Focus (Part 2)

(Source: markrekers.files.wordpress.com)

As a follow up to my previous post "Focus", this post is derived from a book I have recently been reading called The Snowball - Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder.

While having dinner with some very successful people, the story tells how Warren Buffett (Biography) met Bill Gates and described what is meant by "focus", their key to success.

Excerpt from The Snowball:

"Then at dinner, Bill Gates Sr. posed the question to the table: What factor did people feel was the most important in getting to where they'd gotten in life? And I (Warren) said 'Focus'. And Bill (Gates) said the same thing."

It is unclear how many people at the table (Katherine Graham, Tom Foley, Jerry Grinstein) understood "focus" as Buffett lived that word. This kind of innate focus couldn't be emulated. It meant the intensity that is the price of excellence. It meant the discipline and passionate perfectionism that made Thomas Edison the quintessential American investor, Walt Disney the king of family entertainment, and James Brown the Godfather of Soul. It meant the depth of commitment and mental independence that led Jeannette Rankin to stand alone as the only representative in Congress to vote against U.S. entry into both World Wars in the face of widespread ridicule. It meant single-minded obsession with an ideal. "Focus" meant the kind of person who could earn billions by allocation capital (referring to Buffett), yet to be baffled by a sign that said "No TP."

"TP" refers to a note on the door of a bathroom which Buffett had not understood what it meant when he saw it.

It is clear what they mean. Focus is putting all of your efforts mainly into one thing. Something that you are extremely good at, something that you have unlimited motivation for, something that you are or could be the best at in the world. Gates is undoubtedly one of the best businessmen in the world, Buffett is the best capital allocator and they both achieved these heights because of one word - Focus.

Intense focus on something will likely achieve you insurmountable results, and the above two heroes are proof of that.

10 Traits of a Successful Human Being

(Source: Persistantillusion.wordpress.com)

Taken from "10 Traits of az Successful Human Being" on Pick the Brain.

1. An Independent Nature

If we rely too much on those around us for assistance and/or support we will be setting ourselves up for disappointment in the future. This is not to say that we shouldn’t look to others for help when the time is right, but crafting our pursuits in such a way that requires the intervention of another is like handing over the keys and getting in the back seat. Our friends and colleagues may help open the doors of opportunity, but it is our own responsibility to take the wheel.

2. Self Confidence

Every decision we make in life will have some kind of effect on future outcomes. If our choices our filtered through fear and doubt, we can be assured of the life we are trying to avoid. Trust your instincts and listen to your heart. When you make a mistake, don’t look at it as reason for doubt, but instead, realize the opportunity for wisdom as you continue to push ahead.

3. Persistence

It’s been 5 years since I started my consulting business. 5 years of long hours and hard work. Many times did I consider throwing in the towel when things didn’t go my way. But every year that’s gone by, every road block I’ve pushed through, my business has grown as my resolve to make it a success has strengthened. Persistence is not an optional trait for those who desire success, but an essential attitude that must be embraced!

4. A Big Imagination

When I think of some of the greatest ‘achievers’ in American history I see great innovators and people of purpose. Names like Henry Ford, Walt Disney and Bill Gates come to mind. From cars to cartoons to computers, their personalities were as diverse as their pursuits. But one thing they share is the wonderful ability to see what’s not yet visible to the naked eye. It was the imagination of Henry Ford that first painted the picture of a car in every garage, and Bill Gates, a computer in every home. And it was Walt Disney who continues to inspire millions with the idea that ‘anything is possible’.

Those with inevitable success can see the unseen. They’ve become successful in their minds before they laid their first brick.

5. A Thick Skin

I’m a people pleaser at heart and can be devastated by disappointment. But as a necessity in business, I’ve grown a thick skin that allows me to deflect defeat while maintaining my focus. Whether in corporate conflict or the liabilities of life, it is those with a strong armor who will maintain their momentum.

6. Clarity Of Self Understanding

If you don’t know who you are, you will never truly know what you’re capable of. It is in our daily pursuits that we need accurate information on our strengths and weaknesses to succeed. Because being blind sided by your own inability or missing out on your true talents will bring nothing more than failure and frustration.

7. Clarity Of Intent

Continuing with the analogy of Ford, Disney and Gates, we can see three individuals with very clear intentions. No one ever questioned Ford’s intentions of filling the roads with his Model T’s. Disney was never far from his pursuits of capturing our imaginations. And even when no one believed in his dream of populating every home with a PC, there was never a question of Gates greatest goal.

