Adrian Nantchev's Blog, page 32

Top 2 principles for business

There are two main requirements of yourself in business. You can do anything you want, so long as you fulfil these two criteria with your actions.Be Happy.What every you are doing for your business, you have to be happy with what you are doing. If you are not happy then you will be restless and unhappy with what you are doing. Happiness is an emotional requirement and I used to believe that money alone would make me happy, but that turns out not to be the case. Money can bring happiness, as it magnifies the person you already are, but happiness comes from the things that money can allow and enable in your life. Furthermore, happiness is working on something that you love in your life. If you are not happy with what you are doing, then find something else to do. There is no point in living your life begrudgingly.Be competent.If you are not competent with what you are doing, then you will want to quit. If you are not competent then you will not see the results. When you are working on your skills or talents, yet not getting any results, then you need to go back to the drawing board and figure out why you are not getting any success. Do not let a temporary defeat turn into a permanent failure. When something is not working, then either you need to change your plan as you approach the market or you need to look inside of you and be introspective so as to know what you could do better.Learn more in my book:Secrets of the Entrepreneur Mind.

How to niche your business effectively

In business it is either a race to the bottom on price, which is a commodity business, such as Walmart. Or, you can be a brand business, where it is a race to the top, such as Apple. Nothing wrong with either and you can make money from both, but, when it comes to starting a business you may want to be seen as high value to a specific type and number of people. When you are a brand business, then you are seen as the one to work with, work for or buy from- you are seen as a high premium business. The kind of business where you can sell 1 thing a day and make £1,000 profit, rather than sell 1,000 things a day and make £1 from each of them.Be something special to a select few.As you are starting a business, you want to have a monopoly on a certain very niche and selective market sector. You do not want to start out serving everybody, but you want to start out serving a few people, solving a very specific problem for them..Let's say that you are a car dealership, you can serve anyone and everyone. Nothing wrong with this, but the problem you will face is your marketing- because you are just another car dealership. Just how if you started just another business, then there would be nothing remarkable about you.Where as if you started a car dealership that dealt with Mercedes Benz for the winter, then suddenly you are starting to appear as high value to a certain number of high value clients and you are quite selective in who you work with.You could go one step further and say that you are a car dealership that specialises with Mercedes Benz for the winter in Germany. Suddenly your perceived value to those kinds of customers and clients goes through the roof and they see you as high value and as an expert.Rather than seeking to be the cheapest in the market, you suddenly are one of the most expensive and are a premium dealership that knows what they are talking about.When you niching down you need to care about the thing you are building and the things you are selling. You need to have a bigger purpose behind what it is you are doing- and it's not just the money, because the money is a result of your transaction and a compensation for solving a problem for your customers.Learn more in my book:Start within a niche

How to create opportunity from thin air

Recognising opportunity is all about awareness- the more awareness you have, the more opportunity you can recognise and create from thin air.Opportunity comes from connecting the dots. Dots that people are willing to pay for to be connected, and dots that mean something to you and something you care about.Imagine your brain like a container that has knowledge inside of it. The more knowledge it has inside of it, the more ideas it can generate when an external input enters it.Let's say you have knowledge about book writing, creation and promotion, then you heard about something in the world or heard about a topic. This topic can be bounced around within the container and as it bounces off the book writing knowledge it generates an idea, which is to write a book on this topic. Then as it bounces around other pieces of knowledge, then it will generate moreideas that way too.The more you have inside your mind, the more opportunity you can create from thin air.The best kinds of opportunities are the ones that you personally care about and the ones that you act upon. Because everyone can come up with ideas, but not everyone acts upon them and when they do, they are not always whole heartily.Seek to take in more information, new ideas, more knowledge and be curious as to how the world worlds works.I talk about this my book:how to get ahead as an entrepreneur.

Best way to learn as an entrepeuer

Education is important and we have to keep on our toes as to what we are learning and putting into our minds. Because: the more we learn, the more we earn.But what kind of education is the best for entrepreneurs? Essentially, the more actively we learn something, the more we retain.Look at Edgar Dale's cone of learning and you'll see that the more actively we learn something, the more of it we retain over the long run.Reading is probably the most scale able and cheapest way to learn new things, but does not offer a very high retention rate, meaning: we cannot remember all of it 2 weeks later.  However, you can get books on almost every subject in the world, thus making it the most accessible form of learning.On the other end of the spectrum is doing the work. When you are working with a mentor or actually working on your business, then you are learning the most. The problem with this is that making a mistake can be very costly, because when it happens it can affect your entire business and livelihood. Whereas if you were to read about someone's mistake in a book, then you'd not experience the hardship, but only learn the lesson.As entrepreneurs, we need a balance of ways of learning new things: we need to be reading a book, whilst learning on the job of building our businesses. We need to be life long learning machines, because there is always something else we do not know.Constantly take in more information and from different sources. You, and I, can never know too much. Check out my book, detailing the mistakes and lessons that I have made whilst I was an entrepreneur:101 Entrepreneur Mistakes and Lessons.

