Life is What YOU Make of it!!!

There are many successful business structures out there and one of the models that are seen so much are franchise businesses. The uniqueness of franchises is that all of them operate on the same business model and plan the main difference is that they are in different locations. A franchise main goal is to produce similiar results as all of the other franchises no matter what the circumstance (well that really depends on location, people that are hired, and other factors). Some of the most popular franchises are McDonalds, Walmart, 7-Eleven, Burger King, and many more fast food restaurants. All of the sport’s teams are franchises and one of the popular sports is the NBA (National Basketball Association).

NBA Structure and Restrictions

The NBA consist of 30 teams spread out all across America including one team in Canada. They all have the same business model and business plan (this varies slightly due to different locations and markets). Not everyone can own a NBA team, but just the pure excitement of owning a professional organization has got to be one of the biggest joys of a businessman. Not only does an owner have to worry about making money they also have to put together the right combination of coachs and players to win a champion title. All teams are regulated for everything; whether it be salary cap, words said about referees would result in a fine, length of shorts, mandatory meetings and post game interviews, and so on. Some people may feel that with all of the restrictions it is not worth it being an owner in the NBA. However, I think a person has to get creative with all of the restrictions and that is the beauty of owning a NBA team or other sport teams with many rules and guildlines.

Beating the Odds of Restrictions

Here is an example of a business owner beating the odds. Mark Cuban has been the most popular owner for the NBA for the past couple of years. He is crazy, animated, and a smart businessman. He literally transformed the mentality of the organization that rarely went to the playoffs to a team that is expected to make it to the Western Conference Championship every year. Mark Cuban has also been fined many times because of his attitude and comments to the commissioner. But he still stayed true to himself and has found a way to make his system work for the Dallas Mavericks.

Not all are Created Equal

NBA teams have had their share of movement due to a shitty place to market the team, disagreement with owner and city on new sports arenas, and so on. The current system isn’t going to be the same if the team doesn’t continue to improve. The story usually goes like this, team do good = owner and players get paid and everyone happy or team do bad = everyone complaining, blaming each other, and there needs to be a change. There are tons of coaches, general managers, and scouts being fired and players being traded and the process continues.

The Systems in the Business of the NBA

Each team consist of the owner, president, vice president, general manager, scouts, coaches, free throw specialist coach, trainer, market experts, players, and so on. Everyone plays a role to make the whole business run and that allows the owner to increase revenue and profit for the company. There are tons of things that I am leaving out, but you can already see that the NBA and other sports franchises are very complicated, but it works and that is the most important thing.
Everyone Working Together to Complete a Task With the Big Picture in Sight is Beautiful.

“Work is passive without you. It can’t do anything. Work is only an idea before a person does it. But the moment a person does it, the impact of the work on the world becomes a reflection of that idea-the idea behind the work-as well as the person doing it. In the process, the work you do becomes you. And you become the force that breathes life into the idea behind the work. You become the creator of the impact on the world of the work you do.”

-Excerpt from, The E Myth Revised, by Michael E. Gerber

This is one of many passages of The E Myth Revised that stuck out at me and really challenged me as an entrepreneur. Everything starts with the idea at hand and it is truely up to the entrepreneur to interpret that idea to the people that are going to be doing the taskful work. At times while at work I feel drained and bored of routine task. Once I am done with a particular task I go back and see what else that needs to be done and I am told by my boss to add this and that and just keeps on going on and on with the same shit. I am a big picture kind of guy and feel that if I knew what the whole project is all about then I can get things done quicker.

Whenever people think about work it is a negative feeling. Most of the time people are not doing work that motivates them and are ready to leave once the workday is over. What I get at my workplace and from talking to friends is that everyone is challenged the same way. I believe this just leads to disaster because the employer doesn’t know the strength of the employee and won’t ever really push the employee in the right direction of using their strengths in order to complete the job with passion and enthusiasm.

