2014 Year-End Review And My 2015 New Year's Resolutions

I kicked myself in the butt to put this list together. I decided to write a year-end review for 2014 and a list of New Year's resolutions for 2015. This turned out to be an awesome exercise. If you haven’t done one yet, I highly recommend it. It is a great exercise to help you contrast your intentions with your actual accomplishments for the passing year, as well as give a new chance to put your 2015 goals in perspective. I was a bit too harsh on myself about not being able to accomplish enough in 2014 until I wrote this list and realized I am actually very proud for what I did last year. There is definitely lots of room for improvement but every day I am given is a new chance for intentionally creating an awesome life.

2014

GOAL	INTENTION	ACCOMPLISHMENT
Improve relationships		I joined a mastermind group where I ended up making great friendships with a group of awesome entrepreneurs. Opportunities and more focused mastermind groups have come out as a result of making this one of my top priorities for the year.
Start a podcast and an online brand called Baby in Bloom		I started an awesome blog and podcast but it fizzled out in just 6 months. I learned a great deal about this experience and this has set the stage for my future projects.
Work on my health	I wanted to reduce my social drinking but this was just the intention. I failed poorly at this last year.	My workout rate was not great but I managed to be successful in the last quarter. I ended up dropping 7 lbs as a result. My cholesterol improved a bit but still have a way to go.
Start a SAAS business		I started the business with a partner and picked up two paying clients over the course of the year.
Be a fulltime Entrepreneur	I ended up taking a job in Corporate America after 6 years of being a full time Entrepreneur mainly because my business was not making enough. I wanted to break free before the year end and gain my freedom back, but I was not able to make my business profitable enough to support my family so I remain a full time employee.
Work on my personal brand	I wrote a few blog post but not as many as I had intended. This is something I still need to improve on.	Started my own YouTube channel focused on tech videos. I have posted 4 videos so far, have 40 subscribers and over 15k views overall. I'm still finding my voice with this and I know this will grow much bigger in 2015. I feel I’m on to something as the response from my audience has been really positive and encouraging.

One of my main goals for 2014 was to meet new people and improve the quality of the people I surround myself with which it turned out to be a great success. My biggest loss this year was my FREEDOM as an entrepreneur.

2015 

1. Stay on top of my fitness and improve my health.
2. Finish the latest version of my tracking software for mobile and web-based applications.

2. Publish Website and create a social media presence for the software.

3. Create a marketing campaign that reaches out to new clients.

4. Upgrade all software documentation.

5. Train sales reps and technical resources to help us grow the business.

6. Pick up 4 more clients by July 1st 2015.

7. Be more active in my mastermind groups and attend more mastermind meetings.

8. Create more content for my Tech Talk YouTube channel.

9. Create a blog and podcast around my YouTube channel's content.

10. Turn my tech content into an E-Book to sell  on Amazon.

11. Create a video course to be sold through U-Demy no later than Dec 31st 2015.

This exercise has helped me tremendously to understand where I have been to in the previous year and where I am going to in the new year. I hope the same for you and wish that this can help you create a framework for yourself to to stay focus and keep your New Year's resolutions on track. Best of luck! 

How to choose a mastermind group and the top three mastermind groups I recommend

It is very important you choose the right mastermind group as all of them serve a different purpose to their members. The one indisputable fact is that if you are truly serious about achieving success, growing your business and working on your personal development, you must be a part of one.

"If you find you are weak in persistence, surround yourself with a Mastermind Group" ~Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich 

I have put together the top three tips you have to take into account prior to joining a mastermind group to help you in the process of choosing the right one for you:

1. Do Your Research: I recommend to find out what the different masterminds groups out there have to offer. They come in all sizes, prices and some are even free. Make sure your expectations are met for the most part by the mastermind group that you want to join. Some mastermind groups are strong for accountability, others for launching websites, podcasts and others for learning how to create online businesses. Choose wisely and you will have an awesome time as improve your business and life.

2. Engage: The first thing you must know prior to joining a mastermind group is that you need to allocate some time to engage with members. Be willing to provide value to the mastermind group as well. Although, mastermind groups are there to bring you value and help you, the only way to cultivate relationships is by giving back and showing that you are there to help as well, not just to be helped. This comes in the way of responding to people's questions, sharing articles, giving shutouts on Twitter or jumping on a hangout with the members to brainstorm.

3. Be Vulnerable: We are often our biggest critics and mastermind groups can be very intimidating at first. Specially if you see some members being way ahead of where you are when you first join. Don't let this get to you as all of the members are in the mastermind group for the same reasons as you. Remember, They all started out from zero at some point in time. Don't be afraid to ask questions, share your failures and successes. Be vulnerable and real and people will connect with you. Even the most successful entrepreneurs have failed miserably. You will be surprised by how understanding and helpful mastermind group members can be.
   

Mastermind Groups I Recommend

The Internet Business Mastery is in my opinion the best program to learn how to start an online business and create passive income streams. This is the program that created entrepreneur rock-stars like Pat Flynn of the Smart Passive Income and many more. They offer structured training with awesome videos, checklists and community support. If you join their program, you will get full access to their private Facebook group where members are willing to engage and help you at all times. The key to success in the academy is following the program from A to Z and engaging with the community. To join the academy, you pay a one time payment fee to access their training resources plus their Facebook group with over 1200 members.  