8. Focus

There’s a lot of talk about multi-tasking and single tasking when it comes to getting things done. But however you go about accomplishing your goals, focus must be at the core of your character. Successful people have the knack for deflecting distraction and keeping their nose to the grindstone. It is our drive that pushes us forward and keeps our momentum, but without focus we will just be moving for the sake of motion.

9. Optimism

Many of the traits mentioned thus far would not be possible without this key ingredient. Without being able to constantly see the cup as half full, we would never be able to stay focused. Being blind to that silver lining would paralyze our persistence. So it is absolutely crucial that our minds maintain a positive outlook on life and never give in to the destruction of defeat. Optimism is at the heart of a successful human being!

10. Passion

Success can be obtained by many, but maintaining the drive to reach our goals requires a passion for pursuit and a lust for life. We can create a to-do list and set our goals with the best of them, but without this necessary habitual hunger, we will most certainly fail to bring to the table the results we imagined.

All ten of these traits are very important in being a good person, being liked by others, and being successful at anything you do.

Warren Buffett on Charlie Rose - May 2007

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

I have recently starting reading (listening actually from the audiobook) The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. It's been a thought-changing book so far and he has a lot of great ideas to tackle your fears and your passions in life. He started off working in an office like many Americans and made a dramatic change to alter his life and travel the world, all the while working only 4-hours on his own businesses.

His book is broken out into the following chapters:

Definition means to figure out what a person wants, get over fears, see past society's "expectations", and figure out what it will really cost to get where a person wants to go.

Elimination is about time management, or rather about not managing time. This is achieved applying the 80/20 rule to focus only on those tasks that contribute the majority of benefit. There's a difference, Ferriss says, between efficiency and effectiveness. The books emphasis is on effectiveness.

Automation is about building a sustainable, automatic source of income. This includes techniques such as drop-shipping, automation, Google Adwords and Adsense and outsourcing.

Liberation is dedicated to the successfully automated of one's lifestyle and the liberatation from a geographical location and job. Incidentally, Ferriss notes that if somebody has a regular job, the order of steps will be DELA, not DEAL.

The book asserts that technology such as email, instant messaging and internet-enabled pda's complicate life rather than simplify it. It advocates hiring virtual assistants from developing countries such as India to free up personal time.

Source: Wikipedia

Timothy Ferriss also writes a blog and maintains a website. Check them out! You can also check out my previous post - Timothy Ferriss, American Author and Speaker.

Wesley Autrey, Subway Samaritan

Wesley Autrey (b. 1956) (dubbed by the media as the "Subway Samaritan", "Subway Superman", "The Hero of Harlem" and as the "Subway Hero") is a New York construction worker and Navy veteran who in 2007 achieved international recognition after he saved Cameron Hollopeter, a 19-year-old film student who had suffered a seizure and fallen onto the tracks, from being struck by a New York City subway train.

He was on the 2007 Time 100 most influential people in the world list made by Time magazine and had the text about him written by Donald Trump.

The Subway Story

On January 2, 2007, Autrey was waiting for a train at the 137th Street and Broadway station in Manhattan with his two young daughters. At around 12:45 p.m., he and two women noticed a young man, Cameron Hollopeter, having a seizure. Autrey borrowed a pen from someone and used it to keep Hollopeter's jaw open. Following the seizure, Hollopeter stumbled from the platform, falling onto the tracks.

As Hollopeter lay on the tracks, Autrey saw the lights of an oncoming train. As one of the women held Autrey's daughters back away from the edge of the platform, Autrey dove onto the tracks. He thought he would be able to take Hollopeter off the tracks, but he realized there was not enough time to drag Hollopeter away. Instead, he protected Hollopeter by throwing himself over Hollopeter's body in a drainage trench between the tracks, where he held him down. The operator of the train applied the brakes, but two cars still passed over them, close enough to leave grease on his cap.

Source: Wikipedia.org

The simple act of caring and doing something nice for a complete stranger is what gives this story meaning.

Teen Millionaires

Stories of two teen millionaires. One of the teens had 12 businesses before age 21.

Here are some of the lessons from the video:

• Put yourself out there.
  
• Start with small goals.
• Focus on something you know.
• Adapt or die, continue to change.
• Read books and study successful people.
  