There are many things we as humans like and don’t like to do. Most of the time it seems that we are doing things that we don’t like to do. However, when we do things that we do like we feel great and love the lives that we are living. I am going to stop complaining about the boring work that I do and challenge myself at work to use my strengths as much as possible. I will also continue to do things that I like to do away from work and help motivate people to have alittle more fun than they do.

I didn’t think much about Apple products until I bought my Ipod a couple of weeks ago. I thought they were overrated and overpriced for the value you got out of it. As soon as I started playing around with the Ipod I quickly saw why people are raving about it. The ease of use is simply simple in it’s own way, however, I am sure there are other mp3 players that are just as simple or copied off of Apple. I am also sure that many mp3’s and Apple Ipods have similiar features ranging from 1 gig to 80 gigs, but that is where the similiarities end.

My Past Experience With My “Old” MP3 Player

My old mp3 player was a Creative Zen Sleek Photo, which is a 20 gig without video capabilities. I bought this mp3 player from my brother because he was upgrading to a new mp3 player. I have to tell you that I didn’t know much about mp3 players about a year ago and rarely used mine when I had it. The Creative Zen was easy to use and there were tons of features that I didn’t utilize. I used a freeware called Media Monkey in my opinion is shitty because of the way you add media files onto the mp3 player. They may have updated to freeware to make it alot easier to use. There was one day that changed the way I lost hope in the mp3 player and most of it is my own fault. Well I locked up the mp3 player and couldn’t get it to turn off, the mp3 player went into recovery mode and I started to delete everything including the filmware. I tried a couple of times to bring the player back to life, but just gave up and bought an ipod.

Why the Ipod?

Well the next thing for me to do was to get another mp3 player and I wanted to get something I truely wanted. I started to ask around like my other two brothers, one had an Ipod Nano and another had something else I forgot the name but he was happy with the it. So I then went to the Apple website and starting comparing what they had and was overwhelmed with all of the choices. In the end I decided on a 30 gig Video Ipod and am quite happy with my choice. Like I wrote in the beginning the ease of use was great and had tons of features that I probaly wouldn’t use but they were there whenever I wanted to try them out. I believe what seperates Apple from other mp3 player makers is itunes and here are the reasons why:

1. Easy to add music albums and audiobooks.

2. Itune Store- Can look for a large selection of podcast and like the ease of downloading them and updating with new podcast episodes. I don’t have to download a podcast reader onto my computer and can find similiar podcast with the search function. I can also buy music/audiobooks/movies/tvshows/etc and all of it can be downloaded onto my ipod instantly.

3. Apple Website- If I wanted to buy accessories I can through the Apple online store. This isn’t rocket science, but just the ease of being able to get what I need from one source is a time saver and less headache and actually kind of fun finding things.

We can learn a couple of business concepts from Apple who weren’t the first company in the mp3 market, but became #1. They simply helped their customers get the most usuage out of their product by providing a place to get that information. Also, there are tons of different Ipod models that everyone can buy depending on their needs and/or wants. I am not saying that Apple is perfect, hell they could have atleast included a power adapter with the Ipod, but it works for a large demographic of people, which is being able to enjoy the “ease” of entertainment whichever form it may be in.

For the past couple of weeks I have been really diggin my 30 gig Video IPOD. I had another mp3 device(creative zen) that I broke, but glad I did. I will be doing a comparision of that later. It does everything I want it to and more. I mainly use it at work while doing my civil engineering work. Like many other people who work in Corporate America we are able to do multiple things at once. I have a tendency to get bored very quickly whenever I am doing the same thing for a long period of time. The activity that has helped me out quite a bit is listening to music, audiobooks, and podcast while doing work. Some people say that is hard to do, but I feel that if I didn’t have my IPOD at work I will really go crazy. If I had a choice of what to listen to I will always pick an audiobook or podcast over music. The reasons are:

1. I am learning while I am working- Nothing beats getting your work task done while learning something about entrepreneurship, people, current events, travel, or whatever.

