Entrepreneurship

The most money I've ever made in a week was about $26,000. Previous to that it had been about $12,000 in 4 hours. Before I was 21 the best I'd done was about $1,000 in a week. These three examples come from three different systems, two of them choices and one a non-choice.






The first, the $26K was from entrepreneurial effort and opening a bookstore online. I'd been muddling over what to do to not only earn more money but to do something else besides just working at a job and I circled back around to the thousands of books surrounding me in my living room. In the fall I'd been to a Rich Dad, Robert Kiyosaki workshop, gotten inspired and hunkered down to try out my newest entrepreneurial venture. Eight months later $26, 000 was in my bank account and another $14,000 rolled in in the following weeks.









The second, $12,000 came from following Kiyosaki's advice and taking control of my taxes. I took the HR Block Tax class, to understand my taxes in 1998. I focused diligently in class,only missing two I think---but I was there like a fire cracker for the entrepreneurial section. I passed the class with the knowledge and never became a tax preparer because honestly I figured out whatever their payment structure was, I could make more focusing elsewhere. About 3 years later with diligent care and attention to my expenditures and budget, slowly maturing a small business and keeping impeccable records I sat down at H&R Block and mapped out my taxes like a boss and impressed the hell out of my former teachers....and got back $12,000 that year. Technically, I guess I was right, I'd used the class to make more than possible sitting their doing people's taxes and the subsequent years have been equally well managed.






The $1,000 comes from a job I had as a sales associate at A&S Department store in Manhattan, NY. We were on commission plus $7 an hour, 8% of every sale I believe. I was hired in August and by December was rocking a great check from selling literally any and everything in that store.









My personal financial education has been choppy because as much as I understand money and finance and investments and have been schooled (tax prep, financial planning, MBA, and years working as a financial analyst and securities paralegal) my relationship to money took time. We're still negotiating our relationship, truth be told. The reason for our discord is because I had to learn so much of this on my own even though my mother had some of the same skills and large chunks of money. Since I was a child I remember one of her side hustles was doing taxes and then she started several small businesses, including a modeling agency. Eventually she was depositing checks for $600,000 and I had the honor of actually being with her in a car dealership when she reached into her bra and whipped out a roll of cash to buy a car straight off of the dealership floor. At 21, I bowed my head, groaning inwardly.






However, now, looking at my cousins, I see that she and my father(s) provided a level of advanced education within my family that has allowed me to do the above three financial leaps. While sitting in that dealership, my mother and I also owned the co-op that we'd lived in---the reason why I didn't get to college until that $600k check was deposited was that my mother was laid off by AT&T after 17 years; she took the lump sum payout, budgeted tightly and informed me that if I left for college at 18, we'd lose the co-op. But if I worked full time, contributed to the mortgage and household bills, it would give her time to build up her business and then I'd be able to go. Pretty much that's how it worked out within about 18 months. I had faith in my mother's business acumen because she'd been always doing stuff on the side---selling leather skirts and jackets at AT&T, as side hustle; starting a catering business (once even paying me to cook for 75 people she'd been commissioned by---yeah, I have cooking skills like that); being a tax preparer; joining a multi-level marketing company, Undercover wear, selling women's lingerie then broadening that to her own line and a modeling agency. At 14, for my birthday, my mother gave me a tax ID number for my small nation publishing business. Entrepreneurship is just a fact of life within us, I suppose.









But my mother, now on her third owned house, having rented others out, has owned property and started a business, only my uncle and a one cousin, so far having owned a singular house each. No one but myself in my family of say 100 people has started a micro-sustainable business except for her and I. I say micro-sustainable because the true test of a business is being able to go away for a year and it continues along fine or does better---I'm not quite there yet....but I'm closing in on it. Therefore owning property has become an important thread in my life for me and in my mother's egging of me. She often throws up her hands in confused exasperation as I focus time and money at education, going to school, instead of buying a house---somewhere, anywhere----but it will come in due time. The fact that a house is not an asset but a liability, because it's the bank's asset and your financial liability, another Kiyosaki lesson, is mainly my reticence...though I believe in and am working on renting out properties that one owns.






However as an advancement to her point of ownership, I've expanded my financial education by a factor of 3 to her own and have been able to do things on a worldwide scale that she hasn't. She respects outcomes, especially to money, so she likes what I'm doing in multimedia and publishing so far, seeing the long range outcomes and potentiality.






My mother's financial industriousness inspired me to learn about money, even though I don't exactly have a deep emotional connection to it---I often think when I've been in relationships or looking for someone, that level of monetary acquisition acumen is something I find attractive. I know what to do with money, but I don't care about it, I need someone who cares. One of the things I honestly measure a man or a woman by for friendship or more, is their financial acumen and entrepreneurial skills/ability. I have found being with people who identify themselves as employees isn't for me.









I'm starting to close in though, this being my second or third entrepreneurial effort and foray into publishing, depending on how I calculate time and projects. The internet having been a huge boon as it suits my technical skills. I have found though that the more I learn, the more I experiment with, the more mini-successes I have, honestly the more money I make---the faster my circle of compatriots changes. Don't get me wrong, I know lots of people of color scrambling and desirous of money but I know only a few with some technical skills, willingness to talk about it, willingness to teach me a thing or two. Sadly, I know more White people who fall into these categories, mainly because historically White people have more experience with money and ownership, 14 generations since they arrived here, to people of color's 3-4 generations, since we've been legally allowed to own property and business interests. And if you follow my family's mathematical breakdown, there are about 5 people for every 100 in every Black/Latino family with middle class and higher financial education. So that works out roughly to about 5 million of us---spread amongst about 400 million people in the total population in the Western hemisphere.






