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Alex’s Banerry

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It would be cool to hear a parrot say, “Polly want a cracker.”

The parrot wants a cracker, and unlike most other animals, the parrot can actually tell you when it wants a cracker. The only problem is when the parrot gets impatient, you’ll hear more, “Polly want a cracker.”

Hearing the parrot say the same thing every time gets annoying after the third time. What if there was a parrot that was able to do more than say it wanted a cracker? A while back, I read a book called Animals In Translation which explained how autism could decode animal behavior.

It was a fascinating read, but one of the stories about a parrot was simply incredible. The parrot’s name was Alex and it was trained by Irene Pepperberg. Alex was an African Grey Parrot that had a vocabulary of over 100 words. The parrot could distinguish 5 shapes and 7 colors.

Alex the parrot knew the difference between a banana and a nut. Although he didn’t know how to say the word apple, he referred to it as a ‘banerry’ which was a combination of two fruits Alex was familiar with (banana and cherry).

The parrot that keeps on asking for the cracker is just an ordinary parrot. The parrot that can do more is the one that is extraordinary. Alex the parrot is remembered because he didn’t keep on saying the same thing. He was able to make decisions and learn a lot in a world where the scientific community believed that a large primate brain was needed to handle complex problems. He was a unique parrot that proved the experts wrong.

We don’t remember the name of the parrot that wanted the cracker, but we will remember Alex the African Grey Parrot.

Narrow Down Your Choices

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The most common mistake for new entrepreneurs is trying to please every client. If a new entrepreneur only knows about fixing Toyota cars, chances are that the new entrepreneur will fix any car, even if it isn’t a Toyota. The new entrepreneur won’t know how to fix a Honda, but if that entrepreneur might make some extra money, it’s worth a shot.

This is where a lot of new entrepreneurs mess up. They give the client too many options. Even though the entrepreneur only specializes in fixing Toyota cars, the entrepreneur will try to fix other cars as well. When the entrepreneur tries to fix other cars, it is the classic giving up quality for quantity.

The best way to get more clients and sales is to narrow down your choices. If you offer a lot of services, eliminate the services that take up the most time or give you the least amount of profit. If one of your services results in only $10 in profit and 10 hours of your time, that is a service you need to get rid of.

If you aren’t good at one of your services, get rid of it. The entrepreneur who fixes Toyota cars shouldn’t fix other kinds of cars. That entrepreneur should focus on Toyota cars because that’s the car the entrepreneur specializes in fixing.

Find something you are really good at, excel at it, and make it the highlight of your business.

Why We Panic (And Quit)

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Every time someone panics, they make more decisions faster. At the rate these people are doing it, they could be making important business decisions in a matter of seconds. When people are making that many important decisions in a quick amount of time, they are going to make some bad decisions. Action does need to be taken, but don’t go after the quantity of your actions instead of the quality of your actions.

Another result of panic is complete stagnancy. People stare at their project for almost an hour before doing any of the work. Bigger projects become smaller projects and smaller projects become unfinished products.

When panic consumes someone, they will be tempted to quit. Even the most successful entrepreneurs talk about how they were so close to quitting. You will achieve success gradually. There is no overnight shortcut. Not even Mark Zuckerberg was an overnight success although he became successful much earlier than the average entrepreneur.

So what causes panic? There are two major reasons that result in us panicking. You can easily see what caused someone to panic based on what they are doing now.

The first reason people panic is because they overthink. I think of what I will be doing in the future. I see myself with books, membership sites, CDs, and so on. Although I recommend doing a 5 year plan and writing your future goals down, thinking about them too much won’t get any work done. There is a difference between thinking about your success and taking action to turn your success into a reality.

The people that overthink are the ones who simply stare at their projects for a long period of time before actually working. Multiple thoughts come up such as how the project is going to be amazing and how that person will be able to charge a lot of money for the finished product. They will think of their blog getting thousands of visitors a day, but in reality, their blog is only getting 10 visitors a week. Action needs to be taken.

The second reason people panic is because of time. Time can be cruel because time goes fast or slow depending on the individual and what that individual is doing. If you are watching paint dry, you will be counting the seconds. If you are doing something pleasurable such as hanging out with friends, time flies by.

The problem occurs when it’s midnight and no work has been done. In order to compensate for lost time, this person will do their work from midnight until their body can’t stay awake any longer. Then they get up too early to compensate even more. By that time, the person is so tired that every business decision isn’t important anymore. The person is just too tired to identify how important business decisions are. They rush with their decisions and their work to catch up with where they should have been.

That’s how panic comes around, what panic can do, and what ultimately leads many entrepreneurs to quit.

Ignore The Trends

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Look at the trends on Twitter right now and write them down. They can be found on the left hand corner under the “Who To Follow” section. Don’t look at what you wrote down. After a week, see if you can remember any of those trends.

