The entrepreneurs are a bit suspicious and over-protective. Who wouldn´t be? Somebody is making a run at their baby. The investors are cautious too. They probably know from experience that all that glitter isn´t gold. It could turn out to be lead- with a hefty price tag attached to it. Over the years we have been on both sides of that table. We have been the entrepreneurs with a company, when a sudden offer from a motivated investor landed in our laps. And we have been the investors, where we have sliced and diced the numbers, the entrepreneurs and the business of a company, in order to be able to make an offer for a piece of the action. We´ve been around long enough to know that most of what is on those lists below gives a fairly accurate picture of what to expect. We´ve heard most of these lies on many occassions. In fact, we think we may be guilty of delivering some of those lines ourselves over the years. We know they will be part of the entrepreneur-investor vocabulary for years to come. So maybe we overdid them a bit sometimes. We just couldn´t resist the temptation. After all, when you have learned to know the game, the players and the playground good enough you can´t help but to laugh at it all.  Sometimes a joke can point the way to the truth. This is exactly one of those times. Here goes; two lists of the most common lies that investors and entrepreneurs make when the going gets tough, and the lawyers get going.

Top 10 most common lies of entrepreneurs:

1. We don´t care about our salaries at all, in fact we don´t care about money. We just want this company to grow 100 percent per year and for you to get a good return on your investment.
2. If we can only achieve our target 2 percent market share, we will make gazzillions of dollars.
3. We are about to strike a deal (about selling our service/product) with one of the major players in our field.
4. We have been approached by other investors, and they are about to offer us a mouthwatering deal.
5. We are sitting on a gold mine of other potential blockbuster ideas that any astute buyer will get in addition to our existing business.
6. We have been very conservative in our projections. We expect the actual outcome to be much better than this.
7. We expect to grow exponentially for the next couple of years. Our pipeline looks very promising and we expect to beat previous years by miles.
8. Our patents are 100 percent bullet proof. There is no way around it.
9. We are very experienced at running a business and building a successful enterprise.
10. Our product/service is quite unique and is not easily imitated by major corporations.

Top 10 most common lies of investors/venture capitalists:

1. If it were only up to me I would definitely have invested in your company.
2. We will dedicate tons of resources and time to your enterprise once we sign the deal.
3. This contract is standard, they all look like this. In fact we haven´t even read it. Especially not the fine print.
4. We don´t care that much about short-term ROI (return on investment). We are patient, long-term investors and we are only interested in the long-term visions, ideas and goals of your company.
5. We are not investing so much because you are willing to sell at 50 percent of market price, we don´t care about money, we are investing because we believe in you as entrepreneurs and individuals.
6. We love to be passive investors, and we won´t interfere with your decision process that much. Really.
7. Our astounding experience, connections and market expertise is worth an extra 10 percent of stocks at the very least.
8. If you could only show me some major business (orders) coming your way, I would be interested to invest in your company.
9. We are looking for a swift and effective process. Time is important to us and we don´t believe in wasting it on a lengthy process.
10. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and your chance at striking it rich. Everybody that has struck a deal with us has been amply rewarded in due time. Just sign those papers and we´ll work out the rest as we go along.

sell lots of something

sell few high margin high cist

att starta vid sidan av eller som ny verksamhet

Harvard Study 97-3 percent

anders erickson the talent code deliberate practice

thinkers vs does brystol myers briggs -Jung

16 personlighetstyper länk via google

personlighetstest bygg!

100mills-hemsida

born rich hemsida

Maslows Behovspyramid (Abraham Maslow quotes?)

att vara entreprenör som familjefar- hur kombinera och anpassa

Machiavelli

carmichaels citat och bios entreprenörer, resurser, böcker, citat i PDF-format gratis, samft bästa 50 böcker wealth PDF gratis

Making the decision to become an entrepreneur is like deciding to jump out of an airplane for the very first time, with a parachute on your back. You know that whatever happens you are likely to survive, but since it´s the first time you are doing it, you are not sure.

Nothing is certain in life besides death and taxes. (Ta med i skatteartikel).

David Murdoch:

Most people make their “To Do” lists and do the items in the order of preference.  I do my “To Do” list based on the order of importance.  It’s a simple as that.

Ta med i artikel om att lista TO-DO för varje dag.

Read. Continous education. All rich people have a library.

Citat av en entreprenör vi känner:

“Being an entrepreneur gives you tremendous freedom. You get to decide by yourself how to arrange the 100 hours of work you put in each week.”

The truth is that when you tell people what you want to make happen you will be met by scepticism and negative comments. “You are never going to pull that off.” or perhaps “If it were that easy everybody would be doing it” or “The competition in that area is too fierce. How are you going to take on a multinational corporation?”. But as soon as you take your idea and put it into action something happens. The world stops questioning your business ideas and instead becomes intrigued. Why? Because you are one of the few people who have actually transformed an idea into something concrete. The world is reluctant to listen to people with ideas, simply because there are too many of those people around. But once they realize that you are a man of action they start paying attention. Bigtime. And that´s about the same time that those sceptics start being a bit interested. Suddenly all sorts of things start to happen. People are approaching you with questions, suggestions and opportunities. Would you fancy a partnership? Could you come to a business meeting for a discussion? Would you do an interview?

The reason for this turnaround is simple. Somewhere deep down inside most people realize that talk is cheap, and that you have to be able to act to achieve. The problem is that most people seem unable to get themselves to act. And when these people notice a man of action they start to think that maybe, just maybe, that guy is going to strike gold. And maybe I could be part of the ensuing bonanza.

Ideas will get you shot down. Action will get you noticed. Make sure you get noticed a lot!

Forbes lista på världns 100 rikaste miljardärer

By working faithfully 8 hours a day, you may eventually get to be the boss and work 12 hours a day.

Robert Frost

The superior man resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus, his person is not endangered,  and his States and all their clans are preserved.

Confucius

What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.

Confucius

(om attityd, smile osv)

If customer ignorance is a profit center for you, you´re in trouble.

strategy consultant Gary Hamel (in internet and the price transparancy)

sun Tzu if yoiou want peace prepare for war citat. don´t f with me attityd

For instance if you are trying to sell something and the person on the receiving end of your pitch is crossing his/her arms it might be a good idea to back off a bit. Clearly you haven´t been able to establish a relationship that ius trong enough to withstand a selling procedure. Back off, lead the convcersation into some less delicate stuff and try to get some rapport going. You can always try to close a sale later on. Or you can simply wotk on the relationship in the hope of closing a sale further down the road. But be aware of body signals, and don´t try to push a sale down somebody´s throat. It will backfire and nobody will benefit from it. Instead, try to always look for situations where all parties are better off, and the basic conditions for a sale have all lined up in a nice manner.

Hardships are to character what bricks are to buildings. (Mitt eget citat.)

