Success Manifesto

My last final is this Tuesday. While I've enjoyed this semester, I look forward to having the next month to reflect, restrategize, relax, and blog (sorry for the lack of it lately).

Posted by Michael Simmons at 11:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (6)

I've been extremely busy the past week catching up with school. After 6-7 hours of sleep, I've been pretty much working until I fall asleep. Ironically, I would say that past two weeks have been two of the best of my life. I haven't been jumping off the walls with glee, but overall I've just been very happy, fulfilled, present, and loving. When I do get angry or worried, I've been noticing it and returning to a baseline state more quickly than I normally do.

A lot of this can be attributed to my lessons learned from the Amazon.com Bestseller Campaign and my resulting prioritization of happiness. For some reason the silliness of being so worried and stressed about something, especially something that ended up working out, seemed so silly to me.

At any rate, I've decided to prioritize happiness even more by embarking on one of the largest projects I've ever embarked on (it still has to pass the morning-after test though). I will put happiness and fulfillment as my #1 priority and focus on them religiously through out the day. As I go along, I will journal and blog about my successes/set backs and what I've learned. This is not a project with a clear end in mind where once acheive it I can get an award that says, "Happiest Student of the Year Award". It will be an ongoing process. I imagine I will continue to focus on it if it brings the benefits I'm hoping for.

As I write this, I realize that I may feel completely different tomorrow morning. In which case, I will make an addendum to this entry saying, "Upon further reflection this project has been postponed indefinitely." I also realize that this is another impulsive decision. Therefore, if I wake up tomorrow morning and really like it, I'm going to think about what the commitment entails and how the commitment is going to look like in my life on a daily basis. And then I will journal about the costs and benefits.

Some reasons this project seems very important to me right now are:

1. Everybody talks about how happiness and fulfillment are two major keys to life (something, which I agree with). However, very few people really act like they are. Very few people seem to keep life in perspective on an ongoing basis.
   
2. It's nice to be happy and fulfilled.
   
3. I believe very strongly that it is possible to be the change I want to see in each moment regardless (to a point) of my external situation.
   
4. Happiness is contagious and will improve the lives of those around me and consequently my life.
   
5. I believe that by being the change I want to see, I will make better decisions and act more harmoniously.
   
6. I believe that the decisions I make in my life (even the small ones) are extremely important and that their effects compound over time. For example, if you look at the decision tree below, you can see that the first decision completely changes the paths followed in the future.

Over the next few weeks or months, my journal entries might be more focused on the progress of the project/experiment. They will also keep me accountable.

One thing that I'm watching out for is fake happiness. I'm not exactly sure what 'fake happiness' means, but I've definitely met people who say they're very happy, but don't act or behave accordingly (in my opinion). As such, I'm going to have to really think about what it means to be happy and fulfilled and how I know if I'm getting closer to it.

Posted by Michael Simmons at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (19)

I keep on telling others that I learned a lot from the Amazon experience, but I've kept on pushing back writing about these lessons until now.

The Lessons Learned

1. Always plan for the worst. We were expecting nearly $10,000 in checks since September. Because they were already delayed we figured that they would come any day, so we incorrectly assumed that the money would arrive when we needed it. In retrospect, we should have followed up with the organizations earlier and created backup plans no matter how sure we were.
   
2. Know the benefits and costs of your various choices. Based on Amazon.com Bestseller Reports I had read, I determined that the main marketing strategy to be employed would be writing a sales letter and getting other list owners who target enterprising students to tell their lists. What I didn't think about was:
   
   1. The number of people that normally open the newsletters sent out.
      
   2. The conversion rate for these people that open the newsletter.
   My good friend, Ryan Allis, who operates a newsletter with 10,000 suscribers, sent out the offer to his list. 1 out of 10 people opened the newsletter and 1 out of 100 of those 1,000 purchased the book. In other words, 10 people purchased the book as a result of his email newsletter. With those statistics, 250,000 enterprising youth would have had to been reached with our offer through newsletters. With those sort of numbers earlier on, I would have devoted most of my time to bulk purchases. As it were, more than 70% the orders came from bulk purchases, yet I spent 90% of time trying to get individual purchases.
   
3. Pursuing a large, short-term goal with varying levels of support from many people, with a very uncertain outcome can be a lot of fun. After making a public commitment (through this blog, the newsletter, and through conversations) and a private commitment with myself, Sheena, and other collaborators, I was extremely focused on the goal. Also, because I felt like the goal could be achieved, but that we were behind where we wanted to be, I committed a lot of time and lost sleep (something that I haven't done for anything over an extended amount of time since Freshman year). I sacrificed a lot of pleasantries so that everything I was doing could lead to the goal. While this was certainly stressful at points, I have to say that there was something exhilarating about the process. Part of me wants to avoid that stress ever again and part of me wants to leap into another project with my lessons learned.
   
