Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurship’ Category

3 Steps to Have Your Best Year Ever (Without Disappointing Resolutions)

Saturday, December 31st, 2011

According to a study done by the University of Bristol, about 78% people who set New Year resolutions fail. So, ever since 2007 I haven’t worried about committing to “new years resolutions”. And every year since then has been more fun and productive than the last.

In this post I’m going to lay out the 3 steps I use to make each year even better than the last…

Step 1 – Write Down Your “Top 10 Experiences” From This Year

Can you think of a few big things you did this year? Instead of starting the year by making big promises to yourself about changes you’ll make, why not take a minute to reflect on the some fulfilling experiences you had over the past 12 months? After all, gratitude plays the biggest factor in someone’s level of happiness.

Here’s an example of my top 10 list for 2011:

  1. Trekked the Himalayals in Bhutan - My biggest physical challenge of 2o11 was a trek through the Himalayan Mountains with Outward Bound International. My first time above 16,000 feet was tough but very rewarding.
  2. Hosted a 7 day trading seminar - We had our first week long trading event in Austin, Texas for Emini Academy students.
  3. Hiked part of the Appellation Train with my Dad – This is my highlight of the year! There’s nothing more rewarding than “surviving” and connecting with my Pops while disconnected in a beautiful part of the country.
  4. Launched a new Real Estate company - I partnered with one of the biggest real estate investors in Texas to take advantage of this depressed real estate market.
  5. Learned important lessons about hiring and firing – I like to consider myself a great vision planner, but not a great manager. I’ll be posting about some of the top lessons I’ve learned when hiring and managing team members.
  6. Hosted 2 mastermind meetings for top trading companies – The New York and Las Vegas mastermind parties turned out to be great times and extremely productive.
  7. The birth of my nephew – My sister keeps popping out amazing kids. It’s keeping my parents off my back, for the time being.
  8. Kicked-back in the U.S. Virgin Islands - My fiance and I took a pre-honeymoon on St. Thomas and some other Virgin Islands. It’s definitely underrated!
  9. Wrestled tigers in Thailand - Before setting off into the Himalayas I got to jump into a pit with over a dozen full-sized tigers.
  10. Started 3 other projects with top-level entrepreneurs

Step 2 – Plan for Your “Top 10 Opportunities & Experiences for the Coming Year”

Forget setting meaning less goals. Achievement is great, but at the end of the day the most important thing is experiencing life! Making a million dollars doesn’t mean much if you didn’t enjoy the process.

So, instead of worrying so much about the end result, why not start by imagining what the experiences are going to be like?

Here’s an example list from some of my possible opportunities and experiences for 2012:

  1. Implement the latest trading technology into our futures trading strategies and software
  2. Help create solutions for would-be home buyers that can’t buy and desperate sellers who are upside down on their homes. Create a massive real estate portfolio and income stream in the meantime.
  3. Get married!
  4. Enjoy the process of increasing my trading skills and kicking off a trading journal to help other traders learn from my mistakes and breakthroughs.
  5. Take 3-4 months away from “producing” to experience new cultures, people, and food
  6. Learn to ski in Vail, Colorado with my new wife
  7. Continue to build my team of bad-ass key players by filling 3 key positions
  8. Publish and launch “project-x” for active traders
  9. Evaluate big opportunities each week and be flexible and open to ideas
  10. Start one new passion project that helps an emerging segment of entrepreneurs

Step 3 – Create a Plan for Hunting for Opportunities Every Day

Day traders are constantly hunting for “high profit potential trades”. In other words, they’re constantly on the prowl for trades they know have a high probability of winning. The concept of “hunting for opportunities” can apply to any area of life for entrepreneurs, business owners, and anyone who wants to grow.

There are a million and one reasons why only 12% of people actually follow through on their New Years Resolutions. Overwhelm, lack of focus, and procrastination are among the biggest reasons. But I think most people just get bored with chasing meaningless or difficult tasks.