Även om de byggt kapital under åren(vilket man kan förmoda) så krävs det ändå mod att klippa av livlinan till dagarbetet. De lär ju ändå inte ha blivit ekonomiskt oberoende i så pass unga år, särskilt med försörjningsansvar till barn och familj.
Handen på hjärtat. Hur många av er är det inte som “dör långsamt” av att gå in i det där satans kontorslandskapet varje dag. Du har en “fin titel”, ändå exekverar du bara vad nån högt upp i nån beslutskedja fått för sig att du skall jobba med. Inkletad i all corporate BS om vem som rapporterar till vem och hur många ytterligare chefsled det tillkommit i bolaget. Och sedan det ständiga småintegrerandet bland kollegorna om vem som är mest “viktig” för företaget och kampen om småsmulorna från bordet.
Det var ju inte det här du drömde om, när du var 23 år och inget tycktes omöjligt.
Ändå jobbar du på utav ren trygghet och bekvämlighet.
Därför ger jag cred till de här killarna som ändå FAKTISKT brytit upp och vunnit lite frihet. Även om jag kanske tycker det hade varit roligare om affärsidén inte hade handlat om att profitera på sthlms inredningspsykos.

presentations

Ability to see the bigger picture

It´s all about attitude. Your attitude is important. Some entrepreneurs will even tell you that attitude is everything. We wouldn´t go that far, but it is important. For sure. People will go on and on about this or that. But if you ain´t got the attitude to match the other stuff, business is going to be a lot harder than it could be and should be. That´s not only true for entrepreneurs. You can ask any successful sales person, executive or CEO of a fortune 500 company and they will tell you the same thing. And since being an entrepreneur is really a mixture of all those other professions, attitude is even more important. By attitude we do not only mean the ability to be optimistic. It´s a lot more than that that comes into play.

The best entrepreneurs know that they are going to make it, they are just not sure how they will go about it just yet. We find this attitude to be quite refreshing, and it is typical of our own outlook on business life as well as the attitudes of most entrepreneurs we know. They all feel they are going to win, it´s just a matter of time. And they are ready to put in the necessary time. We don´t think it´s a coincidence that almost all entrepreneurs we have met are competitive in their nature. Some have a background in sports. Some have excelled in other areas. But they are all very competitive, with a healthy dose of self confidence. They expect that they will win. Some of them won´t tell it to your face, but you can feel it. It´s as if they have already seen the future and what it holds in store for them. They already seem to know the destination, so now they are busy making the journey a pleasant one.

Besides a “can-do”-type of attitude, and a conviction that they will make it, most successful entrepreneurs seem to have a positive oulook of the world. They have humour and an optimistic view on even the worst of problems. They smile often and try to maintan a level head at all times. They are not easily intimidated in general. To a small degree we think this is due to personality type, but we also believe that the many setbacks and adversities all entrepreneurs have to go through leaves them with a really thick skin. We have found this attitude to be even mor prevalent in older entrepreneurs. “You can´t do nothing to me I haven´t already had done to me before”, the reasoning seems to be. That attitude makes them come across as completely fearless, on the verge of being arrogant. In reality it is experience doing the talking. These old-timers know that there is no point in worrying about stuff, and they also know that no matter how terrible a situation might appear at a first glance, they usually end up landing firmly on their feet. And what´s the point of worrying or being anxious about something that´s probably never going to happen to begin with.

Winners do it with a smile. Why go through life unhappy? Why not wear a big smile on your face?

Do it with smile

Be optimistic- Smile, humour

So keep working harder than you ever thought possible pursuing your dreams. And smile. We don´t mean one of those silly little girlie smiles. Make it caount. Smile at the world and let everybody know that you are going places. Ear to ear baby.

do what you say and say what you do

Build a business system. Build a business system not a job position. Most people who start a business are typically doing it just because they love doing something, or they have aquired skills in a particular area of business. In many cases the entrepreneur has held a similar or identical job at his/her previous employment and now wishes to continue working, but with more freedom and the potential to take a larger part in the business profits. Most people who start a business are not really entrepreneurs in the true sense of the word. They work in their business, but they forget to work on their business. The system is what makes money. The system is what provides the leverage. The system is what leads to success. Try to continually improve your system and the rest will take care of itself. We once heard an entrepreneur friend of ours say that the word SYSTEM is really an acronym for “Save Yourself Some Time Energy and Money”. That phrase has stuck with us ever since.

Think like a producer. Not a consumer. When it boils down to it there are only two kinds of people. The producers who own the facilities that produce and sell goods and services. And consumers who work for the producers and use that hard-earned cash to buy the products of the producers. Be a producer. Another way to put this is: be an entrepreneur. But being an entrepreneur is not enough. You need to be an entrepreneur who has the mindset of a producer. Producers can forsake things today in order to achieve even greater things tomorrow. Consumers want things now and are willing to suffer in the future just to be able to enjoy themselves now.

Would you rather be the guy wearing the fancy clothes and watches or would you rather own the companies that sells it to them?

Networking. Ok we admit. This one might not be our strongest skill set. Still, we have encountered too many entrepreneurs who attribute a large part of their success to this factor to be able to neglect it or downplay its role. Clearly, there is money to be made in knowing the right people, knowing many people, or being a person worth knowing. We know entrepreneurs who throw giant parties, events and happenings just to market themselves and let the world know what they are about. When we asked one of those entrepreneurs if he wasn´t scared off by the costs of throwing large parties and happenings he simply shrugged it off and told us that it was money well spent. He figured he was marketing himself as a person and as an entrepreneur. By throwing these lavish parties and hosting great events he was simply promoting his own personal brand. And that brand opened a lot of doors, closed a lot of business and made a ton of money apparently. The icing on the cake was that he had a lot of fun doing it all.

When there is a discussion about network marketing most people think about a lot of different network opportunities. But very often the key component of network marketing is overlooked; the customer. The best and most powerful network on earth is that of the happy and satisfied customer. If you keep your customers happy and they recommend you to friends and family, you know you are onto a winning concept. And great enterprises are usually very adept at creating a loyal following among their core customer base (Apple pops into mind). And with a loyal following a lot of the marketing effort will be done for free by those very same customers. It is the best of worlds. Not only do you get to sell to these people, they are driving sales from others as well. And research clearly shows that we are far more likely to listen to recommendations from somebody we know and trust. Not that we need reasearch to clarify that though, it is common sense. Now, there have been many studies over the years regarding how many people an average unhappy customer will tell about his/her bad experience. All studies come back with different results and there seems to be differencies for example between different industries. But as a general rule of thumb an unhappy customer will complain to 10 other persons about a bad experience. There is a saying among marketers that a happy customer tells one friend, but an unhappy person tells everybody. But the marketing landscape is changing rapidly and new technologies, software and social communities have literally changed old marketing truths. In this day of age the saying should be more like: Satisfied customers tell one person, unsatisfied customers tell Google, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook. And thats just for now. New social vehicles tend to surface from time to time and a negative company review can reach a devastatingly large audience at the speed of light. Another marketing vehicle not to be overlooked are the many blogs that are around. Today there are blogs about virtually anything and everything and between them these blogs have a respectable following. What´s more, that following is usually made up of regulars, and that means that any recommendation from a blogger they follow will have a massive marketing impact. One of the main reasons for this is of course that follovers of a blog gain trust in the blogger. After all they feel they have gotten to know him/her and what they are about. The relationship between a blogger and his/her readers has proven to be very strong indeed, and this fact has not been lost on the marketing community.

