21 habits of highly successful people

CHAPTER: 1 UNCLEARPURPOSE/VISION
CHAPTER: 2 OPINIONORIENTED
CHAPTER: 3 WRONGVIEWS
CHAPTER: 4 DISHARMONY
CHAPTER: 5 DISTRUST
CHAPTER: 6 UNFAVOURABLE EMOTIONAL STATES
CHAPTER: 7 LOW EXPECTATIONS
CHAPTER: 8 ILL-HEALTH
CHAPTER: 9 STRESSED ALL THE TIME
CHAPTER: 10 FAILURES
CHAPTER: 11 SUCCESS
CHAPTER: 12 PROBLEMS
CHAPTER: 13 CHANGES
CHAPTER: 14 HANDLING BOREDOM
CHAPTER: 15 UNCERTAINITY
CHAPTER: 16 IMPATIENCE
CHAPTER: 17 UNWILLING TO LEARN FROM OTHERS
CHAPTER: 18 SINGLE TASKING
CHAPTER: 19 INCORRECT MARKET ANALYSIS
CHAPTER: 20 NOT FOLLOWING 80-20 PRINCIPLE
CHAPTER: 21 QUANTITY VS QUALITY CONSIOUSNESS

21 habits of highly successful people

CHAPTER: 1 UNCLEARPURPOSE/VISION
There is an old story in which few workers will be shifting bricks from one
place to another.
A visitor approaches and enquires one of them What are you doing?
The worker responds I am carrying a load of bricks from here to there.
The visitor asked the man again What are you doing?
The worker shouts back angrily Cant you see, I am carrying bricks from
here to there! Dont you have eyes?
The visitor left the worker alone and asked several other workers and to his surprise all of them
answered in the same angry and stressed tone.
The visitor was upset. After much time, he finally reached one person who looked happy and asked him
What are you doing?
The person replied We are carrying bricks to build the corner walls. We are building a beautiful church .
The visitor became happy & moved on. This story is a good example for visions and their power.
The workers, who shouted with anger, appeared stressful because they did not know as to why they are
carrying such a load of bricks; they did not know the goal or end result.
But the worker who was happy knew the end goal or the result of his work.
He knew how every brick helped the construction of the church; hence he felt that his work is
meaningful.
If an entrepreneur doesnt have a clear vision, then he will move in different directions wasting a lot of
time, effort, energy & money. The end result is Frustration.
What is a vision? Vision is a clear picture of the future you want to be in. The picture should be detailed
and precise. Have you observed, if you just imagine a car with some emotion, you will start seeing
similar cars in TV, newspapers and roads? This is exactly the power of vision. Once you have clear vision,
life will start working towards your advantage. Mahatma Gandhi had a vision of seeing India free and
this vision inspired millions of people and finally everything worked towards the success of its vision.

What is stopping you from having a vision?

Is it that, you are not exactly sure what you want?
Are you afraid that your vision will not come true?
Are you afraid that your vision may not be liked by other people?
What is your real issue?
If you dont have vision, you will be out of business very soon and it is like a ship moving in unknown
direction.

In order to carry a positive action we must develop a positive vision. Dalai Lama"

CHAPTER: 2 OPINION ORIENTED

Whenever you plan to start something, what thoughts come to your mind? Does it sound like below?
What will others say?
What will others do?
What will others think?
Am I looking good?
Will people laugh at me?
Will people reject me?
Will people back bite?
Will people be jealous?
Will people try to harm me?
How can I face others if fail?
Will people think I am not worthy?
Will people misuse me? Etc.
If you are getting these thoughts, then you are a victim of others Opinion! That is, you are always on the
need of approval from others. That is, you need people to say that you are good and that whatever you
are doing is the right thing to do. Having an approval seeking attitude is the top reason for failure in
entrepreneurship, because there are not enough people in the world who are really interested in you.
Its not that the people in the world are bad, but mainly because they have their own list of issues to
address and your issue will be last in their list. So if you want success, approval seeking attitude should
be out of your mind. Everybody knows that they shouldnt worry about what others say, but why do we
still look for opinions from others?

The answer is simple, from the time we are born, we had to

Listen & get approval of parents to get food & love
Listen & get approval of teachers in school and colleges to get grades and pass in exams.
Listen & get approval of brother, sister, bosses, spouse, children, friends, neighbors, priests,
politicians to lead a comfortable & peaceful life.

So, this habit has taken a strong root in your mind& heart and it is very difficult to not bother about
others comments.
But if you are serious and want to be a successful entrepreneur, then you should be courageous enough
to follow your heart and ignore everybody elses opinion. You will not get this attitude immediately, but
take small steps and start doing things which you like to do, irrespective of others comments. Wrightbrothers tried to fly and everybody for sure would have laughed at it and nobody would have approved
them. Because of the courage and conviction of Wright-brothers, now we all are flying 1000s of miles.
This is a great example of not worrying about others opinions and just following your heart!

