Mind Cook

It seems to be a de facto dream for a lot of people – the idea of running your own business. For some people, especially those who are born into families with strong business backgrounds, it is second nature. The thing about successful business ownership is that the influence, networking and experience can be passed on to your next of kin if it is well planned for. But what about the others? Those toiling away at their jobs thinking that the grass has to be greener on the other side – well is it really?

I consider these 3 requirements of being in the startup / business to make the decision worthwhile.

Basically, if you can’t say yes to these 3 items, you might want to look at doing something else.

1. The ability to say no

Now I am not talking about consent for things that go beyond work duties, I am talking about responsibilities at work which may not be what you enjoy or it may not follow your “moral compass”. The truth is, as a startup owner you will more likely still be working for others. The real benefit is if something does not sit right with you, there is complete control to be able to decline something or get someone else to do it. You don’t have to feel bad, exhibit escapism or begrudgingly get out of bed. It is your decision to decline if the customer is being unreasonable, if the workload is too much or if you just can’t see value about doing something.

2. Decide how you allocate your time

This is slightly similar to the first point, but it’s more about being able to dictate fully when you work and what you work on. If you want to work a 40 hour week, perhaps you prefer to do it in the evenings or on the weekends. Or maybe you find it easier to work outside the office, in a cafe, while travelling or on the beach. While you might not be able to get away from certain tasks which you understand are valuable to the company, you might be able to focus more on areas which suit your interest without being considered to have dropped the ball. Perhaps on one week you like to engage more with customers, and the week after you want to just hide in your home office. You know you are producing value, and that’s all that matters.

3. Speed of growing income

The thing about a paycheck is that it seldom grows exponentially over time – that’s the beauty of just plain work, you do your time and you know exactly what you get for it. Business often starts slow or in the red, and then should be able to accelerate over time, whereby at least equity grows even if your take home income doesn’t. Some people end up spending so much mental space working with 1. and 2. that they just ignore the income aspect. Seriously, there are times when a lot of business owners are better off taking jobs. If you are going to do this, you should make a strong commitment to build income over time, and if it doesn’t work out – consider firing yourself or selling the business, and consider going back to work.

These are what I would strongly consider before embarking on any business or startup founder journey. If you don’t make these conscious decisions upfront, there is a possibility it is not a good idea in the long term. Unfortunately some people are so far in to it that it’s too late for anything else. Going in with your eyes open and keeping yourself accountable for these should be good benchmarks moving forward. Seriously, there is nothing wrong with taking a job.

Countless movies and stories have been made on the concept of time travel. We look at time as this linear progression, ageing, decision making and experiencing things for the first time. Time in itself is something we describe as a thing that happens, and so we should be able to go backwards, right? In a scientific sense, we seem to be limited by the speed of light, which appears to not allow us to do this – but let’s let our mind wander. Maybe through a black hole or through some incredible machine that mankind will be able to make.

What would you do if you could go back? You might want to change a decision you made. You might want to have that experience all over again. Or it might be simply that you want to just pass the time in a holiday sort of fashion. Well, it won’t really work because we are not wired to hit replay this way. Can you imagine having the best moment of your life replayed again and again?

You see too much of a good thing becomes meaningless afterwards. You start taking things for granted. What’s worse, you might lose yourself because what you enjoy starts to haunt you. Hang on maybe you wanted to spend more time with someone… All that builds is a memory, which is what you already have. Things come and go, it is what life is about. Something you lost gives you a chance to value something else in the future, or educate someone else about it.

It’s best to consider letting the memory be that beautiful piece of you. Something that created you – your life, your likes and dislikes. An imprint no one can replace, or revisit and rewrite.

There are days when things don’t work out the way they should. Like perhaps, the coffee or toast was burnt or it’s a cloudy gloomy day. Someone you communicate with doesn’t reciprocate the way you hope for. Or even just some unlucky event happened and you are just not getting what you want.

You will be in a state of longing and will be more likely to rush for something. You need to be reassured, you want to be validated. You want to be right for that moment. And when you try to fill that gap with your instincts, you are at a high risk of coming up short.

Instincts are important when you are in a dangerous place. Like if you are in a wild jungle and you hear strange noises. Or you are driving a car at high speed and you see an unexpected crossing. In those cases your instincts will tend to do the right thing based on your accumulated experience. It’s when you try to make a non life death immediate decision that this doesn’t have as much reliability.

