After I read this the following story on John Chow’s site I new I had to share it here. I am not going to ruin it by telling you what the article is about because reading is fundamental for all, but it is a good read. It was guest blogged by a person who did not leave their name, so at the moment Mr. Chow gets the credit. Check it out!

One day, an expert in time management was speaking to a group of business students and, to drive home a point, used an illustration those students will never forget. As he stood in front of the group of high powered overachievers he said, “Okay, time for a quiz.”

He pulled out a one-gallon, wide-mouthed jar and set it on the table in front of him. Then he produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, “Is this jar full?”

Everyone in the class said, “Yes.”

“Really?”, he replied. He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. He dumped some gravel in and shook the jar causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the space between the big rocks.

He asked the group once more, “Is the jar full now?”

By this time, the class was on to him. “Probably not”, one of them answered.

“Good!”, he replied. He reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in the jar and it went into all of the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked the question, “Is this jar full?”

“No!”, the class shouted.

Once again he said, “Good.” He grabbed a pitcher of water and poured it into the jar until the jar was filled to the brim. Then he looked at the class and asked, “What is the point of this illustration?”

One eager beaver raised his hand and said, “The point is: no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard you can always fit some more things into it!”

“No”, the speaker replied, “that’s not the point. The truth this illustration teaches us is: If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all.” What are the ‘big rocks’ in your life? Your children; your loved ones; your education; your dreams; a worthy cause; teaching or mentoring others; doing things that you love; time for yourself; your health; your significant other.

Remember to put these BIG ROCKS in first or you’ll never get them in at all. If you sweat the little stuff (the gravel, the sand), then you’ll fill your life with little things you worry about that don’t really matter, and you’ll never have the real quality time you need to spend on the big, important stuff (the big rocks). So, tonight, or in the morning, when you are reflecting on this short story, ask yourself this question: What are the ‘big rocks’ in my life? Then, put those in your jar first.

Alternative ending

…. Then he grabbed a pitcher of beer and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to the brim. Then he looked up at the class and asked, “What is the point of this illustration ?”

One eager beaver raised his hand and said, “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, there is always room for beer !”

SOURCE

I took a real look at beating this recession a ways back and now I aim to show you why now is the perfect time to reassess your position in it. If you have the ingenuity to supply a demand, you need not fear the big bad CNN economic forecasts.

Traditional schooling rants behind us, the number one reason why people are struggling right now is a lack of, as the old folks called it, gumption. Hustle, ambition, fire-in-your-belly, hunger pains–whatever name you choose to use to describe it, we have become complacent with the security of our day to day jobs and lost the adventurousness that our pioneers almost completely relied on to make their way. What I’m getting at is that we all need to look at how things are now and think of new ways to improve our situations–even if we’re already employed.

The company man

There is nothing wrong with working your way up into the upper echelons of a company if you so choose to; there are many benefits with this action (such as tenure with the company and translatable experience) that to the naked eye is appealing. I get it, I promise I do. I just hated conversing with a co-worker who’d been there for 6, 12, 20 years and was no closer to some degree of ownership of the company than when he’d started.

He’d happily rattle off all the privileges he’s received (mostly accrued vacation and company car usage) and all the Christmas parties he’s attended and then say that if I were there long enough, I’d get to do the same. And then he’d notice my blank look and ask, “How do you like that, eh? WAY better than your last employer, right?” To which I’d reply, “How about stock options and possible partnership/directorship/presidency” and get a blank stare back in return. Yeah, I’m sure it’s great being a company  man in a company that isn’t yours  to begin with.

That’s what turned me off from doing more than temporarily working for someone else: your share will never be comparable; the game is nepotistic and unless you have a real relationship with the powers that be, your upward movement is severely limited.

The truth behind a hustle

I’ve seen a lot of people get hung up on the idea of side hustles; they feel like they don’t have either the time or  money required to set one up. Everyone has time for a side hustle and it boils down to if you have the heart to make it a priority. If time is your issue then go to bed later or wake up earlier. Get on it during your lunch break or instead of that two hour block of “American Idol”.  If it’s money, my man Freeman has low cost and free hustles you can start today to fund your main side hustle. There is no excuse not to have a side hustle going and what better place than here and what better time than now to get that cracking?

A rut is only for those that choose to get stuck in it. Reassess your situation and strategize ways to improve it. I don’t care if you’re Bill Gates, there are always way to grow and with as many people down on their luck as there are, the hustler spirit needs to thrive like never before. Go get you some.

