Doodle

 

Have an exit plan.
撤退計画を持とう。

 

Successful business people are usually quite risk-averse, regardless of what they say in public. They never go all in, at least money-wise.

They are quite focused on success of their life and business, but they also know there are thousands of ways to achieve it. Therefore they never cling to one idea; they do hundreds of experiments and pick only one or two that work well. And they keep doing that until, or even after, they achieve what they wanted to achieve.

How do they choose? They have a clear guideline, or an exit plan, before doing experiments. If the outcome doesn’t meet their criteria, they will exit—no matter how they love the idea.

This is the strategy we also should apply to our personal life. No one wants to fail, but we will most likely fail if we go all in without any experiments and clear exit plan. We shouldn’t live our life like compulsive gamblers.

 

 

See yourself.
自己を認識しよう。

 

It’s always better NOT to make a decision or take a decisive action when you’re trapped by a negative feeling or emotion. If you did, the outcome of your decision/action would be quite different from what you originally wanted or intended.

So what should you do? Instead of making impulsive decisions or taking hasty actions, go somewhere you can be alone, and write down your negative thoughts on paper. All of them. Be specific. Negative thoughts keep growing if they exist only in your brain; they start to disappear if you write them down and see them objectively.

Learning how to control our state of mind is not easy, but worthwhile. Our life is limited, and it can be much shorter if we don’t know how to control our state of mind.

 

 

Break the success code.
成功の暗号を破ろう。

 

A successful artist might not be an artist; perhaps he or she is a good businessperson who has outstanding artistic talent and skills.

Andy Warhol once wrote: “An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.” But Andy Warhol himself made millions from his artistic works. If you were a business owner and produced things that people don’t need to have, would it be possible to make millions?

If you run your business, this kind of contradiction is worth investigating. It’s easy to ignore or criticize it, but if you did so, you would never discover the hidden formula behind it.

 

 

Learn from the best and worst.
最高・最低の両方から学ぼう。

 

What is the WORST advice you’ve ever got?

This question is sometimes more valuable than the questions like “what is the BEST advice you’ve ever had?”

You may say, “Wait a minute. I don’t want to hear the worst advice. I need to know only the BEST!” Here’s a cold fact: The advice that someone else got, either the best one or the worst one, will not always work for you. But getting to know the WORST ones will give you a list of things you probably wouldn’t do to make yourself successful. In other words, the BEST advices can be your to-do list, while the WORST advices can be your not-to-do list.

The WORST advice I’ve ever had is to start a company before I decide what to do with the company. This advice was from one of famous authors in Japan. He said “That’s what an entrepreneur does!” although he was not an entrepreneur. I did what he exactly said, and the result was disastrous. And of course, the author never took responsibility for the outcome. He made (and still makes) money by making exaggerated statements in his books and seminars.

To be fair, his advice was not the only reason that my first company didn’t go well. But, if I had been smart enough at that time, I would have taken hundreds of actions before starting a company so as to launch it better. I didn’t know how to learn from the WORST advice or practice that someone else ever had.

I think no one should follow my path, but the worst advice I’ve ever had could be the best advice for someone else. Who knows.

 

 

Think beyond the limit.
限界を超えて考えよう。

 

I rarely talked about this in public: I love Andy Warhol’s piss paintings.

But I never think the piss painting is beautiful. I love the paintings because they always remind me of unlimited possibilities of our thoughts and creativity. I see the paintings when I feel stuck, because they make me realize that I don’t think and try hard enough.

If we think and try hard, we will most likely fail—especially at the first attempt. But who cares? Even if someone laughs at you, let them do so. In the first place, no one cares about you; everyone is busy caring about themselves.

So always think hard, try hard. When you think you reach to the limit, see some great creations that our ancestors made. You’ll notice that your limit is still far, far away.