My children will have the equivalent of an MBA by the time they're 18. Teaching them about money, the currency humans must use in whatever form and how to not just work for it but create it strikes me as the only sensible thing to do as a parent. It doesn't escape me that I've earned from a business 26x more in a week than I ever have as someone's employee. The problem in the gap between being an employee and an owner is time and discomfort. You must be willing to be poor, voluntarily for awhile, in order to rocket ahead of others eventually. That's the hard part, especially when you like learning like I do, so have plenty of skills. But I have always maintained, since 14, I suppose, that I am Kyle, Inc. in partnership with Manpower, Citigroup, Metlife, CB Richard Ellis, Columbia University, etc.. It's never been a subservient relationship and while I don't think that makes me a better long term employee, I'm generally a better worker because we have a work ethic and code here at Kyle, Inc..








Money, therefore to me, is ownership of self, control and a level of fun and creativity. I was raised on a differing diet of money so it's hard for me to be deeply concerned about the financial aspect of say, the minimum wage though I'm deeply concerned about the social and racial implications of it. I see money differently, when you create it, not just work for it, you tend to.






Just recently I was browsing around Netflix and watched a documentary about Wal-Mart and it's influence on the small towns that it goes into. I've read the biography of Sam Walton, the founder and lots of business analyses of it, so I have a deeper understanding of why Wal-Mart is so successful. I mentioned to my father about watching this movie, he's a big customer of Wal-Mart---our biggest disagreement being my pointing out that driving to Wal-Mart to get cheaper prices, when one can walk up the block to the supermarket, means that ultimately, totaling in gas, you're spending more for Wal-Mart....but I digress. I explained the premise of the film to him and how I was concerned that the small businesses being put out of business and Wal-Mart's business practices were at loggerheads but no one was turning that powerful judgment and microscope to the real culprit: the customers.






If Wal-Mart comes to your town, and say you've owned a business for a couple of generations and when they get there it tanks your business---it's not Wal-Mart's fault. It's your neighbors, people like my father, who go out of their way to go there because, and he does this too, they can never just buy one item there---it becomes an adventure in consumerism.









One of the first business lessons, having moved away from...illegal pharmaceutical businesses before I was a teenager that my parents taught me, was that the money for a drug dealer isn't in the product, it's in the comeback. That if the customer keeps returning, that's how you make real money. Being the controller of the source and putting as few payees between you and the customer. Most people don't realize that's why they're paid so little, why things are so expensive, why they're not getting ahead in a job---there's a lot of hands involved before your paycheck. They also taught me to not do drugs for this reason....and then they added oh, yeah and umm....don't sell them either. (Actually funny side note, that's one of the reasons why in spite of financial issues my mother was committed that I go to college---she knew that my entrepreneurial interests and acumen, left to the streets would amount to something else. She said that if she ever got a call from the police, her first question would be what was the charge. That I had the capability to be the controller of a distribution network, not a stick up man.)






My baby multimedia empire is spreading nicely, I keep adding pieces to it, improving aspects, following other companies---much larger one's models---learning how to construct businesses that suit my identity, my ideology, my desires, my feelings for what money is and isn't. I've still got some time and next phases in projects before I'm "happy" with my accomplishments. I used to direct and produce small films and one long form one in high school/college---I have long range plans to do some audio/music work, radio work, audiobooks, online classrooms, scripted TV work and movie work off of some scripts and stuff....and stuff...and more stuff.












My financial education is always around ownership and partnership, never employment because I know what money is.






Thank you for reading and if you liked this check out the other blogs or one my books on Amazon.com
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@gmail.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/
Amazon.com: simply type in Kyle Phoenix for over 25 paperback and digital books!
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter!
Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast



















My first job, on the books, was for $4 an hour at Pathmark, in Hartsdale, New York, it was amazing to me because I'd been paid $30 a week for about 30 hours of work at Charles' Friend Chicken as a delivery boy. Sure I had carfare and a whole lot to learn (how to use the register, memorizing the codes for all fruits and vegetables, the departmental division of items---a supermarket is a hotbed of intellectual effort.) Then we moved and I was then at $3.35 an hour at Wendy's. I was so proud and even more so when after a few months I got up to $3.65. I could just smell $4.00 on the horizon with them. But then I got pulled back into the game at D'Agostino's supermarket, for $4 an hour, which was right across the street from my high school. I thought being smart was the operative goal, so when I came up $50 short, I proved how their computer system was in error and that it was the manager's error, not mine. So they fired me. But that was okay in the short run, I went to Abraham & Strauss Department store, where I got a whopping $7 an hour PLUS 8% commission on ever sale. I went back to D'Agostino a few months later, armed with a Mastercard AND a Visa cresdit card (that A&S's employment helped me get) at 18 and shopped, hard---lobster, steaks, the good stuff and such---to prove a point. The revenge of a teenager.




