Tag Archives: Business

Rubber day

Today I visited a rubber plantation because we are considering starting a rubber plantation, or at least plant part of our land with rubber. And I’m starting to realize it’s business, so these type of things should be run as a business. And that means indeed applying the principles of success in order to be successful.

And even though I want my web development business to be my primary business and to be successful I now realize what mistakes I made with that and why it is not where I would have expected it to be. So with the rubber I want to do better, indeed first have some ideas, which I already have, to be ‘different’ from other rubber plantations, to have an advantage. And then indeed do research, serious research or involve people who already have the knowledge. And then plan and just put the plan into action. And then, also looking to my post of yesterday, it should be very simple to be successful, to just have a rubber plantation.

And I said simple, not easy. There will be still hurdles on the way and in this case as I’m not experienced in anything agriculture I may make mistakes in that area. And persistence will be needed as the whole thing might not be as simple as I thought or expected.

But yes, just applying the simple steps of wanting something, doing some research, make a (good) plan and implement the plan should just be enough for anything. And indeed, looking around it may just be that simple for anything or virtually anything.

Is life like a bicycle?

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I just got the following quote as a (spam) comment on one of the posts in this site:

“Life is like riding a bicycle: you don’t fall off unless you stop pedaling.” – Claude Pepper

And it made me think, as most of my life I’ve been pedaling very hard and I have the feeling it didn’t bring me anywhere. Yes, in a way it brought me quite some money, but the end result was not what I wanted or expected.

So end of last year I kind of stopped pedaling and recently I’m pedaling slowly. And I’m trying to make sense of it all as ‘just pedaling’ is not enough. As I’ve been pedaling very hard with my business, but it didn’t pay off until now. I just feel like I fell very hard and I’m not sure how to stand up, how to make sure I don’t fall that hard.

And the main issue right now is I fell so hard and am so wounded that I’m not fully sure how to move on. I feel like I need help, but don’t know where to go. And somehow I still want it to work, want it to move, want it to be alive. And while writing I realized the bike is still there as I still have some infrastructure, even though that’s also a bit wounded and a main asset in the form of the Active Discovery Application Framework which I think is a very powerful web development framework.

So yes, while writing this I see I still learned a lot and it seems I still know what I want and it seems there are still assets there, so yes, getting some quote and doing something with it like writing does help, does give perspective.

So you might also want to write about what’s bothering you, what you’re thinking about.

Free

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Well, not sure today what to write about, but I just thought of two free services that didn’t work out properly for me recently. Today I had a Skype conference call with my team members and one of them had trouble staying in the Skype call, even so bad that basically we were not able to have a proper meeting. And yes, we were using the free version of Skype, so basically no valid reasons to complain or go anywhere. And of course it could still also be the internet connection of the team member connection having the problems that was not working properly, so also very difficult to analyze what was really the case.

Another problem I recently had was with the Google maps service, this time even with a customer site actually causing serious problems for my customer as he is a property broker and we use the free Google maps service to get the map locations of the properties. Again, I did not really know where to go, even though I did get a reply from a Google representative for the paid Google maps service. The bad thing is I never realized this problem would occur as normally this free Google maps service just works and I guess also the customer never realized we were using the free version and that there are limitations with it that could cause the service to stop.

And that’s still kind of a problem I have with ‘free’ services. In the end you have nowhere to go if the service doesn’t work, or at least you have no stable ground where to stand so you could ‘demand’ for support or solutions if something doesn’t work.

So why this subject of free services? Well, I believe in the end nothing is for ‘free’ as someone has to pay for something to work. And don’t get me wrong, there must be business models where the whole thing works out, there are business models where it works out, look at Google and Yahoo for example. And indeed Skype. But somewhere deep inside my gut feel tells me that in the end it’s not OK that things are for free, that you don’t pay for the product or the service that you use.

Or is it OK? Does the old financial system not work anymore, or not work for many of the products and services we use today? Or has it always been like this, that some products and services are over paid and some are under paid?

Anyhow, still something to explore further as this whole thing is also the background of our idea that we would like to be paid straight for the services of Inspiration for Success. Looking at the current reality people still prefer to pay for this type of website by showing advertisements on the site and by clicking on affiliate links. But is that really how we want it?

Please let me know your thoughts.

No inspiration

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Well, no real inspiration today. I have worked hard on a project for a customer today. Finally some solution for a project that went down the drain due to the non-cooperation of another company. But being the leader of course I need to take responsibility. And I know, I trust people too easy and I don’t make too strict business agreements. So yes, that’s something I have to learn I guess if I want to earn and stay in business. Still don’t like it though. Why can’t people not be trusted?

And the last of course I ask myself often: can I be trusted? And unfortunately lately the answer is ‘no’. I think I could be trusted before, but so many bad things happened to me lately, so I understand now a bit more about trust (or actually being cornered).

Still, I want to trust people and want to be trusted, so I’ll keep trying to do that, no matter how hard that is. Are you with me with that?

The innovators

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The Innovators - The Men who built America I was just watching an episode of The Innovators – The men who built America and was amazed with some of the information there. The moment I jumped in it was about problems that Andrew Carnegie had with his steel empire. In the program it was shown that he even was at war with his employees once, including taking his factories back by force after they had been taken by employees on strike. It was also shown that he fired the person actually running his company, I presume his CEO, of whom was stated that he kind of went against Carnegie.

I was amazed as things like strike, I presume the Homestead Strike, is meant, especially using violence to retake the factory, are against the rule Napoleon Hill states something like ‘things should benefit all’, although on the other hand Napoleon Hill also promotes to deal with problems and mentions that it is better to ‘put up a straight fight’ than, well doing nothing or something.

What amazed me most was the person going against Carnegie was presumably his CEO, where I understand that he must have been part of the Master Mind Group of Carnegie and the way how the situation was described had nothing to do with the harmony needed in a Master Mind, it appeared to be the full opposite.

The other story in the program was about Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan which taught me a lot about the practice op applying the Principles of Success and actually the whole book Think and Grow Rich seems to fall more into place watching this program

At the end of the program I was thinking that that period in the United States was about building the United States as it is now industrially. As the book is based on that period while America was built industrially one may ask if all the Principles of Success still apply in the way it was used then. The main issue was also there were many large innovations at the time and for quite a while I’m already asking myself if there are still innovations like that in the world. The last thing in my mind was the Appollo Program to fly to the moon and that’s long time ago. Similar projects were the Concorde and the Boeing 747, but later on I realized that the Boeing 747 was not the big innovation I imagined it to be.

So some long, well, frustration of mine is that there seem to be no more real big innovations anymore. The Appollo Program seems to have been kind of the last. After that it seems to have been mostly ‘more of the same’, like more efficient or bigger of faster, nothing really innovative.

So of course in my mind is how could I find ‘the next big innovation’ that might even be my money making goal. I’m good in ideas and still have some big ideas and plans in my mind, but nothing ‘world changing’.

You want to think with me? Please let us know your thoughts below?