How much better would your life be if you stopped chasing and started living? I think the difference between frustration and freedom starts with the quality of your questions. For example, check out these questions that could turn your focus from goals to living:

  • What’s the one thing I could do to make today a great experience?
  • What am I taking for granted or ignoring that could lead to huge growth?
  • Why am I spending time on this right now? Is it bringing me closer to my vision?

I hope you have the best year yet. And feel free to leave me a comment if there’s anything else you like to do to prepare for a coming year.

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Thoughts | »

The Work-Life Balance Myth – How Successful Entrepreneurs Do Big Things & Still Live With Freedom

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

The “work-life balance” says you should separate your business life  and personal life.  It says you should focus some time on your work life and some in your personal life.  Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not possible for entrepreneurs to operate that way.  For business owners, their business is their life.  Now, that doesn’t mean someone has to be a slave to their business. Quite the opposite actually…

Working in Sprints – Keeping Life Exciting and Motivating

“But what about the four hour work week Chris?  You’re a huge proponent of that idea.  Is that lifestyle really possible?”, my buddy asked me at dinner last night.  As much as I love to travel and spend as time “off the grid”, it’s impossible to only work 4 hours a week every week and develop, build, or create something of value.  It takes a tremendous amount of focus and energy to create a cash-flowing business, develop a skill like day trading, or put together a high-performance team of employees.

My “work” strategy is similar to the way a sprinter competes.  I take long breaks and plenty of me time, but there are short bursts of intense-focused activity.  For example, after I got back from my month in Australia, I went on a 90 day business sprint where I launched a new company, coordinated a major launch, and published two experts.

Next, I’m breaking away from the daily grind by flying out to Bejing, China… then hopping over to the pristine mountain ranges of Bhutan for a 70-mile trek through the Himalayas.  I’ll get to re-group and plan out my next sprint all while meditating with some Buddhist Monks.

For me, this sprinting routine is the best way to keep my life exciting.  I always have something to look forward to that isn’t the same mundane routine of going to an office.  There’s always room to grow and expand, and always time to do and experience incredible things around the world.

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Thoughts | 4 Comments »

3 Steps To Creating a Seven Figure Business with 5% of the Effort

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011
One of the biggest questions I get from entrepreneurs is, “How can I create a seven figure business without killing myself?”  There seems to be this misconception among aspiring millionaires that they must work longer hours, and do the plethora of tasks they hate.
In this post I’m going to show you how I increased my income by 1,109% in less than 6 months, while cutting my workload by over 90%.  After implementing these 3 steps, I freed up over 7 hours a day to do the things that truly inspire me.  And it’s at that point that exponential growth becomes almost effortless.

Thanks to this new way of doing business, I was able to accomplished more on this two-hour cruise around Sydney Harbor in Australia than I used to get done in a month!

entrepreneur
I gave a talk at the Top Performing Entrepreneurs Society titled “Top Down Productivity – Eliminating the Bullshit from your day”.  Today I’m giving you the top 3 things you could put into your daily routine that could literally take you from wherever you are today, to a point of total freedom to do what you want, when you want, with whom you want.

Step 1 – Write Out Your Life Mantra

Before you dig into the income producing stuff, you need to take a few minutes to figure out why you’re doing what you’re doing.  This is similar to “finding your purpose”, but this gives you something practical that you can use every day.
Assuming you live with no financial, geographical, or time restrictions, what do you want to experience every day?  This is much deeper than surface-level materialistic things. This could be a state of mind or feeling you get when you do something that really turns you on.
My life manta is as follows:
“I live with gratitude all the time.  I have an eagle eye focus on achieving my goals, while enjoying every step in the process and being thankful for every moment.  I live with no stones in my shoes.”

In other words, it doesn’t matter what I’m doing or the situations I’m going through, I can always turn inward to being grateful.  After all, you could have billions in the bank or all the time in the world, but if you’re not grateful, then none of that matters.
It’s important to note that your life mantra should be written in the present tense.  This isn’t something you hope, wish or dream for in the future; it’s something you live today.

