Adrian Nantchev's Blog, page 29

How to create and give yourself your perfect job

People are often talk about finding the perfect job, but do not think about creating it instead. By looking for a job you are dependent on someone else to pay you and to have a job for you.When you are working for a business you are ultimately working for another entrepreneur's dream.You have to give yourself a job- become an entrepreneur.Work for yourself, not someone else.I saw an old friend recently and they made the comment that I had gone all "entrepreneurial", and my reply to them was "between the choice of working for myself, or someone else: I'd prefer to work for myself".Invest in yourself and create your own job. Create the life that you want for yourself, as opposed to working on someone's else business and being subservient to them. Be your own boss.Employ yourself and work on your passions and your dreams. Figure out what it is you stand for and what your purpose is and then monetise it! Don't be an angry, bitter old person because you never had the life you wanted- be your own person.When I first had the choice of being an entrepreneur, I could see myself in the future looking back at that moment and begin glad that I made that choice. As opposed to looking back and thinking "why didn't I do it? I had the time, energy and opportunity. Why?"Some people talk about how the employer is exploiting his workers and that a zero hour contract is exploitation- when they have the chance and opportunity to start their own business or become self employed. Yet, few if any of them, actually do it. Why? Because liberty and freedom scares people. It is the responsibility of having to really take care of yourself and your customers, and eventually, your employees.Freedom scares people and that is why there is a divide in wealth in the world: because some people dare to dream, learn and act on their ambitions. They realise that playing thesamegame as everyone else will get them thesameresult as everyone else. So they decide to do something different... they become an entrepreneur and forge their own destiny.Isn't it time you did so too?To save you some time,hereare 101 lessons and mistakes that I learnt the hard way during my time as an entrepreneur.

It does not matter who is the President or Prime Minister

It does not matter who is in charge of your country, an entrepreneur will find a way to make their business work in any economy and country.If you think that a politician will change your life and help you grow your business, then you are an idiot. They will not help you and it is best to be able to help yourself and propel yourself further.You may get help and tax breaks, but this kind of help may be few and far between, not to mention it is indirect help.They are not going to tell you what you should be learning or what you are missing or overlooking in your business. But they will do lip service to people like you, and the majority of the population in order to get voted in. They may be genuine, experienced or a good person, but do not be mislead that they will change your life- they will not. Only you can change your life.They have no real power to change your business and only you can do that. You have to be the change that you want to see in your life. For your life to change, you need to change- no politician is truly going to look after you.This is also what annoys me about poorer and lower class people, where they think their entire life is determined by who is in power- hoping that a politician from London or Washington D.C will make their life better. For your situation to change, you need to do something different with your time and energy.'You cannot change a situation with the same mindset that created it', said Einstein. So, for people to become rich, get out of poverty, etc, they need to change their habits, what they spend their money on, who they associate with, etc. They need to be the spark that changes their life, and it is the same with your business: you have the be the ignition that makes your dream and vision come true. No politician can push you to success, they only get in the way and delay things with taxes and bureaucracy.Be self reliant and understand that no matter who is in power: you still have to look out for yourself. No politician is truly going to do that for you.To learn more about this lesson, clickhere.

The problem EVERY entrepreneur will face

The problem every entrepreneur will face is that we need to focus on your business and on your work until you are satisfied. The problem is that we will have distractions.It is called the 10 dark years, where you work, work and work, towards your goals and to have the life you want. So, then afterwards, you can have a better life afterwards.As entrepreneurs, we are doing the work otherswill not, so in the future we can live the life otherscannot.Gary Vaynerchuck described it well with "eat shit for 24 months, so you can have caviar for the rest of your life".You have to focus on your goals, ambitions and desire before you can allow yourself to settle down.I was told by an entrepreneur who is in his 30's, that your priorities change and you want to slow down and settle down when you reach your 30's. So that means, before then you can build the life you want to have.I broke up with girlfriend recently because she was not ambitious, she did not want to do the work now, so she could then relax for the rest of her life. Now that I have broken up with her I am just going to focus on my business until I am financially stable, then endeavour to find a wife.Learn more about this topic in one of my bookshere.

Careful who you take advice from

Careful who you learn your lessons from and who is your mentor, because not everyone knows what they are talking about and some people are misguided.Listen to the 99%of people, but learn and realise who you should ignore. Not everyone knows your circumstance or your business as well as you do, and only you truly know what is best for you.When you listen to peoples' advice, ask yourself things like these: are they practising what they are preaching? Have they put their advice into action or is it just theory? Follow the money. Who benefits from you learning from them?There is a thing called the survivorship bias, which talks about how one piece of advice, or practise, that worked for someone may not work for you. Just because someone successful teaches you how to do something specific or gives you some advice, it does not mean that it will apply to you too. Because their experience is unique to them and so is their journey. Therefore, any advice or wisdom they draw from it is biased towards their unique situation and circumstance. So, be careful what you learn from people, because often it may be biased and not quite applicable to you.Listen and learn from everyone, because you can often learn what not to do in life, by learning from others' experiences.Some people will be genuine and they will share and teach a lot, and will be very generous about it. Where as others will only share and teach you for the money.It is down to you to figure out which are which and who you listen to.Learn more about this topic in one of my books: https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/home

2 Mistakes to Avoid when Starting a Business

When you are starting your business, there are a two things to consider:1) Start small.Expand your comfort zone and learn new things that can help you become a better entrepreneur.Do your research, extensively, before you make any decisions. Because there may be a better way to achieve what it is you want to achieve than the way you are already going about it.As I started my first business I spend £997 launching my first website, little did I know about alternatives such as Shopify, where I could have got the same result but with a better service.2) Risk what you can afford.As it is your first business, the chances are that you will fail- but this is also good because you will learn a lot. You don't lose- you either win or learn.Only risk what you can afford to lose and learn as much as you can from this venture- it probably will not be your last.Be prepared to expand your comfort zone, have a lot of restless nights, crying and figuring out what to do and what went wrong. Your first business can be a very exciting and decisive experience. But you also need to have persistence, not only in yourself, but in you becoming better and learning new skills that you can then apply.Here are a few other mistakes and things I recommend doing, as you grow your business. Clickhere.

