Adrian Nantchev's Blog, page 7

What should I learn about? - 65/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.Everything and anything:Business.Marketing.Finance.Psychology.Understand how the world works:Stock exchange. Foreign exchange (FOREX).The more you can learn: the more you earn. The better you are equipped to face the world and the bigger impact you can make.Here are some key topics that are worth doing further research into:Non-farm payroll.Binary Options.25 Cognitive Biases.Inbound Marketing.Limited Liability Companies.Capitalism.Invisible Hand Theory.Keynesian vs. Austrian Economic Theories.Bitcoin/Cryoptcurrencies.Fri... Hayek, Milton Freidman.Each one of these go beyond the scope of this book and each one will open up a new world for you, thus generating ideas for you and broaden your horizons.You need to understand how the world works and  how humans think, then you can have a distinct advantage over 99% of the population. Because you have an idea how they think and act, as well as how businesses and economics works and how they affect peoples' lives, including your own.Put it this way: because we live in a world that is dominated by capitalism, it is best to understand how capitalism works. If we were born in the year 1517, 1717, 1817 or 1917, our priorities, plans, ideas and lives would be different, so would the world and so would our opportunities. When you can understand the system in which you live, then you can begin to have to take advantage of it and live your life to the fullest.Question of the day: what are you learning about?

How do I become a better person? - 64/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.Define what kind of attributes constitutes a good person: hard working, reliable, etc, and seek to have these kinds of qualities in your life and associate with people that already have these. Do the opposite with what does not constitute a good person: lazy, ignorant, etc. Seek to avoid behaviours, influences and people that will foster these in your life.Define what kind of attributes are needed to be a better person, and also define what kind are not needed.Make a list of the different attributes you want to have and not have in your life and for 30 days strive to fulfil and practise these attributes. Perhaps you could add these traits to your affirmations to help you become a better person.If you fail and revert back to the person you were before, then start your 30 days again, reset each time you fail. As you do this more and more, you'll slowly become the person you want to become. Over time, as you change, you'll wonder how you ever managed before in your current. As your comfort zone has been expanded, you cannot return back to the person you once were.Question of the day: How are you becoming a better person?

How do I become motivated? - 63/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.It is down to discipline, as it's easier to be motivated when you are passionate about the thing you are doing.There is a thing inside of us called 'ego depletion', which talks about how we lose energy as the day progresses. The longer we are awake, the more hours we spend working or the more decisions and choices we make throughout the day, all deplete our energy and power. This is why, as you may have heard Mark Zuckerberg always wears the same clothes, because it requires less mental processing power when he already knows what he is going to wear, thus saving him energy. This is a famous example, but a good example of reducing the decisions made throughout your day. What parts of your life can your streamline? Your clothes, food, routine, etc. Neither you nor I want to lose energy as the day progresses, as it means lost opportunity and energy.One thing that I was taught is to divide my day into 3 segments:The first segment is the first 1/3 of my day, which is where I have the most amount of energy and where I need to do the most mentally exhaustive and important tasks and objectives. Such as writing my books, answering important emails, sorting out customers, etc. This could be from 6-10am, or 8am till 12 midday.The second part is the 2/3 of the day and it is filled with your automatic daily tasks, whether personal or house chores. These are the tasks that do not require great amount of energy, but are important and need to be completed. This could from 10am till 2pm, or midday till 4pm.The last part of your day is where you have the least amount of energy, so you can reward yourself with pleasure, prizes, etc. When you reward yourself you are increasing your dopamine receptors in your brain and fanning your desires to strive and achieve more. This stage is also for relaxing.Look also to use an egg timer in your activities. Experiment with the Pomodoro technique, where you give yourself a 25 minute time span to complete a certain task- leveraging Parkinson's Law where a task will be completed in the allotted time given to it.It is down to maintaining your focus on activities and switching between different tasks constantly can drain your energy and make you overall less efficient. When you lose focus it can take you around 3 minutes to get back into focus. Try this little experiment: speak the alphabet and after each letter say the corresponding number. So: A1, B2, C3, D4, etc... Then try it again but just saying the letters and then separately counting to 26. When you separate out the tasks you are much faster, than if you were to count out the corresponding letters and numbers.One idea that a friends of time taught me that I like is to put £50 in a random page in a random book, so when you are reading and you find it randomly, it is a nice unexpected reward for you, which also spurs you onto to keep reading and learning.Lastly, it helps to maintain motivation when you have a goal to work towards. Define something you want to see in your life and work towards it, whether it is in health, wealth, love or happiness. You need a destination.Question of the day: How do you stay motivated?

Why is attitude important? - 62/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.You and I have to cultivate a sense of independence; because whenever we find ourselves with majority we need to stop and think. Whatever the majority of people are doing: do the opposite, you and I need to think for ourselves and become our own master. Follow the follower is the most unrewarding game in the world, stop and ask yourself "are the people that I am following going where I want to go?". There is an old saying: great people talk about ideas, average people talk about events and simple people talk about other people.Success stems from mental attitude. Attitude towards work, the definition of success, business, entrepreneurship and such. When we believe and think that we can achieve, we begin to see success as we manifest it in our lives.If someone is smarter, faster or more efficient than you: you can out work them. Do not let your handicaps let you down, as you can outwork and out strive your competition.Be the turtle: slow but steadily getting ahead and proceeding towards success. Be a diligent student of business, success and more, whilst striving to be better and applying those lessons.Someone can learn forever and be a diligent student, but action is important and applying what you have learnt. I have learnt about business, writing books, how to get books onto Amazon and how to market books, so here I am: applying what I know.As I mentioned earlier briefly, when we are defeated we ponder- we think, strategies, plan and envision. But when we are successful- we party and recognize our achievements, but we still need to buckle down so as to maintain our success, because there will always be someone to replace you as number 1.

