Kapil's Take

What is that one thing that will have the largest impact in your business. That one thing that will have the largest impact on your profit and that one thing that will get you out of a financial crisis?

Why am I so concerned about profits and money making. Well that is THE reason why businesses exists – to make profit. Sure, ideologically businesses are there to provide services, products and serve its customers. But how many businesses do you see in existence that provide all kinds of great products and service and make their customers happy and do not make any profit? The real answer is NONE!

If you are thinking that there some companies who provide great products and services but aren’t making profits, then its either a temporary situation that the business is in, or if they maintain this trend, they will soon go out of business. If however, it is neither of the cases then that business is,..well…out of business already.

Profit is the juice, the fuel, the gas, the food, the energy, the chi, the life force that keeps businesses operating. The book definition of profit is Income minus expenses, and to maintain a positive profit(i.e. NOT loss), which is also something that we are actually interested in, you need to have income more than expenses.

So what is that one thing that has the largest impact on profits? The answer is SALES, SALES, SALES and more SALES.

Let’s face it, you can reduce your expenses as much as possible, streamline the crap out of your business, but if you are falling short on SELLING, then you are in trouble. The only way to get your business out of a financial crisis, is to sell yourself out of one – and that is the bottom line!

I just want to say sorry to all my readers and subscribers. Comments that were posted on my blog by you folks were accidentally removed. I keep getting spam comments from people and in order to get rid of those I wrote a script and without realizing I deleted all the legitimate comments on my site. I’m pretty sure that happened months ago and I just recently noticed it – as you can tell from my last blog post which was indeed months ago.

I haven’t really found it a very useful strategy to learn from your failures. Every time I realize that I have made a mistake or that I have really failed at something and decide that this is the particular lesson I have learned from it, I really don’t really seem to learn a lot or that it really doesn’t help me a lot. I have only learned how not to fail again, but haven’t really learned how to succeed in that particular situation. I mean, really think about it. Do you really want to know all the ways of how not to fail, or would you rather learn a few techniques that help you succeed and master it?

For the past one year I have been reading, listening and watching a lot of self help, or self development material. My understanding of peak performance, about different tools and strategies to achieve your goals, how to set your goals and how to determine what I really want in life has expanded to an extent to which I can safely say I can write a book now from what I have learned and from my own way of thinking. And for some reason there always seems to be something lacking. It helps me a little, but then sometimes(not always) I fall in to the same rut; into the same old habits.

Just two days ago I was thinking about all my successes in the past. Actually I have done that a lot of the times in the past. I think about all my successful moments in life and keep wandering, what was it really that made the difference. It has been many months, and for some situations I can even say it has been years since I started inquiring about what it really was that made the difference. There have been times when success seemed so easy to attain. Two days ago I made some very key distinctions that resulted in my quick and easy success.

1. I knew exactly what I wanted and believed without a doubt that I could achieve it. Failure not only was not an option, it just didn’t exist in my mine; I could not even imagine what failure in those instances would be like.
2. I just did it! I did not plan, or think, or ponder, or come up with a strategy.
3. It was fun, enjoyable and exciting. No matter how difficult it would have seemed from a third person view point, I did not see it as work. It was so much just natural.
4. I was focused on the end result, and every step I took was in the direction of what I wanted, and every step that took me away from it was quickly eliminated.
5. I did not look at temporary set backs as failure. I took it as, since this doesn’t work, the set of possible guesses was getting smaller and I was getting closer to success.
6. Once I believed I had succeeded, I tested it! And started using what I learned from it.

According to me, these are my key 6 steps that I have used unconsciously to succeed. What is or was your success strategy? I’m sure everyone has their own strategy; their own algorithm of success. Scrap out the old belief that you have to fail many times to succeed. Before I knew this idiotic concept of learning by failure, I was actually successful in a lot of things that I did. When I started learning from failure, I was actually failing more and succeeding less. You know what they say, “I was born smart, education made me stupid”.

I attended the annual CIRA(Canadian Internet Registration Authority) annual general meeting. There were two brilliant keynote speakers Terry O’Reilly – radio host of CBC’s O’Reilly and The Age of Persuasion, Mitch Joel – Social Media expert and author of Six Pixels of Separation. There was a panel of “Architects of the Internet”, which had some of the most brilliant and pioneers in the field and they discussed the origins and the future of the Internet.

Paul Vixie – Internet Systems Consortium(ISC). He is the primary author of BINDv8, has been contributing to Internet protocols and UNIX systems since the 1980s. He has developed tools like, sends, rtty, cron etc…

John Demco – Webnames.ca. John is basically the God Father of “.ca”. He helped create the .CA domain in 1987 and was its initial registrar, and chairing the CA Domain Committee until 2000. He has also been responsible for chairing and managing a number of academic and research networks.

Chris O’Neil – Google Canada. Chris leads Google’s operations in Canada as Country Director for Google Canada. He is focused on building Google’s brand and driving innovation to help fuel growth for Canadian Business.

Byron Holland – President and CEO of CIRA.

Everyone everywhere is getting mobile – actually this statement is so 2000. What I should be saying is everyone is mobile and everyone is connected everywhere every time, and the fact is even that this is so 2006.

The question that I am trying to answer is – should we be throwing away our desktops and laptops and go completely mobile with cell phones and tablets like the iPad?

Definitely throw away your desktop. If you just bought one, then keep it to store your media and then when it’s time to throw it away, throw it away.

Laptops – keep those because they won’t be going away anytime soon. The iPad isn’t really a netbook killer yet and netbooks simply put are not notebooks. There are a lot of things that the iPad doesn’t have. Like a web cam, less computing power and etc etc. We’ve heard all about the iPad haven’t we?