Things happen that we don’t want a lot of the time. It’s good to be able to take a breather and accept things the way they are. Take a rain check if you need to. Don’t rush into the next thing to try to make things work. Unless it’s a purely mechanical task, you are heading to highly risky wrong instinct territory.

Everyone has a peak at doing something before it goes downhill. It could be quite straightforward like how a sportsperson’s body can no longer keep up the same pace. Or it could be because you just aren’t quite as up to date and responsive like you used to be.

To try and reduce negative impact, you need to acknowledge that you are winning. It might be due to real hard work or talent. Or it could also be due to luck. Whatever it is that got you where you are will not last forever. You might be lucky if you have someone you can fairly compare with to see how you are faring. This is the easiest gauge there is.

Nobody likes to quit when they are winning, and this is not really the point of this post. It is best to stop or leave while you are still up there though. This keeps you in good spirits to go for the next adventure. It also makes sure you leave others with a good impression, as that could be fuel for other things.

In any case, we should celebrate our victories however big or small. This gives us the strength to face days that are not as great.

If you ever have a chance to get a mentor you should always take it up. A mentor is one shortcut to success, whether it be a knowledge mentor, building connections for you or just someone who gives you motivation. Not all of us are lucky to get a mentor who fits our needs early in life. So how do you compensate for this?

First thing you need to ascertain is what sort of mentor you would look for. It helps if you know what exactly you want in life, but for a lot of us this is a difficult question to answer. One way to simplify this is to think about people you want to emulate. Imagine someone in the world who if you could ask them to be your mentor, you would jump at the opportunity. Think of the qualities they possess or the achievements they have made.

Now that you have this, you need to lay the groundwork. Just work on either the quality or make a start on the thing you want to master. It could be as simple as trying to change your behaviour for a specific occassion, or getting into an online course that gives you some essential basic knowledge. This is also a good test of whether you are serious or you are just being a wishful thinker.

If you have already done that, then the next step is to be a little brave. Take your knowledge and start a project, or engage someone and try a newly learned approach. You want to be in a vulnerable position to solidify what you have learned, but also for someone to be able to find flaws in it. It is so important that you do not mistake that you know everything – for you may lose any advice that might have helped you (as a mini mentor)

The main issue with the approach is that you can never be 100% sure you are correct or on the right path. This might be the same case with a mentor but at least I hope people would choose mentors who know what they are talking about. There will be times when your eyes will be opened and what you thought you knew unravels. This is a good thing, it means you found your true gaps and are much closer to your goals.

Perhaps this is a risky way to do things, but sometimes we have to motivate ourselves to find opportunities. A lot of us are just waiting or have some fleeting interests but don’t move forward because of lack of a mentor. It might be slightly uncomfortable, but you still get there. And sooner or later, the mentor you need can be found if you stay on course.

We are living in the era that is more difficult for the layman to predict. It’s not just the sudden lockdowns that happen from time to time, it is also the nature of technology and the speed at which we can take action has ground immensely over the years.

Getting used to chaos is the opposite of what human nature loves. It is going against our comfort zone and not living in true certainty. Yet the greatest things can come from these type of situations. We need to be keenly alert to make full use of what is available.

It’s all about keeping an open mind about situations and predispositions. A lot of things we thought was gospel are getting challenged. This has been the case for science for the longest time, and now that information is traveling at the speed of light, these revelations continue to reverberate across the world.

People who are diligent and hardworking tend to be the most conflicted. Sudden riches are possible, including sudden downfall. It’s as if the law of the world was suddenly flipped on its head but that is not true. We just need to understand that this is a law in itself. Perhaps it is not clear what exactly the boundaries or methods are, but it is a legitimate thing.

Begin to take advantage of this by observing your biases and reactions to certain unexpected events. Whether it’s a meme, a hype or an online movement, take a moment to consider your stand and if there is anything to gain. One must remain objective to be in a winning position.

We all will face challenges from time to time. It is easy to be overcome by negativity reducing us to our lesser selves. For some, this means we become violent. Others it means we are just grumpy. Or we just could not be performing at our normal capacity.