People who want the most approval get the least and people who need approval the least get
the most."Wayne Dyer"

CHAPTER: 3 WRONGVIEWS
Some people are conditioned to believe that, it is a worthless and low profile life to be as an employee
and hence he should always try to become a Boss and run his own business.
This is a classic example of wrong view of looking at employee vs.
employer situation. As mentioned above, people may be motivated
to become an entrepreneur for some ego-centric and foolish idea. So,
its important to set things in correct perspective while pursuing a
success in entrepreneurship. Some common wrong views are listed
below
1. Entrepreneur is free to do whatever he/she wants to do and there
is nobody to question or dictate. This is not correct because you are
answerable to customers, shareholders, financers and even
employees.
2. Money earning is not spiritual and is not a good karma. This wrong
view mostly exists with people who are confused between spirituality
& materialism. What is important to understand is that, you cannot live in this world without money and
practically speaking you have to earn money for yourself and your family and if you are aspiring to be a
successful entrepreneur, then you have to earn money for all of your employees also.
3. Entrepreneurship is just a one-time job where "you can perform and take complete rest after that.
This cannot be true because
a. You have to make progress every quarter and every year.
b. Continuously improve your product or services to keep customers happy.
c. Track competition continuously and make changes in your business, so that you dont lose your
business.
d. Always work on keeping your employees happy & healthy & rich.
e. Increase your customers and sales etc. This means to say, an entrepreneur cannot rest for a
long time and he has to keep trying different things all the time.
4. Entrepreneurship is just 9 to 6 job. This is totally a wrong view, because something or the other will be
in his mind almost 15-16 hours in the day and sometimes things will come in dreams also.
5. Entrepreneurship is just ordering employees to do work and he can just sit and enjoy. This is again
totally a wrong view because entrepreneur should know and track and sometimes do many peoples
work. Entrepreneurs always need to be aware of their ideas and beliefs and make sure that they are not
falling prey to wrong views. Steve jobs, was diagnosed with cancer and went through many hardships.
But, still he did not stop working and taking rest. He continued working and producing some great

products. This is a classic example of hardships people face which they would have not imagined. So,
having understood that entrepreneur life is not as easy and rosy as you are guessing, why are you still
looking for entrepreneurship? So, if you are not a success in your entrepreneurial attempt, then its time
to investigate your reasons and motivations and evaluate whether it is right or wrong. You can try expert
advice and other information channel to learn more about right motivation for being business.

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't. Margaret
Thatcher

CHAPTER: 4 DISHARMONY
There is a beautiful Chinese story in which a family consists of 4 people -father, mother, daughter & son.
Once on a rainy day, the family will be having tea in their balcony and discussing something.
After sometime 4old men come and stand in front of their house looking for
shelter. They will introduce themselves as Harmony, Peace, success and
wealth and they mention that they want some shelter until rain stops. The
family wants to invite only one, and they are discussing themselves.
Father says I want Success.
Mother says I want wealth.
Son says I want Peace and
Daughter says I want harmony.
It was a tough conclusion to come to, but finally all of them gave in for the little princess daughter &
decided to invite Harmony.
So, they asked harmony to come-in, but to their surprise Peace, success, wealth also followed in. The
moral of story is, harmony is the highest value, and once it is prevalent, Peace, success & wealth will
follow automatically, even if you dont ask. Harmony should be kept as the highest value for an
entrepreneur, because with it everything else falls in place.
Harmony should be kept in family, with the team, with the society also.
If one is fighting in the family with their spouses and also not loving their children, how he/she can
succeed in the outside world? All his energy is drained out. Similarly, if the team members are not in
harmony, how will the organization flourish? How will they create quality product? Similarly if your
organization is not adding any value to the society, how will your company exist in the eco-system?
Hence, a successful entrepreneur recognizes all these and makes sure harmony is kept as the top of the
list. Whereas an unsuccessful entrepreneur will be not comfortable with his family, with his employee,
with the industry & society in large.
Coming back to the story
Harmony creates Peace with other. Once Peace prevails there is more energy & hence success. Once
success comes, wealth also follows automatically. But most people are aiming directly at wealth or
success and hence they dont have anything. Neither Peace nor wealth.

Harmony makes small things grow; lack of it makes great things decay. "Sallust"

