Plan For Tax Implications

In any revenue generating endeavor you can either attempt to earn more money from labor, intellectual property and capital gains or lower your expenditures and cost base. In reality you want to do both at the same time. However, money you save is better than money you earn, because the money you save is not taxed and go straight to the bottom line. This difference can be significant in places with progressive taxation on incremental marginal income. Review and plan with tax implications in mind.

Improve Your Public Speaking Skills

I recently had a conversation with my high school language teacher of old about the virtue of speaking well. Incidentally she has been conducting rhetoric classes for many years and has come to the same conclusion as Andrew Carnegie did; students that improve and do well in public speaking raise their grades in all other academic programs at the same time. We have established earlier in this column that there is a direct correlation between your vocabulary and your wage grade. It pays to learn the art of speaking well.

Identify Resisting Forces

In order to accomplish a your plans swiftly you need three things; set an objective, develop an action plan and identify the resisting forces that would hinder you to succeed. Without the action plan your vision is merely a dream. Perception and skewed vision are common resisting forces of our own mind. Not until you have identified the opposing forces you can build in steps on how to deal with them in your plans.

Accumulative Advantage

Life isn't fair. There is this principle of accumulative advantage that says if you win, it is more likely you will win again. It creates a "winner-takes-it-all" logic; a few authors for example represent 90% of all book sales. This holds true for recording artists, football players and sales people a like. Figure out how you can join the top 10% crowd that reap 90% of all the rewards. What would you have to do to join the accumulative advantage club?

When You Turn Hundred

When you turn a hundred years old you will have a party and celebrate together with your friends, most of them younger than you. They will tell stories about all the things you have accomplished in your life and most of those initiatives will have been launched after you turned fifty. Many great entrepreneurs, like Ray Croc of McDonalds and Colonel Sanders of KFC started later in life to build what became their legacy.

Say Good Things About Others

Speak well of everybody. Don’t gossip, don’t badmouth even if what you say would be true. If you can’t think of anything nice to say, say nothing at all. Talk to people, not about people. It is good office-karma to refrain from negative comments about people not present in the room. It makes others comfortable that you will not speak evil of them when they are not there. Only say good things about others.

Let Go Of Perfect

If you have a slant of perfectionism in your personality let me suggest you lower your sight somewhat. It is good enough to get better as long as you consistently improve. You don't have to be perfect. Perfectionists tend to be late because they work on small insignificant changes that do not add value and very few people will notice, anyway. Don't overwork anything where the incremental improvement won't pay off due to diminished rates of return. Let go of perfect when better is good enough.