Happy customers are definitley the best ambassadeurs a company can have and social networking on the internet has proven to be a marketing powerhouse, but it doesn´t hurt to spread the world and do some traditional old-fashioned networking as well. Our advice is to put your company name out there in any way you can. Let the world know what you are about. And never miss  a chance to do some “soft-selling”. What we mean by soft-selling is doing a light sales pitch in a situation where you know no sale is going to be made. You simply do the sales pitch to merket and profile your company and increase the knowledge about you and your products/services. Soft selling, if done correctly, will very often result in something. It rarely results in a sale right then and there. But it may well lead to a sale further down the road, and all because you raised the awareness about your company a long time ago on a business meeting you can barely remember. Another positive spin-off from “soft-selling” that happens quite often is that those sitting on the receiving end of the pitch helps you out in some way. It can be that they give you a lead on a prospective client, or they give you some advice on who could be worth looking up, or they can tell you to come back in a month or two since they think they might be more interested to do business with you then. Although a sale is not made on this meeting, it is very beneficial for the longevity and stamina of your business. And by doing these soft selling meetings you are continually maintaining your network, and improving on it.

Let´s move on to have a close look at some of the most important players of a solid network; the gatekeepers. While the gatekeepers may not have the highest salaried or the fanciest titles, they very often have something else which is priceless; they have the ear and truts of the big boss. They can make or break a deal, and those who have been around for a long period of time often end up giving the CEO their candid view on things. As you might imagine, being on the right side of the gatekeepers of this world will open a lot of gates for you.

Gatekeepers,

Don´t be afraid to ask (for help, favours et c)

not much for clubs (quality contacts) exchange favours particularly new enterprise

Tratten säljare stjärna

Behålla gamla kunder och fylla på med nya

A general rule of thumb is that it´s five times more expensive to win a new customer than to keep a current customer.

If you allow a salesperson or somebody else to control the first moments of any interaction, chances are you are going to be playing according to their gameplan for the rest of the conversation. This is especially true for sales calls and sales meetings but it applies for any type of business meeting really. Don´t allow somebody else to gain the upper hand by bullying you around. In fact, if there are any bullying signs available from the beginning of the situation deal with them swiftly. Interrupt or sabotage their canned openers. Throw them off balance by catapulting something completely unexpected into the conversation. Make chaos out of their structured selling approach. And as soon as they blink, go in for the kill and regain the control of the situation. How you do that? There are literally hundreds of ways. One approach that we find particularly funny and refreshing is one that was first taught to us by a fellow entrepreneur who happend to be chairman in one of our companies many years ago. Whenever a salesperson called him and started the conversation he would completely kill their sales pitch by making a simple statement. How he did it? Well, the typical conversation would go something like this:

Salesperson: Hello, this is so-an-so calling from so-and-so, maybe youve heard of our company?

Chairman: So nice to hear from you. Of course I know your company, I´m one of the original founders.

And that´s about it. This kind of approach will kill their script off in an instant and most of their memorized rebuttals will be worth nothing. We know this for a fact, because we have tried it on several occassions. It works. As long as you use the instant chaos that your statement has caused to regain control of the situation and the conversation. All salespersons will react differently to a statement like that. But more or less everyone start out by missing a beat, before they bring themselves back together. And that beat is all you need. The best response we have had so far is one salesperson who started to share his resume with us. Appearantly he figured that since he had one of the founders of the firm on the phone he might as well try to attempt a climb up the corporate ladder. We felt a bit rotten yet we couldn´t resist it. Hilarious. And the way he praised the excellent top management had made with the company was priceless. He made our day.

Being able to control a situatin and a conversation is not only important with regards to salesepeople. It comes in handy in many different types of situations. Take a meeting that is going the wrong direction for instant. Why would you want to waste you time with that? Your time is valuable and you should never let somebody else steal it away from you just because it fits their agenda. Who cares about their agenda? Concentrate on your agenda instead. We find ourselves in this situation from time to time. Either we have accepted a meeting with somebody who is clearly not working according to the agenda they announced during our phone conversation. Or sometimes they simply have nothing of interest. They might be dreamers with nothing results to back them up or they may be looking for funding only the have zero credibility in terms of track record and they are putting in zero cash of their own in their “mindblowing” idea.  Those are just examples. Some of the meetings we have had over the years are so bizarre that if we wrote them down we know for a fact you wouldn´t believe us. There are just times when reality makes fiction seem dull and lacking creativeness.

But whatever the reason for us wanting to end a meeting we always try to be nice about it. If we can help it. We are always friendly about it. Why, it doesn´t make any sense to come out swinging straight away. Most of the time the best approach is to be a bit laid back about it and just end it in a painless and polite fashion. It´s the smooth way of dealing with it and as long as it gets the job done we will pick that approach nine times out of ten. If, however, you are dealing with a moron or your polite approach is getting shot down you need to be able to go caveman. By that we don´t mean that you should smash their heads in. Rather you need to let them understand that you are capable of doing just that. Along with a bunch of other unpleasant stuff. Cut them off, be assertive, take control of the situation and try to end it as soon as possible. Use body language to establish the right “frame” to it all. You don´t want trouble, but if it should come to it you are more than capable of taking care of yourself. Remember that it´s not about winning an argument, it´s about ending it as quickly as possible. When you are clearly dealing with an idiot your goal should be to end it, get away from his/her as soon as possible and switch to doing something profitable instead.

When it comes to salespeople calling us we have a rule that we try to apply at all times. It´s called the “30-second rule” and just like the name implies we don´t give the conversation more than 30 seconds before we kill it. In most cases it doesn´t even get to 15 seconds. How we do it? Very politely. Almost like pulling out a tooth, only with plenty of anesthetic. It doesn´t really hurt, but it´s not exactly pleasant either. We use some direct kind of question to assert that they want to sell us something. Then we throw them a one-liner that will throw them off balance for sure. And the we use a canned finish. Something along the lines. I appreciate your call but I´m not really interested. But have a fantastic day!. And that´s it. There are other approaches that are less polite. But why would you want to go there. Just end the conversation and move on with building your business into something truly oustanding.

There are several reasons that we like this rule. First of all, if we know from the beginning that we are not going to be buyers anyway we might as well save them the effort of the pitch, and at the same time save both of us some valuable time. Second, you don´t want to give them a firm footing, because if you do that will only take a lot more of your time. They have been trained to keep you on the phone, talking to them. If you don´t cut them off quickly they will only gain in strength as the conversation continues. If you let them work those canned openers and switch into the Q&A and rebuttal phase you are in for a long conversation, unless you are just plain rude and hang the phone up.

As you might have figured out by now we are not gig fans of meetings. We will kill those too if we feel they are taking too long or are unfocused. Also if we don´t see the meeting going somewhere, like a specific course of action, we kill it. there is no point in wasting time on something that may sound like work to a corporate employee but is seen as a waste of time by most entrepreneurs. We want our meetings short, to the point and with an end result consisting of an action plan and a division of the labour  so everybody knows what is expected of them until the next time we meet. If you do this correctly there will not be many meetings, and when they do occur they will be short and sweet. An added benefit is that you will avoid the risk of people with limited patience and attention spans (like us) walking out of them.

Control your time and don´t let anybody else take big chunks out of it without your consent. You must be in control of your life. Time is money, and when you are letting people steal your time you are really letting them steal your money. Why would you let anybody steal your money? You have to look out for number one. Manage your time. Plan your time. Be reluctant to give away your time freely. Use those precious working hours each day to build the business of your dreams and use any remaining hours to enjoy the company of your loved ones.