The power of reading books

As an entrepreneur, we need to learn as much as we can and apply as much as we can. We are one skill away from changing our future and fortune- we just don't know what skill that is.Books are a very powerful source of knowledge and each book has a golden nugget of knowledge inside of it. Every piece of advice or knowledge inside of a book can change your life. It is down to you to absorb that knowledge and apply it.I knew a guy once that was developing a business and I asked him what book he was reading and he said "I don't read book", almost in a proud/stubborn way. So it was as though he was proud of not reading books and he believed himself to know more about business and marketing, than people that have spent years in the sector and written up a book about it.In economics there is a thing called the convergence rate, which talks about the rate at which one thing can catch up to another and cover the same distance as someone before them has done, but in much less time. Look at USA vs. China from 1970-2000: China went from one of the worst economics to one of the best because they applied the technology, management structure and industrial processes that took America years to figure out, learn and master. All China had to do was apply those lessons that took America years to learn. It is the exact same principle with reading from other peoples' experience.We can learn something from every person and there has never book a person, or a book, that I could not learn something.Go crazy with learning: I often have three dozen videos on my YouTube watch later list and I'll listen to them at twice the normal speed, or I will flick through an eBook at the end of the day. There is so much opportunity to learn and take in new knowledge, principles, ideas and lessons from people around the world, yet we simply do not.If you want your life, fortune or business to change then you have to approach it with a different angle and with different ideas. Einstein once said: "you cannot solve a problem with the same mindset that started it"Learn more about this topic in one of my books:101 Entrepreneur Mistakes and Lessons from the Real World

Why you should get carried away with learning

When it comes to business: knowledge is invaluable.You, and I, as entrepreneurs, need to learn as much as we can- because we don't know what we don't now. We are one skill away from changing our fortune and future- we just don't know what that single skill is, so we have to be diligent learners.Just because we have finished school, college or university- does not mean we should not keep learning.In November 2016 I read around at least a dozen small eBooks, read ~100 blogs posts and watched a dozen hours of YouTube interviews and lectures about inbound marketingDrink deep from the fountain of knowledge, do not just take a sip. Go crazy with learning things and taking in new knowledge. When you want to learn something, endeavour to read a least 3 books about it.The funny thing is that as you begin to research more and more: you'll learn that you're missing more and more things.The funny things is that the more you learn, the more you begin to realise that you do not know, so you want to learn more so as to fill in that knowledge gap. Keep researching and learning until you either feel that you know more than enough to get started, or that you start to feel guilty that you have spent enough time researching.Check out one of my books that I have written that covers this topic:101 Entrepreneur Lessons and Mistakes

Simple method to create content to generate traffic

Firstly, find the content you want to share / or the message you want to get out into the world. Whether it is to buy, learn or understand something, etc.Then ask yourself "why is it important?" three times.Why is 'A' important? Its important because of 'B'. Why is 'B' important? etc.You cold also ask yourself other kinds of questions like "why is it remarkable?", "relevant" or "reliable" three times also.Why is 'A' remarkable? Because of 'B'. Why is 'B' remarkable? etc.By answering these kinds of questions you boil down what it is you want to promote to its emotional angle, so as to give yourself plenty of ideas for topics that you can talk about to your audience. And to create content that has an emotional angle, which will help them care about what you are sharing.By using this strategy you can come up with ideas that can be repackaged and presented in different ways; from info graphics, blogs, videos, etc.It helps to explain the benefit to your product/service, so as to help your audience care more about the product or service you have on offer.People like to buy, but don't like to be sold to. So, when you can start a conversation with someone that helps them to gauge your products or services, then they are more likely to buy from you. Here is an analogy: when you are selling weed killer to your customers, don't talk about your weed killer, instead talk about their crab grass. Join the conversation that is already happening in their head. When you can do this, it helps them to know, like and trust you. Which, in turn, helps them to buy from you. And you can do this by having conversations that your customers care aboutIt is about finding the emotional angle that appeals to the reader, with your ideas you can use them to create anything. Whether videos, blogs, infographics, a free PDF Book or even a new book for Amazon. It helps you to create content that your audience will care about.

