Your Intuition Is Your Best Friend
By Cheval John
Photo Courtesy of Stuart Miles
When a person is at a crossroads of whether to change careers, start their own company or make a crucial decision that can change the direction of their business, they always make sure to check the facts and look for solid information.
They understand that if they make the wrong decision, it could set them back for years.
Even after finding out all the information that can lead to them making the right decision, they are still indecisive on what to do.
One of the additional ways that they can overcome that indecisiveness is to follow their intuition.
Your intuition is one of the best guides that you ever had.
Nine times out of ten, your intuition is always right.
But how do you know whether to decipher if it is your intuition or just another feeling.
The best way to answer this is to practice.
With anything whether it is writing a story, playing a sport, or riding a bike, you always have to practice until you perfect your craft.
Following your intuition is the same thing.
Once you perfect the process of recognizing your intuition, then you are really setting yourself up for success.
I can say that I had two instances where following my intuition led me to working for a chain of coffee shops and the time when not following my intuition led to me spending about three hours in getting home.
I was planning on going to downtown Houston on Tuesday a couple weeks ago.
I had felt that my intuition “saying” not to go that Tuesday.
That Tuesday, it ended up raining like crazy.
Then I felt that I needed to be in downtown Houston that very Thursday.
So I decided to go on Thursday.
The only problem was that my truck was not working for me to get to the Park and Ride which was a couple of blocks away.
So I decided to walk to the Park and Ride station and then took the bus to downtown.
When I arrived, I went to the coffee shop and then I asked if they were hiring just to make sure that they were hiring (which they were because I saw the sign that they were hiring).
I applied for employment with the company and was hired a couple of hours later.
I was told that I would start the very next Monday.
That week was part of the training week because I was learning about the different types of coffee.
Then I was told to come to work the closing shift.
At that time, I was thinking of whether to drive my truck, which was working again, or take the bus to downtown.
I was driving towards the light and decided at the last moment to park my truck at the station and take the bus.
I felt that I had made the wrong decision.
As I was leaving work, I realized that I had missed the bus that would have taken me to the park and ride station.
I had to take the other bus towards the 1960 area and then waiting on the next bus towards the station.
From there, I walked about 40 minutes before arriving at the station.
After that, I drove home.
In that moment, I realized that I should have followed my intuition and driven my truck to downtown for work because I found out later that I could have parked my truck in the property where the coffee shop is located in.
Hopefully anyone who is reading this will practice following their intuition.
Once they master recognizing their intuition, they are on the road to success.
The Art of Collaboration
By Cheval John
Disclaimer: I am an Amazon Affiliate and I make a commission based on the recommendation of a book
Is it possible to work together without meeting each other in person?
In this day and age, the answer is yes.
Technology has made it easier for anyone to collaborate on projects from anywhere in the world.
They don’t have to fly to one location to work together like they did before the evolution of technology.
That is why most businesses are allowing their employees to work from home because they see the savings in not letting them working in one place.
It doesn’t hurt if they meet in person once or possibly twice a year to deepen the friendship with their colleagues.
Examples of companies or people who are using technology to their advantage to collaborate on projects without first meeting in person are Brian Fanzo and Rachel Miller, Basecamp and Erin Baebler/Lara Galloway.
1. Brian Fanzo and Rachel Miller
Brian Fanzo and Rachel Miller are considered one of the best people who knows how to interact with their community on social media.
Mr. Fanzo is the Chief Digital Strategist and Partner at Broadsuite Media Group while Ms. Miller is the Chief Social Listener for Pipeliner CRM.
They host a Twitter chat called, #sbizhour, previously known as #sshour.
#Sbizhour deals with how businesses can be better at interacting with their customers and building a community.
The chat has been around for a year and has gained a lot of attention in the world of Twitter because it trends on the social media platform most of the time.
What is really cool about the both of them is that they have never met in person yet.
“Rumor” is that they will finally meet in person this year.
2. Basecamp
Basecamp, formerly known as 37 Signals, is one of the most interesting software companies in the world.
They started out as a web design company when it was founded in 1999.
One of the ways they marketed themselves was by starting a blog called “Signal vs Noise” in 2000 and sharing their experience about running a business, their thoughts on the industry, etc.
You can argue that they started their blog at the right time because blogging was in it’s beta stages.
As documented in their book, “ReWork,” they could not find the right software to get their work done.
So they decided to create their own software called Basecamp.