CHAPTER: 5 DISTRUST
An entrepreneur cannot achieve great things alone and he has to
depend on many people for their contributions. Hence, he has to
have trust or faith in others and the lack of trust will create an
unhealthy environment. Lets say you are going to haircut, you
have two options
1. Trust the barber and relax, assuming he will do his job.
2. Distrust the barber and be worried /restless all the time.
1st is better than 2nd, you know it very well, because 2nd irritates
the barber, stresses you out and the end result is that you get a
poor haircut and it will became awkward and difficult for you to face the world. The same analogy can
be taken to your organization and colleagues. If team members dont trust each other, the end result
will be a bad product and also bad reputation in the eyes of customers. So, any successful entrepreneur
recognizes this aspect and always works hard so that there is trust with his fellow colleagues.
NONE OF US KNOWS WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN EVEN THE NEXT MINUTE, YET STILL WE GO FORWARD.
BECAUSE WE TRUST, BECAUSEWE HAVE FAITH."PAULOCOELHO BRIDA"
Stephen. R. Covey has written a beautiful book called SPEED OF TRUST. The summary of this book is
that, when there is trust, things happen fast and effectively and, when there is lack of trust, things are
delayed and produce bad results. If trust is such an important value to have, why it does not exist in
some individuals? Some reasons include
Some event that happened in childhood which destroyed the trusting ability in ones heart and
the person is still carrying mistrust till today.
Ego, that is you think you can do all done and perfectly. Others are not capable to do a good job.
Whatever are your specific reasons, you need to analyze quickly, because it greatly determines the
success of failure. Trust has to start or has the following dimensions
Trust in oneself
Trust in family
Trust in friends
Trust in colleagues & partners
Trust in Society
Trust in God.

Unsuccessful entrepreneur dont trust themselves and others and many time they dont even trust God.
So, start analyzing why you dont trust? Take any area or aspect where there is a lack of trust and then
keep on asking why? Why? Why?
Lets take for example, you dont trust your wife, ask yourself why? Some reasons will pop out. Then ask
the next question why? Researchers have shown that if you can ask why 5 times, the answer will come
out in front of your eyes. But the mistake we do is we stop at 1st or 2ndwhy for some strange reasons.
Another important question to ask is, do you really trust God? Do you trust lifes process? Do you trust
that it will be all ok in the Gods scheme of things? If you dont have trust in God, it is a very stressful
thing for you and becomes a lonely battle where you have to plan & worry about millions of things in
your tiny brain. So, all aspiring entrepreneurs, keep TRUST has the highest value to possess and move
ahead confidently.

CHAPTER: 6 UNFAVOURABLE EMOTIONAL STATES

Human Beings are feeling beings, which mean to say they will feel
many emotions like love, fear, worry, sad, joy, angry, hate, jealous,
anxiety, depression etc.
You may be thinking, what is the big deal about emotions? In the
context of entrepreneurship you need to be constantly aware of
your emotions. If all the time you are filled with fear, worry or
sadness, do you think you can succeed? No, you cannot succeed
because you will not have physical and mental energies to do
some good work.
On the contrary, if you are filled with love for your job, success is
on your way, because you will perform at the best. The love that you display to your job will attract
many other team members also to love and perform at their best.
This can be easily understood with the example of a relationship that you have with your spouse. If you
hate or worried or afraid of your spouse, then your spouse will respond with the same emotions and the
result will be a failure in your relationship.
But, if you display love to your spouse, they will respond back with love and the result is that of a
successful relationship. Things run smoothly between you and your spouse.
The same applies to your entrepreneurship dreams. You need to fill yourself with love for your
organization, products and the people. Love is very infectious. It spreads to your colleagues and
customer also. Steve job is a great example of love for his work. It was clearly seen in the company he
has established and the products he has made. Its very rare that customers dont love Apple or iPhone
or iPod or Mac. Its time to investigation and talk a stock of your emotions. You can use below format if
you like:
S. No

Work

Dominating Emotion (Love or Fear)

You can manage your emotions by learning from spiritual gurus, management experts and from other
self-help source
NOT ALL OF US CAN DO GREAT THINGS. BUT WE CAN DO SMALL THINGS WITH GREATLOVE. "MOTHER
TERESA"

CHAPTER: 7 LOW EXPECTATIONS

What do you expect out of life?
How do you think your future will be?
Will you be successful or a failure?
Do you think you deserve a great life?
Do you expect the world and people around to help you
achieve your goals?

All these questions are trying to investigate about your expectations from life or your core beliefs about
your future and the world around you.
Successful entrepreneurs have positive core beliefs, that they deserve a lot of success, health and
wealth & great relationships. They see themselves alongside other achievers; they expect the world to
be friendly and helpful.
Unsuccessful entrepreneurs have exactly opposite beliefs. That is they expect things to fail, things to not
work for their advantage and they expect people to ignore their visions. So, Expectations clearly play a
major role in the success. Expectations which are positive have created miracles in the healing of
diseases and in many other situations.
Why do people have low expectations? Some reasons include
Guilt, which is something, has happened in the past which made them guilty and hence they
always feel they are bad & under serving for good.
The environment in which they have grown might have conditioned them to have less
expectation (as expectations would have created suffering)
Their past experience might have not been good and would have not met their expectations, so
they assume the future will be same.
The list can go on, but you need to analyze what are your reasons for not expecting a great life?
This discovery has to be made real quickly, so that some concrete positive action can be taken.
The key point here to understand is that more than having great expectations, one should never have
under serving feeling, because if you yourself feel under serving, then you are not going to succeed.