Podcaster's Paradise is a community for podcasters. If you want to learn how to create and monetize your podcast, who better than one of the top podcasters out there, John Lee Dummas of Entrepreneur on Fire. John is a genius at monetizing his podcast. He is currently making over 6 figures per month with his online business. Podcaster's Paradise will offer you access to his knowledge and to his private Facebook group with over 200 podcasters ready to help you and support you along your podcasting journey. To join you pay a one time fee and you have access to their private Facebook group and all their podcasting resources that a podcaster needs.

Fire Nation Elite was the first mastermind group I joined and where I was able to make great relationships with awesome entrepreneurs like Mike Kawula of Self Employed King, Celest Horton of How to Pay for College HQ, Alex Harris of Alex Designs and many more superb entrepreneurs. If you join Fire Nation Elite, you will get access to a private Facebook group of about 100 members, valuable resources, two yearly meetups and occasional webinars. This mastermind group is more about what you are willing to make of it. The smaller group size gives you a chance to make close-nit relationships with the members but that is purely up to you. To join Fire Nation Elite, you pay a monthly fee with a minimum of three month commitment.

Final Thought

Joining a mastermind group is essential for achieving success in your business and for personal development. I like to see mastermind groups almost like having access to your own personal board of directors when you are still in your start-up phase. The value you can get in terms of relationships, advice, tips, resources from entrepreneurs and their expertise is purely invaluable. If you want to know more about mastermind groups, read this article I wrote on the top 5 reasons for joining a mastermind group. If you enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends and/or leave your comment below. Thanks for reading and stop by soon.

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Top 5 reasons for joining a mastermind group

I had the great chance to attend New Media Expo #nmx2014 in Las Vegas this past January. I had an incredible time specially because I got to hang out with the coolest group of people. I had the privilege of meeting entrepreneurs I highly respect and  look up to, such as Pat Flynn of the Smart Passive Income, Lewis Howes of The School of Greatness, Jeremy and Jason of the Internet Business Mastery and Chris Brogan. It wasn't just luck for me that I met these awesome people, but it had to do with a decision I made of joining my first mastermind group last year. The mastermind group was Fire Nation Elite by John Lee Dummas and Kate Erickson of Entrepreneur on Fire.

John and Kate hosted a couple of meetups for their members to have a chance to mingle. I not only got an awesome experience meeting these wonderful people, but got great advice to apply to my business. I was asked by Max Panas, one of my entrepreneur friends in Vegas to record the best advice I could give at the moment for his community; and nothing stood out more for me than to recommend them to join a mastermind group. The reason was because joining a mastermind changed my life, business and catapulted me into a chain of action that I had never experienced before. This is why I decided to write this article to help those who want to know more about them:

Reason 1: Relationships

Mastermind groups will immediately open the door to meeting lots of people. In the case of the mastermind groups that I am a part of, I have access to groups of people ranging from 10+ up to 1200 people. This has allowed me to hang out with entrepreneurs with similar interests as mine, who are eager to exchange ideas and help each other out. I have made great friends whom I have attended business events with. I have had the privilege to meet top entrepreneurs like Jaime Tardy of  Eventual Millionaire, Marie Forleo, Chris Ducker of Virtual Staff Finder, Caleb Wajick of Fizzle and many more.

Reason 2: Mindset

Mindset is probably the most important thing you need to master if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur. Most successful entrepreneurs have one thing in common and it is called persistence. To be persistent requires the proper mindset to stay the course despite the circumstances.

“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”  ~ Steve Jobs

A mastermind group is a breeding ground for mindset shifts specially when you realize you are no longer alone running your business; that now you have a group of people in the same boat as you who are willing to be there with you along the way.

Reason 3: Accountability

Accountability is one of those things that one can easily overlook when running his/her own business. There aren't many people willing to keep you accountable when you are starting your own business. As solopreneurs, wantapreneurs or entrepreneurs, we may not have access to a qualified group of like-minded individuals willing to keep us on our toes. Lack of support often leads to fear, self-criticism and self-defeat.

This is where a mastermind group comes into play as an essential tool because its members are willing to keep you accountable. In addition to this, the mere fact of making a commitment in front of a group of individuals is a good motivator to keep you on track. I like to think of accountability as the tool to get my butt working on something important and not loosing  focus until achieving it.

This is one of the greatest things I have gained from joining some awesome mastermind groups. I found a group called the Fire Starters led by my friend Dean Patino of The Fire Starters Company who were organized on the basis of helping you launch a website, a podcast and video for your business in only 30 days. I joined two of his groups and the results were amazing. I ended up learning a great deal about podcasting and video production. But most importantly, I found the accountability that I needed to break through my fears and get things done. The result of this lead me to launching The Baby in Bloom Podcast, a podcast that my wife and I created.

Reason 4: Support

The world of the entrepreneur is often lonely and misunderstood. The majority of time entrepreneurs find people telling them how they are going to fail rather than how they are going to succeed. This is unfortunately true specially for family and friends.