What don't I see?

Endeavour to look at your business from different angles.There is something that you do not see that is affecting your business and its performance.Look at your key performance indicators: customer acquisition cost, average order value, customer life time value.When you look at your metrics you can see a snapshot as to how your business is performing.I looked at my potato business and realised that for every 16 visits I was getting a sale, the average order size was £5 and that around 50% of the sales were abandoned.When you see more things, then you begin to build a picture as to what your business is doing and how it is performing.Here are some major KPIs to consider:Customer acquisition costAverage order valueCustomer life time valueAbandonment rateCost of good producedProfit marginConversion rateNet profitReturn on investment

What don't I know?

When you are building your business you need to ask yourself: 'why don't I know?'You don't know what you don't know.There is also something out there that you do not know or see.By looking for what you don't know, you are trying to find the holes in your business and for what you are selling.There is always a unknown factor in your business and it is down to you to figure it out.If you think you know everything and your entire strategy is foolproof- then you are an idiot.Whatever could go wrong will go wrong.Think about your downside and think about what you are missing- this way you can make your business more secure. There is always something you are missing.I was at a business event recently and was talking about my upcominghemp business, and one person talk about what could happen if I build all this attention, awareness and demand, only for a big business to sweep in and capture all that awareness and steal the demand from me.Learn more about this topic in one of my bookshere.

Write Things Down- 10/101 Entrepreneur Mistakes & Lessons

When I was at college back in 2010 my lecturer encouraged us to keep a journal with us so that when we got an idea we should write it down. I never bothered with this, but I now realise the benefit to doing something similar.Ideas are the modern day alchemy; where you can turn everyday objects (ideas) into gold (money).The more ideas you have, the more opportunity you can create for yourself.Ideally, you need 5 ideas a day, which means that you'll create 1 pure 24 karat golden opportunity a year.When you get an idea you need to write it down as soon as you can. What I personally do is write down the idea into an email and I send it to myself, so when I'm at my laptop later on I can then write down the idea in the appropriate word document and expand on the idea.That file is saved onto Dropbox, so if there is a problem with the computer I can access the file elsewhere. Reducing the chances of that idea being lost forever.This book was an idea I generated a few weeks ago, I wrote it down and soon after I did some thinking, research and planning, then I decided to write this book instead of another book I planned to write.I rationalised that this book topic was more important than the other ideas I had lined up. So it was given higher priority. I only started writing this yesterday, on the 3rd February 2017.By writing down your ideas you have 0% chance of forgetting them, which means that you are not missing out on creating opportunity for yourself. An idea you have randomly one day could change your life.A lot of people use apps like Ever note, I never really got into it and you don't have to use it, you just use what bests suits your practices.There are another 100 mistakes that I madehere.

Create more assets - 9/101 Entrepreneur Mistakes & Lessons

Another thing that I did not fully focus on in 2016 and understand how to achieve, is the creation of assets.Assets are things that put money into your pocket automatically and all the time, even while you are sleeping.I think I bit a little bit more off than I could chew by trying to go into real estate investing too soon. Because property is a good asset, but it can be quite expensive to get into, as it has a high barrier to entry.But you need to go crazy with creating assets for yourself, especially when you want to become financially free.Never stop creating and maintaining assets. Because as the world changes, you need to change with it. More on this later on in mybook.Because I did not focus on creating assets much in 2015 and 16, I have now set myself the goal of creating them big time in 2017.One of the easiest kinds of assets you can create are books. Because the barrier to entry to getting a book onto Amazon is extremely low and very easy and the content for your books is inside your mind.I believe that you should write books because all the knowledge is inside you for nonfiction and all you need to do is put them online. You can go the extra step to promote them and blog about them, but this is your choice. Furthermore, by doing so you'll become an authority easier.If writing is not your thing then focus on building your business, getting stocks or getting more property.The lesson I learnt is that you need to continue to build and buy assets. This is how you raise your standard of living and how the rich get richer.Learn more about this mistakehere.

Write A Book - 8/101 Entrepreneur Mistakes & Lessons

I believe that you cannot really go wrong by writing a book. If you decide not to write a book then it is business as usual, where as if you do decide to write a book then the worst thing that can happen is that your English grammar will improve. But is that really a bad thing? No. You may also get a sale or two online, and that's not bad either.Millions of books are published a year, but how many authors do you know? By writing a book you are a select few people that have actually sat down, researched and written what you know.Also, writing a book is a way to ensure people recognise you as an authority. When you know your stuff you can write a book about it, and that way people know that you know your stuff.The way I also see it is: do your idea justice and share it with the world.It does not need to be a book per say, it could be a blog, video, commentary or interviews.The principle is to package your knowledge so you can share it and sell it in the world.This is how you become an authority: by sharing your expertise so people can consume your knowledge and attribute what they know to you.After all, the word "authority" has the word "author".Define your knowledge: what you know and do not know, and begin to write a book on the topic.Use the Createspace publisher as I mentioned earlier to get your book into physical form and use Kindle (KDP) to get your book on ebook readers.Find some templates and get writing. One very quick template I know: define 10 chapters and ask and write about 15 questions per chapter that the read will want answered. These questions make up the body of the book.I find that once you begin writing, more ideas come to you and your book quickly fills up, and soon you have an idea for another book.Check out one of my bookshere.