Even this blog was posted from my phone, and I am not talking about using a web browser on my phone. I’m actually using a wordpress app on my iPhone to draft and post. I can approve, disapprove and delete comments directly from this app.

When I need to go somewhere and I don’t know where it is, I don’t even bother checking. I get in my car, look it up the gps on my IPhone and I’m off.

I don’t carry a watch on me, I use my phone(likes millions do these days), I don’t keep alarm clock – got a phone. And remember those daily planners, those little books they used to carry back in the days – ya you don’t even need that anymore, and if you are still carrying those – shame on you!

Get a smart phone!!

Even shopping had been made easy. Some of the major stores have their own apps for phone like the iphone and you can browse their entire catalog.

Just about to head into a meeting, so I’ll just wrap it up here, but stay stunned!

The Paradoxical Commandments” by Kent Keith(Mother Teresa Version)

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis,
it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

This to me is probably one of the most accurate definition of success. In 1904, Bessie Anderson Stanley wrote the following definition of success in Brown Book magazine:

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children, who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it, who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had, whose life was an inspiration, whose memory a benediction.

I joined Toastmasters a little over a month ago and yesterday I gave my first speech; the so called ‘ice-breaker speech’. I think I did well. For anyone who does not know what Toastmaster is, it is basically a public speaking club. I am a member of the North York Toastmaster’s club in Toronto. It’s a very diverse group since there are first timers to very experienced public speakers. Everyone’s very friendly and very encouraging. There are a lot of talented speakers there too, which is amazing because it will give me the added motivation to keep improving myself. I absolutely get totally engrossed in listening to some of the speeches.

I went full out and gave it all that I had in my own first speech. I actually went way over the time limit,…hehe, but yes since it was my first speech it was quite flexible. I will have to work on that in my following speeches.

Overall it was an amazing experience. Can’t wait for my next speech.

Spring is here and this season brings new hopes, new opportunities and hopefully brighter results. I am keeping myself busy with projects. Keep those ideas pouring in and hopefully we can collaborate and build something exciting.

Many requests for blog sites and shopping carts have come to me and as always I’m happy to be of service. For those who do not know yet, I am also providing strategic couching in areas of social media marketing, online business strategy, career planning, kick-ass study plans for college and high school kids and help for folks to get out of the analysis paralysis and into putting passion into action.

Just recently I had a client hand me a $100 cheque for my advice which hardly took 20 minutes.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. If there is a solution out there then I can do it, if there is no solution out there yet, let’s go get down to it and make one. I don’t believe any business that I do can be done alone. Like I said in my previous articles customers are collaborates of success, so every success solution comes with your efforts and mine.

So why pay me to do anything? Well, when everyone does, I watch, and when everyone stops I do! I love uncommon sense and I love the challenge!

So contact me and lets get down to business!

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games had “OH CANADA” written all over it. The color of the olympic flag might be white with different coloured rings on them, but the true colours of these olympics were red, white and a red maple leaf!

We as Canadian set out to own the podium by trying to win the highest total number of medals in these games. That did not happen, however we did win the most number of Gold medals, not only in these games, but in any winter olympic games in history. Canada was all red, white and gold.

I was not born here in Canada; I was nationalized. I got my Canadian citizenship few years ago, but 2010 is the year I truly became Canadian. I always felt a bit of lack, and somewhat at unease knowing that us Canadians although were proud to be Canadians, had a silent pride and were not as outwardly as we truly should be. But from the moment the torch relay across the country began, I started seeing a different part of Canada, a part that I had not seen in close to a decade that I have been here. The momentum grew as the torch went from east to west, from south to north. I went to see the torch arrive in Toronto. It was a proud moment for me. Suddenly people were not just from different backgrounds, they were all Torontonians; they were all Canadians.

But just before the games began, 21-year-old Nodar Kumaritashvili died after losing control of his sled on the final turn at Whistler mountain in his qualifying run. Could that tragedy have been avoided? Maybe. It is sad and nothing really can replace that. But over the course of the 2010 olympics, the games itself did turn out to be a celebration.

So what were my most memorable moments of the Vancouver 2010 winter olympic games?

• From the opening ceremony, the whales.
• From the opening ceremony, Shane Koyczan’s poem, “We Are More”
• The first medal for Canada was not a gold but a silver by Jenn Heil and in her words “Of course, I wanted gold but I won silver”. Yes she didn’t loose the gold, but she wont the silver.”
• First Gold medal ever for Canada on home soil – This was the true defining moment and this was what being Canadian is all about. When the last competitor finished his run, and points were award, Alexandre Bilodeau knew he had won Gold, and he started celebrating, but then in an instant paused, to congratulate the last competitor to ski down the slopes for his run, by patting him on the shoulder and then went out to celebrate his victory. And little did he know that he had just predicted the outcome of these Games by saying, “”It’s just the beginning, I think”.
• Joannie Rochette’s courageous first figure skate after her mother passed aware during the Olympic games.
• Canada’s dominance over Russia in quarter finals of men’s ice hockey with a 7-3 victory.
• Women’s curling final between Canada and Sweden. Canada deserved to win, leading by 2 points in the later half of the game. Sweden drew in the last round, and then won over Canada in sudden death. But whatever the result, these Canadian women are champions.
• The equalizer by team USA in men’s hockey final between Canada and USA with only 24 seconds remaining.
• And finally the golden goal by Sidney Crosby in over time taking the men’s hockey team to victory. This one golden goal had 3 golden moments in it. First is the gold medal in men’s hockey declaring to the world that Hockey truly is Canada’s game. Second, making that one goal resulting in the breaking of the record for the most gold medals won by any country at any single winter olympic games. And third, is the coast to coast celebration in that one moment where people just stood up, jumped around, screamed with joy and more, and as it is said, the rest is history.