I ran a poll among 90+ entrepreneurs in one of my mastermind groups and 57% of them responded that they would like more support from their families and friends. Although, family and friend support is a great thing to have, specially in the start up phase of a business; often times it may not be there. This should be no reason to stop you from achieving your entrepreneurial goals. This is where a mastermind group is the holy grail to an entrepreneur because it helps you connect with like-minded individuals who will support you through struggles and celebrate your victories.

One of the ways I benefited from the support of my peers while on a mastermind group was when I had 5 entrepreneurs joined a small focus group I organized within Fire Nation Elite. We held Google Hangouts for 4 months helping each other out and exchanging valuable ideas. These hangouts made me develop close relationships with the members and their feedback helped me tune up my marketing campaigns and validated my business strategies.

Reason 5: Opportunities

Masterminds are a great platform for business opportunities. I saw how a good friend of mine and awesome graphic designer Aaron Pierson became the go-to designer for podcast art design for many members of our mastermind group. People fell in love with his designs to the point that he ended up making a business out of it and started offering his services at www.mypodcastgraphic.com

Final Thought:

Joining a mastermind group is not only great for business but it is absolutely essential for success and self development. I outlined in this article the most important reasons for joining a mastermind group, which are relationships, mindset, accountability, support and opportunities. If you are serious about being successful in business then you must join a mastermind group. If you are considering joining a mastermind group then read this article I created on tips for joining a mastermind group and the top 3 masterminds that I recommend. If you enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends and leave me a comment below. Thanks for reading and come back soon.

The power of pivoting

"You cannot change what you do not acknowledge."  - Dr. Phil McGraw

It was late at night sometime at the start of this year when I had a Jerry McGuire moment. I had just had some disappointments in my business and decided to make serious changes right the next day. I woke up ready to fix what was broken. I pivoted making tough choices and some positive results started coming out of it just a few months later. 

Step 1:
I looked at my current state of affairs with everything I was doing in my business. I gave myself a grade for my performance in my business and some things were ok and others were just plain average. The part of my business where it was plain average was taking a big chunk of my time and the return was very low. I made my first tough choice and decided to let go of this part of the business. The reason was I could not longer dedicate the necessary time to deliver outstanding services anymore. I refused to let my clients down and made the difficult decision to say thank you very much for everything but I can not longer continue servicing you.  

Step 2:
I looked at the ok work I was doing and decided that I could not settle for ok any more. I had not gotten any complains from my clients, but decided to change from ok to outstanding. The reason because my clients deserve it and I am grateful that they give me business. It all came down to making improvements in the areas that needed improvement such as better communication, faster response and 100% system up-time.

Final Step:
The last thing I decided to do was to bring forth the many personal projects that I had been neglecting for so long and decided to take action. This is where the personal projects come in and where the inception of this blog began. 

The Result:
I am so thrilled that just a few months later I am seeing outstanding changes and very positive results from my pivoting. Ever since I began writing this blog many awesome things have been happening. I still have a ways to go, but every day I am getting one step closer. I am starting to do more of what I love and laying out the path to improving my life and those in my family while helping others improve theirs.

I want to hear from you please leave me your comment(s) and share this article with your friends. Thank you!

How one epic mistake in business can cost you almost everything and what you can do to avoid them

A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise one learns from the mistakes of others ~ Unknown

Business mistakes are not only common when you are starting out, but they are inevitable and for some are a way of life. Entrepreneurs embrace failures and credit them greatly for making them better and stronger. This is all true, but some failures will cost you more than others; while others may cost you everything. One of these epic mistakes often times bring companies and individuals to their knees. This is the story of a mistake I made in my business that brought me to my knees and almost ended up bankrupting me. 

Monumental mistake
It was early Spring of 2008 and the economy was clearly in a deep decline. I had just come out of having an awesome year in 2007 and not much was going on at the beginning of the year. 

A friend of mine referred me to one of his friends who were in need of creating a custom web application for a business they had just opened. 

I was excited about the opportunity and I immediately contacted the potential clients. They had a job that at first glance would cost at least $15,000 to develop. I told them that they needed to define the business rules well in order for me to accurately quote the job. I gave them my overall estimate and they were shocked by it. They told me they could only afford $6,000. They asked me to cut them a break that they would be willing to settle for less functionality. 

I wanted to help them out and decided to go against my gut and accepted to do this job for the price they had put on it. To make things worse for me, I decided to do the job after they refused to sign a written agreement. BIG MISTAKE!

They were mature business men so I thought, who told me they would prefer to do things the old way without much formality. They made me believe they needed a nice looking demo that would help them get clients in the door and that they would definitely invest more in development once they had met the quota for the first 50 customers. This was the first time for me I engaged in development without having a written contract. Did I already say big mistake?

Production time
I started the job and began a process that would take me 6 months of hard work, tons of stress and problems with my family. 

The first demo of the application was completed and live one month into the job. I was excited and felt the job had pretty much ended right there. 

