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Check out my latest infographic

Based on the Amazon.com bestseller “Digital Marketing Madness: Social Media Marketing Strategy at Super Low Cost”

The secret to going viral is to know WHY people share in the first place.  To know this, we just gotta know the 11 to 17 questions people ask themselves subconsciously before clicking  the “share” button.

We should think about these questions every time we create a new video or online poster for our brand. If the viewer subconsciously answers “yes” to any of these questions, he/she will most likely share/reshare this video or poster. Enjoy!

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Okay, so in my earlier blog post here, I talked about the difference between a “real” entrepreneur and a mere “dreamer” with good ideas, and the what separates the two is action.  I also talked about what could be stopping a great dreamer (like you?) from actually taking action.

One thing which may stop potentially great entrepreneurs is the fear of hard work.

Well, good news!

A lot of GREAT entrepreneurs HATE hard work too.  In fact I believe in these two sayings:

“If you must always work more to earn more, then there’s something wrong with your business model.” -David Michael Ledesma (me)

“I choose a LAZY person to do a hard job.  Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” -Bill Gates

You’ve already heard of the old cliche that you should work smarter instead of harder.  Well guess what: in today’s Web 2.0 world, it’s VERY real. Cleverness, ingenuity, originality and (a small but reasonable amount of) action go a looooooong way.  It’s so simple (and I dare say it: quite “easy”) to set up a good business nowadays by starting with something as simple as Youtube (like I did!) or other social media to get followers.  What will you set up?  You can set up a business based on your passion; your passion could be in fashion, beauty, photography, fishing, wine tasting… (whatever!).  I’ll eventually be teaching you how to do this step-by-step (it’s simple AND easy…)

The great thing is, once you start a business with web 2.0 (Youtube, squidoo, etc.) and you get your followers, you can eventually link this to your website, which can then earn money ON AUTOPILOT (whaaa??). Yes, you’ll only have to update your site every now and then; maybe 45 min. per day at the most, and it will continue to earn money for you… without much work on your part… and your social media content will continue to drive people to your site.

Anyway, as I’ll be showing my viewers how to do that eventually, back to this post’s topic. Why is there a strong belief that we must “work hard” in order to achieve success?  I think of only 2 reasons:

1) Your parents or grandparents said so.

2) Your teachers said so.

3) You read it from business personalities, authors, and gurus online and elsewhere.

Let me tackle it one by one.

“My parents and grandparents said so.”  Well, they come from another time when maybe indeed, hard work was needed.  They certainly couldn’t set up businesses which would earn money on autopilot (read: “website”).

“My teachers said so.”  I don’t blame them.  To succeed in high school in the past, you definitely needed to work hard.  But there are other ways nowadays when you get to college or masters (they obviously haven’t heard of the super easy videos of MBAbullshit.com, LOL!)

“Famous entrepreneurs and authors said so.”  You know what?  I think either these are big people who built their success a long time ago… or they indeed worked hard and became successful, but the success could’ve come even without the hard work…. OR they’re simply LYING through their teeth.

Why would they LIE to you about hard work? Simple, TO PLAY IT SAFE. To protect themselves from being blamed for your failure. Huh?  More often than not, these gurus give you some “magic formula for success”… and then they insert “hard work” as part of the “formula.”  Why? So that if their formula fails and you blame them, they can point the finger back at you and say “Hey! Part of the formula is ‘hard work.’ If you failed, it’s not coz of my formula, it’s coz you didn’t work ‘hard enough.’ ”  Get my drift?  It’s a simple as that; they add in the ‘hard work’ aspect to wash their hands clean if you fail while following their formula.

I too have a ‘formula’ but I know it can never guarantee success… even then, I do believe that you can VERY GREATLY increase your chances of success using cleverness and ingenuity with social media… without much work (or at least without constantly having much work; as the business should eventually run on almost autopilot).

So well anyway, I hope you enjoyed this post.  Til next time!