Once they showed Basecamp to their clients, they told them that they needed this for their businesses.
In the world of entrepreneurship, you have to know when to pivot your company because of market changes.
If you stay with the old business model, then you will end up losing out and your company will suffer for it.
Jason Fried, one of the original founders, and David Heinemeier Hannson recognized the change and pivoted Basecamp to solely being a software company in 2004.
As of now, the company has 36 employees.
What sets them apart is that the majority of their employees are located in different parts of the world while the rest of them including the founders are based in Chicago.
They don’t have to worry about communicating with each other on projects because they use their own products.
That is one of the best ways to sell your product to customers because you are using it yourself.
And if you want to learn from them, get their book, ReWork.
I can guarantee that you will love it (I have read the book over 13 times).
3. Lara Galloway and Erin Baebler
Many are recognizing the importance of entrepreneurship.
It is more evident that women are seeing the importance of running their own business.
According to the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), there are more than 9.1 million companies owned by women.
My guess is that 1/3 of them are owned by “mompreneurs,” a women who is an entrepreneur and a mother
They see that running a business is the best path to securing their own destiny.
Mompreneurs might have difficulty in being both a business owner and a mother at the same time because they don’t want to feel like they are neglecting their duties in being a parent and vice-versa.
Lara Galloway and Erin Baebler understands the challenges of being a mompreneur.
As a result from their experience, they co-authored the book, “Moms Mean Business,” which achieved Amazon Best-Seller status.
What is really unique is that the both of them did not meet in person while they co-authored the book.
Ms. Galloway explained how they got the book written on my podcast, “What’s The Word?”
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The only time they met in person was when they launched the book.
So if a person believe that they can’t collaborate on a project with someone they have not met in person, I hope they will follow the examples listed above.
Because the internet have made the world a borderless society.
And it is highly possible to build great friendships and collaborate without first meeting in person.
What Does Five Years Of Work Experience Means?
By Cheval John
Photo Courtesy of Stuart Miles
You have probably seen this in job descriptions when you are looking for work.
The description that the employer post says they are looking for a person who have five years or more of work experience.
And the most frustrating part of this is most of the descriptions are probably for entry-level positions.
You might be thinking, “What Does Five Or More Years of Work Experience Really Means?”
It is “understandable” that employers are very choosy on who they hire.
They are the ones who are spending the money and want to be careful on who the right person for the position will be.
They are also burdened with the coverage of their employees.
And in this day and age, they don’t want to go through months and months of training the new employee on how their systems work which comes with a cost.
So if they can find a person who meets their requirements, it will save them a whole lot of money.
Though it is good news in the short term, it is bad in the long term.
What they don’t realize is that they are hindering their progress of hiring the right person because they are looking for that so-called, “Rock Star.”
They feel that the so-called “Rock Star” will solve their problems and over deliver.
At the same time, they believe that they will not have to pay them the salary they deserve.
When companies have that type of thinking of looking for the “rock star,” they are missing the very people who are very talented in plain sight.
And when they miss the talent, it is actually costing them more money than if they had hired the employee.
They are also causing low moral in their company because they have put pressure on the current employees to deliver great work with less resources.
And then they wonder why they can’t find the right people to fill their company’s position.
And if you are the person who are trying to find your dream job and are hindered when you see the required “five years of experience,” here are a couple of suggestions:
1. Get a Part-Time Job. The reason is because it will allow you to have consistent cash flow while you are waiting to achieve your ideal workplace
2. Start A Side Business. If you trying to get work that fit your skills like writing, public relations, etc., then starting a company or even “freelancing” your service will give you a head start in gaining your dream work. You might eventually love your “freelancing” business to the point that you might forget about seeking employment.
3. Have a Strong Social Media Presence: Everybody is an influencer. If you can showcase how efficient you are on social media, then you have a great chance of wowing your potential employer.
And the chances of building trust with CEOs, Human Resource professionals, etc. on group chats on social media, will put you ahead of everyone else who are only putting out resumes and hoping for someone to see it among equally great resumes.
4. Start A Podcast: Podcasting is the lowest of competitions out there. You could possibly interview the owner of a company and ask them about how they decided to create their business and get your foot in the door. In addition to this article I wrote for Millennial CEO, here is another reason why you should podcast. Yesterday, Spotify, which has 70 million listeners, announced that they are adding video and podcasting to their music streaming service. That is a huge opportunity for podcasters to gain more listeners in addition to iTunes and Stitcher. If that does not convince you, then I don’t know what will.