How much passion do I need? - 61/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.It helps to have passion in business, otherwise you'll want to quit and it is best to work on what you love and what you have a passion with.When you have passion and are competent you can work on your business easier and are willing to put more energy and effort into everything you do.Focus stems from competence, which stems from passion. Focus allows you to achieve what you want to achieve.You need as much passion as you need to get the job done. There is no right or wrong answer, but only your performance and your results. But passion will carry you through the good and the bad times. The passion that created your vision will carry you through and help you to grow the business and fulfill your vision.Question of the day: What are you passionate about? And, what are you doing about it?

Should I get a virtual assistant? - 60/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.I was taught by my mentor that I should outsource my work before I am comfortable enough to do so. Meaning, that you and I should seek to hire a virtual assistant and personal assistants to do some of our work before we have enough work to give to them, so that we can find and create more work for them to fulfill for us, thus we can grow and achieve more faster.A virtual assistant can handle email inbox, messaging people, doing miscellaneous tasks for you, etc. If you have a virtual assistant that is other side of the world, then you can have 'double time'. Which is to say that while you are sleeping your assistant can continue to do your work, thus your level of productivity is maintained.If an assistant costs you £10/hour and you can do a task that will give you £100 in that same hour, then you'll have a net profit of £90 while your assistant can do other work for you. This way you are leveraging their time and skills to save you time and so you can become more efficient, more productive and thus can achieve more.Question of the day: Are you getting an assistant, and why?

How do I expand my business? - 59/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.Do not over stretch your business.Do not take on too many problems, customers, products or services at once if they will jeopardize your current standard of service.Expand as you can afford to. Remember that you can also pivot your business if things are not working- thus you must adapt and tweak if and when the market changes.Remember and acknowledge that there is no one way to build a business and that different strategies will work for different people. What works for some, does not mean it'll work for you.Have 6 months of expenses in the bank, in case the expansion goes wrong, but also have that much cash in the bank just in case.Define new kinds of customers to solve problems for, whether more customer personas or simply introducing new kinds of products and services.When you can serve more people without jeopardising your standard of quality or delivery, then your business is growing. That is how you maintain your brand and sales while growing.Question of the day: How are you expanding your business?

How small should I start? - 58/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.Start with something you enjoy, that you are happy to work on and be competent with. Do it for fun and experiment.Start with something small that you are experienced with. Do not worry about making mistakes, because the chances are your first business will not be a big success, and you can take the lessons learnt from those mistakes into your future businesses.Risk only the amount of money you can afford to lose in this venture.Do not spend too much money getting it set up either, aim to spend £100 at most.Do your research and find ways you can make money online by leveraging other platforms such as Amazon, eBay and others. Helping you to keep under you £100 budget and allowing you to leverage others' platforms, systems and logistics.Define a certain problem and solve it for a certain audience. Define 1 type of customer and solve 100 of their problems.When I started my first business in November 2014 I spent around £1997 building a website, which was built on the 13th January 2015 and I immediately plateau. I should have spent more time researching how to many money online and how to use other platforms which would have been cheaper than building a website. I also picked something that over time I would lose interest in: selling video games.But I used the lessons I learnt and the momentum I gained from that business to become a better and stronger entrepreneur.Question of the day: What are you doing and how small are you doing it?

What is NLP? - 57/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming and it is involved with understanding how the human mind works and is a form of communication that helps shape human behavior. It is akin to hypnotherapy and psychotherapy.NLP is a very interesting field because we can use it in business and in marketing. For example, there are diferent phrases that we can use to get peoples' attention. These include:"Would it be ok if"."There are two kinds of people in the world"."I have some bad news and good news"."There is an old saying".NLP is a very interesting topic and warrants much further exploration and research, as I write this chapter to raise your awareness of it.I encourage you to research different topics with the field of NLP, such as:Pattern interrupt.Embedded commands.Milton Model.AnchoringReframing.Satir positions.Leading and pacing.Question of the day: What are you most curious about NLP?

What are some free ways to market my business? - 56/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.It helps to understand who you are your target audience is, what kind of content will appeal to them and what kind  of problems they have. When you know what kind of content they'll consume, you can create content for them.One free way is to write a book aimed at your audience.Follow the methods I mentioned earlier in the book on how to organize and write on. Put it onto places like Amazon Kindle (KDP) and CreateSpace, both of which are for free and both of which will get your book on Amazon. Use the book as part of your business- a way to generate traffic to your website, generate sales, grow your email list, etc. The book has got to have a purpose, because that's where the majority of the money can be made, as part of your eco system.Do you have a YouTube account and a smartphone? Then you can take them and answer your customer's questions and discuss topics that you mention in your books.=, creating 100s of evergreen videos, videos that will be searched for and consumed today just as much as a year from now. Not only are these monetized by the AdSense (which is the icing on the cake) but you can also encourage the viewers to go to your website and buy from you. You can use YouTube to grow your audience, begin monetizing your knowledge, promote your books and be found in the world 2nd largest search engine.In all cases you need a website which can collect people's email address, so you can keep in touch with them outside of social media and begin to run an email marketing campaign.When it comes to marketing it's better to play the long term game, because that's the only game worth playing. Business takes time and it is worthwhile in the long run.My quarrel with things like FB adverts and adverts in general is that cost money, you can create much more engaged and loyal following through content and the content can reduce your customer acquisition cost to practically £0.00.Question of the day: How are you marketing your business for free?