Certain thoughts which can help you feel deserved are:

1. Any incident that has happened in the past is not just because of you since it required cooperations of many other people & resources. This thought helps you to release the guilt &
other negative emotions because you alone were not responsible.
2. Past is not equal to future. That is going by LAW OF KARMA, if past determined your present,
then the present can determine your future. So just do your best now.
3. There are many stories of great people who have come out of tough childhoods & yet now are
celebrities. People like Oprah wintry, are great examples. If you analyze the early life of Oprah,
she had all the reasons to feel undeserving, but she has turned her life around. So, you need to
start exploring different ways like reading books, listening to people & other methods to reach
to a state of positive expecting or deserving feeling. Once you feel in your heart, that you really
deserve good things of life, then great things starts to happen.
YOU, YOURSELF, AS MUCH AS ANYBODY IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, DESERVE YOUR LOVE AND
AFFECTION. "BUDDHA"

CHAPTER: 8 ILL-HEALTH
Recent studies have shown the effect of mind on body. For example: - A
prolonged uncertainty can cause peptic ulcers, gastric problems &
indigestion.
Since an entrepreneur journey is long, hard and challenging, many
emotions flood him like fear, worry, confusion, angry etc. and these
emotions for sure will have the direct effect on the body causing many
diseases. This needs to be kept in the mind and managed appropriately.
A positive mental attitude combined with good healthy body is a great
bonus for an entrepreneur.
If an entrepreneur has ill-health, all he can achieve is a bed in the hospital.
What is a health? Health is a sense of well-being both at the physical & mental levels.
This sense of well-being can come with a disabled body or a body which is attacked by some disease also.
Steve jobs for example had a cancer, but still he achieved quite a lot because, he felt good inside and
there are many other stories, who were disabled people, yet achieved professional success also.
An aspiring entrepreneur has to take good care of their body and mind. Some of the things they can
follow are
Strict and nutrient rich diet
Good water intake
MeditaMon, reading posiMve books
Yoga or gym or swimming
Some sports where they enjoy most etc.
Massages, acupressure etc.
There is no need to further say, how it feels to have a healthy body &mind. For example an early rising &
a simple walk/jog can set the tone for the entire day to be energetic & effective. On the contrary late
rising in the morning will set a wrong tone for the entire day and things will go wrong one by one.
So, to succeed & do better, keep your body &mind in a good condition. You might have heard the below
quote I worked hard to achieve money and then I spent all my money to regain health. Please, make
sure that you are not unconsciously following the above quote.

HEALTHY CITIZENS ARE THE GREATEST ASSET ANY COUNTRY CAN HAVE. "WINSTONCHURCHILL"

CHAPTER: 9 STRESSED ALL THE TIME

How do you feel these days?

Are you tired?
Do you lack energy to do things?
Is your creativity getting duller?
Do you feel lazy or sleepy?

Well, if your answer is yes for most of the questions above, then know for sure that you need
RELAXATION.
If you are working most of the time without taking breaks, then know for sure that you are not
performing at you best.
Western mind has introduced a very bad culture, which is to reduce the sleep time in order to get more
working time and achieve more in less number of days. But, if you analyze for yourself, all your stresses
happen in the working times and hence reducing your sleeping time is like increasing your stressful
times. You know from your own experience, how you feel after a goodnight sleep, but still you get
tempted to reduce sleeping time to achieve more.
Successful entrepreneurs always keep Relaxation as a top priority in life and some of the things they do
are:

Good sleep

Regular vacations

Massages

Playing some sports

Spending more time with children, nature & pets

Charity works

Prayer, meditation etc.

But, unsuccessful entrepreneurs do exactly the opposite; they work almost 18-20 hours in day. The
result is obvious, they are not yet successful and also unfulfilled. Not having an attitude of relaxation
effects
Teams producMvity also, because people try to live up to your expectation and try to work1820hour and their intelligence drops, producing lower quality output.
Family members also and hence they start revolting in home. An unhappy family is the root
cause of many business failures.
Your own creaMvity and eciency goes for a toss since you will never get any fresh idea to
improve your business.
Please keep in mind that Relaxation is not against work, but in fact it is a pre-condition for a better
quality of work.
How is your situation now? If you feel you are working too much, then just stop all your jobs right now,
plan a vacation with your loved ones and get some happy time. A happy mind and a happy family will
boost your entrepreneurial success.

Each moment of worry, anxiety or stress represents lack of faith in miracles, for they never
cease. "T.F. Hodge"

CHAPTER: 10 FAILURES
If you analyze many successful peoples life, one thing common is that
they FAILED many times and in many things, and if you analyze any
unsuccessful people, one thing common is that they have not
FAILED in many things.
So, patterns are very clear and give us the teaching that FAILURES are
not bad or something wrong or to be feared, rather it appears to be a
pre-condition to success.
Thomas Alva Edison was interviewed once and somebody asked a
question you have failed 10,000 times. Edisons response was I
have not failed. Ive just been successful in finding out 10,000 ways
which will not work.
In spite of clear statistics and many stories which clearly mention that failure is the stepping stone for
success, why do all unsuccessful people quit at the very first or second failure?
The difference comes in the way people use imagination. When there is a failure, you can imagine all the
things that can go wrong after the failure or you can imagine all the good things that can happen by
learning from our mistakes which caused the Failure. It is the same imagination faculty, but functioning
in very opposite ways, one caused the person to move ahead and the other caused the same person to
quit the work he has taken up.