There were two jobs in between there and college, I wasn't able to go until I was 21, one at $7 an hour and the other at $5 an hour. At college---I was punched in the gut back down to $3.35 an hour at several university jobs---and a limitation on how many hours I could work. I literally had to ball together 5 jobs, 4 on the books, and one side hustle to create a decent monthly income to pay my way through school. But I made it happen. One year I calculated that I had survived on $3000 for an entire year. Today, I tend to believe that's what workers in India and China are making, if not less.




After undergrad, my first temp job was $7.25 an hour, then $10.25, then $14---these jumps happening from assignment to assignment across three cities in about 5 months. Then I landed my first "real" full time corporate job, with overtime it came out to about $46k a year plus benefits. I was able to get a huge apartment and even when that job ended, I was much more centered in my skills and ability to command a higher salary. For about 5 years I kept up the increases, averaging out, mastering how to control my spending and taxes until I hit a personal high of around $80k essentially from just temping. All of that took about 5 years from the $7.25 at a pharmaceutical company in the mountains of nowhere right after college to edging into the six figures in a handful of years.









Since and during then I've gone back to school several times, learned a lot, incurred some more debt, started a prosperous business, shutdown that business, started another one and gone into the non-profit world, left the non-profit world, gone back to school, gone into education and arrived at the point of traveling a lot around the country, and soon the world, in this hybrid educational career.




Backtracking to minimum wage, I've earned every wage and expect that as I slowly build a sustainable business yet again, it's going to jump back and forth a few more times. I was just offered a job in 2013 paying exactly $80k a year but it's on the other side of the country---which would mean abandoning my current schooling and not being along the corridor of travel of home, school, family that I have going over several states. Everyone around me, the headhunters, my family, my friends---they were all tempted, asking about the multiple interviews, about my plans my interest. I was sort of...meh...about the whole thing. And even I was struck by my lack of wholehearted interest and frankly, hunger for it that I remember having a handful of years ago or way back to when I left undergrad. I would've killed a few puppies for that job and been there 23 hours a day, my first job, the $46k one?---I used to clock about 18 to 20 hours a day there and I was commuting from 100 miles away.




My favorite job, insanely enough went back to my undergrad days and temporarily repeated itself: security. I worked for Public Safety during my undergrad years and someone suggested it and I pursued it. I'd been walking wherever I wander late nights in Manhattan and noticed a parking lot with a security attendant in it on his laptop. It must've been about 2am and it suddenly struck me that I could do that! That I had done that! That I could get amazingly prodigious amounts of work done. It took about a month or so before I was sitting in an empty lobby writing to my hearts content. It was amazing. I wrote about 6 books, edited them, did law school classes, was refreshed and aware in class (I'm a night owl) and as long as the check covered basic expenses, I was happy. It was with varying costs and sundries under $10 an hour.






But here's how I looked at it. And how strangely I look at a lot of work. For the 8 hours plus 2 hours travel, I got say $80. I was responsible for watching a few hundred people sign in or out, the numbers lessening when I was on my preferred later shifts. I generally bought or brought a nice dinner, about $10, my IPod dockable radio, a few books, several notebooks, and a binder of classwork. Maybe 2 hours was spent acting as security, I didn't have to patrol, just make notations every hour. Honestly I really didn't do much. For them. They literally paid me an extra $50 a night to write my books, to build my business, to study law. I was good at it because naturally I'm a night owl so they never had to worry about my dozing off---which seemed to be 90% of the issue with most everyone else.




Now for myself, I created several royalty bearing items while I was sitting there, started generating money. Which meant that $10 an hour some nights was really $30 or $40 as sales were popping up and happening all over the world. I was able to focus one semester on wholly being a student, taking a break from teaching, and ironically, as a night owl, I would've been awake those hours anyway and probably less productive. By less productive I mean that for me, personally, I've noticed that work, no matter what it is, as long as it doesn't require too much of me, acts as sort of "nap" from my other thinking and writing and business stuff. I'm often able to be pleasant and present and disconnected from all the things employees gripe about, both real and unreal, because I'm not in it.






I started out this blog posting thinking I would take to task the American financial system and explain how the three states of the individual in and to Capitalism (Product (think: slave), Consumer, and Creator (Owner/Entrepreneurs) was underrepresented in a firm understanding due to a lack of financial education overall to the American populace. I was then going to to rail a little as to how an Owner is forced to choose between their own aspirations and familial responsibilities and the payroll and operating expenses of a business in competition to competitors and the convoluted, equally fair and unfair taxation system. I was then going to, as an educator, lash into the overall lack of available education to workers to improve their skill levels to increase their value from a physical ratio of 1:1 (one person puts out essentially one point of physical energy) and that not being taught, that ratio, and therefore how to increase the ratio, workers are doomed to thinking what they do is all they can do. I really was going to go at that.




But I thought I should look at minimum wage in my own work history. And maybe pull some insights from that as to how I, brown as the floor, have managed.




I was talking to a friend/fellow instructor at Columbia about the American economic system---you know---a light chat----and he was really upset about his current job position. In my observing opinion and professional estimation, he's a very good teacher. I actively encouraged and gave him some recommendations for other positions, if he wasn't interested in the laborious task of climbing the university food chain to full professor. He went on and on about co-workers and bosses and environments at his consulting position. The consulting position offering health care and other benefits into his contract so it offsets the minimal stuff he's eligible for at the university. He was just upset.