From a Homeless, Drug Addict to Millionaire

Bob Williamson fled a broken home in Mississippi at age 17 to hitchhike around the country. He landed in Atlanta in 1970 at 24, homeless, broke, and addicted to heroin and methamphetamine. When he got a job there cleaning bricks for $15 a week, no one would have guessed that he would start a $26 million software company someday.

Change your life around if what you're doing isn't working:
Successful businesses often spring from a combination of hard work and dumb luck, and Williamson credits both. Not long after arriving in Atlanta, he was injured in a car wreck and spent months recovering in the hospital. While there, he read the Bible, converted to Christianity, and decided to straighten up his life. It wasn't easy: He had a criminal record, no college degree, and few job prospects.

"I was either going to commit suicide, which several of my friends had done, or I was going turn my life around," says Williamson, now chairman and chief executive officer of Horizon Software International, a 180-employee maker of software for food service systems used in schools, hospitals, and other institutions.

Promoted Eight Times in Two Years

Be the first one there to work, and last one to leave:
Williamson eventually landed a job putting labels on paint cans in the basement of the Glidden paint company in Atlanta. He cleaned up the labeling department and helped Glidden move to the company's first computer system. His work ethic, he says, was: "First one there, last to leave." Glidden promoted Williamson eight times in two years.

He went on to work at two other paint companies. By then a paint expert, Williamson started working in his basement to develop a better formula for his hobby: airbrush art. "I borrowed $1,000 on my Visa card and bought a bunch of chemicals and made a bunch of paint," he says. At a trade show, artists flocked to his booth to buy the paint he developed, called Polytranspar. He quit his job and started his own paint company, Master Paint Systems, in 1977.

He spun that into several other businesses: a magazine for artists, how-to books, an art supply manufacturer, and a mail-order business, teaching himself as he went along. As the business grew, so did his need for organizational tools. It was the early 1980s, and he realized he needed systems for his warehouse, inventory control, and supply-chain management. "Back then you couldn't buy software, so I hired a couple of programmers, and we wrote software for all these different companies," Williamson says.

Recovering From Bankruptcy

By 1986, when he was selling 6,000 different art-related items, Williamson prepared to take the company public. But during the audit for his IPO, he discovered an accountant had been embezzling money from the company. "We fought our way through it, and my accountant and my lawyer and everybody told me to just take bankruptcy and forget about it," Williamson says.

Never give up:
But he was convinced he could recover. Williamson urged his creditors not to file lawsuits that would force a liquidation. "Every week I would send them a letter and tell them what was happening, and we rebuilt it up beyond its former stage," he says.

Focused on School Cafeterias

After recovering, he sold off his previous ventures, and in 1992, founded Horizon. The company was built on the back-office software Williamson spent years developing for his own businesses. "We wrote a system for our mail-order business, we wrote software for our manufacturing company, a point-of-sale system for retail," he says. "We weren't selling that to anybody. We had just written in-house for our own use."

The company focused on systems for school cafeterias when Williamson found no one had written back-office software for that market. He was soon selling into other institutions like hospitals, nursing homes, colleges, and military bases. Horizon recently won the contract for the Los Angeles public schools, the nation's second-largest system.

Williamson's son, Michael, who is Horizon's chief operating officer, says his father succeeded by jumping on opportunities that chance presented. "You would never have thought that we would be in food service software when we started Horizon, but the path just kind of led that way and we took advantage of it," he says. "He's always had a great ability to look out into other markets and other products."

The Element of Chance

Be an honest and straightforward person:
Williamson, now 61, presides over Horizon's 44,000-square-foot headquarters in Atlanta. The company had $26 million in revenue in 2007, and he's projecting $32 million this year. Still, Williamson says, "I'm the first one there and the last one to leave." And he ascribes his business success to his conversion. "I have always tried to run my business according to the way that God would want me to…I've always tried to be honest and straightforward, and not lie and not cheat, and not try to take an easy way out."

Hard work was certainly part of Williamson's improbable personal turnaround: He recalls years of working 20-hour days and says he still only sleeps four or five hours a night. But chance guided his entrepreneurial success as well: a car accident that jolted him out of a destructive life, a paint recipe that became a hit, and early exposure to the burgeoning software industry.

