Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.

To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.") Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.

Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking .... well, there's no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.

To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don't. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur ("If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

8. Don't tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don't put yourself in harm's way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.
If you want change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.

It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on. Remember, you don't need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It's never what you are, but what you do.

Rejecting Wall Street, graduates turn to entrepreneurship

Kimball Thomas and Davis Smith, co-founders of the e-commerce site Baby.com.br, had just six hours in Brazil to pitch to prospective investors and recruit a promising executive for the chief operating officer’s role.
With little time left after a four-hour meeting with venture capital firm Monashees Capital, the prospective candidate, In Hsieh, agreed to drive the entrepreneurs back to the airport for his interview, braving the city’s notoriously congested roads as he answered their questions.
Thomas and Smith, who are cousins, made their evening flight, and Smith got home in time for his final exam at his business school (B-school).
“Between my red-eye flights, I didn’t have time to study,” Smith said. “But I realized, the whole reason I went back to school was to build a business like this.”
Smith, who attends the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Thomas, of Harvard Business School (HBS), are part of a growing number of B-school students rejecting traditional postgraduate paths such as investment banking, hedge funds and consulting. It’s a trend that is accelerating in the wake of the financial crisis as Wall Street loses its lustre and Silicon Valley shines with a new crop of multibillion-dollar start-ups.
At Harvard, some of Thomas’ classmates are applying their entrepreneurial ambitions to technology ventures. Kevin Nazemi, a former Microsoft Corp. product manager, started Done, a personal productivity service, last year. Daniel Gulati, a student who helped Thomas draft his early investor presentations, founded retail site Fashionstake.com with a fellow classmate, Vivian Weng. Graduates from the class of 2010 started 30-40 businesses last year, a 50% increase from the previous year, said William A. Sahlman, a professor of entrepreneurship at HBS.
The level of entrepreneurship activity here, and I presume at other schools, is up dramatically over the last two years,” said Sahlman.

Baby.com.br is the second start-up for Thomas, 31, and Smith, 32. In 2004, the students started PoolTables.com with around $20,000 (around Rs. 9 lakh today) scraped together from friends and family. The venture—which taught them the basics, such as how to coordinate with vendors in China and how to run an e-commerce site—was profitable in its first year. Now, the two are tackling a broader, if more complicated, market.Smith got the idea for Baby.com.br after trying to find diapers for his son, Jack, during a family trip to Rio de Janeiro last year. He had to visit three stores to find a package of Pampers in the right size.
Struck by the lack of high-quality baby care goods, Thomas saw an opportunity in Brazil’s fast growing market, where more than three million babies are born every year, according to World Bank data.
The start-up follows a similar strategy to Quidsi, the owner of Diapers.com. That site, also co-founded by a Wharton graduate, has attracted more than one million parents in the US with free shipping on goods for their children. E-commerce giant Amazon.com snapped up Quidsi this year for $545 million.
“We actually see a lot more potential for e-commerce in Brazil,” said Thomas, Baby.com.br’s chief executive. “E-commerce there is so much more nascent.”
Even so, they face more challenges than with their previous site, including a different regulatory and tax regime than in the US. In Brazil, the payment processing is also more fragmented. The plan is to start the service in July, but Thomas said they may have to push it back.
Investors, inside the school and out, have taken notice. In late April, Baby.com.br was named one of the top three winners for Harvard’s annual “Business Plan Contest”, which came with a $25,000 cash prize. The award is on top of the $3 million that Thomas and Smith raised in February. That fund-raising effort, which valued the company at $5.6 million, included several well-known venture capitalists, including Monashees Capital and Ron Conway of SV Angel, who has stakes in Twitter and Zynga.
“Harvard carries some distinction; you can catch some people’s eyes,” said Thomas, referring to prospective investors. “On the margin, if they can, they get back to you.”
The contest is part of a broader effort by the school to foster innovation. Last year, budding entrepreneurs at Harvard formed the Startup Tribe, a student group. The organization, which has more than 150 members, persuaded Harvard to start the Minimum Viable Product Fund, a $50,000 fund for new start-ups. The programme distributes awards of roughly $5,000 apiece to promising teams, including the nine winners announced in March.
“We’re a scrappy, adaptive community” said Andrew Rosenthal, a member of the Startup Tribe. The group has been gaining traction, because of a confluence of factors. “We have a new dean, an active network of recent graduates who are providing mentorship, and there’s a strong demand for a student-run community,” he said.
The school is also planning to open in the fall the Harvard Innovation Lab, a student centre for start-ups, where founders can work with peers and Harvard’s entrepreneurs-in-residence.
Of course, a B-school can also be a significant hurdle for passionate founders. Thomas admits that his grades probably suffered last semester, as he struggled to juggle his classes with investor and client meetings in Brazil, San Francisco and New York.
For the moment, he’s catching his breath. Thomas, who is graduating this month, finished school on Friday. “I’m quite relieved that classes are over,” he said. “I have a trip to Brazil next week.”

-2011/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Business lessons for young entrepreneurs by a young entrepreneur

Before you begin your new and exciting venture into the business world, take time out to enjoy what you have already accomplished. Realize that what you are doing may not become a total success in the end and what you are more importantly gaining is business experience. Take a good look at the other young people you come in contact with everyday and understand the strides you have taken to set yourself apart from those around you and the benefits these efforts will earn you. Just by trying you have become an "overachiever" in your peer group.

As a young entrepreneur, there are certain business related and personal related obstacles you will have to endure in order to become successful. Some factors are real, such as where you will get your initial funding and where you will find time to manage your business, family, and school responsibilities all at once. Other factors, as we will discuss, are nothing more than self-inflicted obstacles such as worrying about your age or experience level when dealing with a possible client. These are nothing more than mental games you will play with yourself that will hinder your performance and success. As a young entrepreneur, you must overcome in order to (over)achieve.

