I have been thinking about how things have changed in my life recently and realised something that I have known intuitively all along but maybe hadn’t put all of the things together into a coherent whole. Now I can’t remember the exact percentage but I believe that Woody Allen once said that 90% of success was just turning up.
Being a typical entrepreneur and not taking my own advice re not working now and again, I have spent much of the afternoon writing out a business plan, or as most people know it totally making up a bunch of BS and hoping it hangs together into something that an investor may be interested in.
Last week I started writing.That was a result of doing some serious thinking.
I am writing a book to help people out who are struggling in the economic climate that we have. It will be an ebook and will include ten ways to bootstrap businesses to earn a little extra income. Yes you heard right, ten ways to make yourself a millionaire… No, sorry, no hype. Simply put these are ten ways to get started with businesses that require little or no investment but can bring you a nice little sum in monthly that will offset some of the problems that people are finding in the current economic climate.
First you earn the trust of your clients then you earn their friends. For years in my real estate business I have been looking long term, looking to give an excellent service in return for respect, excellent word of mouth reputation and possible referrals. The payback comes in what is the lifetime value of a client to me or any other business.
As the title tag states “Being an entrepreneur in Spain is like being a snowboarder in Jamaica”. I have been told this is so true it is unbelievable but some do exist. To that end this blog is going to have guest posts too from other entrepreneurs in Spain.
Here I am sitting having lunch and wondering if it is possible to be too busy? The last week has been a haze of doing stuff and all of it for a change is heading in the right direction but focus is totally impossible with all of these things requiring time and differing skillsets. So what is happening?
I have to admit that sometimes I just confuse myself. If I lose focus for a time I can easily forget a project for a few days and this month is a month for losing focus. Tomorrow is my wife’s birthday, next week my daughter’s 18th and at the start of next month my youngest daughter’s 4th birthday.
I am currently working on a project with two other guys living in Spain because they choose to not because they are Spanish. We met in November at a conference in wet, cold Manchester and brought the thoughts back to the warmer climes of the Mediterranean to mull things over.
“Being an entrepreneur in Spain is like being a snowboarder in Jamaica”.
It may be an exaggeration but Spain is a country where more than most people define themselves by what they do and what they want to do rather than who they are. Ambition is measured by wanting to be a civil servant because you cannot be sacked. I am sorry but it doesn’t float my boat.
So who am I and why am I an entrepreneur? From a young age I realised that I didn’t want to work for anyone else. I prefer working for a slave driver; Me. I set my own goals and start up my own businesses because I don’t like being told what to do by people that usually I consider to not have a clue.
The Spanish 30DCHome crew had a meeting this weekend. We talked, discussed, brainstormed and more and out of it has come a solid plan which will be presented on Tuesday. Already got a lot of actionable steps to take in the next few days and we feel that the whole could be a lot greater than the sum of its parts.
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