But do not give even a minute to some moron with a sales quota to fill. Be brutal and don´t allow anybody else to dictate the terms of your life. Instead, be in total control of your own time and learn how to fend off those time consuming idiots. Take control. Now. It´s about time you did.

Don´t see problems, see opportunities. Problems are a natural part of running a business. There will be many of them around, Some will be big, some will be small. But if you tell us your don´t have any problems, we are going to tell you that you are probably not running a business. You can´t run a profitable business without any problems. Nor can you run any other kind of business without problems. Difficulties, challenges and problems are a reality of everyday entrepreneurial life. They cannot be avoided. They must be accepted, adapted to and embraced. The question isn´t whether you are going to have any problems or not. The question is how you are going to deal with them when they do occur. It seems most entrepreneurs who have been around for a while have developed a really thick skin as to what may intimidate them. Blackmail does not work with them. They seem immune at times of people badmouthing them. They do not respond to threat. In a way they can come off as being too cool for school. But while the good and experienced entrepreneurs are good at dealing with problems in a casual manner, the truly great entrepreneurs have mastered the art of dealing with problems even better. In fact, they are on a whole different level altogether. Good entrepreneurs may not be daunted by problems that easily. But the truly great entrepreneurs take problems and turn them into opportunities. They change the game, and in the process of doing so they make the switch from loser to winner in the blink of an eye.

Great entrepreneurs are good at spotting opportunities where others see nothing in particular. We know entrepreneurs who seem to be on board every major business trend that has come along for the last two decades. It´s as if the have a knack for really knowing if something will fly or not. Why is this, and is it an opportunity that can be learned. We think there are two reasons. First of all, these entrepreneurs are really skilled at spotting oportunities. We believe it has to do with a developed ability to be highly creative and think outside of the box. Many entrepreneurs see opportunities simply because they do not view the world in the same way as others. They are less likely to think about what is allowed and more likely to consider what the possibilities are. And they see possibilities and potential where others see only restrictions, rules and regulations. In fact they see opportunity at every turn. And that brings us to the second reason; these entrepreneurs get their homeruns since they are swinging their bat at every opportunity they see. One of the best entrepreneurs once told us “You don´t get to read about the thousands of failures. All the journalists and the public are interested in is the one that took off.” And we can tell you that many of the entrereprenurs that are good at being in on new business trends strike out a lot too. Many of them seem to be working in an iterative fashion, that is they try something on on a small scale first and only if it flies are they willing to go for broke. That way they are losing small on they occassions when they are loosing and they get to win big on those occassions where everything lines up nicely for them.

Another thing we have noticed is that the very best (and the wealthiest) entrepreneurs like to try new things out. They just love to hear about a new business opportunity and put some small amount of cash on the line. They don´t mind losing that cash. They consider it to be “play money”, money that can be sacrificed in order to gain an education. We know entrepreneurs who at any one time are invested in literally 50 or 60 investments at any one time. The results from those investments are usually quite scattered, with some being fantastic winners and others being “lose-every-penny”- kind of deals. But that don´t seem to bother theses entrepreneurs. You see, when the find something that is working they turn up the heat. They allocate more money into that investment. Hell, they´ll even leverage the position. Why shouldn´t they? Nobody has died from some extra risk, right? And besides they know that the big money is made from concentration, not diversification like the theory books like to say. Most of the time these type of entrepreneurs tend to do extraordinarily well. Their investment portfolios end up being loaded with a few extremely successful investments and some minor investments that are still in the process of being evaluated.

As you have seen these extremely successful entrepreneurs don´t posess any mystical skills that allows them to pick the business ternds of the future. Nor do they have a particularly sensitive investment nose that allows them to know a winner the instant they see it for the first time. Their greatness lies in being genuinely interested in the world around them, trying new business opportunities as they become aware of them and then having a knack for weeding out the bad investments and keeeping the good ones. And once those good investments have proven themselves they are not afraid of turning up the heat a notch and getting very aggressive. And some of these amazingly successful entrepreneurs are so aggressive they make most other entrepreneurs seem far too prudent (we are among that group). As you can imagine these extreme risk-takers are at the top of the food-chain when it comes to entrepreneurs. The do not utilize anything fancy when they decide on investments. Rather they use a trial-and-error process coupled with some good old common sense to arrive at an optimal mix of investments. For an outsider it may look like they have a flair for finding these investments. In reality what they excel at is filtering and evaluating investments in an iterative process, rather than being able to pinpoint these great investment opportunities in the first place. The end result is a concentrated, and quite often leveraged, portfolio that creates positive cash flow at an astonishing rate. The beauty of positive cash flow is of coure that it creates the opportunity to try on new investments without much second thoughts. When cash flow is reinvested like that you get a perfect money machine with ever growing portfolios of investments that keep generating ever-growing amounts of cash flow. And that´s exactly why the rich keep getting richer.

Now we know that this type of business deals are hard to accept for all parties. After all business is to a certain degree a struggle for the same sack of coins isn´t it? It doesn´t have to be. When you are dealing with the wrong person business will quickly turm into a battle where only the fittest will survive. But that´s just the point. The struggle doesn´t need to be a struggle. When you are dealing with the right kind of business person and you have established a long-term relationship the struggle goes out the window. You are not fighting over that sack of coins. Rather you are dividing it amongst you, discussing when the next sack is about to arrive and coming up with ideas of how to make that sack even bigger than this one. It´s a different ballgame alltogether. But to be able to go into a long-term relationship with someone they need to be emotionally able to do so from a business point of view. We have meet quite a few individuals who are not cut out to do long-term relationship business deals no matter what. These individuals are just to caught up in the “struggle” part of the equation. They will try anything to get a bigger share and they are not paying any attention to the bigger picture whatsoever. They don´t get it. They will never understand what could have been. Instead they will be trapped in that unfortunate part of the business world where each day is a struggle, where only conflict exists, and where every moment is about trying to get hold of the next victim to game. That´s just sad.

Where the long-term business relationships are about telling it like it is or even underpromising and then overdelivering, the short-term players are all about hustling another poor schmuck to be able to cover this month´s expenses. Now, we agree that the short-term players will score big from time to time. That is bound to happen if you are gunning for the stack of coins all the time. But why go for the stack of coins, when you can have the keys to the bank? The short-term player will get hold of some big money from time to time, but these occasssional homeruns will be few and far between. The long-term relationship bussinessman on the othre hand will probably not be making as much money per deal, but there will be a lot more deals done in this camp. Apart from that the deals are more likely to increase in size as time moves along.

One entrepreneur we knew a long time ago told us something on this issue that has sort of stuck with us throughout the years. He once said: “If you only nibble at the spoils, you will always be welcome back for a second, third and fourth serving. And there will be many servings.”. We thought it was clever right then and there, but it is only after years of doing business that we have understood how right he really was. You can trick someone once, but you are not likely to do businesss with that person again. Or you can play a fair game and come back over and over again to the same business partner. You might not make as much each business deal when you play it fair, but you will get a lot more deals than the tricksters, and the volume of deals coming your way will more than likely make up for it.