Chances are you won’t remember a majority of those trends. The newest trend becomes an old trend in a matter of hours, and rarely, days. Most of the trends you remember today will be forgotten by the end of the week.

When you talk about the trend, you will get a lot of traffic. Talking about the trends doesn’t even guarantee more traffic or followers. If you talk about that trend on a normal basis, then be a part of that trend. It relates to what you are talking about. If you talk about sports, and one of the trends is about a sports team, feel free to talk about the trend.

Some trends are good. These trends will be unforgettable, or they relate to what you already talk about. However, a majority of trends go from new to old faster than the sun goes down and comes back up.

Don’t focus on trends because there are a lot of people who talk about the trends. Your content will be mixed into the thousands of other people who are talking about the trend. Then that trend simply gets replaced by another trend.

The Wonka Decision

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Charlie Bucket ends up winning the competition, and his house is moved to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. However, there were many people who wanted to be in Charlie’s position. Here’s how Wonka ended up choosing Charlie as the winner.

The first thing Wonka did was to hide the golden tickets in bars. There were only 5 tickets, and the five people who found those tickets were Charlie Bucket, Veruca Salt, Mike Teavee, Violet Beauregarde, and Augustus Gloop. Charlie was the mot deserving out of the five because Charlie had proper manners. The other 4 had flaws. When you are making decisions between who to include in your business plan, do what Wonka did.

Augustus Gloop’s downfall was his eating habits. He was a greedy eater, and he ate everything in sight. When he saw the chocolate river, he knew he needed to eat some of the chocolate. He keeps on eating the chocolate and ends up falling into the river. He continues eating the chocolate, but then he gets sucked through a pipe where he ends up in the Fudge Room.

Augustus Gloop’s greed led to his demise. If he won, he could have had all of the chocolate he wanted. His greed made him want the chocolate right then and there. The chocolate river looked really good, but Augustus had it too early.

Veruca Salt was a daughter of a rich family which naturally made her spoiled. If she saw something she liked, she would say, “I want it now!”

Hearing that the first time is annoying enough. Constantly hearing about it for a long time is. It all ended when she demanded her father to buy her one of Wonka’s trained squirrels. When she approaches the squirrel, the squirrel says Veruca is a “bad nut” and  sends her down the garbage chute. Her father endures the same fate. She still wants more. Covered in garbage, Veruca looks at the glass elevator and asks her father for one. That was when her father lost his mind.

Veruca was a spoiled girl who wouldn’t be grateful no matter what she was given. If she won the competition and ended up being given the chocolate factory, she would have wanted more. More is good, but it is better to be grateful for what we have.

Violet Beauregarde’s problem wasn’t that she ate too much. It was the opposite. She was an athlete which is good, but she kept on talking about herself. She was competitive, and one of the things she did was chew gum. She bragged about how she chewed the same piece of gum for 3 months. During the tour, she sees some gum, and she chews the gum against Wonka’s wishes. Violet ends up growing into a superhuman blueberry and weighed over 1 ton.

Violet’s big ego resulted her turning into a superhuman blueberry (doesn’t get bigger than that). She ends up going back to normal size. No one wants to hear someone talk about themselves all the time, and Wonka couldn’t agree more.

Mike Teavee was a bad-tempered boy who commented on everything involving Wonka’s ‘absurdness’ and points out the flaws of the chocolate factory. The only thing Mike cares about is television. He primarily went to the chocolate factory to see the chocolate television room. While trying to film himself, he shrinks himself to a few inches tall. He is small enough for his father to slip him into a pocket.

Mike Teavee was smarter than the other children who didn’t make it, but he only looked at the flaws. He saw areas where the chocolate factory could improve instead of how amazing the place was. He also went to the chocolate factory for the wrong reason. If he won the contest, the entire chocolate factory would have been his.

Just like Augustus Gloop, he saw something and couldn’t stay away, the chocolate television room. Then he shrank himself. He was definitely small enough to know if there was any dust on Wonka’s floor.

Make decisions like Wonka, and then you will be able to choose the benefactors instead of the malefactors.

The Wishing Well Is A Trap

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Success is not something easy to achieve. If it were easy to achieve, no one would be talking about it because it would be ordinary. Success is anything but ordinary. People wish that success will find them.

Wish upon a star, then wish upon another star, and then which upon all of the stars you see. A couple of wishes later, you said what you wanted, but did you take action? Did you get closer to turning that wish into a reality?

The wishing well is a place where you make wishes. More coins get put in depending on the wish. You’re giving away money in hopes that your wish comes true. In fact, no one’s wish can come true without taking action.

The wishing well is an idea that as you pay, you are more likely to make your wish come true. Then you start to learn trick shots and make putting coins into a wish well entertaining.

The fact that the wishing well is a place to wish for your dreams to come true isn’t why the wishing well is a trap. It’s a trap because when we wish for something, people believe they will get what they want. When people believe they will get what they want, no action will be taken.

Stop putting coins into the wishing well and start putting coins into your future by taking action.