The clients started using the application but came back to me saying it was only a fraction of what they had requested. They made it look like it was me who had not understood their concept from the beginning. I wanted to make them happy so I went back spent 2 weeks of hard work and released the changes. They were already approaching 100 customers by this time. 

They kept coming back for more work and at one point they threatened to sue me. They claimed I was making them lose business by not giving them all the functionality we had supposedly agreed upon, which I had no written agreement for. 

I had already done everything and much more of what they had asked me, but they kept on changing things as they got customer feedback. 

This time, it took me 3 more weeks to make the changes and the same story once more. The kept the same attitude and by then I was getting scared. I did not want to go through court and end up loosing more money because of my mistake.

I kept on trucking and hoping that at one point it would all end. By the 5th month I had already spent $2,000 of the project's money on outsourcing some of the work and had already spent about 600 hours of my own coding time into this job. I had gone from making $50 per hour to barely $6 by the 5th month of working on this project.

I was so desperate that I even went as far as telling them that I would give them a full refund if they would just leave me alone, but they would not budge. 

I had to finally consult a lawyer who helped me draft a written agreement. The clients and I agreed on doing the last set of requests and then this would absolutely release me of all further responsibility. The good thing is that this time I had it in writing. 

I put in one more month of hard work and by the 6th month I released the latest version of the application. They had already approached over 1000 paying clients and things were looking good for them but not for me.

The price I paid
One more month of hard work brought my total profit for the job into the negative. I ended up loosing 6 months of my life I will never get back and this project had impacted my life and my family's in a negative way. I closed my fiscal year the lowest yet at $17,500 for the whole year making 2008 the worst year I have had in my business along with the US economy.

The lessons I learned
I'm grateful for this experience because it taught me invaluable lessons. I am laying this out on the table for my readers to help them avoid these problems in their businesses. It is never ok to let others dictate the price of your work. If something does not feel right then politely walk away from it. Time is our most valuable asset and one resource we can never get back. 

Here are the lessons I learned in a nutshell:

• I never did another project without a business contract. 
• My time and expertise are not for bargain.
• I no longer work based on fixed prices as all my work is paid on an hourly basis.
• I learned to say NO when business deals don't make any sense. 
• I decided that if I want to be nice and do something for someone, I would rather do it for free. 

I hope you enjoyed this article, please leave me your comments and share it with your friends.

How one job created a great relationship with my client and made me over six figures

One of the first things I did when starting my business was to have a clear idea about how I was going to drive revenue. This for me was to take on work that had decent budgets. This also meant I would only take on work that I could do with my skill-set; that had a timeline that was right for the job and most importantly that generated profit. I ran my business for the first few months parallel to my full time job that I wanted so desperately to quit. There were a couple of small contracts I took during this time that made me money, but one in particular is what I call my first big success story. 

The big one
This job consisted of developing an online tracking system for the Medical industry. A good friend of mine referred me to one of his contacts who was looking to develop this software. The project seemed interesting enough that I took a stab at it. The reason why this was my first success story was because when I approached the client, the job itself had all the ingredients necessary to be a huge failure; and it was my core set of principals that made a difference and turned it into a great success.

Recipe for disaster
The conversation with my client started out with him saying he had a web application that needed to be completed. He had previously hired a full time programmer and according to him the application was only 100 hours away from completion. I decided to take a look at the client's business rules, the business plan and the software that they had developed during that time. The whole thing did not make much sense and the software did not follow the functionality from the business rules. In addition to this, the software was poorly written and it was riddled with bugs. 

Business ethic at play
I then talked to my client and broke the news that there was not much I could do with what he had and if I were to take his 100 hours all I would do would be to waste his time and money. I knew then that this was a big recipe for disaster and I could not take what he was offering. I told him if he wanted me to work with him, it had to be done the right way. This meant starting from zero and making sure the business rules were properly translated to well-defined wire-frames and UML modules. I told him that was my bottom line and the only way I would commit to developing such demanding application. In addition to this, there was so much complexity to the software that I could not put a price to the total project, so we settled on an hourly charge of $50.00/hour. I thought at the time that I would either engage in projects that made sense or else I could jeopardize my entire business and this is what I did with this job. 

Shocking reaction
My client surprisingly agreed and we got busy. We moved throughout the project life cycle meeting all milestones and finally producing a great product. The entire software to its demo version was developed in 3 months and ended up billing around $21,500. I call this my first success story because I turned a super bad deal into an excellent business relationship that brought success to my client as well as me. I did it because I operated with the same level of principal on which I founded my business and this alone ended up teaching me an invaluable lesson.

How did $120,000 happen?
My client ended up loving the product and finding over 250% growth in his business after the release of the software the first year. This success created more opportunities for me supporting, improving and customizing the application for new clients. The demand grew to the point that my client hired my business on a steady support and development contract soon after the first development stage was completed in September 2007. My client continued hiring my business in 2008 giving me about $12,500 on support and development. Business kept booming and we ended up agreeing on a steady support and development contract providing 7-day customer support and software enhancements for all his clients that has yielded steady $25,000 per year since 2009.  