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Are you a real entrepreneur or just a dreamer? Don’t worry, in this post I’ll tell you how to get your ass out of that “dreamer” mode.

I know of so many people who either believe they’re kick-ass entrepreneurs or people who are regarded by friends as good entrepreneurs, just because they have “great ideas” or “grand plans.”

But how many of us have actually take even small steps of action to bring us closer to our success? If you’re still in the “dreamer” mode, I don’t mean to put you down.  Been there, done that.  Before I became a successful entrepreneur in my own small way, I too was just a dreamer; but eventually I took action in the real world (actually social media world) instead of just leaving it “up there” in my dreams.

Now, I UNDERSTAND why you may not have started yet.

1) You’re a procrastinator and refuse to change. (I can’t help you with this).

2) You’re a procrastinator but you’re willing to change. (Read on.)

3) You don’t have the time right now. (Read on.)

4) You don’t have the capital needed right now. (Read on.)

5) You don’t like hard work. (Neither do I, and you DON’T need to; read on!)

Of course, if you’re a procrastinator, you have to ask yourself WHY?

Let’s skip #1 (since I can’t help with that) & go to #2:

Believe it or not, I was a procrastinator and discovered that my reason was that I was/am a PERFECTIONIST.  A big chunk of procrastinators actually aren’t lazy.  They simply can’t start because they can’t stop worrying about the *perfect* way to start.  If this is you (it was me), then the solution is simple; choose to start even if you’re not starting perfectly.  Then you can go into “continuous improvement” mode later on and still achieve perfection.

#3: I don’t have the time right now.

Hey, I hear you; and I’m not faulting you for that.  But you gotta ask yourself, is it really that you don’t have the time or are you just using the “no time excuse?”  Will this “don’t have the time” excuse drag on forever or until your retirement?  And will you end up just a retired failure?

I DO have a solution.  Surely, even if you “don’t have the time” right now, you can spare 5 minutes a day? Or maybe even just ONE minute? Heck, you’re spending around 5 minutes just reading my post right now!

Well, this is what I want you to do in your precious 5 minutes (or even 1 minute) per day: Do any (and I mean any) TANGIBLE action to bring you closer to your entrepreneurial dream.  It could be as simple as writing down a rough biz plan on a paper napkin.  Or maybe just a rough budget of startup costs.  ANYTHING. But it must be TANGIBLE (like writing it down). If it’s just in your brain, you’re still dangerously close to the “dreamer mode” instead of the action mode.  Eventually, the concrete actions will fire you up enough to take bigger action WITHOUT needing too much “willpower” to get started.  (All the inspirational quotes in the world will not be as motivating as knowing that you’ve already taken and continue to take tangible steps every day, even if tiny.)

#4: I don’t have the capital right now.

Okay, fine.  But again, have you done anything TANGIBLE to help you get closer to having the needed capital?  Did you save even a little money TODAY (not SOMEDAY) to bring you closer to the needed capital?  Did you even make a super rough capital budgeting plan on a paper napkin at the coffee shop (speaking of coffee shop; did you give up your expensive black coffee from an expensive shop and instead make it using the office coffee machine?)  It could be any SMALL thing.. but do something tangible TODAY that brings you closer to your capital requirements.

I’m also writing a book right now which I’ll put on Amazon on how to start an online biz for very small capital, lower than $500 like I did with this website; using Youtube and social media.  But don’t let that be your excuse and say “I’ll wait for David’s book.”  Saving capital, even small, is a good thing. And even if you’re in a tough situation right now and can’t save a penny, you can still draw up your capital budgeting plan on a paper napkin and do other small things like that everyday… which will have a domino effect of its own and make it easier for you to save your capital.

I’ll stop here for today. “#5: You don’t like hard work” deserves a post of it’s own, I believe.  Don’t worry, I’m not gonna be your high school teacher and blame it on you.  Because you really DON’T need constant hard work to be a successful entrep (note that I said “constant”).