I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying. "Michael Jordan"
So, how to build this imagination faculty to function in our favor? It doesnt just come out of the blue!
You may get these thoughts by reading some books, listening to some great people or learning from
your own experience.
Learning from our own experience is the best as it is very real. You can just look back in your life any
success that you have achieved so far and then analyze all the things that made you succeed. Careful
analysis will reveal that there were few failures in the path of your success and you had overcome it
with a positive attitude.
How did you overcome that failure? What attitude you adopted to come out of the failure? How long it
took to come out if it? You can dig deeper by asking questions and the answers will come out from
yourself.
The more you analyze your own life experiences and also observe and learn from your friends &family
and also learn from others who have succeeded, you will build your imagination faculty in a right
direction.

Steve Job is a great example of overcoming failures. He built apple from scratch, but he was thrown out
of his company. He felt bad for sure, but he did not get stuck with this failure. He built another great
company and finally came back to apple again.
The key thing to take away is that failure should not stop you from moving ahead; rather it should make
you walk or move ahead more intelligently and confidently.
FINAL ENDING QUOTE FROM MICHAEL JORDAN

Ive failed over and over and over again in my life and that is way I succeeded

CHAPTER: 11 SUCCESS
One thing which an entrepreneur has to keep a careful watch is
success, not just failures.
Please read carefully the below quote from Bill Gates Success is a
lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.
This is very important for an entrepreneur because, he/she will attain
some success on the way, but if they became complacent about it,
they will find themselves out of business very soon.
Google is a great story. This was the #1 search engine and they were
making millions from the advertisement. But after face book has
started, the advertisements are now shared with face book also and hence Google losing some share of
their business.
So, an entrepreneur should not rest, even if he attains success and he needs to keep moving. Yes, he can
celebrate the success, but he should not be stuck there for a lot of time.
This appears a very tough journey, because you have to keep running even after success. Whether you
accept this or not, this is life and you have to follow its rules. The reason is simple once you succeed,
many people will follow your approach and they will be trying to throw you away from competition.

Quotes: Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that
counts."Winston Churchill"

CHAPTER: 12 PROBLEMS
An entrepreneurs journey is not a simple journey, because he/she has to pass
through many problems. In fact, it will be one problem after the other.
Problems may not be failures, but a situation which needs to be resolved to
move ahead.
So, the attitude towards problems is very important. If you are getting
frustrated about problems, then entrepreneurship is not at all for you.

What is a Problem? Lets take some example

Washing clothes was a problem since it takes lot of manual effort & time. Solution was creating
a washing machine.
Washing dishes was a problem. Solution was creating a dishwasher.
Travelling from one place to another was a problem. Solution was creating car, plane, ship etc.
If you observe, all these were big problems at one point in time, but not after it was resolved by few
entrepreneurs. There are two kinds of people
1. One, they see a problem and they complain and worry about it all the time.
2. Second, they see a problem, create the solution & make money out of it for themselves and others.
Which group do you belong? If you belong to 1, then entrepreneurship is not for you.
So you need to have better attitude towards problems. You should always look what are the business
advantages you can take from the problem at hand. For this to happen, you should spend 10% of time
on understanding the problems clearly, but spend 90% of time on solution seeking.
Lets take an example. People could not communicate to their loved once instantly at one point in
history. Some entrepreneurs saw this has a problem to be solved and they created telephones. Even
after telephone invention, people could not communicate on the fly i.e.(whenever and whenever).
Again some entrepreneurs saw this has a problem & created mobile phones. Each solution to these
problems created great business and helped many other people. So, this is the attitude, an aspiring
entrepreneur needs to have. Always look for the advantage you can take or the business you can create
out of a problem or challenge in front of you.

EXPECT PROBLEMS AND EAT THEM FOR BREAKFAST."ALFRED A. MONTAPERT"

CHAPTER: 13 CHANGES
Change is the only constant
~~Unknown~~~
Everything is impermanent ~~~~~
Buddha ~

What does the above two statement means? It means life is dynamic and nothing remains static.
For examples: -Earth doesnt remains in same place Body doesnt remains the same as it keeps aging.
This is especially true in the case of business environment. New products come and replace the old and
this keeps happening. For example, the computers size has come down from a rooms size to notebook
size.
An entrepreneur will have to change his ideas, people and many other things many times in his lifetime.
Unsuccessful people take a long time or sometimes never change themselves, whenever there is a need
to change. This makes them outdated and had to quit the business. In America, when the concept of
outsourcing the work to other developing countries came into picture, there were two options to every
entrepreneur in America

Outsource as much as possible, so that they can do some other design & value added work.

Dont outsource, thinking that it will make Americans lose their jobs.