The simple truth why passion is NOT enough

Forget about passion; you would not be in business if you did not have passion. Everyone has a passion for something, but talk about yourvision.Talk about what impact you want to make in the worldthroughyour passion. That is what no one, or certainly very few people, are talking about. When you talk about your vision, you make your passion more tangible and realistic. Everyone has got a passion for something, it is what you want to do with that passion that makes all the difference.JFK talked about getting a Man onto the moon.Martin Luther King talked about his dream.Donald Trump talked about making America great again.Talking about the vision that you have behind your passion and what you are working towards in your business, or in other ventures.The first thing you have go to do is to start with your 'why'. What's your reason that you are doing what you are currently doing? What drives you forward? What is the purpose behind the difference that you want to see?With my third business I fully embrace my vision- as it is to "champion the usage of hemp and bring it into the mainstream conscious", by business is an eCommerce site that will advocate and sell hemp based products. Furthermore, my vision can be fitted into a single tweet- making it easier to remember. Using this purpose as a guiding start for what I want to create and see, I am aiming to advocate hemp and change the stigma behind cannabisWith my first book I wanted to share the knowledge about the cognitive biases that we, as humans, have inside of our minds that affect how we think, feel and perceive the world. I wanted to help people learn about them and see how they could use them in their lives.When you start with why, not only do you have a direction and guiding principle(s) as you grow and expand, but also you know the purpose. You know, in concrete terms, why do you are doing what you are doing- and it helps if you give a damn about your why, otherwise you will lose focus and begin to lose interest in it sooner or later.The second thing to consider is your 'what'. What are you going to sell? What will the logo look like? What will the activities be that creates your vision?  What is it you are going to do? Whether eCommerce, writing a book or creating content. What is it you are going to do to bring your vision into existence? What are your distribution channels?Lastly, the 'how', which is the one you worry about the least because if there is anything you do not know- and there definitely are things you do not know, then you can learn them.Spend a a day understanding yourself; take the Myers Briggs test and the Hexico test to understand your personality from a psychology point of view. Spend a week understanding and researching how to use social media. Spend a month learning about marketing. Spending a few weeks learning is very worthwhile in order to learn and get ahead, so you can achieve more in your venture.This is why passion is not enough and that you need a vision. The vision is your guideline for what you want to accomplish. By having a vision you have something to refer to as you grow your business, achieve more and become more.Passion is simply the love of your actives. But with what purpose? Everyone got a passion, but few have a vision. What's yours? Help communicate it to the world and you can take your passion to the next level.Learn more about this topic in one of my books:101 Entrepreneur Mistakes and Lessons

Replace your New Years Resolution with this

Everyone knows that during New Year's there is aspike in gym membership, and we all know someone that decided to quit smoking or change a habit.But there are better ways to set your goals and ambitious for the year and for your life- as opposed to just claiming to start one.Create a Not-To-Do ListDefine 25 things you wish to accomplish and from these, pick 5 that you want to focus onnow. Make these 5 your to-do- list.Simply focus on these 5 until they are completed, and do not touch the other 20 until they are done. This helps you to focus your time and energy, whilst helping to you realise and figure out whether this activity or action gets you closer to achieving your goals.For my, my 5 goals are:Maintain the potato business, and phase it out.Record 3242+ Videos for YouTube, each with an accompanying blog.Fiver giggs/ Upwork.Create Udemy e-courses.Start and grow the Hemp business.Each of these tasks gets me one step close to the life that I want to build and see for myself- they are all part of a grand strategy. When I can focus, then I can follow one course until success. Being to focus is a powerful way to get your goals achieved.Because I know what my goals are and what I want to focus on, I can then decide the best ways to spend my time and whether doing certain things or going to certain places will distract me from being able to work on them. What is called anOpportunity Cost, which is the time and attention cost of doing something. If I choose to do X, I am missing out on the chance to achieve Y. By writing this I am missing out on the opportunity of having breakfast, but I know I will benefit more by doing this first. By knowing what I want to focus on, I can focus my attention and energy on achieving them.Lastly, you don't need to wait for new years to set yourself goals- you can do these any time. You don't need to wait for an arbitrary date.Learn more about this topic in one of my books:3 Fucking Mistakes Every Entrepreneur Needs to Avoid

The 3 worst thing that can happen if you write a book

When you decide to write a book and share your knowledge and expertise, there are three main things that can go wrong in your life:When you write a book, your English grammar and communication skills will improve, which will means that your ability to read, write and  speak English will increase. God forbid this to happen! It's not like we speak English all the time...As you publish a book that people are searching for, there is a chance that someone may buy it and that you'll get a sale. Because you know, it is on the market waiting to be bought...Furthermore, if you choose not to write a book, or do anything else in your life that people will consider to be remarkable, then you will continue to get the life and results that you have been getting already. Normal actions and activities will result in normal results and normal consequences. Unless you endeavour to be remarkable, then you will get unremarkable results in your life- and no one truly wants a boring life. when you chose not to write a book, then it is business as usual...Keep in mind what the motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said: "if you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always got".If you want your situation to change, then you have to be the spark that changes it. You have to be the change you want to see in your life. What changes do you want to see in your life? What do you want to achieve?I realised in July 2016 that everyone can be remarkable and that my purpose: to help you become a remarkable entrepreneur. You are going to see more blogs like this and more books, because I want to help people become a remarkable entrepreneur, so one way I am going to do that is by writing an creating more content like this.Learn more about this topic in one of my books:9 ways writing a book can supercharge your business