Listening I realized, I've been an Employee. And I've been paid every wage. I personally liked temping and even more, consulting because it allowed me to learn from every place I was at, always my number one priority, and it gave diversity to the places I was at---so I've never sat at any one place for longer that 2 years doing the same thing. It infused a dynamism to work for me. I realized also that having my side entrepreneurial enterprises, some years bringing in a few thousand, others up to $50,000 a year, while working full time, have always given me a space to be mentally about work. I can literally take it or leave it. I'm there to learn but I've never expected a job to save me, hold me, support me, be there for me, like me, be fair to me.




In fact, I count the Public Safety jobs that gave me time to think, ponder, write, create as pound for pound, the most useful. Similar to Einstein at the patent office. Luckily I had read several biographies on Einstein so I knew the importance of time to think, to create (He sussed out the theory of relativity working for 7 years at a Swiss patent office and said he loved it because the low level work gave him time to ponder theoretical physics all day long and not be tied into teaching, working, constantly satisfying an employer about physics).




The current employment system, girded initially by the lack of financial education suggests to employees a care taking that isn't ever stable or assured. Or bluntly, true. Your job doesn't love you and your manager will toss you over and replace you, I calculate, in the amount of time comparable to a day to the dollar of your hourly wage. I realized in talking to my friend, how much of an entrepreneurial mindset I had. I personally look at jobs like a 7-11 Store---oh good, it's open for that immediate need but I'm really focused on the supermarket, on a big shop elsewhere. But as an educator, I've worked hard to teach my students, mainly adults now, quite a few Black, Latino and Asian, that the 21st century means that paradigm of being an hourly employee has changed. I think it shifted in about 1998 or so when skill, higher than a 1:1 work productivity ratio, technology and financial education all merged or coalesced into a bigger, or at least different, expectation of employees.






The average worker is not ready for the 21st century, more than a decade into it. As more and more of my books publish, several of them focus on the financial future and education of people of color. I endeavor to in every book print a glossary of information on how money works, on the options for enhancement of one's self. And I'm standing somewhere in person or on TV or in an online video doing this as well, pretty much every minute of the day. Don't get me wrong, I've gotten great feedback and seen people do incredible things with the little bits of information I've passed on, I'm just greedy I suppose. I want more people to be able to do more. I'm constantly heeding the thrumming in my ears from my ancestors: "Free my people."




Part 2 of this article will talk about the things that I did and maybe the things that you can do to shore yourself up, to get ready because as I forecast into the future, it's not going to get easier, it's going to get harder if you're dependent upon a job.




Thank you for reading and if you liked this check out the other blogs or one my books on Amazon.com

Kyle Phoenix

Email: kylephoenixshow@gmail.com

Website: http://kylephoenix.com/

Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/

Amazon.com: simply type in Kyle Phoenix for over 25 paperback and digital books!

Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter!

Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast































Entrepreneurship: Daymond John of Shark Tank, Q &A












1. What makes a good business idea great?


Something that solves a problem (i.e., helps you do something faster), satisfies a need (i.e., makes an existing product cheaper), or improves quality of life (i.e., medical devices ).





2. What do you think are the traits of a great entrepreneur?
1) Being driven
2) Always educating themselves
3) Doing something they love
4) Willing to take advice
5) Resourceful





3. How do I know if there's a real need for my product or service?
Put it for sale on the internet and see if people who do not know you purchase it!





4. What are the most important first steps a new entrepreneur should take?
Educate themselves in the product and the industry they are attempting to enter.





5. How do you create a business plan that works?
Allocate all the time and money that you can invest into the business. And write down your strengths and weaknesses, then cost out how much it will take to partner or hire somebody to cover the weaknesses.





6. Where can I get help creating a business plan?
Small business consulting firms. Then look for a consultant in the area of business that you would like to go in.





7. How do you compete against the big guys?
Do not try to compete against the big guys. Your strength will be that you are small and can do the things they can't do.





8. How do you build a great team?
This is trial and error. Make sure people know their roles. Make sure they complement your weaknesses. Make sure they are focused and in the business for the right reasons.





9. What makes an investor put their money into a deal?
Trusting and believing in the CEO, knowing that the business can grow and distribute large profits, and knowing you have a patent that can be defended as well as licensed out to a larger company.





10. How do I find investors and business partners and what's most important in my presentation?
Banks, venture capital, and angel investors are listed everywhere. Also, go to a trade show for the industry you are in and seek a strategic partner.


Biography:


A young entrepreneur, an industry pioneer, a highly regarded marketing expert, and a man who has surpassed new heights of commercial and financial success are just a few ways people have described Daymond John. Over the last 20 years, Daymond has evolved from one of the most successful fashion icons of his generation to one of the most sought after branding experts, business, and motivational speakers in the country.


Daymond's creative vision and strong knowledge of the marketplace helped him create one of the most iconic fashion brands in recent years. FUBU, standing for "For Us By Us", represented a lifestyle that was neglected by other clothing companies. Realizing this need in the marketplace, Daymond created the untapped urban apparel space and laid the groundwork for other companies to compete in this newly established market.






Daymond grew up in the community of Hollis, Queens, quickly becoming known as the birthplace of the new genre of music called Hip-Hop, with acts like RUN DMC and Salt-N-Peppa rapidly making names for themselves. Being surrounded in this influential neighborhood helped spur the inspiration for his clothing line that would ultimately change the fashion world.


