1. Are my dreams truly mine? — people give in to society’s vision of what they should be.
2. If I had all the money and time in the world, what would I be doing? — these things will nurture you.
3. Are my friends and family keeping me stuck? — most times it’s the ones closest to us that hold us back.
4. What do I regret the most? — learn the lessons or it will keep happening.
5. What is calling me but I am afraid to do? — asking someone out, taking a trip, etc.
6. When was the last time I was ecstatic? — notice what you were doing.
7. What’s holding me back from my dreams? — it’s usually a bullshit story.
8. Why is it holding me back? — another bullshit story.
9. Why don’t I believe in myself? — take a chance on yourself.
10. Am I in a loop? — like the mundane existence of most people.

-Rafael Eliassen

You are your own ceo........

How can I become rich?

We’re 7.6 Billion people in the world.

Growth won’t stop anytime soon.

The population is projected to grow +1 billion in the next 10 years!

Millions wake up daily and hustle to become rich.

Millions are trying to do unethical things to become rich.

Millions are trying to get elected to a government position to become rich.

Millions are in college today to find that “secret recipe” for becoming rich.

How can I become rich (stand out) in this world among billions of people?

Let me explain with a soccer analogy:

This is a perfectly LEVELED playing field.

Which team will win?

Obviously the team with the best players.

Those with the best abilities.

Those gifted to be faster and stronger, plus who work hard to master the game.

Agreed?

The advantage is obvious; a team of professional players will always win over a small high school team.

This is exactly what millions are still learning in college today: how to become “professional” soccer players.

Now picture this playing field:

Now which team will win?

It’s NOT a fair game anymore, correct?

In business it’s called DISRUPTION!

The team that scores to the left goal has to go uphill to score.

The team that scores to the right goal will score with a fraction of the effort.

What does this mean?

The world HAS changed.

The economy HAS changed.

It’s virtually IMPOSSIBLE to achieve financial wealth if you still play as a normal “soccer player”.

To understand the new rules of the game you need to learn the new rules of the Digital Age and develop a new mindset.

Let me further explain:

Wealth is NOT created by hard work anymore.

IT’S ALL ABOUT LEVERAGE! You:

Leverage other people’s time.

Leverage other people’s money.

Leverage other people’s talents.

Leverage the power of scalable tools.

Welcome to the Digital Age! New economy! New game!

Ways of creating wealth have changed:

In the Agrarian Age, wealth originated from using nature.

In the Industrial Age, wealth originated from using machines.

In the Information Age, wealth originates from using information and knowledge.

To become rich you must master the new rules, the new opportunities and play the new game!

Various Income Streams

WARNING: Not all income leads to financial freedom.

Understanding the different types of income, their sources, and how they are taxed is key to building wealth and achieving financial independence.

Here’s a list of them:

To answer your question, how can you create multiple incomes?

The only way to create multiple income streams is by deeply understanding how money is made.

Here is an example of each type of income, all following the same business (a food truck).

Employment: A cook who works for a food truck business and receives an hourly wage from the food truck owner.

Freelancing: A freelance chef who offers occasional party catering services with his own or rental food truck.

Solopreneur: A solopreneur who starts their own food truck business and operates it as a one-person operation, handling all aspects of the business from cooking to marketing to finance.

Entrepreneurship: An entrepreneur who starts their own food truck business, hires other chefs and staff and operates multiple trucks.

Investment: An investor who buys shares in a publicly-traded food truck company and earns returns on their investment.

Rental Income: A landlord who rents out food trucks with a parking space and collects rent payments.

Royalties: An author who writes and publishes food truck cookbooks and earns royalties from book sales.

Passive Income: An investor who provides capital for a food truck business and earns a share of the profits.

To create multiple income streams, deeply analyze each of these eight options and focus on the two or three that you have the best skills and resources to accomplish TODAY.

Which will you focus on?

Share below!

#BeBusinessSmart

-Hector Quintanilla

Hear me out all females

Start Ups

You mean that 2 guys who might have never worked before, with no experience of making tough business decisions, with no financial experience or cash cushion, putting together a product that was never seen and entering a market that doesn’t exist, with a brand that no one cares and a business entity with no real process, but still taking on large complex problems do fail often? Yeah, what do you expect?

So many startups fail because new and risky ideas are by design failure prone.

