Tag Archives: Facebook

Why I Asked the Questions I Asked: the 2011 Money Summit Interviews

Discovering the Beauty Within

Discovering the Beauty Within

Those who are larger than life, and seemingly possessed with superpowers, are humans too, like the rest of us.

This is what I learned when I engaged some of the speakers of the 2011 Money Summit in a conversation via Facebook messaging.  Some of them are downright funny (hilarious even), and all are inspired and inspiring.

Here were the questions I asked:

1.     Who were you before you became successful?

2.     What interests you apart from your business or your career?

Why those 2 questions?

I want to find out if successful people have a common trait which made them successful, and I wanted to find this “special trait” by looking at what they have written and how they wrote it.  The things and events a person discloses about himself and his life, what a person gives importance to, gives a glimpse of that which sets him apart (I was pleasantly surprised at the glimpses some have allowed me).

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How to Get A VC to Fund You

Beholden

Before the Entrep Summit, I was not very familiar with the venture capitalist (VC for short).  I have heard about them but was not sure how they figured in the world of business.

Turns out, VCs are the power behind great start-ups like Facebook (as you would have already found out if you watched the movie Social Network).

And through the Entrep Summit, I learned the hoops of how I can get funding from a VC.

But as I said in an earlier article, it is not simple.  A lot of money is at stake and venture capitalism is not charity – the venture capitalists are also in the business of making money.

But yes, getting funding from a VC might be well worth your time – it not only eliminates worry but it also lets you know someone believes in you and that someone has your back.

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Hoarding Emails (and Letting Go)

Simplify

I was getting tired of seeing 5,600+ unread mail in my mailbox.  What’s funny is I am also being bombarded with emails that say I should simplify my life.

So I did.

But it is harder than I thought.

As of press time, I still have 3,089 unread emails.  And it is growing by 50 a day.

I am confounded as to why my unread emails became that much.  I am usually overly zealous at reading what’s up in my world and everyone else’s.  Looking at my 2008 emails (Gmail has allowed me to keep them), I saw that I had read each and every one.  I do not know what happened between then and now.

Maybe it’s just that I am a sucker for enlisting for products and services.  In early 2009, I was so big on personal finance and internet marketing that I had signed up for those websites and people my mentors recommended – Schefren, Daily Wealth, Daily Crux, Morningstar, Napoleon Hill, Bob Proctor, League of Extraordinary Minds, Carl Ocab and many more other websites.  I seriously think this is the time when my emails ballooned to unimaginable and my life went from simple to crazy-exciting.

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Are You On The Internet?

Virgin Territory

Internet: Virgin Territory

My mother had foresight.

She had the two of us enroll at a computer school at a nondescript building, with an area not exceeding 40 square meters.  I forgot where it was located, but I remember we had to look over the shoulder of the teacher and we had to share a computer, tinkering with DOS and binary numbers and floppy discs together.  We were no longer mother and child, but two people trying to ride with the times.  I am not sure if I (or she) learned anything.  I know that back at home I continued to type my thesis with an electric typewriter.

Not that it mattered.  What we had learned would be relegated to the annals of computer history, because in a few years, mankind was to take several quantum leaps into the information age.

In his book “The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty First Century”, Thomas L. Friedman catalogued the shift of the philosophy of the world – from working hard, man had to work smart.  He said, “… One way small companies flourish in the flat world is by learning to act really big.  And the key to being small and acting big is being quick to take advantage of all the new tools for collaboration to reach farther, faster, wider, and deeper.”

From the computer came the Internet.  And the internet is the new frontier where this is possible.

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