In your first attempt at building a successful business you will undoubtedly come across times of trouble. To preempt feelings of failure during these inevitable situations, begin by taking a walk around the local mall. There you will find many of your peers working in jobs that they do not enjoy. These jobs will never serve a purpose in their lives other than paying for their current expenses. At the mall you will also find others, much older than you, working in dead-end jobs in which they have no control over their future or their success. They wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep and start over again in the morning. You, however, are involved in a dynamic business experience that will help you throughout your life. Your age should never concern you. It should be used to your advantage rather than becoming a detriment to your success.

It is natural for young entrepreneurs to feel insecure about their age when dealing with people that are older. Not only does this type of thinking get you nowhere, it can drive your client prospects to your competition.

Although it may be a natural reaction to defend your age while speaking with clients or prospects, you must fight the urge. You will be defending a position that was never an issue with your client. By bringing up your own insecurities, you may plant that concern in the head of the person you are dealing with. People are worried about whether your service is going to help them or not, not about who is behind it. If you let this type of thinking go on, you will blame any type of failure on your age and inexperience instead of focusing on how to get better. This is a fatal business flaw. Youth should be a business asset rather than a liability.

Understand that your youth enables you to do many things in business and take risks that older people in the same position could not. You are young, without a wife and three kids, unlike your competition. You can take chances and not have to worry about feeding your children every day. Your youth grants you energy and a sharp mind. Use these factors to separate yourself from older competitors. You should view yourself as a "young gun" of business and take things head on, because if your business flops, so what? You can always go back to McDonald’s, but you can never regain your youth. If you need steady income while your business is still developing, use your part time job to your advantage. It could be the only source of capital you have at first. Once again, if either your job or your new business doesn’t work out, so be it, you can always make up for it in the future and you’ll be wiser as well.

It is prudent to take a step back and evaluate your position before embarking on a business venture. Begin to grow your funds in the bank while your business is still young. As you grow and expand the money can be used and replaced. Also be sure to save as much of your paycheck as you can while being able to pay your everyday expenses. As your business grows and you are able to support yourself, you should then focus your attention fully on developing your business.

School and schoolwork are other obstacles that are unique to younger entrepreneurs. It is important to set your priorities straight. No matter how successful your business is becoming or how much your business needs to be worked on, you must keep your schoolwork as your top priority. It is easy to ignore assignments and lose focus in school because of the million dollar ideas floating around in your head. Be sure to understand that school is what will help you later in life as you continue your business career. Set homework time aside every day and keep your grades in order. No one wants to deal with a businessperson who has failed out of high school.

As you begin your venture, know that you have already succeeded. It is the entrepreneurial spirit and will that will help you throughout your life. Even if your business is unable to stay afloat, know that you gained more business experience than your colleagues have in the classroom alone. As long as you use your youth to your advantage, stay aggressive and keep thinking positively, you will have a successful run. Never stop promoting yourself and your business and never be afraid of success! Good luck!

Entrepreneurship

Towards Entrepreneurship : Becoming an entrepreneur is a real challenge. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication and focus. Before taking the plunge into entrepreneurship you have to make sure you are ready. You may be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Even as Entrepreneurship is comparatively a new trend for our society, many have tried; many are becoming successful while others give up before attaining success. Due to its involvement of high risk, entrepreneurship is often discouraged by many.

To become an entrepreneur you need to possess the three P’s… a clear and positive Perception of yourself and your offering, Passion for what you do and the difference you can make, and Perseverance for the time it takes to build your business (which our people specially lack in). They are the essential ingredients for success. One piece of advice to becoming an entrepreneur is to never stop reading. Whatever industry you are in you need to constantly be on top of what is happening. Staying ahead of the curve is about having a massive pipeline of information, organizing it and making decisions to move faster than your competition. Your entrepreneurial instincts are fueled by information. The fact that you are reading this article is your one step towards Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs—the fastest growing area of our economy; what makes these strange people, risk takers and wealth generators tick? Why do entrepreneurs take risks, endure pain, fatigue, and embarrassment? What makes them run? Is it money, fame, power or fun?

None of the above ! Entrepreneurs might want and enjoy those rewards but what drives them and what distinguishes them from an overachieving employee or salesperson is the desire to create. That’s it. They have a passion to create and innovate. Are you an entrepreneur? Do you pass the test? Many overachievers are not entrepreneurs. Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, JRD Tata and GD Birla were entrepreneurs so are Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Ambanis, Bajajs, Ashok Soota Narayanan Murthy, Sunil Mittal and Subroto Bagchi. They had dreams to create new horizons for humanity. A vision, inspiration and most importantly the belief that, “I can do that”, is the defining image of an entrepreneur. Against all odds, they trusted on themselves. Instead of depending on others, they have faith and confidence on their own, stood on their own feet and demonstrate Self Reliance sending out the message that Self Reliance is manifested in Entrepreneurship. “There is a cost of standing on your feet, and there is a cost of living on your knees. Guess which one is more expensive.” Decide accordingly today, for your future. My vision for our people is that “all the youth will find something to do in life. They will practice entrepreneurship in whatever field they choose to venture and through it, will demonstrate Self Reliance.” We have started . . . scantily, . . . we have started drinking our own juice and watching our own videos.

But, ten years . . . ,  okay twenty years from now on, we need to see our people – eating biscuits from our own factories, wearing jackets from our own cloth-house, building materials from our own industries, driving cars of our own made, taking medicines from our pharmaceutics, . . . . using everything in our own brand. We need to see more Tatas, more Ambanis, more and more Bill Gates. So that we will not only stand on our own feet, but also be brave enough to sponsor more projects ourselves and help those who are in need.

-THE SANGAI EXPRESS