Conclusion
Running your own business is riddled with challenges, successes and failures. The idea is to have a clear work ethic and use it as a road map to steer your decision making towards success. Sticking to a defined set of principals will always give you the necessary tools to do the right thing for you and your clients. It will enable you to turn a bad deal into an awesome one or simply get out of bad ones quickly. This one job alone started at the beginning of my business in 2007 and has continuously given me a decent return which has made me over $120,000 in the last 6 years and counting. In addition to this, doing the right thing for my client and my business has paid off with a great business relationship and has taught me an invaluable lesson.

Thanks for reading, please take a minute and leave me a comment and share it with your friends. Questions are also welcomed if you have them. Please come back for my next article where I talk about my first big failure where I compromised my business core principals and how it almost destroyed my business.

Tips for Effective Time Management: The science behind it, the secrets of how geniuses do it and why it is essential for business

Time management is absolutely essential to achieve success. Managing time effectively is a key skill to master. I have chosen this topic because time is a resource you cannot afford to waste if you have your own business or want to succeed in general. Although I talk about business, the research in this article is very valuable and can be applied to personal life. This will greatly benefit you if you struggle with managing your time and don't know why you can't get it under control. 

Schedule everything
If you do not have a set schedule to follow, time will go by very quickly and before you know it, you will be either bankrupt or having to rush to get a job to make ends meet. If you can schedule everything even your time off, time with family and work, you will be able to train your brain to understand the difference between leisure activities versus work. In addition to this, your business performance will be greatly impacted by how effectively you are able to manage your time.

I am putting time management into a series of things to consider when starting your own business or to improve life in general. I wish I had done this myself when starting my business, but I did not even know much about it then. I always had issues with time management since I was a kid and grew accepting it over time. I only started paying more attention to it until lack of time management skills led me to loosing business and overworking myself to the point that it affected my health. 

I then started researching and working on mind hacks in order to manage time more efficiently. I am still a work in progress, but I am so much better now than I was in 2007 when I first started with my business. Following the tips I describe throughout this article plus learning from the experts has greatly benefited my business but more importantly it has benefited me as a person.  My goal with this article is to help you understand the importance of managing time effectively and the benefits it can bring to anything you want to do in life. 

The key elements
Managing time requires a healthy state of mind and focus to get things done. If I had known this earlier in life, It would have saved me a lot of unnecessary stress and made my life much easier. Although, I managed to meet some deadlines in my business, I had to give up 80% of my sleep in order to stay on schedule. This affected my health over time and client relationships. It took me over three years to improve on my time management skills and incorporate them to my daily work routine. Once I started managing my time better, I was able to get my sleep back. The results have been great, it has greatly decreased my stress levels, it has brought a lot more stability to my income stream and best of all I have become happier.

Focus like a genius

I grew up believing that to succeed at achieving a difficult task you needed to work hard and this meant to put a lot of hours into it. This couldn't be further from the truth as working hard at something is not dependent on the amount of time you put into it, but rather on the amount of focus and the quality of time you put into it. Cal Newport, assistant professor at Georgetown University, wrote an article on his blog titled "If You’re Busy, You’re Doing Something Wrong: The Surprisingly Relaxed Lives of Elite Achievers" about a study from the Universität der Künste in Berlin on the habits of elite over-achievers. It turns out that the study concluded that successful individuals follow a pattern of focusing hard on the objective to achieve rather than working an excessive number of hours at it:

This study sheds some light on this paradox. It provides empirical evidence that there’s a difference between hard work and hard to do work:

• Hard work is deliberate practice. It’s not fun while you’re doing it, but you don’t have to do too much of it in any one day (the elite players spent, on average, 3.5 hours per day engaged in deliberate practice, broken into two sessions). It also provides you measurable progress in a skill, which generates a strong sense of contentment and motivation. Therefore, although hard work is hard, it’s not draining and it can fit nicely into a relaxed and enjoyable day.

• Hard to do work, by contrast, is draining. It has you running around all day in a state of false busyness that leaves you, like the average players from the Berlin study, feeling tired and stressed. It also, as we just learned, has very little to do with real accomplishment.

Focusing and prioritizing were two of the things I struggled with the most. I used to stay up at night working hard to meet deadlines. The worse part was that I was pretty much working throughout most of my day as long as I was awake. I ended up being tired all the time and it eventually took a toll on my health. All of this made me unproductive and became hard to do work for me. The reason was because I was multitasking and trying to do everything at once; reading emails, answering text messages, phone calls, social networking, etc. I engaged in multiple projects simultaneously and I was making very little progress at all of them. This frustrated me and it made me very stressed out. 

One day while being distracted reading blogs, I started discovering some of the information that I am putting in this article which came as a wake up call for me. I realized that there was a different way of doing things and achieve better results. 

Some articles suggested meditation and quieting the mind which I started doing. I also started talking to a therapist about it who gave me some good tips as well. I started controlling my thoughts and my emotions much better. It helped me have more productive work days.  

I also created a special weekly calendar and schedule everything from my work projects, diner, play time with the kids to spending time with my wife. This was great because I was able to manage expectations with my family. It was a way of disciplining myself to stay on track. 

