Tag Archives: passion

The most important thing – Day 126/139

Posted on June 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Today’s guest blogger is Jouni Riuttanen, VP sales at FinderBase.com.

I wrote about sales vs. games vs. sports in my previous entry and emphasized the importance of winning in sales. Winning is a key thing is sales, but even more important things do exist.

The most important thing is love.

You will gain happiness by doing things that you love most. But sometimes people do things that makes them unhappy because they think that they have to do it. I like sales, but I love my family. It is quite difficult to combine these two, since I just can’t be with my family and meet my customers at the same time.

Before one should go and do everything to win in sales, one should think is the sales the most important thing in life. This is also a thing to remember in games and sports. Typically you also need some luck to win in sales, games or sports, but you will end up feeling unlucky if you lose the things that you love most.

Remember, do it with love.

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Passion vs. obsession – Day 110/139

Posted on May 30, 2010 | 2 comments

Passion and obsession can be considered two sides of the same coin. Being passionate is about dedicating yourself to something. Being obsessive is about not dedicating yourself to anything else at all. Or well, obsession can surely be something, however small, that somehow controls your life.

Most people don’t appear obsessive.

I think most people have a collection of small obsessions that don’t appear on the outside but still control their lives. If you don’t have any obsessions and would like to try having one, keep reading. For everyone else:

If you don’t want another obsession STOP READING NOW! Reading forward will get you IRREVERSIBLY obsessed.

Ok. You were warned.

You are now playing the license plate game. Every time you see a license place you will pay attention to the number part. Your mission is to spot cars with each number from 1 to 999 in order.

You will remember this game every time you see a license plate.

If you forget where you were, you start over from the last number that you do remember for sure.

Best of luck with your new obsession. If this makes sense to you, there’s a club in Turku for people sharing your obsession.

Let me know if you see a 144.

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Lifelong learning – Day 87/139

Posted on May 7, 2010 | 4 comments

I was recently interviewed about education and need for professional courses in my business activities. I think I gave all the wrong answers.

In a short period of time my respect for extensive education has collapsed.

I used to believe that education and especially university-level education are the solution to success in our society. Most people still believe that the education you get will predestinate the success for the rest of your life. On average this is true.

But is the success actually caused by the education or could it be that the people who complete their education had been successful regardless of their education?

I will argue that people will learn anyway what they consider inspiring. School works for people who don’t have the passion and motivation to learn stuff themselves.

So, when I was asked what kind of professional courses I would like to have to help my business, I couldn’t think of anything. Even the best people giving courses are seldom passionate about what their students do. In contrast, if there was a person who was both knowledgeable and passionate about their subject and could provide their skills for the students to use, that would be a completely different thing.

The importance of learning cannot be denied.

But everyone should stop and ask why they are learning stuff the way they’re doing it. Are they learning for themselves or for the system? And if the answer is for themselves then why do it as inefficiently as the school system tends to do it. Ask why and try to understand the answer. For example:

Ask your mother why she made you do your homework.

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5 lessons in love and business – Day 54/139

Posted on April 4, 2010 | 2 comments

The more time I spend developing my own business the more similarities I see in it to my personal life.

Romantic relationships and business life have a lot in common.

I want to present here five lessons that I’ve learned both from love and from my career in entrepreneurship:

  1. Passion. I consider passion to be the number one success factor for both business and love. Some philosopher might say love is what is left when the passion drains from a relationship. I will argue that passion is a crucial component of love. Nobody can be passionate about everything but everybody can find their passion both in love and in business life.
  2. Purpose. In business we call the purpose a goal, a vision, a mission or a strategy. In a relationship you and your partner are the “business”. You have to have the same goals in life. When you can trust that the other person is pursuing the same goals and backs you up in your personal decisions, there is a huge potential for success.
  3. Openness. Both the passion and the purpose come through open discussion. There is no other way. Verbal communication has a very similar role also in business life. A functioning professional organization is based on openness. Companies don’t achieve anything by themselves, it’s the people who make the success through communication.
  4. Constant learning. Without learning there is only one way and that way is failure. In a healthy relationship you can learn new things about your partner after 50 years of marriage. The same goes for companies. A professional organization should keep learning faster than its competitors to succeed. Again it’s the people who learn, organization only facilitates their learning.
  5. Conflict resolution. No relationship or business is made without conflict. Conflict is inevitable but can be avoided through the process of learning and through openness. Bad handling of conflicts can deteriorate even a successful company or a relationship. The best way to handle a conflict is to do it firmly, friendly and immediately.

So whether you want to success in business or in love, keep these factors in mind. And let me know if there is something you’d like to add to the list.

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8 secrets of success – Day 39/139

Posted on March 20, 2010 | Leave a comment

Speaker and author Richard St. John presented his eight secrets of success at the 2005 TED conference. This three-minute presentation is fascinating in its simplicity. I really recommend you to watch it.

Although I learned about Richard’s list only recently, these eight secrets have been the foundation of my project for the last 39 days.

  1. Passion. I’m thrilled about the things that we do. But what is even more important are the people who can share this passion.
  2. Work. Making a million in 139 days requires a great deal of work. I’m willing to push myself to the limit. But work doesn’t feel like work when you’re working with people and things that you really like.
  3. Good. I’m not good at everything. That is why I work with people who are good in what they do. Passionate hard work for anything makes you good at it. I going to be good at turning ideas into reality.
  4. Focus. The goal of this project has been clear from the start. The means to get there are a work-in-progress but we’re not far from founding a company that does one single thing, and does it well.
  5. Push. Working hard requires pushing yourself. Not everything is 100 % fun all the time. Writing one blog post per day needs some pushing.
  6. Serve. Serving other’s is the single most important factor of what I do. Firstly, I want to serve my team in giving them tasks that they love. Secondly, I want our team to be honestly willing to help others through what we’re going to accomplish.
  7. Ideas. I have a lot more ideas than is even required to make a million. One good idea is enough. But people keep sharing me their own ideas which is fantastic. We can change the world one good idea at a time.
  8. Persist. Richard put it well. Persist through CRAP. Criticism, Rejection, Assholes and Pressure. I get all of that and I’ve learned to like it.

The last thing that I would like to add to the list is Openness. Openly sharing your motives and intentions will help the team dynamics. At the point when we’re addressing our future customers, we will show how openness can be a critical success factor even in business life.

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It’s good to be personal – Day 38/139

Posted on March 19, 2010 | 4 comments

I’ve received thanks for writing this blog with my own name and a personal touch.

The two most important aspects of being personal are:

  1. Integrity. Whatever you do in business or in your personal life, you must have integrity. You have to show that you can be trusted. It’s a lot easier to trust a person that shows who they are.
  2. Passion. Passion is the driving force of our society. Without passion there cannot be success. Passionate people rarely have the need to be evil.

Using this as a starting point I added a short biography of myself to the about me page.

I challenge all my readers to go through the things you’ve felt passionate about. It can be extremely rewarding to identify them and see if you need something new to be passionate about.

Respect and good feedback promised to anyone who dares to present their passions here as a comment.

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