Whether people wanted to outsource or not, outsourcing kept happening in a big way and companies
like IBM, HP etc made great profit in terms of money & the work they did.
But all unsuccessful entrepreneurs kept resisting the change and they remained local. Though it appears
like a good thing to Americans on the surface, it ultimately ended up as a loss for the company because
of following reasons.
1. The competitors were producing more products and solutions, since they were now working
24*7.
2. The competitors were making quality products since they had access to better quality workers all
around the world.
3. Competitors made high profit and hence paid their employees high & hence kept their
employees happy.

So, this is a very good attitude to develop for an entrepreneur that is to look out for the changes, and
embrace it quickly. The only reason, unsuccessful entrepreneurs dont embrace the change is because of
fears. Whether the fears are real or imagined, if they dont change, they need to pack up their bags since
they are no more relevant in the changed world.

SOME CHANGES LOOK NEGATIVE ON THE SURFACE BUT YOU WILL SOON REALIZE THAT SPACE
IS BEING CREATED IN YOUR LIFE FOR SOMETHING NEW TO EMERGE. "ECKHART

CHAPTER: 14 HANDLING BOREDOM

The professional life of an entrepreneur is not always filled with creative or
fun things. In most situations and times, he needs to repeat the same job.
For example he might have to present the some product description to
100s of potential customers.
So, the key thing to keep in mind is that, an entrepreneur should develop
right attitude towards the monotonous or repeating jobs.

If you are always doing the repeated or similar jobs, then are you
Not creative?
Not outsourcing to some body?
Not introducing productivity tools?
Not risk taking?
Please ask these questions to yourself because statistics have proved that successful people have the
ability to manage or give up repeated or similar jobs to others, so that they can spend time on quality
and important jobs.
If you think that you have outsourced all the repetitive tasks to somebody, but still feel Bored? Its time
to think about Serial Entrepreneurship.

THE LIFE OF THE CREATIVE MAN IS LEAD, DIRECTED AND CONTROLLED BY BOREDOM.
AVOIDING BOREDOM IS ONE OF OUR MOST IMPORTANT PURPOSES. "SUSAN SONTAG"
Serial entrepreneurs create a new business, bring more it to some stable condition and hand it over to
others. Then they move on to some other business. In this way they might have done 20-30 business in
their life time.
If you are already a serial entrepreneur, but still finding the whole job of business or entrepreneurship is
boring and repetitive, then what to do? This is a tough and important issue to address, because then
questions like what do you really like to do in life come into picture. This is an input to same serious soul
searching and probably consultation with same entrepreneurs who are successful in keeping their
entrepreneurial attitude alive even in the midst of monotony.

At the end of day, if you have taken up or embarked on the journey of being a successful
entrepreneurship then nothing should really stop, nothing should make you stagnant and BOREDOM is
one of the main reasons to get stuck and loose interest.
Take a break from your work; analyze what new things you can do or how you can do the same things in
a new way.

CHAPTER: 15 UNCERTAINTY
Uncertainty is an important and major issue for entrepreneur.
An aspiring entrepreneur always has 2 options in his mind
1. Work in an established company as an employee because
things appear to be certain- monthly salary, career path,
people and nature of work.
2. Accept uncertainty that comes in the business life and
jump into it.

Most people are always looking for certainty. That is they have questions in mind like how will be my
future

Will I succeed or fail

How will I keep reinventing myself to keep pace with world?

Am I doing the right thing or wrong thing?

Will I make money or lose money?

Will my health go down or remain fit?

Will my people stick together or leave me?

Basically, everybody wants a clear picture of what will happen in the future. But who will tell this to you?
Except God nobody can tell precisely. Few experts can just guess, but it will not be for 100% sure. This
means until we have direct contact with God, we can never be sure of the future.
The attitudes and approaches that we have towards anything is very most. For example if we talk about
uncertainty, you can think in one of the two ways.
1. Future is uncertain, so let me not try anything new, better to stick to what we know already.
2. Future is uncertain and that is why it is interesting, challenging & joy. If everything is certain,
then it is boredom. What we think has certain now, was uncertain sometime back.
See, these two are totally different ideas on uncertainty, one makes you move forward & Feels good,
the other makes you dull & bored.

What the entrepreneurs always need to remember is that future is not certain even if you work as an
employee, because ultimately that is also a business which can go up/down. For example after apple
computer have introduced iPods, iPhone etc., the market for tape recorders & CDs is almost negligible,
so people who were comfortable working in tape recorders business will obviously lose jobs if they dont
re-invent themselves.
If we listen to the interviews of any successful entrepreneur, she/he will always say that the company or
business grew beyond their imagination. Why do they say like that? Because nobody can be certain how
many millions their business will do exactly.
The best advice given for handling uncertainty by successful people is:
1. Life is uncertain and hence interesting
2. Just focus on one step at a time and Keep clear vision
3. Have faith in God that things will work out for good.
Thats it; there is no other magic formula. Just keep moving in spite of uncertainty.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are
certain, they do not refer to reality. "Albert Einstein"

CHAPTER: 16 IMPATIENCE
Are you feeling restless? Thinking that you are not progressing? Do
you feel that time is running out? Do you feel exhausted?
If the answer is mostly Yes, then you are victim of IMPATIENCE
What is impatience? It basically means that you really feel that you
have done everything that you could have done, but so far not happy
with the results. You feel a sense of time slipping away from your
hands.

