Bob Started » General Advice

Jun Loayza’s First 1.5 Years as an Entrepreneur

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:54:29 +0000

I randomly ended up at Jun Loayza’s Blog earlier today and found this video of his first 1.5 years as an entrepreneur. I recommend that each one of you watch it immediately.

I feel that this video summarizes much of my own thoughts perfectly. It is a great characterization of some of the things you go through as a young entrepreneur. He also mentioned two books that I hold close to my heart (Crush It and the 4 Hour Work Week) and I recently bought the third book he mentions (E-Myth Revisited).

Robert M. Cavezza

(Bob)

The Importance of Changing Your Goals as Time Progresses

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:24:10 +0000

A few days ago, I posted a few of my goals for this year.

7 days into 2010, I learned that one of my goals will not get completed this year. Yes, I received my “not admitted” letter from the Babson College MBA program earlier this afternoon.

Pretty upsetting.

Anyway, the greatest aspect of goal setting is that they are personal. The only person they matter to is you. Because of this, you have the opportunity to change or update your goals each day.

I know I will not be living in Boston from May until 2012. This creates the potential for a mini-retirement in an exotic country after the successful launch my current projects. My current mission remains to establish and automate three companies before the end of the year. Instead of doing so to attend Babson, I am now doing so to create time for a mini-retirement in Taiwan. I hope to use this trip to learn local customs and return to the US with some new business ideas.

It is never a nice feeling to get rejected from anywhere. What matters is your mindset and how you respond. I intend to use this disappointment to fuel my fire behind my plans for the next few months.

Best Regards,

Robert M. Cavezza

(Bob)

Is it a Wise Move to Find a Partner for Your Venture?

admin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:52:55 +0000

According to Frabrice Grina, a student and entrepreneur from France, yes – you should take on a partner.

In a recent post, Fabrice discusses the success of major internet companies and discusses reasons why it’s often better to have a partner.

This post is definitely worth a look if you’re considering going solo on your next project.

Robert M. Cavezza

(Bob)

Read the Four Hour Work Week

admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 23:32:39 +0000

I often frequent the business section at Barnes and Noble and no other book has changed my philosophy on small business more than the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. If you haven’t read this book, you should – you will be in for a treat.

Here’s my one sentence summary of the book.

Tim Ferriss teaches you how to take control of your life.

The book is more about small business, outsourcing, and world travel. This book is about changing your philosophy about life. Tim discusses the term life deferment. This refers to the typical nine to five working schedule where many adults delay actually living their life until they plan on retiring. This isn’t the way I want to live. This isn’t the way I want anyone I care about to live.

I want every person I know to live on their terms. I want to be able to go to every one of my kid’s soccer games when they get older. I don’t want to be told I have to be in an office for 8 or 9 hours a day.

Tim’s work is the closest blueprint for taking control of your life that I have ever read. I want everyone I care about to read this book and take control of their life.

Tim, thank you for writing this book. I am sure you have helped thousands of people across the globe take control of their life.

For more information about Tim’s book, you can visit the Four Hour Work Week’s Official Website.

Making To-Do Lists Before Falling Asleep

admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:51:30 +0000

I read that it is a good practice to make a to-do list for the next day before you go to sleep. After I took some time to think about the current projects on my plate, I made a list of all the items I wanted to accomplish today. I even put time frames and specific quantitative measures for each item.

So far. So good.

I have met every one of my deadlines so far today. I have a pretty tight deadline for finishing the entire look and feel of one of our new website projects by 3:00pm EST, so I better get to it.

I think I first heard of this practice either in Brian Tracey’s Eat That Frog or in The Art of Getting Things Done. Either way, you should check out both of these books. They can greatly increase your productivity at the workplace and at home.

Robert M. Cavezza

(Bob)

Working Efficiently and Effectively

admin — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:57:53 +0000

Lately, I have been very efficient, but not been very effective!

As Peter Drucker has pointed out, you have to do things right, but you also have to do the right things! For the past few weeks, I have been toiling with an html template that was being hosted on Web Presence University. I put a lot of work into making necessary changes to the design to make it fit my needs. I must have spent over 50 hours customizing graphics, changing the stylesheets, colors, table displays. When I think back to it now, it was a total waste!

I am now going back to the idea and setting up a simple wordpress site design. I am going to create different subdomains for each service I want to sell. The services will include search engine optimization, web usability consulting, and creating online resumes.

I realize now that there will be no need to have one site created for all of these functions. I’m going to setup a quick wordpress theme and focus on selling the services instead on designing the perfect website.

As Norm Brodsky and Guy Kawasaki always say, perfection is the enemy of “good enough”.