You need to first isolate yourself from what is actually happening. This can either be by walking away, ending a conversation early, or perhaps just stop paying attention altogether. If you are getting physically abused and need help, this is not the same and I am not saying this is a solution – please get help.

The next step is quite unique to the individual, and it would need looking back at experience. You should consider this before you enter such a situation as you may not be able to think clearly at that point. It could be you like to talk out problems, or just shout. You may want to break something or hurt someone – you don’t want to break a valuable item, so due consideration prior is important.

And this is what I would call a negotiation – it is getting some perspective on the situation and finding the right response to it. Events may make us sad or angry and it is up to us to respond to it. Give it some time but also allow yourself the space to express your frustrations and disappointment. Realise that you are in control of how you respond at that particular moment.

When you are deciding to jump from one career to another, or when you want to move to a different city. Or perhaps you want to decide whether to get married or to plan for another child. It would take a very long time to make such a decision before proceeding.

If the next question is when and you are stuck, you should only look at the negatives. For example it will be more risky moving to another city during a pandemic because it is difficult and very expensive to get flights. It might be a bad time to open a new restaurant for similar reasons. However, if you are waiting for some signals, then it is likely procrastination.

The mentality you actually get into should be one of no return. There may be a way to go back to what you used to have, but you should be prepared for an all in. Having a secondary backup plan often hampers progress or paints a different outcome. It may cause you to linger longer than you should. The comfortable past will call back to you at different difficult times. Sometimes that is warranted and you really do need to go back. But stick with it 100% and see it through as far as possible.

This mitigates timing risk. When we wait for a certain opportune time, what we are also doing is giving ourselves an easy way in and more excuses to fail. Good times don’t last forever, so you need to be able to move forward even if it has gone past that point. There is no point to go in at a bad time though, that is just asking for trouble.

We have come to a point where vaccination is the only defence we have against the protracted COVID pandemic. Yet it’s not going to be a clear path ahead because vaccination is too slow.

At the beginning, it looked like we would have it under control pretty rapidly with many lockdowns. Every country had a different response to it, but we all had the same enemy. This virus will claim more lives than some leaders estimated, and finally we all had no choice but to develop a vaccine, in record time.

Yet this vaccine rollout wasn’t perfect in many ways. The main problem was that it was rushed, meaning that its real efficacy can only be determined long after it was first mass produced. This doesn’t allay people’s concerns because of lack of testing in the field.

Compounding the issue is that despite being mass produced, it still isn’t produced fast enough. Why do I say that? It is because the virus will mutate among the unvaccinated (and eventually vaccinated) people to a point where the vaccine stops being as effective. What then?

Well the flu has been around forever, and so has the flu vaccine. The thing is the flu vaccine needs to be taken yearly to protect you from the various strains. Basically we have not eradicated the flu – how are we going to eradicate COVID which is so close to flu?

If it is somehow possible to accelerate the production and issuing of vaccines say by a factor of 10, perhaps we will be on our own way to eradication. Until then, we are just living experiment subjects of rapidly issued vaccines.

Does this mean I don’t support the vaccination? I do wholeheartedly agree with the intention and will happily vaccinate in due course. But these shortcomings should be acknowledged as they are.

The most classic ways to make money is to go to work or to sell something. Sometimes selling something feels like it needs to bring the worse out of you. Or if you have never sold anything before you might associate selling as something someone deceitful does. That leaves us to think money is a form of reflection of your self worth. After all, the harder you work the more you are worth… Right?

Well if you think along these lines it is going to be difficult to amass wealth. You will be self sabotaging yourself whenever you try to relate earning money and not putting in effort. You will probably also struggle to see past your own morals. Surely not everyone needs to be a millionaire, but a bit of extra money wouldn’t hurt, right?

Once you have conquered this self defeating thought, you open yourself up to bigger opportunities. The rich are not always evil, and life doesn’t have to be just about how hard you work to reach success. You can potentially have the cake and eat it too.

One way to do that is to consider money as just a tool. It is a tool that can be exchanged for other useful and frivolous things. It can be exchanged to give you experiences that are hard to obtain. But most importantly it is a tool that can make you even more money. The tool may need to be used in many different ways to generate more of itself, or it can be exchanged for something you need there and then. It’s just a tool – no need to be overly righteous about it.

In time you will then see that most forms of investment are similar, you are just using that same tool to make more of itself.