What’s your side hustle and re(assess)ion tip?

This is a guest post from my man, J. Hustle of The Hustlers Manual. I thought it was a great example of how to get your hustle on online, so give it a try and comment. Heres his Craigslist Cashflow System

Ease: Simple
Skills Need: Negotiating
Amount of Start up: Varies

One of my favorite hustles is to flip items on Craigslist and Ebay. What I did was I signed up for an invite to Google Voice way back when it was called Grand Central. For those of you who don’t know Grand Central is a really cool service that gives you a completely different phone number that is linked to your actual cell number. When someone calls your Grand Central number is automatically redirects the call to your phone without having to give out your phone number. This will come in handy later.

Let me explain to you what craigslist is. Craigslist is a community type of message board where people in your area can post up a variety of different things. You can find collectibles, jobs, clothing, to even love on craigslist (just to name a few). Another usefully site for this hustle is Ebay. This is where you will post your treasure and exchange them for cash. The downside to Ebay is the fees associated with using the site, but the good side is you will almost always get closer to retail price on the item your selling.

For our purposes we will be using the electronics or cell phones section of craigslist. What I like to do is make a generic email/ text and contact anyone who is selling a popular phone, I ask them how much there selling the item for and the condition. You leave them your Grand Central number in case you don’t want to give out your real phone number ( you can easily disconnect at a later time). At the same time you cross reference how much that same item is going for on ebay. You search until you find a person willing to sell a phone for a decent price that will leave you with a nice profit margin. After you purchase the phone from the person on craiglist, you list it on ebay (or if you got it for a really good price list it back on craiglist ). Then just wait for the flip to occur.

The profit margins on this type of flip highly depend on your negotiating skills. The better the price you get it for the more money you make. What I found is when dealing with Craigslist 80% of the people selling something are desperate for cash. This leaves room for getting great prices on some normally expensive stuff. Also, if you do your research on fixing broken screen you can make a lot of money buying people broken macs, iphone, laptops, and blackberries. Typically the average profit I made when doing this hustle was about 50% – 60% of what I spent. For example, I bought an Iphone from someone on craiglist for $140 (8gb 3G). Then I did some research on how to unlock it to other carriers (another story) and when i sold it I managed to get $240 for it. Since the iphone is so popular the turn around time was only 1 and 1/2 days.. So lets do the math:

sold for $240

brought for $140

leaving me with a profit of $100.

You may not think $100 profit is a lot but imagine if you do 3 – 4 of these a week. That’s $400 dollars extra money you can pocket per week. Besides lets take a look at the work associated with this hustle….. NONE

Courtesy of www.thehustlersmanual.com

I will admit that I when I first started, I was clueless to the whole blogging thing. I mean before my blog, the only time I wrote consistantly was either for lab reports or research papers. It takes some effort (more than I anticipated) to be able to write interesting and informative articles for you guys. Which brings me to the topic of RISK.

I happened to check out a post today on a blog a frequent. In this blog he talks about risk, how it helped him out, and not to fear it. I just want to piggie-back off of a few things he said about risk.

Risk is important in the business world, but managing that risk is more important. Everyday people are faced with different sets of risk, yet how they manage them is what seperates the successful from the average joe. I will use myself and my blog as an example. This blog represents a risk (although small its still a risk) for me. I am taking a risk by letting the world observe as I post excerpts of my life online.

There is a large chance that it will not be successful and will fade into obscurity like so many do. Yet realizing this from the start greatly helps in diminishing that outcome. By pointing out what area’s others have failed in and preparing myself for those outcomes I can reduce the amount of risk I deal with.

Risk literally makes and breaks individuals daily. There are those of panic and flee when in the presence of risk and those who manage it to work for them. So next time a “Risky” situation confronts you, do not panic. Stay calm and prepare for the problems that MAY occur. Decide what actually is that makes the situation risky and do you best to plan ahead.

This concept comes from my upcoming book Be Diagonal and like this earlier topic it was important enough that I wanted to touch on it a bit before the release. In general, every day life I’ve come across that there are three distinct levels of thinking associated to successful people and each is conditioned to the financial state that you’re in currently. Each tier, or “bucket” as I’m prone to calling it, encompasses a section of yourself and to make it from one to the other is a very big deal considering some spend their entire life in the first one.  This will be a quick synopsis of the idea because I don’t want to spoil the chapter for you when you purchase the book.