I worked for a “startup factory” project within Microsoft — where they assembled some of the best scientists and engineers tasked with building new ideas. There was money, there was experience, there was Microsoft’s brand and distribution channels. Despite all that most ideas never succeeded.

For another company, I was managing new venture creation and it was quite hard to push new products despite having large customers for the existing product and the brand name.

New ideas fail everywhere with a high probability. If the risk of failure were not there someone else would have done that already. Startups by design take those ideas that have a slim chance of success.

It is not like IBM could not have built an operating system for microcomputers. Just that they rightly guessed it was risky and the market not big. But, it actually turned out to be a huge market due to changing economic conditions and Microsoft ruled the roost. Walmart entered ecommerce late as they believed people were not likely to buy through computers. The Internet evolved way too fast for them to react.

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As a startup founder you are entering a lonely coast known for tsunamis. You might drown by the huge wave or might actually catch a huge amount of fish (that no one else is taking).

You are trying to put a completely new concept or a new market and assemble a group of people who might not have worked together. While they might have studied together, working together is a different ball game. There is no process to hold the discipline and no brand to lean on. The cash cushion is not big enough to withstand multiple failures and the executives might have no experience wading through tough times. There is no real HR process to manage talent and no good financial management. There is no established relationship with customers and no established channels. Product quality is often poor in the early days and customer support not as professional.

It is just a miracle that some startups even succeed. Startups that got incredibly lucky being at the right time with the right people succeeded. Most others with similar capabilities died.

And many of the startups that die should not have existed in the first place. It might be a feeble attempt by a group of people who might have met at a meetup and decided to try something for a few months. Or a lone ranger trying to build the next big thing. Or some new grads who try something before getting a good job.

For startups with founders who have experience, connections and a team, the failure rate is not as high. The failure rate is just proportional to the risk of the idea itself.

-Balaji Viswanathan

Freelancing

Before you even know how to start working as a freelancer, you need to get rid of the most common myths across freelancing.

The term freelancer is widely misunderstood

Lets bust a few myths first!

Myth #1: Freelancing is all about software development.

Freelancing does not have to just be about programming, there are a lot of other domains as well.

Here are a few freelancing roles:

1. Content writer.
2. Digital marketer.
3. Logo designer.
4. Graphic designer.
5. Web developer.
6. Software developer.
7. Ghost writer.
8. Business consultant.
9. Copyrighter.
10. Social media manager.

and a lot more roles come under freelancing.

Freelancer just means you are an independent contractor, who works independently on projects. You may be a content writer at a company and be a full time employee there or you can be a freelancer content writer who may work for the same company but on a project basis rather than being fully employed over there.

Myth #2: A freelancer just has to work online.

While it is true that it is much easier to find freelance jobs online, that is not the only way to find work as a freelancer.

You may also network with potential businesses and find clients offline as well.

Although finding a gig offline might sound a bit difficult but for a beginner it is much easier to find work offline as there is a lot less competition.

You may reach out to businesses, local shops and see if you can help them with their expertise.

If you are a graphic designer you can help them design brochures.

If you are a logo designer you can help design a great logo for their business.

If you are a digital marketer you can help them establish an online presence.

If you are a web developer you can help them setup an e-commerce site.

Whatever it be, just think in terms of how your skillset can help the other party.

Myth #3: Freelancing pays loads of money.

Just as with any job as some people get paid less while some get paid more, freelancing is no different.

If you are average at what you do you will be paid average, if you are highly skilled at what you do you will be paid highly.

While it is true that online jobs pay you in dollars which translates to a larger amount in developing countries, however if you work for clients from developed countries you also need to deliver a product of equal quality.

If you are under the false impression that freelancing pays a ton for a lot less amount of work then please get out of that bubble.

Myth #4: You need tons of experience to be a freelancer.

Everyone starts from scratch and you are no different.

Freelancers who are experts now are the ones who were in exactly the same place as you are now. They just eventually built their expertise by working on more projects and learning along the way, continually upgrading their skills.

It is true that you wont get expert level projects as a beginner and even if you get one you should simply not take it. Start with simpler projects at first which you think you can handle and gradually move ahead.

Yes you do need to have experience to work on decent projects but how else are you going to get experience if you don’t get started at some point?

While starting off as a beginner all your focus should be on learning, work on projects but work for the knowledge and experience you get. Money is simply the byproduct. This same knowledge and experience in coming years will make you 10X of what you are making right now.