Always look for a win-win situation. Be proactive about it. Actively look for potential benefits for your business partners at the other side of the table. Make them understand that you want them to make money as well and that you are looking out for their interests also. Try to look at everything from their perspective as well to gain a better understanding for where you can meet them so that you can all make money from the deal. If you can make it appear like you are discussing as opposed to negotiating you know you are doing it right. If you look forward to meeting those business partners again you know you are doing it right. If you arrive at a consensus faster every time you meet you know you are doing it right.

Don´t be too greedy. Strive for deals where there are two winners. If you nibble you will be welcome back for more, remember. If you try to take the whole treasure for yourself you will not be invited for any more servings. If you raise your eyes to the horizon you will see the bigger picture. And the bigger picture clearly points to the fact that to win in business you have to make sure your business partners are winning as well.

The Horatio Alger myth. Empirical research suggests that the so called Horatio Alger myth does indeed has a solid statistical foundation. So exactly what is the Horatio Alger myth? In short, if an individual experiences childhood poverty or a disrupted family life, he or she has a much higher likelyhood of succeeding as an entrepreneur. This is because the hardships of their early lives instilled in them a strong desire and motivation for personal achievement and success later in life. Horatio Alger is an american writer who based his success on a simple yet very effective formula. The lead character was youn boys born into poverty and hardship. By hard work, persistance, willpower and fire in their bellies they ultimately took charge of their lives and became a success. It is the classical tale of rages to riches. In a way, the american author captured the american dream and the american way.

The Horatio Alger myth is based on three fundamental assumptions. 1. Each individual is based on his/her own skills, traits and merits. 2. Each individual has a an equal and fair opportunity to compete.

Effectiveness. There´s more to the concept of using your time wisely than just time management. Most people are already planning their work. Or at least they think they are. We have our work planned down to the minute each day. And we ask quite a bit of ourselves each day. Yet we find ouselves doing a lot more than we demand from ourselves. That has to do with effectiveness. Not only is your productivity dependant on how much time you allot to your work, it´s even more important that you are highly effective once you start doing that work. We like to split the day up into 30-minute units. We know what we are supposed to do each unit of time. If we are unable to get the work done in the allotted time we take that work with us into the next time unit. As you can imagine, if something goes wrong you end up with a mountain of work. But that´s ok. The other rule we apply makes up for it. We have a time budget. You see, if we get something done in less time than allotted we get to put that extra time in a “time bank”. We can withdraw the extra time when we find ourselves stuck or we simply just don´t feel like working. We all have ups and downs in our work. There are times when everything is going along smoothly. Some days you can get a weeks work done in just 2 or 3 crazy days, days where you are so effective that you feel almost possessed. Other days may be just the opposite. Lots of interruptions, small unimportant things that take a big chunk out of your day, things that are not working, or people who are not on time. The list could go on, but you get the point.

Now it´s important to use your effective days to beef up your “time bank” so you have something saved up for a rainy day. But it´s also important that you demand enough of yourself so that you are unable to stack up the “time bank” with surplus time too easily. There are time where we do 1 weeks work in 2-3 days, but those are very rare and highly unusal occassions. On most weeks we just barely balance our “time budget”. And that´s the way it should be. It simply means we are working near the top of our game.

5-mins kamprad

morning

evening

no calls, mail, meeting 1 before and after

Staying in shape and working out is even more important if you are still young. Research shows that the effects of working out while you are still in your teens will stay with you for as long as 40 (!) years. Those are just to good of numbers to overlook.

Grow a pair. Be tough. We cannot stress enough the importance of being able to handle difficult and emotional situations in a good way for the entrepreneur who is starting out. In many of these situations a cool head, a good ability to read people and some basic diplomacy will go a long way. But there will be times when you need to be tough. There is a reason the saying goes; “nice guys finish last”. Nice boys are not likely to win the girl, nor are they likely to seal the business deal. Nice means being a pushover. Nice means letting somebody else dictate your agenda. Nice means not having the corage to ask or say what is already out there. So where are we going with this? What do we mean? We certainly don´t mean that you should start acting like an idiot and be rude to people. That will not get you any respect, and it will definitely not gain you any business. We are simply saying that you need to be able to back your professional and friendly “autopilot” manners up with balls of kevlar. And if you are having problems finding the kevlar version from the onset, settle with balls of steel for the time being. You can always upgrade later on.

You need to be friendly and nice most of the time but you have to have a mean side to you as well. If you are unable to find that balance and make the switch when the situation calls for it you won´t be getting any free lunches. And what´s worse, somebody else is probably going to eat your lunch for you. You need to have two sides to you. Sort of “Forrest Gump” meets ”Scarface”. You need to come off as friendly and reasonable most of the time, but they need to know there is a “darker” side to you. If all they get is the nice guy, you will get no respect and that is very likely to begin showing in the way your business contacts interact with you. If they have seen your crazy side they´ll think twice before overcharging you. If they have seen a gleam of terror in your eyes they are much less likely to be late to your meetings. If they have heard you scream in fury they will be a lot more reasonable when you negotiate with them. We wish that the world would look another way, but these are our experiences. Whether or not you believe us it up to you. But we know these general rules to be true.

Carrot or stick? You need both. If you are only running around with a carrot all day long people will start to figure you pose no threat to them. You need a scary, fat stick hanging by your side to scare off any casual attempts. You might never get to use it, but it needs to be there for the world to see. It is your meal ticket to a more comfortable and less complicated business life. It is a statement that says: “Don´t f_ with me!”. And it should convey that important message loud and clear. The truth is that the business world is very often a place where the resources sitting in the middle of the table are scarce and everybody is reaching for them. Some are more aggressive than others and if you are not careful they will try to take your share of the spoils. That´s why you need a stick as precaution. You hope that you will not need to use is. You hope it is only there for show. You can consider it your nuclear weapon, something that establishes enough of a terror balance to avoid unnecessary future conflicts. Be prepared for war, but strive to live a life of peace. That´s the best way to go about it. But at the same time, you must be prepared to start swinging if you, or your interests are under fire. Make them understand that to take the money from you they will be forced to fight you every step of the way. Once they realize that they will have to claw the money out of your clenched hands they will look elsewhere. They will leave you alone and go luck for some lower hanging fruit. And that´s just what you are after. The business world can be a ruthless place and only those who are willing to fend for themselves need apply for a seat at the table.

Apart from being able to fend for yourself, in business the ability to get really pissed off can be a real asset at times. That is providing that you only get angry when there is a legitimate reason to. If you get angry frequently without cause people will shy away from you. But if you get genuinely pissed when the situation calls for it, that is likely to help you immensely in your business activities. We are not sure why that is. But we have our theories. The world tries to avoid problems and conflicts. The world is always trying to go along the line of least resistance. If they know that the´ll end up on the receiving end of one of your outbreaks they´ll think twice before overcharging you. Why do it to the screaming maniac when you could overcharge the timid nice guy who pays no matter what or how you charge? And that´s that. The choice is made, and very often we believe that this choice is made by the subconscious. The subconscious mind knows what you are really after and it always helps you to follow the line of least resistance. The timid nice guy is the line of least resistance. The rage of the screaming maniacs out there (that would be us) is to be avoided at all costs. It´s really a matter of self preservation. Always stay tough and do not blink. If you manage to project strength behind your pleasant demeanor you have alreday won half the battle.

