Archive | January, 2018

Each day, the postman goes to the depot, collects his van full of letters and parcels and sets out on his route, delivering his packages. As he walks, he often comes across businesses and people that he sees every day.

There’s one house in particular that he often has parcels for, and the owner always appears to be in. Over time, they developed a cordial relationship, trading comments on the news of the day and how each other’s lives are going.

Eventually curiosity gets the better of the postman and he asks the owner – “What’s in all the packages?”

The owner invites him to come back at the end of his route and see. The postman returns later in the day and the home owner invites him in and offering him a cup of tea, explains that they run a business for themselves from home. The packages are their products and sales materials, it’s hard work but they work at it every day, building their future independent of the rat race.

The postman in enthralled by this, he asks them what they are doing, and how they do it, he’d never thought of working for himself… Could he do it too?

The entrepreneur sits and explains a little. He tells the postman that it’s more important that you find something that you love to do and work at that, rather than just trying to sell something.

Finding a business that you can run for yourself, something that you love to do, or are enthused about every day, is the hardest part. If you can find that and make a business out of it, it makes everything else much easier.

Building a business that is centered around what you love and playing to those strengths makes each day an easier challenge. The postman considered all this and thanking the entrepreneur, set off home thinking about his own future. Ideas he had considered before but had no idea how to put into practice came to his mind.

Several years later, he returned to that same home owner, that same entrepreneur, he thanked him sincerely for his advice and the time he’d taken in explaining some of the challenges in starting one’s own business. He had taken all that advice and decided to try it for himself.

He told the entrepreneur about his own business, he had always loved brewing ales, and now he was running his own microbrewery. It had been a loved hobby for years, making his own ales and flavored beers, but he’d never thought before that that hobby could become a viable business.

It had taken some help from the bank and a few years to get running and get independent pubs stocking his produce, but in the previous year for the first time, he had been able to pay himself a full salary and had resigned from the post office.

Now each day he was able to work on something he loved, rather than just try to make ends meet.

So here’s my question to you dear reader… What hobby can you turn into your future gold? Think about this and develop a plan to liberate yourself by following your passion and turning it into a business.

A hermit lived high on a mountain top above a township, and every day as the people below him scurried around, doing their daily tasks, the old hermit would watch.

He had everything that he needed on his mountain, there was plenty of food and supplies, he had a small vegetable garden near his cabin, and he kept a few animals to supply his needs, near a rock pool filled with water that flowed down from further up the mountain.

His life was quiet and content, after breakfast and his morning chores, he would make his lunch and take it to the rocky outcrop where he could sit and watch the activity in the town below.

The town was a long way down, the people running around performing their daily deeds seemed like ants to him, but even through all the bustle and busyness it seemed so peaceful. It looked to him like a great ballet or dance.

He watched the activities in the town every day, finally he decided that he would go down to the town and experience this beautiful ballet for himself. He took his coat and started down the mountain. As he descended, he started to hear strange noises, the closer he got to the town, the louder they became.

Finally, he reached the foot of the mountain. The noise here was almost deafening, everywhere he turned there were people rushing around doing tasks he couldn’t even begin to understand, as he tried to walk through the streets, he was getting pushed and jostled by the crowds of people.

He could not understand where the peaceful and beautiful ballet had gone.

Unable to take it anymore, the hermit fled from the town, back to the safety of his mountaintop. Arriving home, he went to the outcrop and looked down again upon the town, to his amazement the beauty and silence had returned. He could still see all the ants rushing around below, but there was no noise anymore, all the screaming sounds and mixture of voices were gone, replaced with the serene silence he had always heard before.

He sat down and stared in amazement, asking himself how could such peaceful beauty come from such noisy chaos?

In our lives and businesses, we’ll often feel overwhelmed by what’s going on around us, but is it really the stressful pressure-cooker we believe it to be? When we feel overwhelmed, our natural response is to give up, to break down. But instead whenever you feel those times approaching, try to step away from the daily issues and look back at them from afar.

Often, you’ll find that the situation or decision that you have lost control of, that is stressing you out, when you step away from it and see it without all the other clutter, it’s not half as bad as you think, and often when you view it from the outside (looking inwards) you can see the solution clearer than you would when you’re right inside the problem.

Each day, take a moment out, step outside of your business, your problems, find your ‘mountaintop’ and look down on your life from there.

It’s all about your perspective, when the one you have isn’t serving you, simply get up and go to another side of it.

A hermit lived high on a mountain top above a township, and every day as the people below him scurried around, doing their daily tasks, the old hermit would watch.

He had everything that he needed on his mountain, there was plenty of food and supplies, he had a small vegetable garden near his cabin, and he kept a few animals to supply his needs, near a rock pool filled with water that flowed down from further up the mountain.

His life was quiet and content, after breakfast and his morning chores, he would make his lunch and take it to the rocky outcrop where he could sit and watch the activity in the town below.

The town was a long way down, the people running around performing their daily deeds seemed like ants to him, but even through all the bustle and busyness it seemed so peaceful. It looked to him like a great ballet or dance.

He watched the activities in the town every day, finally he decided that he would go down to the town and experience this beautiful ballet for himself. He took his coat and started down the mountain. As he descended, he started to hear strange noises, the closer he got to the town, the louder they became.

Finally, he reached the foot of the mountain. The noise here was almost deafening, everywhere he turned there were people rushing around doing tasks he couldn’t even begin to understand, as he tried to walk through the streets, he was getting pushed and jostled by the crowds of people.

He could not understand where the peaceful and beautiful ballet had gone.

Unable to take it anymore, the hermit fled from the town, back to the safety of his mountaintop. Arriving home, he went to the outcrop and looked down again upon the town, to his amazement the beauty and silence had returned. He could still see all the ants rushing around below, but there was no noise anymore, all the screaming sounds and mixture of voices were gone, replaced with the serene silence he had always heard before.

He sat down and stared in amazement, asking himself how could such peaceful beauty come from such noisy chaos?

In our lives and businesses, we’ll often feel overwhelmed by what’s going on around us, but is it really the stressful pressure-cooker we believe it to be? When we feel overwhelmed, our natural response is to give up, to break down. But instead whenever you feel those times approaching, try to step away from the daily issues and look back at them from afar.

Often, you’ll find that the situation or decision that you have lost control of, that is stressing you out, when you step away from it and see it without all the other clutter, it’s not half as bad as you think, and often when you view it from the outside (looking inwards) you can see the solution clearer than you would when you’re right inside the problem.

Each day, take a moment out, step outside of your business, your problems, find your ‘mountaintop’ and look down on your life from there.

It’s all about your perspective, when the one you have isn’t serving you, simply get up and go to another side of it.