Wantrepreneur (eBook)

Take the Decision

Leonardo Vasquez (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
156 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-4362-7 (ISBN)

Infos

For all the dreamers with an entrepreneurial spirit hidden within, those who believe in the power of greatness and dare not to dwell on what might be lost. Let 'Wantrepreneur' be your inspiration, fueling your belief in yourself and unlocking your full potential to achieve greatness.

Leonardo Vasquez, a seasoned leader, entrepreneur, and trusted business advisor with 25+ years of expertise across fields like Supply Chain, Project Management, Business Development, and Precious Metals investing. He's led teams through multibillion-dollar projects globally, delivering exceptional results. Beyond the Oil and Gas sector, Leo's been using his SCM knowledge since 2018 to help businesses in diverse industries achieve their goals. His team offers comprehensive Supply Chain Management solutions, including training and coaching. Leo's passion for nurturing entrepreneurs stems from his desire to create a positive impact. His dedication to clients, his team, and his community inspires emerging leaders and aspiring entrepreneurs.

---

The "e;Wantrepreneur"e; isn't just another guide; it's your indispensable tool for transforming dreams into reality. Discover essential concepts crucial for launching your business successfully. Understand that entrepreneurship isn't one-size-fits-all, but with this guide, you'll gain the confidence to tailor it to your unique journey. This book champions risk-taking, goal clarity, and seeing failure as a learning opportunity. It advocates for building a robust brand, staying current with industry trends, and prioritizing self-care to avoid burnout. These principles are vital for entrepreneurial success, and this guide lays out your roadmap. The author shares their personal journey, highlighting challenges and how they overcame them, inspiring readers to find their own mental shift. They offer guidance to help you sidestep their mistakes and seize control of your life to reach your goals. "e;The Wantrepreneur"e; presents a fresh perspective on entrepreneurship, reminding you that your potential to achieve dreams is limitless. It offers guidance, direction, and actionable advice to transform those dreams into reality. This book isn't just about starting a business; it's about discovering your passion and purpose in life. It's a call to action to take charge of your destiny and realize your dreams. "e;The Wantrepreneur"e; is the ultimate guide for aspiring business owners and dream achievers. It provides a clear path to success and reinvigorates your outlook on entrepreneurship. The author's journey serves as an inspiration, showing that no obstacle is insurmountable. With "e;The Wantrepreneur,"e; you can trust in your ability to make your dreams a reality.

Textauszug

Back to Basics |

Remember Your Roots

Chapter 1

I had to reset everything and go back to basics; You have to crawl before you walk, walk before you run, and (the knee) was all new to me.

Darrell Campbell. –

American Football Player

In this chapter, I will share with you what I needed to learn before I could really understand what I wanted. What I learned changed my perspective on where I was. I saw how far I was from where I wanted to be. I had to learn what I needed from my education, and what I still needed to learn. Once I understood this, the path to achieving my dreams became clearer. I didn’t have all the answers, but I had a place to start.

I was living very much in the I want it now world. And if I wanted it now, I got it now. I’ve worked hard my whole life, so I deserved it, right? I have had many blessings along the way, but I worked hard. I worked hard in school and worked hard at my career. If I wanted it now, then I was going to get it now.

But where did this attitude of entitlement come from? I saw my parents work hard to provide me with a wonderful life of abundance. I didn’t get it from them, so where did this come from? And I noticed that it wasn’t just me. I saw it in my friends, colleagues, random strangers, and in the media (TV, radio, social media, you name it). It’s all around us. What I came to understand is that society is selling us unrealistic lifestyle expectations, and that is affecting us physically, emotionally, and financially. And it’s distracting us from the work we need to do to truly live abundantly.

More than ever, we seem to believe that we should expect quick and easy results. For anything and for everything. Everything has a shortcut. Everything has a hack. But these shortcuts don’t consider your personal situation, nor do they advise you to do so. They tell you that you want it now, and this is the easy way to get it. Couple this with the expectations of the society we live in, and you find that quick and easy results are a necessity just to be able to keep up. It’s no wonder that we find ourselves struggling to embrace the ideas that will help build real financial strength in the future.

Striving for instant gratification has not only affected our financial well-being but it has affected our relationships as well. Not only do we expect information and material items instantly, we also now expect people to be available whenever we want them, without consideration for anything else. Have you ever sent a text and been annoyed by how long it takes for someone to text you back? This attitude is going to be one of the simplest and most challenging parts of entrepreneurship to handle. You will need to be patient with your business as it grows, and also be patient with yourself, your expectations from yourself. The only thing that can happen instantly is your choice to move. And that can happen in a second.