The $1 Bucket

The $1 bucket is the most common bucket to start off in and unless you’re born into a wealthy family, this is the one you’ll be familiar with from go. Every self-made million and billionaire you’ll come across came from a $1 bucket mentality and they’re usually proud of it as it shows the ambition and drive they had to get where they are today. Whether it be a passion they had or a niche they saw easy enough to exploit, they ran the initial gauntlet until they were able to tip the bucket over into the…

The $100k Bucket

The 100k Bucket is the one you’re in when you’ve proven to not only yourself but the world that what you’re doing is profitable and sustaining. You’re seeing in excess of $100k yearly your mindset now is to expand on your operations to make it to the next bucket by all ethical means necessary. This phase is one of constant transition; you’re still a youngin’ in the game and picking up all the information you can to help better your understanding of what it will take to move into the next bucket is what you’re on. Now, you can begin to diversify your portfolio a bit to further flip your chips. As I’ve said before, it’s all a game of maintains and breakthroughs; you keep your house money straight while creating other avenues to make you more money.

The $1M Bucket

This is as big as your thinking gets, and in this bucket you will find a culmination of the lessons learned from the two buckets before it as well as a unique outlook stemming from reaching this lofty plateau. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to speak with a millionaire, you will see a sense of calm about them (even if their personality is a frantic one) that translates into “I can make this again if need be so I won’t sweat the details”. You see, money isn’t a magical substance or a gift given by the Greek gods of wealth; it is the return on providing a useful product or service and the $1M bucket guys have learned how to masterfully create and distribute something that others would pay for in a major way.

Which bucket are you in and what ways can you think of for moving to the next?

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on my site, World Domination with Arthur Pledger discussing the effects of time and effort over talent and natural ability. No creature on the planet serves as a physical embodiment of this concept more than the oyster.

The oyster is one of the few animals able to produce value using the uninspired material around it (see also the silkworm and the honeybee). Far from being an animal of grace and beauty, oysters are bivalve mollusks with an irregularly shaped shell, living attached to rocks, other shells, or on the ocean bottom. They have no means of locomotion, moving only when physically disturbed by other creatures or by wave action. Not the type of creature that one would expect is capable of producing some of the most highly valued jewels on the planet. But by investing time and energy, seemingly worthless materials are transformed into goods unlike anything else in nature.

As a metaphor for the creation of a new company or product, every idea you have starts out like a grain of sand; worthless, minuscule, and almost invisible. It is only after nurturing the idea does it slowly transform from a grain of sand into a highly valued pearl. Days and weeks may pass without any visible progress. Massive amounts of energy may be expended with little sign of advancement. It is, however, only with dedication, time, and discipline are you able to cultivate anything of value.

Pearls cannot be rushed, they cannot be “patched together” and they cannot be replicated. Oftentimes, new entrepreneurs and inventors will pounce upon a new idea, patch together a bunch of mismatched material or team members, and push the end result into the market, only to watch it fail. In their rush to make millions, they actually end up sabotaging their efforts and failing in market. Consumers want a quality product that has been properly cultivated and polished to perfection.

Like the oyster, you might not be the most beautiful of academic minds. You might not have the best associations or a team of PhDs helping you with product development or the navigation of world financial markets. But like in the case of the ugly oyster, time and effort trumps talent. The human mind has the same transformative capability as the oyster. By taking your everyday ideas and material, you too can create something of inspired beauty and value. No matter who you are, or where you are in life and academic skill, treat every idea that you come up with like a grain of sand within an oyster shell. Both you and your ideas have the ability to grow and develop into something far more valuable than its origins.

Thanks,

Arthur Pledger

http://arthurpledger.com

This post is the Block Standard Entry into my girl Kiesha Easley’s website contest at We Blog Better. Check her out here!

So the free eBook I promised all my subscribers at World Domination is ready and being read by hundreds of my subscribers everywhere. Since the Block Standard is contributing to my success, I figured I would give back by offering all Block Standard readers a free copy.

Download using Zshare here.

You can download and keep this book, and its yours to share as you wish. Master your mind, become successful, and live the good life.

Just my way of saying thanks for the support!

I love to see brand extensions that make sense! Alicia Keys x Native Instruments is a good look on so many levels. For the producers, NI has always been associated with quality production tools and one thing that we need in the digital age is an abundance of new and interesting sounds. Another way that this is awesome to me is it opens up the doors for more artists to work with music software companies to license their likeness on pieces that will not only make tons of money but help usher in better quality music. I can’t wait to get a copy of this so I can check it out from a firsthand experience.