4. Selling yourself to soon is risky. In retrospect, I don't think we should have aimed to become a bestseller on my birthday. One night in early October while I was reading about a how to become a bestseller, a press release headline shot into my head, "Birthday Boy Becomes Bestseller". I even started to write a press release for it. Once this was in my mind I stubbornly made the vision my reality and tried to fit our limited time and money resources into it, instead of practically thinking about the sacrifices that would need to be made. Because the idea had become a reality in my head and I had sold myself so strongly, I had a logical, convincing reason for every point that Sheena made for pushing back the bestseller day.

   According to my entrepreneurship textbook, The Entrepreneurial Venture, "Entrepreneurship is a management style that involves pursuing opportunity without regard to the resources currently enrolled." While this style of management ended up working to achieve the goal, I think it can be risky when pursued in haste, without proper planning. In the future, I need to be careful what visions I sell myself on. If we had pushed back the date, we still could've been a bestseller, been less stressed, have lost less sleep, and been a #1 bestseller.

Posted by Michael Simmons at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (29)

What makes an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur? I once read research that said that entrepreneurs are unique because discouragement leads to encouragement. In other words, entrepreneurs enjoy proving other people wrong.

This description of an entrepreneur has certainly fit me before! My mom is very traditional in terms of her views towards education. She moved to America when she was seventeen years old. Through a lot of hard work, she was able to complete college, something that she considers one of the most major achievements of her life. When I was born, one of her major goals for me was to graduate from a prestigious college. Consequently, she has always wanted me to get good grades so I could go to a good school and she supported me very heavily towards this end.

As I became more interested in entrepreneurship in high school, my mom started to see my business as a threat. At first we got in arguments over it, and after awhile I vowed not to talk about it with her because it hurt so much to have something I was so passionate about be shot down by somebody so close to me. In the back of my mind (and partially in the front), one of the major reasons I wanted to succeed was to show my mom and others that I could follow my own path and be successful. While this isn't my main motivator anymore (I think), it definitely served its purpose.

Now, my relationship with my mom is better than it has ever been before. Growing up it was just my mom and I, and arguments were a way of life for us. Our relationship going so well now is so new to me. I'm realizing a love for her that I didn't know existed because it was covered by years of mean things I wish I hadn't said. Even though we have some very different beliefs about the world, we are now connecting on our similarities and I can feel this new change rippling out through my entire world view in a good way.

I have often heard others say that the people closest to you will try to stop you from following your passion because they love you and want you to be safe. It is one thing to understand this intellectually and another to feel it. I feel it now.

This feeling definitely helps me appreciate other students who have 'sacrificed' their own goals to keep the family together or to keep loved ones happy. While I generally believe that 'sacrificing' your own goals hurts everybody in the long-term, I can definitely see how there is a lot of gray area and that decisions that go against the grain can be difficult to make.

Posted by Michael Simmons at 02:16 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (8)

Sheena (my business partner and girl friend) and I have had trouble connecting lately to have a much needed meeting on the strategic direction of the company. I would love to say that we've been really busy (which we have been) and believe that this is the reason why we haven't met. However, we've been following this pattern for a few months now.

More realistically, the reason is that we have difficulty having strategic meetings without getting into arguments or prematurely ending the meeting. As a result, I think we are both subconsciously avoiding having the crucial meetings because we want to avoid the stress of arguments.

Having a relationship with a loved one (family or significant other) is very interesting. On the one hand, we have a trust and interrdependence that it would be extremely difficult to have with anybody else. We're so intertwined that a win for her is truly a win for me and vice-versa. On the other hand, as a result of being so close, we take liberties with each other that business partners wouldn't normally make. Small issues that shouldn't be brought up are brought up. For example, during one meeting it was particularly annoying to me that Sheena was biting her nails. I knew it shouldn't bother me and so I didn't say anything, but the annoyance kept on growing until I finally said something. Asking her to not bite her nails got her angry and then an argument ensued. Looking back, it's comical that such a small thing could blow up.

Things don't tend to be so-so. For reasons that I don't fully understand, they are either better than ever or let's just say, "other than better than ever."

But in the end, we are both committed and our relationship is improving and in so doing we're each going through major personal growth that affects the business and our lives.

Posted by Michael Simmons at 01:27 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (10)