We could give you a lot of stories that underlines our theory regarding the importance of projecting strength. But we will only give you one. It is by far the best example that comes to mind every time we think about this issue. It deals with an immensely wealthy entrepreneur that had made a habit of calling up his suppliers and give them a rollicking from time to time. One of us once had the opportunity to overhear one of these calls. The supplier got the verbal beating of a life-time. He got completely annihilated. he didn´t even get to say anything, he was under constant barrage. It was all brilliant fun. Just thinking about it puts a smile on our faces. Ren minutes after that phone call it turns out that the mistake had not been made by the supplier (as was initially suspected). Instead, the mistake was made in the organization of the wealthy entrepreneur with a knack for telephone terror. What do you think the wealthy entrepreneur did? Well, he didn´t call up and appologize, that´s one thing we can tell you. When one of his employes asked him if they should call the supplier, kiss and make up he said no and added; “It´s a good thing we give it to them from time to time. It will keep them on their toes, and they will think twice about messing with us in the future”. And he was right. From that day on the supplier was extra careful with that particular account. They gave it special treatment all the way, and were very focused on not making any mistakes. A couple of years later we met the guy who was at the receiving end of the aggressive phone call. He told us they were all scared of the crazy entrepreneur and from the day of that phone call they had been giving that account special treatment for the next couple of years. What´s more, when they renegotiated prices with their customers one year after that event, that was the one account were they didn´t up the prices. They figured it would just be a lot easier on everybody if they let that one slide. We give you this story not because we think that the behaviour is a good example of how you should behave as an entrepreneur. Rather we are trying to illustrate that by being a major pain in the ass, you will very often get preferential treatment. Your business surroundings will stop to lie in wait for you and move on to better hunting ground and easier prey instead.

Finally we would like to discuss how this concept can be applied to negotiations. Every second year or so we usually go on a cost-cutting hunt. What this means is that we take a close look at each business and look for excess fat. We look for expenses that can be cut without affecting the business negatively in any way. We always find something, and so will you. If you think in creative ways there is big money to be saved. And the best part of it is that very often that money goes straight down to your bottom line, drastically improving your take from your enterprises that year. Now a big part of any companies costs are usually related to what you are paying suppliers. And we´re not only talking about the suppliers of goods and services that goes into your base production. We are talking about the supply of some secondary services that almost any business has. For instance, if you run an electronic store your base supplier costs are what you pay for the electronic devices that you are selling in your store. These costs are probably an ongoing battle for your business and it´s often not here that you will find potential costs that you can cut in your cost-cutting hunt every second year. The secondary service costs on the other hand can often provide cost saving opportunities. What are these? It´s anything that doesn´t go into your production, or that you don´t sell to your customers in any way. Your legal expenses are an example. Your accounting and bookkeeping goes in here as well. Maintenance, and the cost of the premises also fall into this category. The list goes on. If you check your costs you will probably find lots of expenses that are related to services of this kind.

Now the next step in this process is to find the biggest posts, the costs on this list that are coming from the same company and that constitute a large expense to you. Those are the expenses that you need to target, since that is in most cases where you will be able to cut costs the most. Make a list of those companies and the expenses they constitute. Now you need to contact two competitors to every company that is on that list. Describe what those companies are doing for you and ask for a competing price. More often than not, the companies that you contact will try to undercut your current supplier in the hope of securing a new account. Quite often they will give you a  very low price only to get your business in through the door, and they figure they can always up that price later on. That´s ok for you. In most cases you only use their quotes as a reference point and as leverage in your negotiation with your current provider. When you meet your current provider be humble and pleasant, and try to cut your prices to the levels you now know are possible. If they are giving you a hard time, you could mention that you have been talking to competitors and that they have been able to offer you a better deal. That will get their attention, at least if they want to keep you on as customers. We have been through this process a number of times and we have basically always been able to cut our costs using it. We are not saying it is foolproof, we are merely stating that it has worked very well for us, and saved us lots of money over the years. Besides the money that will be saved, you also save a lot of time using this method. Your service providers will think twice before they raise prices on you or tweak your deal to the downside. It´s a great way to arrive at a fair market price in those cases where the other side has the information advantage, and you don´t really know where the price should be.We just love that.

We have tried to teach this “system” of cutting costs to “brand new” entrepreneurs and in general it has been successful. One problem seems to surface though. We have noticed that many fresh entrepreneurs don´t like to have to call their service providers or service suppliers for a renegotiation of the price levels even though they have received competing quotes at much more favourable prices. In most cases it has to do that nobody really enjoys a situation with a potential conflict built into them. Business meetings where you are trying to pay a considerably lower price for a service usually don´t turn out to be the most exciting and entertaining affairs. Just remember that it is over in a jiffy. One unpleasant conversation today can save you dozens of unpleasant conversations tomorrow. Think about that. It could be a bit unpleasant once, but you get to enjoy the outcome for years in most cases.

Oh, and one more thing. Be sure to cut costs continually. You don´t have to do it every second year like we do. You can do it whichever way you like it, as long as it is a recurring event. Even more important is that you don´t do it when things are going bad and you have to cut costs. Whenever you find yourself cutting costs during the bad times, you are much more likely to cut costs that are necessary or even essential for your enterprise. The best time to cut costs is when everything is going well. In those times there are plenty of costs to cut in general, and you are less likely to even feel any side effects from those cuts. When those bad years come by, as they often do sooner or later, you will already have a pretty trimmed company in place and you will be much better prepared to meet the new tough climate. Take it from us.

Cut costs when you can, not when you have to.

What followed was a discussion between Steve, his wife and me and my partner. Steve claimed there was no upside to being an entrepreneur instead of being an employee. To be fair, he did mention one exception: as an entrepreneur you could make a killing money-wise. But he figured those chances were miniscule, like one in a million or so, so they didn´t really count. He mentioned some statistics about the number of companies that don´t make it, and we agreed that the numbers were awful. We knew about those already. Nothing in life is black or white. And there certainly aren´t any free lunches. There is a price to be paid for everything. We decided long agp we wanted to be entrepreneurs, and we have paid our tuition fees on more than one ocassion. And when Steve asked us what we would have done if we could turn the clock back and start all over again the answer was a no-brainer for us. We would be entrepreneurs. We would do it all over again, only this time slightly different based on what we have learned over the years. But we wouldn´t be employee´s. Not in a million years. Wild horses wouldn´t drag us back into life as an employee. Steve didn´t get it. As an employee you had your security, your steady stream of pay-checks and a comfortable lifestyle. Why would we want to trade that in for frantic round-the-clock work that migt make us rich but was just as likely to lead to an ulcer? Why would anybody take that bet?