Impatience is one of the most key causes of failing in entrepreneurial journey, because to succeed in a
business it needs time and a lot of patience as many things will not go right first time.
Statistics have revealed that it takes at least3 years to succeed in any business. The three years can be
split as below

1st year preparation

2nd year production

3rd year profit making

So, this means that you will be just trying out stuff and preparing in the first year and in the2ndyear you
will start producing some results. Only in the 3rd year and beyond, you can start seeing some profitable
results in your favors. So, you need patience and hold on to at least 3 years.
Impatience comes into picture if you start expecting result just in the 1st/2nd year of trying out your
passions and interest. There may be many reasons to be impatient. Some common reasons are
1. Insufficient funds to invest in business.
2. Insufficient funds to manage your family
3. Not received any feedback from your customers, so you really dont know what will be the outcome.
4. General hurry and fast food attitude.
The list goes on, but its time for you to analyze about your specific reasons and once you know your
reasons, then you can look for solutions from people who have overcome it.
Paulo Coelho is one great example. He is a great writer which most of you have come to know about him
after he succeeded. But he has mentioned in his interviews & books as to how many hurdles he had
faced and how long he couldnt see any success. Impatience was the most obvious thing for him to have,
but he managed to stay on! So, only real thing that you should develop is patience. Please spend more

time on producing good and better products and services, instead of becoming victim of impatience and
hence unsuccessful.

Patience is the support of weakness; impatience the ruin of strength. "Charles Caleb Colton"

CHAPTER: 17 UNWILLING TO LEARN FROM OTHERS

Statistics clearly prove that, not even 10% are successful as an
entrepreneur, which means 90% of entrepreneurs have either quit or
unsatisfied with their average performance.
Why are 90% not achieved as much they wanted to achieve? What
options they have now? The best and the smartest thing to do is, just
analyze why 10% have succeeded? What is their way of working, what
are they working on, how are their treating their people, how are they
marketing, how are they pricing their products etc.
In India thousands of IT service companies started, but how come only a few like Infosys stands out tall
and is well known in the world? Obviously, they are doing something better than others. Small or
established IT companies, needs to learn from Infosys and implement in their own business or else they
will always remain an average performer and with many unfilled dreams.
Once you have understood why the 10% are really succeeding, all you have to do is
Do the same things that they are doing
If this is so simple to succeed, then what stops you?
Is it your ego to learn from others?
Is it lack of drive to move on?
Is it because you think they are special people and you are not one amongst them.
What are your reasons for not learning from others? You need to figure out very soon and take steps to
come out of it an immediate basis. How can you learn from the winners? Well, there will a variety of
means like books, directly talking to them etc.
There is an old saying When the disciple is ready, Guru Appears automatically
So, if you ARE READY sincerely, you will find a large numbers of teachers.

You cannot open a book without learning something. "Confucius"

CHAPTER: 18 SINGLE TASKING

An entrepreneur has to keep several things in his mind like.
Design of his product or service
Team work and producMvity of people
Sales & markeMng
CompeMMon surveys
Customer feedback
Finances
His family
His health, etc.

Whereas an employee, all he has to do is, just do one work or one thing at a time. His task will be predecided and has to do it very well. So, clearly an employee has to master the art of single tasking.
An entrepreneur has to master the art of multi-tasking, i.e., ability to do many tasks in the given amount
of time.
How do you rate your abilities now? Are you a single tasker or a multi-tasker? If you are single tasker,
then you are in wrong position in life and very hard to succeed as an entrepreneur.
Steve Job is a great example of a multi-tasker. He has Coded and designed the product, he has done
demos of the product to customer; he has managed a lot of people. Basically we all know that Steve jobs
built and run a great company called APPLE by doing several things at time.
There is a major confusion with respect to the concept of multi-tasking that we have to do so many
things at the same time. The Same Time has to be understood properly.
Nobody can do two things in the present moment. That is we cannot

Think two thoughts at same time

Speak two words at same time

Do two works at same time

So, clearly in the present moment, you can only do one thing at a time. That is in the present moment,
you can only be single-tasker.

But, if we consider the time period of a day, week or month or a year, obviously you can do many things
at a time, i.e., you can easily be a multi-tasker.
So, if you are aspiring for a success in entrepreneurship, it is time to learn this key skill of multi-tasking.
You cannot just do one thing and become a great success. There are several things you have to learn for
mastering multi-tasking. Some of them are
Use of planning tools
Goal and task prioritization
Concentration power, so that you can complete each task quickly & effectively.
There are several books, audios and videos around this topic from which you master the art.