I learned over time that I was most productive early in the morning when my family were still sleep. I started going to sleep early with my wife and kids and waking up at 5 am to have one hour and a half of pure production time before the family woke up. I would then help my wife with the kids and continue with my work day. This was truly liberating and it provided a boost of accomplishment early morning. This made me feel awesome because I was taking care of my priorities in a more productive way. 

Attention is a limited resource

It is easy to read and conclude that if all geniuses do is focus hard at something then if you do the same, it should technically work the same way for you. However, focusing is not simply achieved with a mere decision, it takes a healthy state of mind to do it and to remain focus. There is an entire science behind how the brain works and how distractions affect us. The more you know how to manage what you focus on, the better chances at remaining focused. I recently read an awesome article by David Rock the author of Your Brian at Work, called "Easily distracted: why it's hard to focus, and what to do about it". This inspired me to buy his book Your Brain at Work, which it is a great read and I highly recommend it. Brian goes deep into why attention is a limited resource:

"Every time you focus your attention you use a measurable amount of glucose and other metabolic resources. Studies show that each task you do tends to make you less effective at the next task, and this is especially true for high-energy tasks like self control or decision making. So distractions really take their toll."

I discovered that attention was a limited resource by pure accident. I only learned in more detail after reading Your Brain at Work. I did this by scheduling the work that needed the most focus for early morning such as software development, application maintenance, database administration, security assessments. And leave the work that needed less focus for later in the day such as writing or answering emails, phone calls, social networking and marketing  etc. Prioritizing my work made me more productive and it made my clients happier. 

After diving deeper into the science of the brain, studies and statistics, David suggestions remind me of a powerful famous quote by Pablo Cohelo "Control your mind or it will control you." David writes in his article the following:

"So, inhibiting distractions is a core skill for staying focused. To inhibit distractions, you need to be aware of your internal mental process and catch the wrong impulses before they take hold. It turns out that, like the old saying goes, timing is everything. Once you take an action, an energetic loop commences that makes it harder to stop that action. Many activities have built-in rewards, in the form of increased arousal that holds your attention. Once you open your email program and see the messages from people you know, it's so much harder to stop yourself from reading them. Most motor or mental acts also generate their own momentum. Decide to get out of your chair and the relevant brain regions, as well as dozens of muscles, are all activated. Blood starts pumping and energy moves around. To stop getting out of your chair once you start will take more focus and effort than to decide not to get up when you first have the urge. To avoid distractions it's helpful to get into the habit of stopping the wrong behaviors early, quickly, and often, well before they take over."

Avoiding distractions is king when trying to focus and perhaps it is one of the most difficult things to do. I struggled to stay away from checking social media, reading the newspapers, checking the latest viral video on You Tube. The way I decided to help myself was to separate my work computer from my fun computer. I bough a cheap laptop for my online fun where I saved all my passwords to all the fun websites that I like like Facebook, The New York Daily News, blogs, etc. I also scheduled half hour a day to indulge in online mindless activities. I also took it a step further and firewalled my work computer to block all access to fun websites. 

A healthy state of mind
The other key element to time management is quieting the mind. It leads to achieving focus and inner peace. It takes training the mind to understand how to sort out emotions and distractions in order to achieve better focus. I get very excited when I hear or read people talking about this subject matter because it is something I have struggled with my whole life. I recently listened to the SPI 71 podcast with Pat Flynn who interviewed Sean Webb author of Iampodcast.com who mentions a study that found that the average distraction comes every 11 minutes. This co-relates to the same topics mentioned by David Rock in his book. Sean Webb says the following:  

"When the distractions come in from external factors that is most common. But a lot of times if your mind is a little crazy and always throwing up other ideas in front of you,should I pay attention to this, should I pay attention to this? Well, if you do pay attention to it, that’s going to increase your stress level."

Sean suggests mediation as a great way to achieve balance and quiet the mind. I love mediating and engaging in exercises to eliminate the noise in my brain. This is great at learning to control the brain and manage thoughts. I have gained being able to focus on my work more easily and have gained inner peace. 

Conclusion
I am big into time management mainly because it is one of the biggest problems I have struggled with most my whole life. Lack of time management skills has had major repercussions in my academic and work years. I did research and started coming up with mind hacks to improve my time management skills. The more I learned, it became a function of focusing hard and eliminating distractions. I achieved both by learning about the science of how my brain works because it allowed me to understand how to engage distractions and achieve focus. This lead me to meditating and getting some help from a therapist. I put this article together to put my work on time management in a nutshell to help those who need to develop time management skills and struggle with staying focused. The resources in this article will allow you to dive deeper into the science behind focusing and accomplishing hard work without having to do hard to do work. This will aid you at balancing your inner and outer environments in order to evolve as the true over-achievers that you all are. 

Thank you so much for reading and please leave me your comments.

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How to incorporate your business in the US

Having a strategy in place and immersing myself into a positive mindset were key in getting my business from dream to reality. Once I had followed my strategy and had the mental predisposition to achieve my objectives, it was time to register my business. 

Do it Yourself Option
I started asking friends about the process of registering a business and they gave me all sorts of different answers. Some suggested to have it done by a lawyer and some told me to go to the Department of State. I looked at the two options and got online right away to get more information. I found out from contacting different local lawyers that their fees were more than I could afford at the time.