Watch out for my next post!

David

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(Don’t waste your time on bullshit resolutions you’ll surely drop anyway…!)

Here are my suggestions:

1) I shall use my laziness as an advantage. With the proper direction, laziness can motivate you to find easier ways to do things in less time. And when you create a way to do this for other people, you get rich! (By selling your products and services to help other ‘lazy’ people like you.) That’s how I invented MBAbullshit.com… offering super easy and quick ways to learn, for people lazy to study or go to class!

2) I shall sit back and watch. Opening a successful business isn’t about getting inspired after watching an entrepreneurship documentary, and then deciding to suddenly set up a business (and then hoping and praying that people may choose to buy from you). It’s about always being very observant as to what people want, need or may want or need. This increases your chances of success and minimizes risk of failure.

3) I shall satisfy my selfishness. It’s ridiculous how many people actually ‘avoid’ entrepreneurship and earning money because they believe it’s selfish. But actually, YES IT IS. However, you being poor does not help the poor in any way, other than helping them “feel like you’re together with them.” If after being observant you see a good opportunity, go for it. And when you are rich, you can help all the poor people you want if you please. And hey, think about it… Who really deserves the charity awards more… a non-profit poor dude who lives with the poor and creates jobs for 500 people, or a “greedy” multi-millionaire who creates jobs for 100,000? Oh, by the way, money can buy happiness (if used properly, of course!).

How about you? What other powerful but easily doable resolutions might you do? I’d like to hear your comments.

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A U.S. presidential candidate this year suggested that entrepreneurs need to take more risks.

Anyway, what does this mean for us business students or executives or entrepreneurs?

Does being a “risk-taker” or “non-risk-taker” really help define whether you can be an entrepreneur or not? Or whether you can be a successful entrepreneur or not?

In my own humble opinion, the answer is yes and no.  Yes, we need to take risks.  However, my (very personal) definition of a kick-ass entrepreneur is someone who’s both successful and obsessive about increasing the potential for profit while chopping down risk as much as possible.  This not only means investing very LOW capital, but also NOT HAVING TO QUIT YOUR DAY-JOB OR SCHOOL.(Actually, they can work well together…)

Luckily, we live in very interesting times, where we have great opportunity to set up great businesses with very great profit-potential using VERY low capital ONLINE; and just using great ideas based on our own inherent super-skills (i.e. great idea: this site; my inherent super-skill: explaining super complicated topics in a super simple way).   I’m sure you have your inherent skill too somewhere.  I eventually want to set up another site helping business students or graduates set up their own successful online businesses with extremely low investment. (Honestly, it completely puzzles me why so many startups need to raise so many millions of dollars from venture capitalists and give up such a big portion and control of their companies. )

How about you?  Do you dream of setting up your own online biz for very low capital?

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Hey zup!

So in my last post, I talked about how simple and “automatic” it is to get rich in the long term. Naturally, some members started asking, ‘how about the short term?’ My response to that is quite simply YES, it can be done, and it can be easy as well (!), although will not ‘automatically’ happen as I mentioned in my last post.

So, how to do it? I can think of my 7 most interesting ways for now, from low to high risk (just based on my personal opinion):

1) Lowest risk, high investment (tuition+tutoring+time), but easiest to implement: Getting high grades in business school, and getting a huge headstart for a high paying job or for a big pay raise.

2) Low risk, low investment (or can be high investment too, depending on a lot of factors), quite challenging (but also fun!): Thinking of a great and super business idea or startup which can be implemented for very little capital investment. Think: a kick-ass idea for your own website that lots of people might love but that no one else has done; or that no one else has done “in your special style”.

3) Medium risk, high investment: Setting up a franchise branch of a successful brand or chain.

4) Medium-High risk, high investment: Investing in the stock market, looking for “good value” stocks with sound business plans, etc.