His first foray into the apparel market came when he wanted a tie-top hat he had seen in a popular music video but could not find one for a good price. With the sewing skills he had learned from his mother, Daymond started making the hats for himself and his friends. Realizing he was on to something, Daymond made a sizeable order of the tie-top hats, sold them on the streets of Queens one day, and made $800 in just a few hours. There was a buzz about Daymond's products that simply could not be ignored.






Based on that early success, Daymond recruited some of his neighborhood friends and FUBU was born. They created a distinctive logo and began sewing the FUBU logo on all sorts of apparel, including hockey jerseys, sweatshirts and t-shirts. The brand hit a tipping point when Daymond convinced Hollis native and Hip-Hop superstar, LL Cool J, to wear FUBU for a promotional campaign. This was the catalyst behind the entire Hip-Hop community supporting the new brand and instantly giving it credibility. In need of start-up capital to keep up with demand, Daymond and his mother mortgaged the home they collectively owned for $100,000. Soon, the home was turned into a makeshift factory and office space.






FUBU gained even more nationwide exposure when Daymond and his partners traveled to the industry trade show Magic in Las Vegas. Despite not being able to afford a booth at the event, the FUBU team showed buyers the distinctively cut, vibrantly colored sportswear in their hotel room. The company came back to Queens with over $300,000 worth of orders. FUBU soon had a contract with the New York City-based department store chain Macy's, and it began expanding its line to include jeans and outerwear. A distribution deal with Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung allowed their designs to be manufactured and delivered on a massive scale. With the brand transcending into the mainstream markets, FUBU recorded annual sales of $350 million, placing it in the same stratosphere as designer sportswear labels such as Donna Karan New York and Tommy Hilfiger.






In 2009, John joined the cast of the ABC entrepreneurial business show, Shark Tank, produced by acclaimed TV producer Mark Burnett. As one of the "Sharks", Daymond and four other prominent executives listen to business pitches from everyday people hoping to launch their company or product to new heights. Investing his own money in every project, Daymond becomes partners with the entrepreneurs helping turn their dreams into a reality. Millions of viewers tune into the show as Daymond demonstrates his marketing prowess and entrepreneurial insights.


Due to the increasing amount of requests from major companies, Shark Branding was formed to provide companies with the marketing insights that have made Daymond's companies successful over the years. The firm consults companies on innovative strategies to connect with their consumers more effectively by associating with the world's most influential celebrities, musicians, and personalities. Whether it's activating a celebrity endorsement or integrating product in a music video, companies rely on Shark Branding to utilize Daymond's contacts and relationships to produce real results and sales.






Daymond entered the literary world with his first book Display of Power: How FUBU Changed A World Of Fashion, Branding And Lifestyle which tells the story of his awe inspiring journey and provides a roadmap for those who aspire to succeed in business and in life. Daymond followed up his with his second book, The Brand Within: How We Brand Ourselves, From Birth To The Boardroom, which examines the loyal relationships companies seek to establish with the public by attaching celebrities to their brands and the instantaneous impulses consumers exhibit when purchasing a product. Drawing on his cutting edge experiences in the fashion business, as well as his hard-won insights developed as a sought-after marketing consultant to trendsetters and tastemakers, the author argues that branding relationships have now seeped into every aspect of our lives.






In recognition of his contributions to fashion and the face of American business, Daymond has been celebrated with some of the most prestigious awards including: Brandweek Marketer of the Year, the Advertising Age Marketing 1000 Award for Outstanding Ad Campaign, Crain's Business of New York Forty Under Forty Award, and Ernst & Young's New York Entrepreneur of the Year Award.







Kyle Phoenix

Email: kylephoenixshow@gmail.com

Website: http://kylephoenix.com/

Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/

Amazon.com: simply type in Kyle Phoenix for over 28 paperback and digital books!

Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter!

Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast


Why Successful People Leave Their Loser Friends Behind, on The Kyle Phoenix Blog















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We all want to be amazing. We all want to be successful, happy, and regarded as important figures in our fields. I am sure that you’ve heard all of the keys to success before: planning, hard work, perseverance, etc.




But today we are going to look at the one factor that will likely make or break your success:the people you surround yourself with.




“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn







Want to be Amazing? Surround Yourself with Amazing People




The Make or Break List




A good friend of mine once told me of a man he knows who brought himself up from rags to riches. Living paycheck to paycheck was a luxury for this man, and he decided that he was tired of being trapped by his own life. The poor man looked around at his friends, and noticed that one of them – who wasn’t particularly smart or more talented – had become quite wealthy. He asked this man how he accrued this wealth, how he was able to become a millionaire. The wealthy man’s response was simple: “keep the right company.”




The man took that advice to heart. He quickly noticed that all of the other friends he had hated hard work and had no desire to improve themselves. So he sought out new friends, he went around to conventions and seminars to connect with people who had made something of themselves. After he had completely replaced the people in his network, he decided to make a list. This list was simple. It had a column for people who would improve his life, and a column for people who would drag him down.




If someone could improve his life, he spent as much time around them as possible. If someone could drag him down, he never spent more than five minutes around them. After following his “make or break” list, the man was able to become a millionaire within three years.