Well it is the third month of the New Year, a time where most new year’s resolutions are hitting their plateau and will begin to taper off sooner than later. My readers all know that part of my resolution was to continue updating my blog on a consistent basis and I feel I have been holding true to that for the most part.

But for others they are beginning to show the symptoms of a failed resolution: exhaustion from a workout schedule they cannot keep, starvation from an extreme diet, or boredom from updating a blog that seems to have not as many readers as expected (this has to hit home for some).

The truth is that within any new project, task, or job you will get burn out at some point in time. Some can hold off this phenomenon for a while but it will catch up to them. Yet, instead of quitting all together, just take a break. Maybe a day, maybe a week, but just take some time to yourself and set a date to start back up again. So many great ideas have been lost in time due to people burning themselves out and quitting.

Anything that you put your hard work and effort into is going to take some time to develop into an actual entity. Knowing this can greatly help a project because you will not be afraid when things do not happen “overnight” like you may have wished. The greatest business minds that the world has seen did not panic when things did not happen as soon as predicted. Nor did they panic if they failed a few times before having measurable success.

We all know about John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie and the success each has had with the business ventures. We know of the horizontal and vertical integration techniques they used as well as the development of the “Corporate Merger”. But what most do not know is the number of FAILED businesses each had before they had success. Imagine if each of these men (who have been called by some as the people solely responsible for jumpstarting the American economy as we know it) had quit after every time they failed. Needless to say the world would be a different place.

We are taught all our lives to FEAR failure, run from it and stay as far away as possible. This couldn’t be any further from the truth. Failure can (and SHOULD) be used as a tool to learn from, an object of growth. Only through failure can we learn from our own personal mistakes and keep our business as well as ourselves growing with the times. Take this quote from Henry Ford to heart, it sums up just about everything I said in this article in one simple line.

“Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.” (Henry Ford)

Now sit back and think; do you have any projects that you are burning yourself out on? Do you have a great idea but are scared of failure? Who knows what that idea may grow into if you just stick with it.

There was a time in high school when I considered joining the track team–and didn’t. I knew I was fast enough of a runner to make varsity, one of my best (and one of the fastest runners in the school) friends was on the team already and in foot races I could best him with ease. I’d been watching the Olympics for years and knew all of the rules and regulations for my two favorite events (the 200 and 400 meter dash) and still never made the effort to join the team. I look back at it now and don’t regret my decision as much as I know just how good I could have been.  I think many of us share that same experience with our career choices, personal options and hustle possibilities without actually getting to the root of the problem: we fear the consequences of being great.

Not quite Freud but…

We have a tendency to talk ourselves out of chances to see and do something better because it’s foreign and being the creatures of habit we are, we would rather continue down the road we’ve been on already than take a detour that might not pan out a few miles later. We’ve been conditioned to stay the risk and avoid the calamitous by being good little boys and girls; I say you’ll never grow as a person, really and truly GROW, until you explore further than what just works. Calculated risk works better than a blind eye of course but sometimes you have to just put faith in yourself rather than the formula.

Promote your inner track star

I’ve been told time and again that I have a good blog and used to humbly say “thank you” while transitioning the conversation away from the topic. It wasn’t even that I was shy to the praise given; I knew I had much more than simply “good” could indicate and someone else’s opinion of it, while nice to hear, didn’t reflect the monstrous amount of desire to get better gained each time I heard it. How was I to get better at blogging? By more blogging? Not exactly. I decided during that conversation (a real conversation roughly 4 months back when I was doing the 10Facets thing) that I would steer away from the “good” topics that you’d see populate all of the mainstream motivation speakers and author’s sites. Gone would be the generalized accounts meant to inspire as wide a demographic range as possible and in it’s wake would be my own views without apology and inviting rebuttal from readers.

Now, I have no qualms with lacing up my shoes and burning down any track that comes my way. Self doubt is tossed out the window and I am the master of my abilities. Great doesn’t equal conceited or condescending either, it’s just knowing what you’re capable of right now and knowing what you want to be capable of later and working towards it. Great is a journey, a progression that should be, but often isn’t, natural. Great is the kind of motivating feelings that have you up at 4:14am writing a new blog post about being great because you feel great enough to do it.

I’m not the greatest writer, editor, speaker, author, person or personality alive but I am great for the simple fact that I know what I talk about is self-evident and true to my experiences. I try to motivate others through motivating myself and pride myself on that. You might see an expletive on occasion but that is all a part of my greatness!

So the question now is what makes you so great?