We saw his point. Truly, we did. But we also told him that he was in no position to make claims about which road was better. He had only tried one of them: life as an employee. He had no experience of the road less travelled: being an entrepreneur. We had been on both sides of the fence. And from where we were standing it wasn´t much of a contest. Being an entrepreneur won, hands down. But Steve wasn´t convinced. He asked us if being an entrepreneur had any advantages over being employeed. Could we name one such advantage? We could. And we did. So we told him what we valued most about being an entrepreneur. It´s the stuff that makes it unable for us to even think about going down another avenue. There are probably loads of other things to put on that list, and many of you might not agree with us, but like we said; this is our list. It deals with the stuff we feel is important. And that´s just the stuff we are about to tell you:

We have a serious upside. We don´t work all year long to make somebody else rich. If there is a payday, we are at the front of the line. If we do extraordinary work, that work wil benefit our bank accounts. Not the bank accounts of some major corporation and a few overpaid upper management guys. And by being players of the game we are not only exposing ourselves to the yearly cah flows that our companies produce for us. By taking part of the game we are also exposed to the balance sheet side of things. As the value of the balance sheet of the company rises so does the value of our holdings in it. Some day in the future somebody might want to aquire our company for a premium price. And that´s just another aspect of the serious upside that is present for an entrepreneur. Running your own business wil allow you to take out exactly what you put in. There is no middle management or other form of middle hands that the money needs to pass before it reaches you. There is less skimming but more responsibility. If you have what it takes, only the sky is the limit to what you can make.

We don´t do corporate bullshit. We don´t have to kiss anybody´s ass, we don´t have to lie, and we don´t have to pretend something that everybody knows is not true. We get to tell it like it is. And we are damn grateful that is the case. We get to operate in an environment where individuals still have freedom and self-respect. We don´t need to whisper the truth in some dark corner of the company office. We get to tell it like it is on the board meeting. We don´t need to be politically correct, and we don´t need to be political. We have the luxury of being blunt, to the point of being rude if we want to. But you can´t tell it like it is in the corporate world. Sometimes the truth is an enemy of the company, and if you unveil it you will get sacked. If you are too cute in a corporate environment you will be labelled as a troublemaker, and sooner or later you will get fired. But who´s going to fire us? We don´t get fired. Getting fired assumes there is someone who exerts any power or infleunce over you. The only ones who has power over us is ourselves. Perhaps some day we will fire ourselves, when we feel like it. But luckily for us that day has not arrived yet.

We are safe. We don´t rely on somebody else to provide an illusion of security for us. We have the security part of the equation covered. We have had some good years and some bad years as entrepreneurs. Fortunately we have put aside some money from the good years. We are not dependant on salary. We are not one paycheck away from the poorhouse, like so many employees are. In fact we are not dependant on getting a salary at all. Being employeed feels safe, but it is merely an illusion. The moment you give up control, the safety is not there anymore. And the employee gave away their control of the situation the moment that employment contract was signed. If you depend on someone else to provide safety for you, are you really safe? You might be. Then again, you might not be. The control is not yours. Somebody else is calling the shots and somebody else gets to decide how secure your safety measures really are. That´s not real safety. It may seem like it. It may feel like it. It may sound like it. But it isn´t.

We make our own rules. We don´t work inside a system. we build a system to work for us. We control our destiny. We control our time, and how we wish to dispose of it. When you are an employee somebody else controls the system you are operating in. Somebody else is calling the shots. You are merely a small piece being moved around on the board, but somebody else is making up the rules of the game. You are just a pawn, waiting for the your next move to be announced. You can´t take a week off just because you feel like it. You can´t take increase your salary, take a vacation or begin working with something else when you feel like it. You are part of a system. Somebody else´s system. And you have a rather limited say in what is going on around you. If you are forced to take part of a game for the better part of your life wouldn´t you rather control that game and make up all the rules. It´s your life we are talking about. Why would you let somebody else exert any control over it whatsoever? It just doesn´t make sense.

We don´t work for money. We work for time. When you are an employee you are trading your time away for money. You are trading away five out of every seven weekdays for coin. We do it the opposite way. We trade money for time. We will gladly pay someone to do the job for us if that means we can do what we like instead. If we want to we can take the day off. Or the week off. We receive passive income from a number of different sources. No matter what we do, money is pouring in. It might pour in a bit faster if we get busy, but if we take a vacation it still keeps pouring in. We get paid when we sleep, when we work out, and when we travel. Whatever we do, those income streams keep coming in, and adding up. Why give away your time for money when you can give money for somebody else´s time? Take your chance today and decide to take control of your financial future over the next couple of years. Make a plan that allows you to pay a one-time price for the privilege of never having to work for money again. What would you rather do? Work your butt off for 5 years for yourself, and enjoy the benefits from that work during the remainder of your life? Or work the next 50 years making somebody else rich? For us the choice was easy.

We are constantly evolving. We don´t get bored, understimulated or tired of our job. Why would we. We get to do a lot of different things over the course of a day. We learn new things every day. We can truly say this: you will learn more in 1 year as an entrepreneur than you will during 10 years of being an employee. We know this is true. We have tried both sides of the story. When we were employees we did mainly 4 or 5 different tasks over and over again. Our jobs involved calling people on the phone, meeting people in real life, negotiating, analyzing, and presenting. We would spend each day doing a combination of these tasks. It was exciting for a while. But eventually you get tired of it. Today we have 100 of different tasks in a day. We don´t really ever a chance to get tired of it, since we are doing so many different things all the time. Another thing that adds to the excitement is that we can see something through from start to finish. There is something magical about sticking with something through the whole process. to this very day it is our favourite thing to do and we are excited even thinking about it. Each time we do it we feel empowered. For a brief moment in time nothing seems impossible. To bring something from an idea to a finished product or service, and finally transform it all into lots of money is a fantastic feeling. And that feeling has less to do with the fact that we make lost of money in the process, and more to do with the fact that we get to work on the exciting process and try our ideas (the theory) against the reality (the practical application). It is the ultimate business chess board where you start out with an opening (an idea), you take that opening into the middle game (convert the idea into action), and finally take the middle game into a winning endgame (transforming your actions into money). When you get to do the check mate (count the money) you realize its not really about the money. It´s about the game. The game, and the passion for that game. Everything else is just noise.

We can retire early. An employee can retire early. If they only save for the next 4 or 5 decades and the stock market doesn´t go bananas it´s possible. But wouldn´t you rather retire while you are still young? Or perhaps semi-retire, where you get to be involved in your companies as much or as little as you like but somebody else is doing the majority of the grunt work. Wouldn´t you rather take long vacations and only be involved in the exciting and thrilling parts of running a business. Wouldn´t you rather count the money and spend it, than work hard for it and trade your time for it? Why work the better part of your life for somebody else and retire when you get old? Why not retire while you are still young? The choice is yours. You either become somebody else´s slave for 4 or 5 decades or you become a pirate for 5 years taking orders from nobody else but yourself. You either get enough money to retire when you´re too old to enjoy it, or you get really rich while you´re relatively young with lots of years to spend the money and enjoy the fruits of your hard labour. You either see retirement as the opportunity to see more of your children when they are grown-ups, or you see retirement as an opportunity to see your children grow up before your very eyes. The choice is yours. Whatever you choose, we wish you a long, beautiful retirement. You deserve it.