No One does it Alone







The five-minute rule may be a little extreme, but there is an important lesson to learn from it: if you surround yourself with positive people who build you up, the sky is the limit.




There is an ideal in our society of the “self-made” man – a man who is able to find success through his own efforts. Now, don’t get me wrong, success does require an immense amount of determination and personal grit. However, success also depends on the ability to connect with people who have already made it.




There was once a man named Ernest Hemingway. If you aren’t familiar with Ernest Hemingway, he was one of the greatest American writers of all time. Even a great writer like Hemingway didn’t succeed on his own. He worked at a newspaper where his boss – a writer named Sherwood Anderson – helped him get his first novel published. Hemingway then connected with other no-name writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.




This community of great writers helped to influence his style, success, and drove him to write every single day and become one of the greatest authors of his generation.




Hemingway is a testament to the fact that innate talent alone does not equal success. It’s hard to keep up a strict schedule to perfect your craft or improve yourself if you don’t have people around you with similar interests. Your network – your five key people – will determine the way you think, the way you act, and the way you approach your life goals.







Three Essential People




A mentor once told me that no matter how many close people you have in your network, if you want to be truly great, you must have three essential people in your life at all times:
A person who is older and more successful than you to learn from
A person who is equal to you to exchange ideas with
A person below you to coach and keep you energized




A great figure of history who embodied this principle was Aristotle. Aristotle was one of the greatest minds to ever grace this beautiful Earth, but this was only so because he was constantly challenging himself and working to refine his talents. He exchanged ideas with other Greek philosophers in the “Academy,” learned from his mentor Plato, and taught a young boy named Alexander…who would later become “Alexander the Great.”











Every great person was, is, or will be successful because of the company he or she keeps. They will make an impact because of a successful network of driven peers who provide both inspiration and healthy competition.




If you want to be remarkable, you must constantlychallenge yourself and surround yourself with remarkable people. So think about what your goals are, and take a look around you. Do you need to write a “make or break” list?







Do you have the kind of people who are going to lead you tolive the life of your dreams?




“Don’t join an easy crowd. Go where the expectations and the demands to perform and achieve are high.” – Jim Rohn


Strive to be better. Strive to be more. Strive to be amazing.


Enjoy!

Kyle Phoenix

Email: kylephoenixshow@gmail.com

Amazon.com: Type in Kyle Phoenix for the Full Catalog of Kyle Phoenix books

Website: http://kylephoenix.com/

Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012

Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on FaceBook or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast onhttp://kylephoenix.com/

Entrepreneurship: 10 Business Tips from Robert Herjavec of Shark Tank









What is the best investment you have made to date on Shark Tank ?
Chordbuddy comes to mind – great guy and an even better investment – product has found a niche and we have had spectacular growth.

Have there been any deals that you had wish that you made in hindsight? Any investment that you wish you hadn't made?
No – my life has no rear view mirror – constant forward momentum. You can't change the past.

Any service/product that you wish you had invented yourself?
No – I'm not a big believer in invention - I have lots of ideas, but the magic is not in the creation of ideas – it's in the execution of the plan.

Is there anything that has surprised you over the season in terms of the pitches?
People know us – they study us – they are becoming more astute – we have to elevate our game – not only with the pitchers but also against the other Sharks.

Is it possible that someone can have a great idea, but fail in the tank because they can't pitch?
Yes – happens all the time. A great business is a mixture of the right entrepreneur, product, execution and so on. You can't have one without the other – a great idea without a great entrepreneur is not a business – it is simply potential.

What's your best advice on how to pitch?
Get us interested (quickly) – bored Sharks make snap decisions – and not always in your favor. Once you have us interested – know your numbers.

Do you have to be memorable to make a good pitch?
No – but you have to be able to make an impact while you are in front of us.

What's the most important lesson an entrepreneur can learn by watching what goes down in the Tank?
If the 6 of us can be successful, anyone can – and more importantly any business, in any field can be a great business – look at the varied set of products and services people come to us with.

What's been the most memorable part of being on the show for you?
Inspiring others – when I was growing up being in business was not cool. I think Shark Tank is making business cool in our own small way – and of course, as a boring old computer guy, I am appreciative that my name and cool would ever be used in the same sentence.


1. What makes a good business idea great?
There are lots of good ideas but most great business are built on better execution of an existing idea. I am not a big believer in "create a better idea and the world beats a path to your door."


2. What do you think are the traits of a great entrepreneur?
Many – but most important is the ability to be relentless as the sand shifts around you. I always say "quick is good – relentless is better."





3. How do I know if there's a real need for my product or service?
Ask the only people who matter – paying customers – emphasis on the word paying. RIM (the makers of Blackberry ) never develop a new product until they have a client who will pay for it.





4. What are the most important first steps a new entrepreneur should take?
Find a customer!





5. How do you create a business plan that works?
People spend way too much on a business plan. When you start – it is important to have vision but a business plan is theory and when you are starting there is very little room for theory. At the beginning, any plan beyond the next quarter is a dream; after you get bigger the next quarter becomes the next 2 and so on. As you grow, size gives you some predictability.





6. Where can I get help creating a business plan?
Spend less time on your plan and find more time talking to people who will actually buy your product. I never had a business plan for my first four businesses.