Most of the time multitasking is an illusion. You think you are multitasking, but in reality you're
actually wasting time switching from one task to another. "Bosco Tjan"

CHAPTER: 19 INCORRECT MARKET ANALYSIS

Do you know what you are doing? Do you know
why you are doing, whatever you are doing?
Do you know for whom you are doing?
Why are these questions important? The answer is
simple- you are an entrepreneur who is trying to
sell something and if you dont know the
customer and their preference, then how will you
sell effectively?

Hence market analysis is very important. There are several parameters you can use to describe your
audience. Some examples are
Sex (male/female)
Age range
Country
Interest etc.
Any successful entrepreneur will have crystal clear idea of the audience or customer profile. But casual
entrepreneurs just do what they want to do without bothering about who will really use or require their
products or solutions.
Market analysis depends on the stage or phase you are in and the kind of product you are making. For
example if you are competing against same other existing products, then you should make your product
which will solve all your competitors product problems. But if you dont take notice of that and create
just another product similar to your competitor, you are on the way to failure. If there is no competitor
product, then a lot of things come into play. For example Steve job came up with an idea of iPod, i.e.,
music on the go! There was no competition as such, but the product made a lot of sense and useful to
the customer. So, if there is no competition, make sure your product

Solve some real problems

Possess high quality

Takes the customers satisfaction to next level

It is time to analyze about you as an entrepreneur. What kind of product you are making? Is it brand
new to the world or a better version of competitors product and once you come up with this, do a
thorough market research and make sure it is effective right first time? Most entrepreneurs fail because
they are very casual, not worried about end customer and are doing things just for the sake of doing.
Ultimately which product really clicks depends on many factors which may include Gods grace too, but
you make sure you are doing a relevant product to the times and world you are living in.

Always treat people as ends in themselves, But never as means to an end. "Immanuel Kant"

CHAPTER: 20 NOT FOLLOWING 80 20 PRINCIPLE

Do you feel busy all the time?
Do you feel overwhelmed by a lot of work?
Do you feel that life is meaningless?
Do you feel that you are working on boring things?
If your answer is yes for the above questions then you are a
victim of not following pare to-principle.
What is Pareto - principle? It simply means, out of 100 only 20 is
very important and the rest of80 are not really valuable or
important. Hence this principle is called as 80-20.
Lets take an example to illustrate this. Everybody knows the great Michael Jackson, but if you question
yourself what you know or most like about Michael Jackson, it will be one or two songs or dance
performance. Does this means, Michael Jackson has not done more than two songs, no he has done
100s of songs, but he has been liked for one or two songs more than his other songs. This is the way 8020 works, that is, out of many things or songs he has done; only few are a success.
Lets take another example to understand 80-20better. In ford Car Company, there are few cars which
are making more business than other cars and more famous than other cars. Why does it happen this
way, it is simple and is another proof for 80-20 functioning, that is only few will do good.
Coming back to your entrepreneurial life, have you thought why you are always busy and yet life doesnt
seem fulfilled? Please analyze right now. It is quite simple that, you are not concentrating more of your
time, effort and money on your 20s and instead youre focusing too much on your 80s.
Statics have revealed that successful entrepreneurs have very clear idea of their 20s in life, which is they
know what is important and will fetch them good results in the future.
Sl. No

Work

Category

Effort

Product A

80

60%

Product B

20

10%

If you want to succeed, then you need to take a break and spend some time to come up with all the
things you are working on. Then categorize the work into either 80 or 20. You can use below format.
Once you have done this analysis, you can share it with others for a better understanding. And once you

are clear about your effort distribution, you need to develop strategies to re-focus all your efforts on
your 20s instead of your 80s. This is the only way to succeed.

20 percent of focused effort results in 80 percent outcome of results! "Vilfredo Pareto"

CHAPTER: 21 QUANTITY VS QUALITY CONSCIOUSNESS

If you observe and analyze, China as a country produce so many
things, whereas country like Japan or USA produces only few
things. This is exactly quantity vs quality struggle.
It is an important question to be asked by all the entrepreneurs
as to how do they want to be recognized. For your many
products of average quality or only few products of very high
quality?
Most of the successful entrepreneurs are generally known for
quality. This is the reason why people like Steve Jobs are more
respected than others.
The common misconception is that we can make a lot of money
if we do many things, but in the ultimate analysis only the
quality wins the customer hearts & also grabs money from their
pockets.
Toyota is another great example for quality consciousness. This can be seen in their cars that come out
to the market.
Entrepreneurs should have Quality and Excellence has the top priority in the list of values, because if you
are just focusing on doing many things, you will get bored, the customers will get bored and the
organization will get a very bad reputation & hence its downfall.
People want to do many things as opposed to only a few is because, they fear that the few may not
succeed and it will be like all eggs in one basket, whereas, if you invest in many things, at least one or
two may succeed. This fear &thinking may be primary reason. Yes fear is justified, but successful people
have overcome this fear & ultimately win.
What one has to realize is that, maintaining many things is difficult, and even marketing many things will
be very difficult. But if there are few things, you need less expense to maintain and its very easy to
market it also.

It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity. "Mahatma Gandhi"