Building from scratch, committing yourself to 10 years

Building from scratch, committing yourself to 10 years

Jack Ma: "If you want to be successful tomorrow, it is impossible, if you want to be successful a year later, it is impossible. But if you want to win, 10 years later you have a chance."

​Jack Ma says : " ... the only thing I am competing with my people....let's compete in 10 years later. (On internet) this is what I believe 10 years later will happen, everything I do is for that goal. I believe this is what's gonna happen.....If you want to be successful tomorrow, it is impossible, if you want to be successful a year later, it is impossible. But if you want to win, 10 years later you have a chance."

I would suggest you to view the whole video to be successful. It is totally inspiring. It is also like a looking glass into your past and your future. How old are you now? Let's see what Jack Ma suggest when you are 20-30, when you are 30-40 and when you are 40-50.

Key moments from Jack Ma's video:
1:02 I had no education, I fail every exam
1:18 Let's compete for 10 years later 

Alibaba - The house that Jack Ma built

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Now that I have started the introduction with Jack Ma definition of what it takes to be successful. If such a successful person would spend 10 years to do what he does? I want you to ask yourself, have you decided how much you spend to become successful? Are you prepared to spend anytime short of 10 years on your single project? How are you feeling now? You feel scared or you feel energized because you have got the secret sauce of preseverence....

Today I like to document my journey for you. how I got here today and what I did to building it from the scratch. I think it is best described my journey from a series of books as I marks my journey. It could also serve you how I power up myself with these books and show you where to start.

I remember....
I started everything from four hour work week by Tim Ferris. I listed out every business ideas by my hobbies, interests and my work skills about 20 of them. Finally, I cut it down to one

​4 hour work week
I started everything from four hour work week. I listed out every business ideas by my hobbies, interests and my work skills about 20 of them. Finally, I cut it down to one and started my first online business jamsport.info and I build my YouTube channel and grew it to 32,000 fans in 2 years. The growth, I believed, I hit the consumer insight and the pain point. There were a lot of Chinese wanted to watch basketball but there wasn't many videos available in Chinese. we created it.

Side note:
I remember I have quite a lot of fear when starting this business. Although it seems to be working, many limiting thoughts was put into it subconsciously. First, I believe I can't compete with international players so I developed a traditional Chinese version. Then I suffered from perseverance issue of not setting a long term vision and what I wanted to achieve in 10 years. I was not confident in negotiating contracts and I can't move forward with a clear business goals. I was lost in general.

​However, my mindset was not strong enough, I was personally handling a million tasks myself, not able to prioritize and was eaten by fear. I be honest with you too, I went back to a job after a year or so. I learned a great lesson, I admitted failure but only temporarily. I m always on the look out for new business opportunities (currently the travel_side_hustle_project on instagram).

Back then, I had absolutely no computer skills and the book introduced me to Weebly, a website builder. The website that you're seeing here now is built from Weebly.

4 hour work week is really a mind changing book, it allows me to look through the eyes of the bold & fearless and encouraged me.
There was a blog in the book "The art of letting bad things happen", Tim was deliberately turning off his phone for 10 days so he can practice "Don't let small things irritate you so the big things can happen."
We are too busy everyday, making the unnecessary chase-down. We are bothered by some tiny things and small progress and our mind keep switching to one place to another.
While I was writing this blog, my laziness thoughts creeps in. I was thinking about picking my ears, I clean a bit my shelf  because my eyes see the mess. I charged my phone & anything as small as you may imagine...We need to remember "If there is no attention, there is no time". If your mind is doing one thing and your body is on the other, nothing ever gets done.

I was just reading through the book again and found this big idea p311. We seem to fuss about every tiny things like a small mistake or something people said that we lose our focus. Tim Ferris was right on the point.The book is my game starter. If you have not read it yet, I strongly recommend you to go for it.

I always have a dream being an entrepreneur. My memory was vague whether I bought the four hour work week or the rich dad poor dad to kick start my journey. But I can definitely remember that I bought rich dad poor dad for at least twice. And I would like to share you the key concepts which still lingers in my mind after years.

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Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!

The first one key concept is delay gratification. This idea is mentioned repeatedly in many books (you can some find some books in shop section (here) It means that if you want quick satisfaction, your return is going to be small in the long run. Imagine if you keep buying clothes and material stuff, it's easy to understand that you will never have money to make an investment. So you are going to be poor forever.

The key to success is to give short-term sacrifices for long-term success.
I could imagine that people without a vision would change job from job just to get a salary increase. It's a loss in the end because they no longer have a field of expertise, every time they changed jobs they have to learn everything again. They have no idea what they really losing long term.

The other idea is what we choose to own, buy or possess, it is a decision we fight everyday.There are two types of things that you can buy in this world, assets and liabilities.
Asset puts money in your pocket and liability takes money out of your pocket which I think it's really true.

RICH DAD poor dad Rule #1 (p64)You must know the difference between an asset and a liability, and buy assets

​RICH DAD poor dad (p135) The single most powerful asset we all have is our mind. If it is trained well, it can create enormous wealth.

​RICH DAD poor dad (p66) An asset puts money in my pocket. A liability takes money out of my pocket

We are often influenced by people around us and to go for quick satisfaction or let temptation run through us, buying a lot of liabilities. We see a lot of people around us dressing very well and we accept it as a norm and we behave the same as those around us. Actually if you take a closer look at a lot of successful people, they are not judged by what kind of dress they put on, but by what values they keep and the revolutionary ideas they could offer to change the world. Only those who cannot offer greater value will express themselves through how they appear.

Pay yourself first.
This is always a difficult concept to grasp. Does it mean that we try to escape all types of expenses, avoid responsibilities just to keep a few bucks for ourselves?
Of course not! We shall always be generous because giving is a way of showing confidence that you will make even more. That is positive mindset that sets you up for even more. A poor guy can never be generous.

Paying yourself first also means that you set up boundaries and budgets of what you're going to spend and what you're not, so that you have always something to set aside for yourself every month. You are not to save what is left. But to plan what needs to be saved in the beginning of the month.

The power of the subsconscious mind
​It is also a life changing book for me. Let me now go to my room find my book and summarise it in here.
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You are to become who you think you are. You think good, you become good, if you act in fear, fear will consume you.

By impressing the right thought into subconscious mind, believing good will happen and you will act according to your belief. If you believe bad things happen, your are paralysed by fear and bad things follow. I remember I was once driving down a snowy road. I keep taking to myself. Don't crash, don't crash. I was so consumed by fear and my car and crashed into a curb. Now in afterthought, I shall impress my subconscious mind with " I will return home safely and slowly" with a smile.
If I wasn't acting on my fear and the bad might not have happened. Notice your feeling now (when you picture my situation, scared, dark, very worried) you feel uncomfortable. Now, adjust your belief to produce a good feeling by thinking "I m rich". Notice the difference how you feel....

​To be continued (Part 2)
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