7. How do you compete against the big guys?
The smaller you are the more laser-like your focus needs to be. A single man cannot defeat an army unless he finds their weakness and attacks them at that point one on one.





8. How do you build a great team?
Lots of ways – but the first thing is be a great leader. People naturally want to be lead and not managed. Look in the mirror – are you the one who can lead?





9. What makes an investor put their money into a deal?
A great probability of a healthy return on the capital – and the likelihood of capital being returned (element of risk ).





10. How do I find investors and business partners and what's most important in my presentation?
First step make sure you need investment – or do you simply need a loan. Most people that want an investment simply need a loan – keep in mind if a bank will not give you a loan – you are going to have a hard time with investors also. They are out there – this is the greatest time in history of concentration of investment capital in cash. Build a great business – everything else flows from that.






Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@gmail.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/
Amazon.com: simply type in Kyle Phoenix for over 28 paperback and digital books!
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter!
Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast

Entrepreneurship: Barbara Corcoran from Shark Tank Q & A











1. What makes a good business idea great?
If your business idea clearly answers a need in the marketplace, it's probably a good idea. If the need is already being met by well-entrenched competitors, it can still be a good idea if it's a new, cheaper or more clever way of doing it.


2. What do you think are the traits of a great entrepreneur?
Every great entrepreneur is passionate about being successful. They are not just passionate about their business idea, but have enough passion to weather all the obstacles and see things through to the finish line. When Erin Whalen of Grease Monkey Wipes (Season 1) confidently said to fellow Shark Robert Herjavec and me, "I promise if you partner with me I will not let you down! I will make this work, I promise!" she had enough passion in her plea to send legions of soldiers right off a cliff. Robert and I believed her and handed her our cash! Every great entrepreneur is extremely pushy. Cactus Jack, the wild inventor of the Body Jac exercise machine (Season 1), was a natural born salesman. He was unbelievably annoying but proved a superstar dealmaker. I've learned that all great entrepreneurs are pushy people and they always deliver.





3. How do I know if there's a real need for my product or service?
Make a list of every product out there already answering the need and be super critical as to whether yours is a better mousetrap. Also ask your family, friends and enemies if they would buy it and what they would readily pay.





4. What are the most important first steps a new entrepreneur should take?
Be clear about what's most important. Figure out what it will cost to produce your product or service, what you can sell it for and to whom.





5. How do you create a business plan that works?
For most people a lengthy business plan is virtually useless because you need to change it constantly in response to things outside your control. The simplest form of a business plan is just a list of what's most important to attend to and what's not. I do much better imagining exactly what I want my business to look like once I'm successful. It's a daydream in living color. Then I make a simple "to do" list of what's most important to make my dream a reality.





6. Where can I get help creating a business plan?
Sit down and write out a clear picture of what your product or service is, what it will cost, what it will sell for and who will buy it. Then put down on paper the concrete steps you'll need to take to bring it to fruition. After that you can ask your friends and enemies to honestly critique the plan and share with you what's unclear, what makes no sense and what's missing.





7. How do you compete against the big guys?
The big guys usually have the corner on money, but remember the little guy always has the corner on creativity. If you can position yourself as an expert in your marketplace early on, you'll get the leg up on all of your competitors right away. I created market surveys on apartment sales in Manhattan to grab the attention of the press and make the Corcoran Group appear much bigger than it was. The media is always hungry for statistics, so creating your own market reports and distributing them will soon have the press calling you instead of you running after them for PR. And if you can steal the limelight, you'll steal the market share.





8. How do you build a great team?
Always choose attitude over experience! When I hire people I make a habit of never looking at their resume because most people spend most of their life in the wrong job. I never hire complainers or excuse makers because they'll find a way within my company to do more of the same. People with a can-do attitude are a pleasure to work with. Positive people are willing to learn, eager to try and somehow find the solution to anything they don't already know. They're always great team players, and teams build big businesses, not individuals.





9. What makes an investor put their money into a deal?
My most important criteria when making the decision to invest are: 1) Do I trust the individual? and 2) Do they have the fire in their belly to bring the business to the finish line?





10. How do I find investors and business partners and what's most important in my presentation?
Come on Shark Tank and give us your pitch! Make sure you can sell your product, because if you as the head of the company can't sell it, who will? Also be sure you're ready to answer the two key questions too many of the entrepreneurs who come on the show can't: 1) What will you do with my money? and 2) How will I get my investment back?

Barbara Corcoran is a self-made business baroness. Founder of the Corcoran Group, New York's premier real estate company, Corcoran is one of the most powerful brokers in the nation.


Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@gmail.com
Website: http://kylephoenix.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/
Amazon.com: simply type in Kyle Phoenix for over 28 paperback and digital books!
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter!
Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast





Why Chinese Restaurants In Black and Latinos Communities Make Millionaires








Income is partially based on how many people are served by what you do. If you work say in an office and your work serves ten people above and around you, your salary is proportional to that multiple. If however you're say George Clooney and you're in a movie, you're paid by how many people that product serves---several million people watching the movie. Or say you're an inventor or a writer, you get paid multiples every time someone uses or purchases your created product. Unfortunately Westernized school systems don't teach this initially that it's not totally what you do, it's how many people partake of your work/service as a product (something you get a cut of) that determines financial outcome.