I then found a great free resource online for incorporating your own business from the Department of State (DOS) where they suggested to contact the local office to get more information on it. I went to the New York DOS website which is the state I reside in. Every State has its own page so you can go to the one for the State you reside in. I found a detailed page with all the resources I needed to learn about the different types of businesses. They had pages on each type of business, what they meant and how to get started. I put in some time into this and got to learn a great deal about incorporating a business. I liked a Limited Liability Company LLC because it limits the liability of the business to the business assets only and separates them from your own. This is a great option if you have the time to put into it because it saves you the third party fee for incorporating the business which are about $200. You only pay the fees required to incorporate the business to the Department of State.


My Decision
I had a day job and did not have time to dedicate do this on my own. My main priority was I needed to get it done fast. I knew the doing-it-yourself option was not what I could do at the time because I could not leave my job to head over the local DOS office to file the paperwork required. I wanted an option between the do-it-yourself and hiring a lawyer. 

Outsourcing the Job
One night in late December 2006, I was watching TV and saw a commercial for LegalZoom offering incorporating services. It was a TV commercial with Robert Shapiro. I recognized him from the OJ trial days and felt it was worth checking out. I went on my computer and pulled up the website. I wrote down their phone number and gave them a call the next day. The people who answered the phone were very cordial and had no problem answering my questions. They talked to me for at least half hour explaining in great detail the different types of businesses I could open and the tax requirements  Soon after my conversation with the agent, I signed up. I was excited that this company took the time and got me through my doubts without pressuring me to buy their product.

Signing Up
The process took about 20 minutes. I filled out the information they requested and in the end I paid them with my credit card. One of the best things was that as soon as I signed up, they contacted me and kept me updated throughout the entire process. It took a couple of weeks to get a package in the mail like the one shown in the figure above. It contained all information related to my business such as my operating agreement, letter of incorporation and my Federal Tax Id number. It came in a nice blue folder (see image above) with all the paperwork nicely stacked together. I had a couple more questions regarding how to proceed to open a business bank account number and file taxes. I decided to give them a call and ask them. I was static when they were very kind and answered all my questions without a problem.

Two Thumbs Up
Using this kind of service was for me one of the best things I did because I needed the process of opening my business to be as painless and fast as possible. I simply could not afford to take time off from work to do it myself. This is why I chose LegalZoom. If you have the time and don't mind going through the regular way, you will save yourself some money on third party fees about $200 savings, but you will have to spend the time do do the ground work yourself. If you have similar stories or easier ways of doing this, feel free to share them with us. 

Thank you for reading my blog. Come back next week for my next article. Please leave me a comment and let me know your opinion on the blog and/or this article. 


 

How inspiration and gratitude can help you start your business

I have been inspired and grateful many times throughout my life. This has always happened for me in stages. The one common denominator has been success during times when I have been the most inspired and grateful. Inspiration has been the engine behind starting my own business. However, the key is to be constantly inspired and grateful. This is not as easy for me as making up my mind. I need help to stay on track because it allows me to easily bring myself back into an inspirational and grateful state of mind. I want to share with you how inspiration and gratitude helped start my business.

For those who are new to my blog, welcome and thanks for stopping by. I like sharing my experiences about life and business. I want to share my success and failures through my ongoing journey and hopefully help those who may find value in them. Learning is a never-ending process for me. This is my chance to grow along with my audience. I wrote this post to share my journey of how I stay inspired.

My Inspiration Sources
Inspiration can come from either good or bad experiences. I became inspired because of both. I once was tired of my day job, wanted to quit and start my own business. I was not financially stable at the time and could not afford to make such bold move. I only took the plunge to go on my own when I was inspired. This catapulted me to great heights. My good inspiration came initially from a book I read called The Secret.

The Secret is a book that teaches the law of attraction. I was not only inspired by this book, but it changed my life. It liberated me from chains of negativity that had held me down for years. The Secret validated for me that being in a state of gratitude is the best way to attract good in my life. I put the teachings of this book into practice and started visualizing what my life was going to be like. I printed out the free secret check that the book offers on their website. I wrote it out to myself in the amount that I wanted to attract and pasted it on the wall facing me. I envisioned starting a successful business and that is what I did. I managed to leave a job that I did not like. I increased my salary over 200% to do what I love the most, spending time with my family and developing intelligent software solutions. 

The Proof

I am a hard-to-sell-to person especially coming from a Science and Engineering background. I don’t easily believe words that are not backed by facts. The Secret teaches the law of attraction and how it can manifest in our lives. I loved this book so much because it came backed up by some of the most influential people in history. It seems from the famous quotes of people such as Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Buddha, and many more - that they understood the law of attraction and hence their achievements. Here is the law of attraction in their own words:

"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." – Albert Einstein
"All that we are is a result of what we have thought" – Buddha

“Whenever you think you can or think you can’t, either way you are right.” – Henry Ford

"What this power is, I cannot say. All I know is that it exists." – Alexander Graham Bell

"You create your own universe as you go along" - Winston Churchill

Whatever the mind of man can conceive, it can achieve" – W. Clement Stone

The law of attraction as explained in the book states that what we think about and thank about is what we bring about. It explains how the law is impartial and you can use it to attract good or bad. This is absolutely true and I have experienced this myself to manifest a lot of good in my life, especially in getting my business started. The more I practice the teachings of this book, the easier it is to stay inspired, grateful and in a constant state of attracting the good in my life.