And in some ways, Williamson's arrival in Atlanta at the nadir of his life set the foundation for his rise. "I'd been through so much in my life, I don't get discouraged," he says. "The trials I've had in business are mild compared to what my life was like."

Source: BusinessWeek.com

Rose Blumkin, Nebraska Furniture Mart

A great, influential story of Rose Blumkin of Nebraska Furniture Mart who was an immigrant from Russia without a formal education. Here is her story with success traits.

Warren Buffett makes no secret of his belief that a good business needs a good manager and, when he buys businesses, prefers to leave management in place, if they are good and know what they are doing.

There can be no better example of this strategy than the Nebraska Furniture Mart founded by the incredible Rose Blumkin.

Rose Blumkin was born in Minsk, Russia in 1893, one of eight children of an impoverished Rabbi, and worked from the age of six in her mother’s small general store. Rose did not go to school but learned arithmetic from a family friend.

When Rose was old enough for outside employment, she got a job in a local haberdashery and was soon running the show. Soon after, she married, and with her husband migrated to America, her husband going ahead before her, and Rose making her way alone via the Trans Siberian Railway, apparently without a passport. The Blumkins made their way to Nebraska where Rose, to augment the family income, sold second hand furniture from her home.

Things must have gone well enough for Rose because in 1937, she borrowed $500 and opened the Nebraska Furniture Mart in a basement shop in Omaha, under the motto that she was to make famous:

Be sincere:
‘Sell cheap and tell the truth’.

Use other options if something doesn't work:
Rose Blumkin had problems in getting the big furniture wholesalers to stock her, but she outsmarted them by buying excess stock from other out of state retailers at reduced prices and selling them to her Omaha customers at low profit margins. This set the scene for the business practice that was to make her famous; buy in bulk, run a tight ship and pass on any cost savings to the customers. She generally worked on no higher than a 10 per cent mark up.

The Furniture Mart grew bigger and bigger, with Mrs B, as Buffett used to call her, working long hours every day and getting her family to do the same. Rose Blumkin’s furniture shop became a Nebraska legend. The original 3000 square feet shop now occupies 75 acres.

Warren Buffett, as a local resident, knew about the store and the wonderful business that Mrs B had established and made several attempts to buy her out, but could not come up with a price that was acceptable.

Finally, according to Roger Lowenstein in Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, Buffett walked into the store one day, approached Rose Blumkin, and asked her if she wanted to sell and, if so, to name her price. Mrs B said she was a seller at 60 million dollars and Buffett accepted immediately. He insisted apparently, on Rose and her sons, by then helping her to run the business, retaining a minority shareholding and keeping on managing.

Buffett knew from previous enquiries that the business was grossing about 15 million dollars a year in profits, but seemed to have done little additional checking, settling the deal within a few days, without audits or due diligence. He knew a good deal when he saw it, and, as he was later to say, he trusted her integrity.

After the deal was done, Rose Blumkin is alleged to have told Warren that they were now going to ‘put our competitors through a meat grinder’. That would not have been news to the various businesses that had tried to compete with Mrs B over the years and who had already been minced.

In his 1984 Letter to Shareholders, Warren Buffett said this, reflecting his own investment principles:

Be enthusiastic, and realize and remain in your area of special competence:
‘I have been asked by a number of people what secrets the Blumkins bring to their business. These are not very esoteric. All members of the family:

1. Apply themselves with an enthusiasm that would make Ben Franklin and Horatio Alger look like dropouts;

2. Define with extraordinary realism their area of special competence and act decisively on all matters within it;

3. Ignore even the most enticing propositions falling outside of that area of special competence; and

4. Unfailingly behave in a high grade manner with everyone they deal with. (Mrs B boils it down to "sell cheap and tell the truth".’ (paragraphing modified).

Never give up:
Mrs B kept at it but apparently became a bit irascible as she grew older. In 1959, then over 90 years old, she had a falling out with family members who were then running the store and left in high dudgeon. So what did she do? She opened up a competing store, specializing in carpets, not far from the Nebraska Furniture Mart, calling it ‘Mrs B’s Warehouse’. She did pretty well, apparently causing a dent in the Furniture Mart’s carpet sales.

Several years later, she reconciled with family members, sold the carpet business to Berkshire Hathaway for $5,000,000 and went back to work at the Furniture Mart, turning up, of course, seven days a week.

Rose Blumkin died in 1998, aged 104. A business legend.

Source: Buffettsecrets.com