Then you have to consider the field you go into, historically people of color tend not to go into work fields that are populated A) By money and; B) By more than just themselves. We tend to work with other people of color thereby they tend to have less resources to pass us for our productivity (think non-profits and social services). Other cultures teach and foster their children to go into sectors that have the highest product ratio for profit (receiving licensing, franchising, royalties) and highest ranges of business profit (real estate, banking, law, finance) regardless of race or "liking" the work. Which is why Koreans focus on Chinese restaurants in neighborhoods that don't look like them---they're not thinking of it from a racial lens, they're looking at a large number of customers, buying a product continuously at a high mark up, in a constant business (food) and then re-investing the profits into other business, franchises, real estate or direct education for their children.



If you run a Chinese restaurant for 20 years, Ivy League educate your children in finance and then are able to fund them in an internet start up---you've jumped the entire family to wealth in two generations while everyone is still alive to enjoy it. This pattern is being replicated by other ethnicities and cultures such as Pakistanis, other Asians, Eastern Indians, etc. What they're doing is considering business from a different model set.




One, they're not looking at having a stable job but instead a stable business. That means you have to master a system regardless of whether or not it likes or accepts you. In the early 1900s Asians petitioned the government to be seen as "White" in racial classification, since physically following the letter of the law with racism, they were. Instead they were sub-categorized into another group and denied the right to have as many women enter America as men and the men were subjected to the Jim Crow/miscegenation laws against procreation. (The 1875 Page Act that was made a law by Congress.) The men could come here to work but they were detracted from settling or propagating into families. The workaround they were able to establish was that Asians were able to do the businesses that Whites didn't want to do---such as laundromats, cooking service businesses, domestics. It became a cultural ideology to focus on the business for profit, not for identity. That the outcome, the profit, was more important than the joy or thrill of individual satisfaction.




Contradictorily, Blacks and Latinos born here in America have assimilated to the projection of White people. Essentially we who are not like them, try very hard to think like them, without ever looking closely at what works and what doesn't work. The concept of yes, banks and money institutions not giving loans to minorities isn't held and looked squarely at and then the workaround of how other ethnicities overcome this. We tend to see the entirety of the world's experiences through racism, good or bad but never pursue the five other reasons that might exist (like a jacked up or lack of a business plan) or alternative ways communities can amass money on limited budgets.




The concept of say a sous sous (which was so widely done in Caribbean, Asian, Indian, etc cultures that the IRS has to recognize it as income) which is essentially say 52 people put in $100 a week for 52 weeks. Each week, one person randomly is picked to receive the $5200, guaranteeing everyone a payday of $5200 a year. It becomes guaranteed savings. However assimilation into a White dominated culture has also come with ingrained feelings of suspicion and an inability to trust financially educated people of one's own race. We've adopted racism against people who look like us, that other cultures don't automatically have. The above concept struck some of you readers as impossible to do with Black or Latino people and that thought train is ingrained racism. When you judge people, based on race, as inferior to being able to do something is racism. How often do you project racism onto other people of color following that definition?






What we're really seeing are minorities operating outside of or around racism within a structure that has racialized psychology. I can prove it! Imagine a Black family starting a pizza parlor, would the pizza be good? Would you go to an Italian restaurant owned by a Black family with entirely Black staff? How about a soul food or Jewish restaurant owned by Latinos? The contradictions that you felt and maybe had to overcome to explore---if the food was good---the if is racism. We never ask the race/ethnicity of the owners of Chinese restaurants because we exclude them outside of our racialized thinking. (Have you considered that it states it's Chinese food but it's not Chinese food? No, but racism in America, used to their advantage, allows Asian people to stand there and serve food, called Chinese food. They racially look Chinese enough to us so we accept that they must be Chinese and skilled at making this food. They're not even Chinese and they're watching us make a racialized gaffe to their profit! Now can you see how they might see you in your neighborhood as less educated as well as foolish?)




How do we change this? How do we think differently than we've learned how to over centuries, over multiple generations? We have to start not simply looking for jobs that guarantee declining pay. Job security no longer exists, perhaps it never truly has for people of color but when we explore entrepreneurship we have to consider mass appeal. We have to look at businesses not simply from our own community needs but other communities, the worlds' needs. As I even design this blog, the television show, podcasts, I get emails and suggestions from around the world. What started out several years ago as a local design of information for men of color has expanded to men of color around the world. I'm constantly looking at how to universalize my work, how to create multiple access points for other cultures and then consider how to re-funnel the profits back into communities that need it or my own social circle.




I learned from the best, the Chinese restaurants, the hundreds of them in Harlem, Washington Heights, the Upper West Side, Inwood, open from 11am to 12 midnight frying chicken and french fries and cooking combinations of food that isn't even Chinese in origin, (it's Americanized food that was created in the 1950s.) Next time you're in a Chinese food restaurant look at and maybe even calculate their business model---how much does a handful of rice cost, a few ounces of chicken, the Styrofoam container, the menus, the mark-up? Ask them some questions. If we understood this natural business franchise that is declaring millions, but ultimately manifesting billions in profit, direct and indirectly over generations, we could solve a lot of the problems the Black and Latino community have found to be intractable. This might even hold the answer to why Black and Latino non-profits are not sustainable.










Thank you,

Kyle Phoenix

Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com

Website: http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012

Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on FaceBook or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/