5) High risk, low investment: Stock speculation on stocks which might “boom” quickly. Think IPOs, penny stocks (really cheap stocks $5 or less… imagine: if a $1 stock increases by just another dollar to $2, that’s a 100% profit overnight) or microcap stocks (small companies), day-trading, etc., or speculation of other financial instruments such as options, futures, etc. Or creating a good idea but expensive startup using “venture capital” investors.

6) Very high risk, medium to low investment: FOREX speculation and trading using high “leverage”. (Meaning: If you are using 200:1 leverage, you can deposit as little as $5000 with your forex broker, and he’ll allow you to “invest” or trade 200x that amount, or 1 million dollars worth of currency with the click of a mouse!).

7) Ridiculous Risk (but still ‘possible’, haha!), low investment (if you call it that):  Winning the lottery, even using a “betting system“.

I’ll be talking more about each of these in my next posts.  Any ideas from you?  Leave a comment.

Cheers!

David

Disclosure/Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links with monetary incentive arrangements. Nevertheless, any business or interaction done between my readers and my affiliates are mainly between them and I make no guarantees on my affiliates’ behalf.  I am not necessarily endorsing any product/service links which appear in this post.

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It’s actually not that difficult.

First of all, let me tell you that this post is about getting “automatically” rich in the long term.  How about the short term?  YES, getting rich in the short term  or near future can be done quickly too, although not “automatically”.  I will talk about that in another post (watch out for it, coming soon!).  But on to this post, about getting rich “automatically” in the long term (like for retirement, etc.)…

Before you get angry at me for telling you to “earn more and save”, you’ll be surprised as to how “automatic” this earning and saving can be, and how automatic this saving can add up (and “compound”) into a million dollars. If you’ve watched any of my videos on future value, you already know the power of interest in making money grow. Furthermore, the effect of future value of money goes quicker when it is “compounded” (meaning your $100 earns 10% the first year and becomes $110 at the end of the year. In the 2nd year, you earn 10% on the new $110, so at the end of the 2nd year you’ll have 121, etc. and this interest just keeps growing bigger).

Here’s the kicker… this “compounding” grows tremendously when, instead of just earning or saving extra and investing it, you save/earn at regular intervals. Just to demonstrate: If you’re 30 years old and you earn/save an extra $26/day (or earn/save an extra 9,500/year) and invest it in a bond earning 5% a year, you’ll have an extra $1 million by the time you “fully” retire at age 67 (nowadays, we work way past 60, and it may even be good for health and prolonging your life).  If you start just 5 years earlier it’s even more amazing… your 1 million will jump by more than 300,000 to $1,348,000 by the time you’re 67. Yes, there are other things to consider such as inflation; but the point is that becoming a millionaire can still be “automatic”.   If you’re willing to take more risk and, starting at 30 years old, start investing regularly in the stock market S&P 500 (instead of a bond) whose annual average return (1950-2009) is 7% already adjusted for inflation and despite ALL the stock market crashes (Source: simplestockinvesting.com), then you could have your inflation-adjusted “automatic” 1 million dollars earlier, by the time you’re only 61. (What if you’re already kinda old?  Is it too late?  Nope… read below.)

*Note: I recommend consulting your personal CFA or CFP before making any investment decisions.

Of course, how do you save more and earn more?

Firstly, look at the non-productive expenses in your life.  I like the way famed author Robert Kiyosaki “redefines” the meaning of “asset vs. liability” in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money – That The Poor And Middle Class Do Not!“.  In Kiyosaki’s definition (not your traditional accounting), if something puts money in your pocket now or in the future, then that thing is an asset.  If it takes money from your pocket, it’s a liability.  For example, traditional accountants (and biz students!) classify a new car as an “asset” because it has “value”.  Kiyosaki classifies it as a “liability” because a) it loses it’s value by 20% (and reduces your wealth!) the moment it rolls out the showroom, and b) it takes money out of your pocket in the form of mortgage payments.  Traditional accountants may classify educational school fees and tutorial fees as “expenses” because you “pay” for them. However, if this education helps us earn money, it could be reclassified as “assets” because they may cause people to save more and earn more in the future.  If  you’d like to read more about Kiyosaki, you can check out the Amazon reviews by clicking here or below.  You’ll be shocked at some of his insights which go against traditional education, and he even seems to  imply that a lot of traditional education is bad; although he stresses the importance of financial education and financial literacy.  (this blog post continues below)