2. Free time to do other things in my life- After listening to these audiobooks/podcast at work I can read, work on my side gig, or whatever else because I don’t have to worry about listening to audiobooks/podcast at home.

3. I get tired of listening to the same music over and over again- I guess listening to the same music over and over again is my fault, I just need to expand my music library and I shouldn’t have that problem.

So with that said what are yall take on listening to music vs. audiobooks/podcast at work?

One thing that I am realizing this year with all that I do is that everything that I plan and think of starts with me. It is really that simple, but really came to a realization this past week. I looked at my task for the day and quickly changed the date to complete the task to the next day. I have done this about 5 times already this year and am tired of it. I can see some of my bad behaviors from last year creeping back from the grave (it has only been 14 days). If I want to run a successful business, lose weight and gain muscle, get closer to God, become more socialable, or whatever I want to do it starts from the top. The top is myself and I have to be completely honest with myself about my current position and the way I want my future to be. One of the quotes that I am going to live by this year is, “Nothing ever gets done unless you take initiative”.

I have completed tons of task that will help me complete my monthly and year goals. I am glad that I have the mindset of being aware of my shortcomings and doing something about them. Again, that starts with me being completely honest with myself. When I was a little kid I would always hear people saying that you can’t cheat yourself and the truth will always prevail in the long run. I never really understood that saying until a year or so ago.

I remember when I was working the first couple of months at my first job out of college and felt good that I was making money for myself, but didn’t really appreciate the work that I was doing. I would tell myself that I would get challenging and better projects that will kick my motivational side into action. It never really got better at the first company. I continued to tell myself that this place is a good fit for me and yada yada yada, but whenever I would talk to friends about my job I would feel pissed and never satisified of the status quo. So I finally got up the courage and realization that me and that company wasn’t going to last and that I needed to find somewhere that I could learn,  be challeged, and help the company grow. So I did that and am happy because of it. However, I should have made the jump alot earlier and should have trusted my instincts and myself more. It is a lesson learned that I will not forget and will continue to improve myself on trusting myself.

So far 2007 is interesting. It can easily be a repeat of last year and me resorting to my old ways, but guess what, I won’t. I have learned so much already this year this past week I can truely say that this is going to be a breakout year for me. I will be doing more traveling, reading, meeting new people, and trying new things.

First Challenge of the Year

The trying new things is harder than I thought, but am figuring out some stuff about myself that is truely remarkable. The first thing I am trying is not drinking for a month. I only drink on the weekends, but when I do I usually drink quite a bit and spend a good amount of money. I did this specific activity for a couple of reasons. They are:

1. To not rely on alcohol to have a good time.

2. Find other activities to do that I am interested in or might find enjoyable.

3. Get absolutely ripped working out and not worrying about gaining calories due to drinking.

The first week of this challenge I have noticed that I rely on alcohol to have a good time. If I am not drinking I am depressed and feel that is the only way for me to enjoy myself around my friends. Also, I have noticed that my friends respect my stand on not drinking and know that I will get through it, however, there are some that don’t want to hang around me because that is the way we would spend our time with each other.

Entrepreneur Journey Report

This year for my entrepreneurial life has been going great. I have realized a couple of things already that I know that will help me grow as an entrepreneur and a person of responsibility. Firstly, things/task/projects don’t get done overnight and in the mind. I have this thing where I think of an idea, then talk to people about it, and then shut it out. I have learned that it is best to just start writing down ways to make the idea a real business, write a business model and plan, and then take various steps to completing the goals. In addition, patience keeps the mind sane. I always thought that if I have a particular goal that I want to complete I can get it done quickly. I have noticed that life doesn’t revolve around me and that I can’t do everything on my own. I have to do my part and also respect partners and others to get their task done and the need of balance of work and play. The compatibility of partners is very important in starting and running a business. It is fine for people to knock heads, but it is more important for people to have different business characteristics also. This will in a sense let everyone do task or activities to their strengths and passion without being told what to do.