frame has opened my mind to a plethora of new, revolutionary insights. For example, a few weeks ago, I visited an exhibition on astrophotography and was struck by the concept of making sophisticated patterns look easy to grasp and for the mind to digest.

We tend to over-complicate processes in business ending up mesmerized by the sheer amount of tasks that cripple our creativity and drain our most vital source of energy, our life force.

Stress, frustration, anxiety, and similar low-vibration feelings hijack our consciousness thus urging us to avoid the unknown and run away from everything that is unfamiliar or might sprinkle a dust of uncertainty onto our well-shaped reality. We think that protecting our ‘Escape-land’ will somehow move us forward and bring us closer to our goals while the exact opposite happens.

“Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.” – Tony Robbins

We’ve heard this quote so often and despite being regurgitated all over the web, we continue to run after the first part of the equation which more often than not is associated with money and fame, disregarding the crucial second part.

How well is numbing your senses working out for you?

For well over a decade, I played the success roulette running around like a hamster convinced that climbing at the top of some random mountain would give me everything I always wanted, only to end up feeling empty.

It was one of the most precious lessons I learned in life as it forced me to rethink my path and create a new life that included precious elements I’ve not considered previously such as protecting my time and energy ferociously, working with people I value, and deeply care about, allow my creative juices to flow freely and open up to new possibilities.

Uncertainty is part of this 3D reality. Embracing it will allow you to experience inner peace and surrender to what will come your way. Obviously, this doesn’t mean you’re not encouraged to design and build your life according to your morals and principles. What this means, is freeing up space in your mental and emotional imprint so that you can use that additional fuel to boost your life as you see fit.

It all comes down to choice which is a powerful weapon we possess. In a world of duality, you either surrender to the unknown or you let it eat you alive.

What’s it going to be? Will you befriend uncertainty or will you allow it to become your worst enemy? Choose wisely.

___________________________________________________________________________

Image by Vladislav Babienako on Unsplash

___________________________________________________________________________

The post The Opportunity is in the Uncertainty appeared first on StrengthInBusiness.

How many boxes can you juggle in life without burning out? Have you discovered the sweet spot that enables you to move swiftly and friction-free between your pots?

Some boxes are more important than others. The core ones stay with us our whole lives whereas the seasonal ones will leave us at a certain stage aka cycle in life. The fundamental boxes are pretty much the same for all of us: health, love in the form of family, relationships and friendships, and career or business.

Is there a main box? And if so, which one is it?

Well, it’s the one that is with us from the first until the last breath we take. It’s the SELF box – not to be confused with the “shelf” box, although more often than not, we place ourselves last.

And then, there are the seasonal boxes as I like to call them. Some of the most prevalent ones are the sports, hobbies, and passion boxes.

Obviously, none of the boxes will ever be 100% pure; in the sense that you will have sports, passion, hobby, health, and love, for example, intertwined.

Let me start by confessing that I’ve not figured this out for myself either. More so, I’m not over-analyzing or obsessing with it, as I think we’re here to experiment and try out as many things as possible.

Recently, I published an article on the Hive blockchain where I shared some insights about the act of balancing my core boxes in life. I defined my three main pots as health, family/relationships/friendships, and business. Furthermore, I shared Baroness Karren Brady’s three boxes which are similar to mine, except that she has “self” instead of my “health” box.

Yes, we can argue whether health is part of the “self” box and so forth, but that’s not the point of this topic. What I want to emphasize, is the importance of the following two aspects:

1. Knowing your boxes

2. Consciously choosing between boxes

How often have you tried to multi-task and have gloriously failed at it?

If the answer is “always”, you’re at least not lying to yourself.

This is where the SELF box comes into play. Investing time into knowing ourselves is crucial. As we move along in life and things get thrown at us aka life happens, we need time to adjust to external factors. This enables us to navigate the stormy waters with a heightened consciousness, without destroying ourselves and those around us.

Let’s tackle the terminology of “truth” in this context.

We all define and perceive truth differently. There is no universal truth albeit there are physical laws that apply to our physical reality as well as quantum principles that govern higher dimensions.

I’ve seen the concept of truth best play out in presentations and conversations. A couple of weeks ago I was part of an exercise where we had someone recite 20 words that were associated with going to bed at night. Funny enough, the word “bed” was never mentioned. Instead, words such as a pillow, dreams, snooze, alarm, night, etc. were enumerated.

When asked what words were used, one-third of the audience said “bed”. And here’s the kicker: This very same third of the audience was convinced that the word “bed” was among the 20 words spoken out loud. Even when the words were played back from a recording some of them couldn’t deal with the fact that they were wrong.

So, what’s the truth when we have such discrepancies when hearing a message?

This is why, you can’t project what you perceive as true onto others. What may be true for you, isn’t necessarily true for the person you’re talking to. Furthermore, you can’t expect the person next to you to understand your truth. Doing so, more often than not results in conflict.

The most important takeaway here is to be as honest and true as possible with yourself while acknowledging the fact, that your mind will play all kinds of tricks on you.

So, if you can’t trust your mind to tell the truth, whom can you trust?

Maybe your heart?

How often has your heart misguided you especially when it wasn’t properly in tune with the mind?

Always?

I’ve come to understand, that there is no perfect truth so to speak. The closest truth is the one coming from intuition, given we are vibrating at a high enough frequency that enables our innate intelligence to guide us.

Therefore forcing our perceived truth onto others causes distress and is detrimental to fostering genuine, strong human relationships.

I’ve got two more questions for you before I wrap this up for today:

1. What do you believe to be true that isn’t?

2. Have you asked yourself whether you’re operating from a framework of “truth” assumptions that might be totally wrong?

We are all plugged into this reality with our five senses and the best thing we can do is define our boxes, and consciously choose between them. If we can’t accomplish this task and apply it to our lives, how can we expect the world to become a better place?

If we can’t juggle our boxes without friction, who are we to advise and worse, blame other people as to how they should run their lives?

In the end, it’s all a show and we get to pick and choose the character that we want to identify with. Some choose to extract life’s juices by convincing themselves that they can multi-task several boxes, while others find a way for better or worse to balance their core boxes.

Juggling boxes without friction requires self-mastery. In the end, we’re all here to experiment, experience, and play.

________________________________________________________________________

Image by Los Muertos Crew on Pexels

________________________________________________________________________

The post Juggling Boxes without Friction appeared first on StrengthInBusiness.