When you make a concerted effort to create your own opportunities, you might end up attracting the right employer who will see your talent.
That in turn will allow you to show them what they were missing when they were searching for that “rock star” employee.
Hopefully, they will finally see that the “five years of work experience” in their job description is not really relevant anymore.
Lack Of Resources Creates Innovation
By Cheval John
Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles
We often think that it is important to have all the resources to be successful.
It is true that resources like money is what makes things go.
Whether it is running a business, an organization, a university, etc., we believe that having more resources will make everything easier.
We think that if we have more money, we can make a great impact on the world.
Sometimes it is better to have less money/resources because it will make you think of creative ways to get work done.
You will have innovative ideas on making something better and in the process disrupt an entire industry.
Here are two examples of people/organizations who were innovative with their ideas and showed everyone that you can make something out of nothing.
Next week Thursday, I will share two more examples of people/organizations who are making something out of nothing.
1. London Heathrow Airport.
When travelers pass through London Heathrow Airport, they get a chance to see a glimpse of the innovative culture of the British people.
In a sense, Heathrow represents the ingenuity of the United Kingdom.
What I mean is that Heathrow only has two runways.
Yet, they have found a way to keep themselves relevant with the rest of the world.
Heathrow has served over 73.4 million passengers in 2014, making it one of the busiest airports in the world and the busiest in Europe.
The second busiest airport in Europe, Paris Charles De Gaulle, handled over 63 million passengers despite having four runways.
You might think that an airport that has a lot of space and a lot more runways should be able to handle more traffic.
To a large degree, it is the case.
However, Heathrow has proven that they are capable of handling more with less.
They basically went with the build as you go approach.
When they saw the wave of the jet age in the 50s and 60s, they modified their runways and build the terminals large enough to handle the large jets.
They kept at it when the bigger jets like the 747s came into existence in the late 60s/early 70s and added more terminals to accomodate them.
With four terminals already in operations, they saw that the airport was facing overcapacity.
So they added the fifth terminal, which allowed them to handle more passengers even with two runways.
You might still wonder how they get all of the jets in and out safely without any delays.
If you ever flew into Heathrow, you might have noticed that the plane was circling around before they landed.
You might wonder why they do that?
That is where it gets interesting.
Your plane was circle around because they were in a “holding pattern”
While the plane was in a holding pattern, air traffic controllers were trying to put the smaller planes behind each other in one taxi-way and the bigger jets behind each other because they wanted to gain them more space.
If a smaller jet is behind the bigger jet and it takes off, the smaller jet will probably have to wait for about a minute or two before they can take off.
Once they get the planes in the right spot, then the air traffic controllers gives the pilots permission to land.
That is how Heathrow has managed to remain relevant and be the airport that connects the world one flight at a time.
Billy Bean and the Oakland Athletics
Major League Baseball has grown into a 9 billion dollar industry.
With that type of money, baseball players will want a piece of the pie.
The really good players will be able to command the high multi-million dollar contracts.
With that being said, a team would have to be able to afford the really great players if they want to compete.
And the teams with the highest payrolls, mainly the large market teams (New York Yankees, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Chicago Cubs) are the ones who get those types of “elite” players.
The ones who are in the bottom don’t have that chance to gain the “elite” players.
Most of the time, it does not put the smaller market teams in a disadvantage because they develop the players in their farm system to get them ready for the big leagues.
And most of the time, the small market teams moves further in the playoffs.
Example of this was the Kansas City Royals, who went to the World Series last year and lost in seven games to the San Francisco Giants.
But I want to focus on the Oakland Athletics, who made the playoffs from 2000-2003 under general manager Billy Beane.
The Athletics are consistently ranked in the bottom half of the MLB payroll.
However, Beane was very innovative in finding the right players for the team that fit the system of the Athletics.
As a result, the Athletics were able to make four consecutive playoffs in the early 2000s.
Amidst that run, Oakland became the first American League team in a century to win 20 consecutive games in 2002 and eventually won their division.
Beane’s innovation as a general manager caught the attention of national media and Hollywood with the movie, “Moneyball.”
One can guess that many small market teams like the Royals are following Beane’s approach to running a franchise with a much lower payroll.
So if you have the not-enough blues, do not complain because the lack of resources is an opportunity for you to be creative in getting your work finished effectively.
Videos courtesy of Rachel Matt and Major League Baseball, respectively
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