Been really busy covering the necessary work to decide between the two business concepts that I have been working on and after speaking to countless really kind mentors, have finally decided on the one project that will keep me fully occupied in the foreseeable future. I’m really excited about it and hope to share more about it with you guys out there the next couple of weeks!

Weirdly enough, I feel that the amount that I am learning about business has only dramatically increased the moment I graduated and started putting in time to refine my startup concepts! Here are some of the awesome things I’ve recently learnt talking and meeting with the awesome mentors I have around me!

3 Lessons I’ve learnt so far

1. Share your idea with tons of people

Yup, I got that right. If you have an idea that you think is good, share it and don’t just keep it to yourself. I think the media gave us all a totally wrong idea of how business ideas are developed – they’re rarely just born out of a stroke of genius, but much more often than not are the result of refinement based on feedback from mentors, friends and family.

But what if someone steals my idea? Well, that is always a possibility, but trying to get a startup going has made me realize that mere ideas are hardly worth anything – there’s a HUGE AMOUNT OF WORK behind just getting an idea started! On top of that, also note that if you don’t constantly make yourself pitch your idea and bounce your idea off the people around you, you’re very likely to end up not really acting on it and not doing anything further about it!

Overall, it seems much more beneficial to share your idea with fellow friends and mentors that you trust! Don’t just keep it in!

2. Be humble and seek to learn

People are generally really helpful if you respectfully and humbly seek to learn from them. There’s so much to learn in business and sadly, business school does not come close to properly preparing you for the outside world. Therefore, do seek to learn from those more experienced as well as read widely to keep getting better at the things that you do!

The answers to the problems are already out there somehow – someone out there has been likely to have faced them, and even written a book on it! I’ve been really blessed to meet so many awesome mentors whom have taught me so, so much these past few weeks. Reading awesome books like Business Model Generation really helped too!

It’s a wonderful book and I definitely will be sharing some of the key concepts that I’ve used to help refine my business model in the weeks to come!

3. Funding is not your biggest obstacle

When I share my entrepreneurial dreams with the people around me, I keep getting people telling me that they rather work a couple of years to gain experience and capital before they leave to begin a startup. I have written about why I believe that strategy results in experience that is not directly transferrable here, but I’ve also learnt that capital’s probably the least of your worries as well.

Getting investors becomes much, much easier once you have a solid business plan, a synergistic team and a good partner. If your business plan can’t seem to attract experienced investors, you already have a fundamental problem with your business that money will be extremely unlikely to solve anyway!

Remember to…

Post your feedback in the comments section below! Do stay tuned for next Monday’s writeup on my journey in developing a business plan for my startup so far!

This is such a creative way of talking about different methods to stay creative in your daily life.

Creativity – every entrepreneur needs it so bad and yet so few take the time to really work on conditioning the mind to be more accustomed to working at high levels of creativity. Watch the wonderful vid below and try to be a little more creative in your daily life!

29 WAYS TO STAY CREATIVE from TO-FU on Vimeo.

P.S. Here’s a link to the original Tumblr which inspired the really awesome video http://paulzii.tumblr.com/post/3360025995

One thing I’ve learnt by being unemployed by choice and to focus my time on working on my own personal projects is that when you have no boss or manager to check on you, discipline is key. Things have to be done and your time must be spent as efficiently as possible.

I was just spending some time thinking and reflecting on how I could work on my personal productivity and looking back, I realized that I probably was at my most productive when I had sufficient sleep and took the effort to start the morning with a good amount of exercise – two things I’ve been sorely lacking over the past few days.

And guess how I felt when I read Tony Schwartz’s blog post on “The Only Way to Get Important Things Done” when he wrote:

Over the past decade, I’ve built a series of rituals into my everyday life, in order to assure that I get to the things that are most important to me — and that I don’t get derailed by the endlessly alluring trivia of everyday life.

Here are the five rituals that have made the biggest difference to me:

• Abiding by a specific bedtime to ensure that I get 8 hours of sleep. Nothing is more critical to the way I feel every day. If I’m flying somewhere and know I’ll arrive too late to get my 8 hours, I make it a priority to make up the hours I need on the plane.
• Work out as soon as I wake up. I’ve long since learned it has a huge impact all day long on how I feel, even if I don’t initially feel like doing it.
• Launching my work day by focusing first on whatever I’ve decided the night before is the most important activity I can do that day. Then taking a break after 90 minutes to refuel. Today — which happens to be a Sunday — this blog was my priority. My break was playing tennis for an hour. During the week it might be just to breathe for five minutes, or get something to eat.
• Immediately writing down on a list any idea or task that occurs to me over the course of the day. Once it’s on paper, it means I don’t walk around feeling preoccupied by it — or risk forgetting it.
• Asking myself the following question any time I feel triggered by someone or something,: “What’s the story I’m telling myself here and how could I tell a more hopeful and empowering story about this same set of facts?”

Guess I really gotta figure out how to get enough sleep, exercise and get focused on work in the mornings if I want to make my dreams come true… before it all gets too late.

I’ve been kinda neglecting this blog for a bit because I’ve had quite a bit to do for the past week or so. Law reports, FYP preparation, coupled up with pretty bad time management on my end has kinda taken it’s toll on me.

But then today, I got this in gmail this morning, and it totally brightened up my day:

From: Dad

Dear Kevin,

Your youngest brother just wrote you this lettter in appreciation of the books that you bought him for his birthday.

Hope that you like it.

Love you.

Dad

Keane's Letter!

Amazing how an earnestly written, heartfelt letter can just brighten up one’s day. Go tell someone who you care about that you appreciate them today! The little things really can cheer one up!