Secondly, save on the right things, don’t scrimp on the wrong things.  I’m amazed about how many people I’ve met who blow a lot of money on cafe lattes at stylish coffee chains, but will scrimp on amazing stuff which can help them get higher grades and a much higher paycheck, and yet they complain they don’t have enough money to save anything (yes, that’s the reason why I compare my premium tutorials to cafe lattes).   How much more extra salary could they make if they graduated on time (or even earlier!) and/or with better academic records?  How much would they save on extra school fees by not having to take the subject again?  The list goes on and on..  Nope, I’m not the first person to compare savings/earnings to coffee lattes or to use the word “automatic millionaire“.  These concepts were actually popularized by famous Oprah-featured author David Bach in his book “The Automatic Millionaire” where he demonstrates the power of saving, investing, and compounding and becoming a millionaire by giving up little things like coffee lattes.

How about if you’re old?  Is it too late?  David Bach has a new book out “Start Late, Finish Rich” where he discusses how it’s not too late and how stuff can still be done to save more and earn more, in time for retirement. You can click on it here or below to read the Amazon reviews.

So, how about you?  What are YOUR ideas to save more and earn more (even just a little bit more!) so you can “Finish Rich“? Let’s see your comment below.

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Hello!

As promised for a looooooong time, here is my newly redesigned website!

Still me as usual, with still the same kick-ass videos.

Hope this isn’t so ugly like the last one..

Welcome back!

David

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8 important traits. This one’s my favorite..

So you go to business school for college/bachelor or masters or even both.  That does NOT mean you’ll have the traits of a good leader, manager, or executive. Do you have them? This is my ultimate favorite one.

Lucky for us, these leadership traits can be learned, and legendary CEO Jack Welch of GE outlines 8 of them in his great and super easy-to-read book “Winning“.

When you watched the old TV hit series “Survivor”, you may have seen how STUPIDLY people try to assume the leadership role by just being BOSSY.  And you also saw the consequences.  Dumb move.  So what are the right ways to become a leader? One leadership trait of Jack Welsh that really strikes me is that “Leaders get into everyone’s skin, exuding positive energy and optimism“.  You may have known this somewhere in the back of your mind, but how many people actually do this at work?  Is it no wonder then, that brilliant but purely “technical” people are not chosen as leaders for a team, department, or company?  Nothing wrong with being technical, in fact it can be a huge advantage.  But if you really wana excel and be a “leader“, you also gotta learn and/or practice how to “exude with positive energy and optimism” with the people around you.  You can then become a “leader”, whether or not you have the “official” title.  Of course, this will then put you at a huge advantage next time a PROMOTION or PAY RAISE comes around.

Not too difficult to do, is it?  And you’ll probably end up happier too.  Not just at work, but in your personal life as well.  If you’re serious about being not just a good, but a great executive, I highly recommend Jack’s book.  It goes into more details on this trait as well as 7 others, and has a lot more great stuff.  It’s also super easy-to-read and non-technical, with little snippets of knowledge that I can use everyday. Just quickly have a look at it, browse around and read the reviews on Amazon.com here.

Hope you learned or realized something.  Have a great day!

David

Disclosure/Disclaimer: There are thousands of products and/or services out there who could become my affiliates from whom I can easily get commissions for recommending.  However, in the end, I only select and recommend affiliates whose products or services I genuinely and truly believe in.  This post contains affiliate links. Nevertheless, any business or interaction done between my readers and my affiliates are mainly between them and I make no guarantees on my affiliates’ behalf.

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