Step 2 – Determine Your Top Profit Generating Activities

“Work, work, work.  If I work just a little bit harder, then I’ll reach my goal.”  This is the typical mindset of an entrepreneur spinning his or her wheels.  Some people think if they only work a little longer, smarter, or harder they’ll achieve their goals.

But it doesn’t matter how hard you work if you’re doing the wrong things.  The highest performing (and often the wealthiest) entrepreneurs I know really only do one or two things throughout the day.  Seriously, I suggest that there’s an indirect relationship between the amount of work someone does and the amount of money they make.  For example, Richard Branson once said that he only spends about 15 minutes a day “working in or on his business”.
The real magic happens when you start doing what you’re programmed to do the best.  Some people, myself included, are great at implementing visions, but hate tracking the small details to bring a project to completion.  Where others, like my Operations Manager, are great at tracking and managing details crucial to finishing a project.  On the other hand, you have people that hate details and high-level thinking, but have a knack for connecting the right people.
My buddy David Gonzalez, co-founder of the Austin Internet Marketing Party, recommended an awesome Wealth Survey to me a few weeks ago.  For about $100, you can take a test that gives you a 30-page breakdown of what wealth building activities will yield you the highest result.  It also shows you who you should align yourself with to do all the other tasks in which you’re not predisposed to excel.
According to this test, there are only 8 ways to generate wealth.  Instead of trying to copy the actions of other successful entrepreneurs, this test tells you exactly where you should aim your focus and effort.  Even more importantly, it tells you what you shouldn’t waste your time doing.  It’s like that old saying that goes, “Focus on increasing your strengths, not trying to improve your weaknesses”.

If you want to take the wealth survey, click Dave’s affiliate link here to show him some love for sharing this with us.

Step 3 – List and Track Your Big Active Projects

Now that you know the top one or two activities that will deliver the biggest profits and personal fulfillment, it’s time to brainstorm a few things that you can start working on that will produce huge results.  Just as the title says, these are “big active projects” that will require many actions, and may require the help from different people.
For example, one of my biggest active projects right now is developing a mental training program for high-performers in skill-focused activities like trading, sports, or professional speaking.  There’s no way I could complete this project on my own.  In fact, I’ve partnered with two other trainers who have extensive knowledge on the cognitive mental structures of high performers.  And as a creator, my role in this project is to take the high-level vision and design the business systems.  I don’t need to be involved in every aspect of the project.  If I was a control freak and felt like I had to do everything, it would create massive bottlenecks that would drag out the completion date, if not kill the project all together.

The Ultimate Secret to Becoming a Millionaire in a Fraction of the Time

There’s something I remind myself of every day – “Things usually take twice as long and cost twice as much, so bust your ass to control the controllable and forget about everything else”.  Even though I’m only in my mid-20′s, that idea has probably saved me from a few mental breakdowns and gray hairs.  It’s also given me the power to persevere through times where it seemed like there was no hope.  In fact, it’s when I break through those pivotal moments that I see the greatest progress.
If you want to get on the fast track to earning seven figures while living your dream lifestyle, then simply start by doing the following:
1. Write out your life mantra
2. Discover your one or two top income producing activities
3. List out and track your big active projects

You probably won’t be able to just quit doing everything you don’t like today, but the first step is becoming aware of the things that will generate the biggest results for you.  From there, you can start working to eliminate or delegate everything that you shouldn’t be doing.  And if you push to spend the majority of your time on your top income producing activities, you’ll see greater progress in six months that you’d see in 10 years just trying to “work” your way through life.
Got questions or comments?  Connect with me by popping in a comment below!

Posted in Entrepreneurship | 3 Comments »

A Trading Conversation Over Coffee… and Tango Dancers

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Well, we made it down to Buenos Aires, Argentina and just got through our first trading day.

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Posted in Entrepreneurship, Interviews, Life hacking, MAP Trading Strategy, Thoughts, Trading, Travel | 1 Comment »