ADHD Brain Scan
Can’t decide what business to concentrate on?Back in the good ol’ days, if you consistently failed to finish your work at school, you’d be labeled as “lazy” or “defiant”
Recently, science has unearthed a scientific explanation for certain cases of “lazy” sufferers. It is call ADHD. Don’t ask me what that is. Go Google. Or Yahoo, whatever rocks your boat(In recent pop culture, actors has tended to use the term “google” more often though, all the more power to Sergey Brin and Larry Page!)
The last time I checked, there were also explanations for behaviours such as anger, (anger management disorder), chronic mood swings (PMS), perpetual fear of life-threatening germs (Obsessive compulsive disorder, OCD)
Hmm. Why DID my teachers in school talk at the lunch table constantly about me being lazy? Were they ignorant of ADHD in 1995?
Sorry Tiger, sorry Ashley Cole, there are no excuses for your wife-cheating behaviors yet….. or maybe there is hope after all! You guys suffer from Women Bipolar Disorder! (Meaning you love your wife only in their presence, and forget they exist in their absence!)
Lame Joke Alert
Speaking of which, I would like to tell a joke told by my mentor in Jakarta last month.
What is the similarity between Tiger Woods and Toyota Prius Hybrid?
Answer: They both have defective brakes! (wink* wink*)
HAHAHAHA!
Sorry for my short break from serious discussion. I do not however, apologize for the lack of tasteful humor contained in this blog.
Now, back to business.
Have you. as an entrepreneur or business-owner-wannabe, decided to do one thing then ended up “enlightened” or “inspired” by an- AHA moment after attending yet another seminar and did another thing, and then another thing, and then yet another?
Tell me about it! When I was in school in 2002-2003 onwards, I had this grand vision of being someone doing stocks and crunching data and graphs and being the go-to guy for financial know-how info.
I devoured books on stocks, systems, analysis and so on. I was confident that i had hit the big jackpot when I made millions in virtual money on a virtual trading platform
(Damn those virtual platforms! Tried withdrawing without much success, other than the reply from customer services, “Dear Imran, we appreciate our relationship with you, but we have to inform you that the money won in *******.com is virtual, and cannot be withdrawn.”)
Whatever.
But anyway, after my brush with “success”, I decided the big thing was to be an info-preneur. You know, those guys who sell insider information and package it into ebooks and Vcds and so on? There are Gurus on relationships, wealth management, happiness, sex, and also Gurus on How to Be Gurus!
In 2002, I then packaged together an info product and managed to make a little bit more than $50,000 USD in less than 4 months or so. My marketing plan involved nothing more than Yahoo Classifieds, where one could spam and post as many times without being banned (Oh, how i miss you Yahoo Classifieds!)
Having earned that, I then blew it all on restaurants and nice hotels for all my “best” friends (Where are you all now, huh? I must be missing something for not being invited to your outings anymore)
About the same time, I then embarked on several different projects. All of them made tidy sums of profit for me, but i lacked one thing. I lacked the continuity, the recurring income. Money came and went. Cashflow could be horrible at times.
I decided by then, that i suffered from entrepreneurship ADHD. I wanted to be and achieve everything all at once.
Right now, I still own the sports coaching business, the internet marketing and entrepreneurship coaching program, the art gallery and managing an events management company plus a tuition centre.
I have to confess, juggling all these at one time makes me go crazy. This was NOT the 4 hour work week I had envisioned to have since reading Tom Feriss’ Book, the 4 Hour Work Week (which i highly recommend) at fourhourworkweek.com
After deciding to focus on ONE project at a time, i realised that my income could increase 5-10X!
Why?
1)You see, every project management process has different phases. The consolidation phase (ideas, programmers, website building, logo making, graphics designing, market targeting)
2)The put-together phase (website launch, email invites, social media marketing, general marketing, customer service) as well as the
3)Cruising phase( revenue generating, ongoing customer service and after-sales care, as well as upselling, cross selling, nurturing of email lists, etc)
I made the big, but common mistake of thinking that i could launch everything at the same time. What a mistake.
When I had to be in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur for consulting work, I could not reply efficiently and cater to my art clients.
Also, I could not properly manage my 2 Filipino employees (not that i like to micro-manage though) to the extent that several major decisions were made without so much as an email to me notifying me of contractual agreements between them and clients!
My ebook and services business also suffered because I did not properly nurture the email capture lists on Aweber.com and Getresponse.com
The take away message is this.
Focus, be laser-focused on one project at a time. Once you have one product or service on cruising mode, automate it by assigning a loved one or a freelancer to it, and start building the other startup phases or consolidation phases of other projects.
This way, income is still filtering in from the final phases of 1 project, valuable to fund the other developing projects. Never be cash-strapped, never be cash-flow challenged when attempting a daring assault on the fortresses of MULTIPLE INCOME.
If you have any comments or questions feel free to comment in this blog or email me at enquiries@artisanpieces.com
April 14, 2010 Posted by careerbrandin