Myth #5: Freelancing marketplaces are full of competition.

When people start off as a freelancer and bid on a project, they see that about 20 more people have already placed a bid on the same project.

Assume 20 people bid on a project, all of the 20 are not your competition.

Your only competition are the people who are better than you and not the ones who are worse than you.

For example, if out of these 20 people, you are ranked 5th as per your skillset then you barely need to worry about the 15 people below you.

The only people you should be worry about are the ones who are better than you.

The quickest and the most direct way to not worry about competition is to outrank them, if you move up the skill ladder you hardly have to bother about the competition. Unless of course someone offers a cheaper price.

Now coming to the main question, how should you start off as a freelancer?

1. See what value you can provide to different people depending on your skillset.
2. Think freelancing as being an independent contractor, try to devote equal amount of time to working on projects and finding clients as well.
3. Finding clients is another skill you would need to learn apart from your core skillset, because no clients would mean no work.
4. Be creative, don’t just get stuck in finding jobs online. Try some creative techniques to land local clients as well.
5. Getting your first client is always the hardest, getting the second client is a bit easier and so on. Hence make sure to not give up too soon. I know people who didn’t get their first client for months and yet they now are doing great.
6. If you chose the path of being a freelancer you need to be a learner for life, because freelance marketplaces are highly competitive and not being up-to-date on skills will throw you out of the market.
7. Look at learning as the process of sharpening a saw, and freelancing as chopping down trees. The better you sharpen your saw on a regular basis the easier it would be for you to chop down trees.
8. Don’t do it for the sake of money. The most successful freelancers I know are the ones who love to do what they do, be them graphic designers or programmers. If you are in it for the money, you will be soon outworked and outperformed by people who are passionate for their work.
9. Don’t get stuck reading blog posts and articles about how to become a freelancer. Instead take action right away. Gathering information and reading blogpost is an endless loop and its easy to get sucked into it. The only people who should read such blogpost are the ones who have no idea about what freelancing is. But if you are someone who has been collecting information since months, you probably need to stop reading and get to the actual work instead.

A few tips on how to find and get work offline:

1. Ask for referrals from friends and families, ask if they know business owners or an individuals who would need your services.
2. Contact and keep in touch with local shops and businesses you personally know. Don’t pitch your services but instead show them how you can help them in their business.
3. Network with more people in your circle and make new connections, you never know who can be your next potential client.
4. Keep an intent of genuinely helping business, don’t simply pitch your services to make money off them, pitch only if you know that your service would be of value to the customer. If it doesn’t help the client, simply don’t sell them.
5. Offer money back guarantee. If you fail to deliver results simply return back their money. If you are so confident about your services you should also be willing to return back clients money if you don’t deliver. This not only makes your proposal solid but will also make your client’s experience stress free.

-Saurav Sharma

Karma's Role In Unemployment

My father hated.......

My father hated watching me lie back and watch TV, living in my comfort zone.

One day he told me, “Son, if you expect to have an easy life and always be ‘fed’ in your mouth like a baby — EXPECT to be treated like a baby for the rest of your life. So don’t you dare complain about those results!”

I must admit, back then I HATED my dad’s tough words — but today, I get it. My father would continuously push me so I could learn how to be fully accountable for my life.

Today, it’s pretty common to find millions waiting for others to solve their problems:

• Waiting for and expecting the government to “bring back the jobs.”
• Waiting for and expecting someone to fix the economy.
• Waiting for and expecting someone to give them an opportunity.
• Waiting for and expecting someone to solve our outdated educational system for our kids.

When will this happen?

Who will do it?

Here’s my point: even if someone does manage to solve OUR problems, don’t ever expect these solutions to be “free!”

NOTHING in life is free.

Nothing! Even if we don’t have to pay for something, there’s always a hidden intangible price to pay.

We get what we deserve.

I’ll never forget my father’s words:

“If you want to experience true freedom in life — you must EARN it.”

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Now, to answer your question, how would you define 'true wealth'?

To me, true wealth is NOT monetary — True wealth is the privilege of experiencing the fullness of freedom in life.

Where to start?

Freedom starts not with the absence of work, but by us taking full accountability for our lives.

If you can’t manage yourself, you will always need to be managed.

You, and ONLY you can make it happen.

Freedom starts from within yourself.

#BeBusinessSmart

 -Hector Quintanilla