But just like any of the other hacks we’ve referred to, just because it happened in a second will not make it permanent. You will be challenged often throughout this journey to entrepreneurship. The biggest challenge will be you: your willingness to change your habits. Not giving up when it doesn’t happen right away. Not giving up when it gets hard. Not giving up when there are other things you would rather do. But I can tell you that every time you make that choice, you’re developing a new habit that will help you build your success.

Now, Back to Basics

You will likely find that you will need to change some of your habits. And if you do, you may find that it is not that hard to change the habit itself, but in doing so you will have to question some long-held beliefs about your own identity.

So, where do we start? For many people, one of the biggest impediments to pursuing the dream of entrepreneurship is finances. I’ve heard that it was Will Rogers, an American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator, who said, “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.” Perfect. So, how do we do that?

The first thing to stop doing is anything related to instant gratification. To help us get what we want when we want it, we have many resources to draw from: cash, credit cards, lines of credit, loans, payday loans. If we have exceeded one, we often move on to another. If the bank won’t give us a loan, we try another bank. And if the banks won’t, a payday loan company might. We often resort to any means necessary to provide the immediate cash that makes I want it now! possible. And sometimes we do this until the instant fix is no longer a want, it’s a need.

This isn’t just a societal norm, it’s a well-defined business practice. One that creates wealth and cash flow to institutions, but that ignores the basics of a healthy economy and a financially healthy society. We all experience pressure to keep up with our neighbors, friends, and colleagues—it’s stressful not to—but this may come at the cost of very serious consequences when you can no longer keep up with your financial obligations. This is a system. And this system is designed to keep you indebted to it for as long as possible. Let me give you an example.

Have you ever been in a situation where you had to pay off a credit card debt with a high interest rate? Let me give you an example. If you have a credit card balance of $2,000 with a 29 percent interest rate and you only pay the minimum payment of $68.33, it will take you 203 months (seventeen years) to pay it off. You will end up paying a total of $6,105.19. That’s $2,000 that you originally borrowed, plus an additional $4,105.19 in interest. Keep in mind that this calculation assumes that you are no longer spending on that card. So, was it worth it to spend that $2,000? If it was for something essential like feeding your family, then of course it was worth it. However, if it was for something unnecessary, like a collection of restaurant meals or new shoes, then perhaps not. Do you still wear those shoes? Do you remember where you ate?

Did you know that in the second quarter of 2023, the average U.S. citizen carried an average credit card debt of $5,733? That’s more than 1.03 trillion U.S. dollars in credit card debt. Canada is not far behind. According to a TransUnion report, in 2023 credit card debt rose by 4.2 percent, marking 2.34 trillion Canadian dollars in credit card debt. On average, each Canadian household carries a credit card balance of CAD $4,000, which is the highest in the last seven years. If you’re interested in the most recent statistics, you can look at debt.org.

Changing the way you think about your own spending will be a challenge. It’s so personal. You can make your own decisions about how to spend your money. But are you? We are surrounded by advertising, TV, radio, bus-stop ads, elevator ads, phone apps, influencers on social media, and on and on. All of them tell you what you should want, just to help you live your best life! “Click on my link, there is a discount. Just for you.” And if you’re really lucky, “Buy now, pay later.” It’s very tempting. And it can be very lucrative for you. If the offer includes free financing and you are able to save enough to pay by the deadline, you’ve gotten a deal. But that’s not what we often do. And that’s when it’s lucrative for the companies. Albert Einstein, the German-born theoretical physicist, himself described compound interest as the eighth wonder of the world, stating, “He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t pays it.”

If you can defer your debt—and have it work for you, with a little financial discipline—that can be a valuable tool. But if you see this as your chance to acquire something you cannot readily afford, you need to consider the cost—the true cost of the item. If the true cost includes the interest accruing on the minimum payment of a credit card, the cost also includes the lost opportunity cost of not having your money working for you. This is where financial discipline—and your habits—come in. Do your habits limit your opportunities, or do they lead to prosperity?

And remember, you are not only paying for your habits; you’re born paying for the habits and choices of others. Those are the consequences of subsidies, poor economic models, wars, pandemics, government debt, and poor financial planning, to name a few. This is passed down from generation to generation via taxes, reductions in social programs, and on and on. According to a statistic found on https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/public-debt-for-every-american/, “a child born in 2023 will have a $78,089 share of publicly held federal debt.” The same system that has an unborn child born into debt cannot help you achieve your goal of financial freedom. As an entrepreneur, it is imperative that you understand how you can make the most of the systems we are in and, more importantly how they can work for you.

But before we can understand all of this, we need to take a first step. We need to go back to the basics.

And that starts with you. You taking an honest look at where you are now is fundamental to understanding the resources you need and how to use them to learn what you will have to do to get to where you want to be. But no matter the resources you are starting with and where you start from, you can always start. And that is getting back to basics.

To start. Start something new. Start to make small changes. And...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.3.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-4362-7 / 9798350943627