We have “Screw you money”. We kneel to no one. We don´t need to answer to no one. Our universe may not be big, but we are masters in it as opposed to being slaves. We don´t need any Machiavellian schemes to navigate through the food chain, because we are already firmly seated at the top of it. We don´t have to do anything. We can do stuff if we feel like it. We can say no to deals worth millions if we don´t feel like it. There is a concept called “screw you money”, or “F_ you money” or “drop dead money”. It is an amount of money that would allow you to tell your boss or somebody offering you a deal to drop dead or screw themselves if you wanted to. “Screw you money” is the amount that enables people to tell it like it is without living in fear of being fired or rejected. It´s the amount that allows you to keep your integrity as opposed to sekking approval and a meal ticket. For some “screw you money” is equivalent to the amount of money that would enable them to maintain their current lifestyle without the need to work ever again. For others´”screw you money” is simply so much money you don´t have to worry about money anymore, regardless of how much you spend. We define “screw you money” somewhere in between. It doesn´t need to be an obscene amount of money. But it needs to be enough to be able to live a very comfortable lifestyle for the rest of your life, without taking into account any appreciation of your capital. However you define it, it is nice to have. It allows you to do what you like, and it lest you tell others what you think. If you get the urge to tell someone to f_ off, you could. Because you have just the ticket for it.

We follow our dreams. We would do the work we do for free. Fortunately enough for us, we get paid for our efforts. What we are saying is that we love what we do. We get to express ourselves in a way which would be impossible in a corporate environment. Even if we had a similar job in a big corporation we wouldn´t be able to do what we do. Nobody would allow us to be masters of our own fate. Nobody would let us change the course of our whole company just on a whim. Nobody would let us stop doing our work and start doing some other work entirely, just because we felt like it. We have a huge freedom in our work, but as is always the case, with freedom comes responsibility. We have to make sure the money comes in. We have to survive and thrive. But as long as we do that, we are allowed to get really creative, maybe even a bit carried away. As long as the money keeps coming in we have complete artistic freedom in trying to reach for our dreams. And as long as the money keeps coming in we have the means necessary to pursue our dreams as well. Following your dreams could cost you a fortune, but not following your dreams will cost you a lifetime of wondering “what if?”. We are blessed in that we are able to do what we want and get paid good money for it. We think every individual should try to reach that stadium. The quality of life it allows is truly humbling. Perhaps Chinese philosopher Confucius expressed it best:

Find a job you love and you´ll never work a day in your life.

That´s it. Those are our main war cries in support of being an entrepreneur. They may not be complete and you may not agree with (all of) them, but they give an accurate representation of how we feel about it. They are based on our experiences as both employees and entrepreneurs. We have believed along these lines for the last couple of decades. In fact, the more time that passes by, the more we have found that these theories do indeed stand the test of time. So there you have it Steve. Those are the main reasons we love what we do, and we wake up each morning with tremendous excitement and a stupid grin on our face. And those are the main reasons that we can think of no better way to live our lives.

Another big aspect of being long-term is related to the business ownership. Our advice on this issue is simple. Never sell. Ever. Be in it for the long haul. Look upon your business as a constant, a part of your life that is always going to be around. Never ever, let go of any ownership. In fact always try to increase your ownership into the businesses that you fancy. We always try to trade away other things against ownership. Why? Because the big money is in the ownership. The control is in the ownership. Everything is in the ownership.

While we do agree that the primary goal of doing business is to make money (many people make the mistake of assuming you are in business to be busy) we are not overly concerned as to when that money is to be paid. We are fine if we don´t get paid straight away if we believe there is a good chance of getting paid a lot more in the future. We will gladly pull ourselves out of a thousand small battles if we believe that those decisions will ultimately win us the whole war. We look for strategic improvements. The operational and tactical aspects are important as well, but it is the strategic improvements that keeps a business moving forward. And as long as a business is moving forward and continually evolving its value is rising. And it is that increase in value that we are after. Nothing more. And nothing less.

We have at times engaged in business activities where key memebers of our team discussed potential ownership with us. We always tried to pay them instead. We paid them progressively in many cases, i e they got paid more the better they did. But we wanted to hang onto the ownership of the company. Our instinct has always been very strong about this particular issue. What is really surprising is how many people are quite content with gettting paid instead of getting a stake in the company. In fact whenever we have discussed the choice between ownership of some sort or a generous salary, 99 percent of all individuals would go for the salary. We find that very difficult to understand. For instance, if we hired a brilliant progarmmer and he built a software for us he would typically be more than happy to get paid instead of claiming a stake in the enterprise. He would accept a 100 percent certain small payment today, instead of a possible large payment in the future. We are just the opposite. Why would we want the money today if we stand a chance to make a killing tomorrow? We don´t understand that line of thought whatsoever. Then again, as most entrepreneurs, we find ourselves on the wrong side of conventional wisdom more often than not. We do not work for salary. But we are willing to work for ownership. There is a big difference. An individual that has salary has limited upside and even more limited time. He is working hard, but more often than not, somebody else is collecting the better part of the fruits of his labour. An individual that has ownership, on the other hand, is in pole position. He gets to call the shots. He gets to play the game with an ace up his sleeve, and he can make up the rules of the card game as it goes along. An individual that has the ownership might not get the small amounts of money right now, but in most cases he or she will get most of the big money later.

There are exceptions to the rule. There are always exceptions to all rules. If we were to be offered a windfall profit, that is a profit which we considered to be a lot more than the theoretical value of one of our holdings we would consider selling. It happens. Sometimes these kind of not-so-rational bigtime offers actually make some sense for the company making the offer. It might be a strategic aquisition or the enterprise you are in control of could be worth a lot more once it got in the hands of a bigger company. The reasons are many why a theoretical overprice might sometime be a sensible bet even for the company making the offer. And if that is the case it becomes a win-win situation. The bidding company gets a strategically important part of their puzzle firmly in place. And the seller gets a boat full of money.

A windfall profit. That´s the exception to the rule. Only if somebody would offer us a windfall profit would we consider selling. We have been approached with those kind of offers over the years. Some of them we took. But many of them we turned down. Those that we turned down had one thing in commmon. They all stated that we had to stay on as “working partners” in the company for so-and-so many years. To us that sounds an awful lot like a slave contract. An extremely lucrative slave contract, but a slave contract nevertheless. That was what made us turn these offers down eventually. The money was good. In some cases the money was a game-changer, enough to last us a life-time. And still we would turn it down. Why? Because we just couldn´t stand the thought of becoming employees again.

We can promise you this: when you have tasted the sweet feeling of freedom and liberty you will not go back voluntarily. As soon as we tried our wings as entrepreneurs we quickly realized that wild horses couldn´t drag us back to corporate life again. Why be a part of a toothless fleet when you can be a vicious pirate? Why have a boss when you can be (your own) boss? Why make somebody else rich, when you could be making yourself rich? We don´t get it. And besides, we are probably way to cynical to be able to stand 5 minutes of the corporate bull shit flying around in the corporate world. We don´t do corporate bullshit. We tell it like it is. No false pretenses. No excuses. No apologies. That´s just the way it has to be. Anything else would make us go insane.

That´s about it. We never look for the quick exit but if you are truly working for the long term you will sometimes be offered an unexpected short-term windfall profit. Sometimes it is prudent to take that offer. But we would only do that if we got to walk away as free men. But that´s just us. Everybody needs to follow their own hearts and minds. We will gladly forsake short-term money, salaries and dividends as long as we can have ownership. An ownership in a continually evolving business has unlimited upside. It is a golden ticket to real wealth. Why would you want to give that ticket away for some paultry pocket change?