I am convinced about the law of attraction not because of the financial gain I have achieved. But my spiritual transformation which has been my biggest achievement. It has made me a better father, husband and human being overall. Financial gain may come and go, but spiritual change will stay with you to hold you in good and bad times. This is my biggest treasure and it is for life.     

Maintaining the Spirit
I personally like to use a few things to help myself stay inspired and constantly visualizing my next moves. I bring the message with me. I downloaded The Secret Soundtrack to my iPhone to listen to it while working out or when I am driving. Another source of inspiration for me is the Stamford University Commencement Ceremony Class 2005 by Steve Jobs. 

One of the biggest gifts Steve Jobs ever gave to the world beyond his amazing creations and revolutionary technologies was the 2005 Stamford Commencement Speech. If you have not seen this video, please watch it now and you will know what I mean. His speech should be titled A lesson in life and entrepreneurship 101 - The one and only course you will ever need to succeed in life and business. 

He poured his soul and welcomed us into himself - not as Apple's CEO, but as a man. He shared his triumphs and defeats for all of us to learn from his experiences. He gave this timeless gift specifically to the younger generations. He encouraged everyone to take advantage and live their lives to the fullest. To trust their gut and enjoy the ride because you can only connect the dots by looking backwards. This video is another one of those treasures that I downloaded to my iPhone.  

Conclusion

This is how inspiration and gratitude have made a difference in my life and helped me start my business. I have realized that being in a constant state of gratitude and inspiration has helped me attract the better things in life. I often listen to the Secret and Steve Jobs' Stamford speech as a way to help myself stay in a constant state of visualization. This is my way of keeping balance in my life and business. 

Thanks for reading and come back for my next article on how I registered my business and some recommendations on the services I used. Please take a minute and leave me your feedback on the article and/or the blog.  

The strategy that helped me quit my job

Quitting my job was one of the scariest things I have done in my life. I was living paycheck to paycheck, had a family and a baby daughter. In addition to this, I had a lot of bills to pay and credit card debt. My financial obligations were about as much as I was making in my day job and sometimes even more. My credit card was my stimulus plan from time to time. I pretty much could not afford to quit my job or else I would be putting my family in jeopardy. I came up with a strategy that would make this possible and reduce the risk of failure from 50% to 0%. Considering I had no room for failure, I planned for 100% success.


My Strategy
1. To commit to a money plan before quitting my job.
2. To identify my unfair advantage.
3. To ask myself if I was passionate enough about this venture.
4. To validate my plan with people who were familiar with my work.
5. To make connections to start getting clients. 


100% success?
That is correct. I did two things which are essential to success. One, I gave myself no chance to invite failure into my plan - and two - I energized myself with a positive mindset to attract the success I needed to bring this plan into fruition. Math and statistics could tell me otherwise, but for me it was a mental hack that I had to reach for 100% success. 

How it all began..
I came up with a down-to-earth money plan to save up all revenue generated by the business until I had enough to support my family for at least a year after quitting my job. I did not know how long this was going to take me, but made a decision that I would not quit my job until this milestone was achieved. I needed this strategy to allow me to try out my business venture and give me enough room to completely focus on my work without worrying about money. 

I started my business in January 2007 and quit my job 8 months later. This was faster than I ever imagined. I wanted to start a business to capitalize on my unfair advantage. And this was for me, identifying problems and finding a way of solving them through software. 

I have always been passionate about programming because it is one of those things that I could do for days at a time and never get enough of it. It is like drinking coca-cola. 

I decided to start a technology based company to create applications and websites. There has always been a market for software solutions and as the world migrates more from the real world to the online world, the demand is only going to get bigger. 

I had also experienced some previous success freelancing in the past and got customers to love my products. I needed to validate my plan and reached out to some of my old freelancing customers and asked them to give me their opinion on my venture and their response was very positive and encouraging.

Finally, I reached out to one of my best connections and one of my closest friends Libardo Lambrano who had a web development business at the time. I told him about my plans and asked him if he could pass me some leads in exchange for a commission. He kindly agreed and this is how it all began.

Your Take
Planning, planning and more planning. Do what it takes to make sure if you ever plan to quit your job that you have all sorts of plans  in place, but most importantly a money plan. Do not put yourself or your family in jeopardy to run your own business. I came up with a well planned strategy that ended up working for me. I am by no means claiming that my strategy is a cookie-cutter strategy that will work in all cases. I am simply sharing my experience and my outcome. I hope this article has given you some insight into the strategies I used to quit my job and hopefully bring you some benefit. 

Thanks for reading and come back next week for my next article on how inspiration and gratitude helped me start my business. Please take a minute and leave me your feedback on the article and/or the blog.