Jesse Meijers

8 Super Tips that will get YOU the Job Position of Your Dreams

Jesse Meijers — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:40:28 +0000

Currently I am holding some job interviews for one of my companies. We’ve held job interviews for other positions in the past as well, and there are some things that strike me when I interview these people. Some positive, some negative. Most people do the same thing that all the others do too. So in order to make sure you don’t make those mistakes; I have put together a list of the my best tips.

These tips may well be worth tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars to you. Maybe they will even defy monetary value for you, by giving you something that makes you truly happy: the job of your dreams!

Your action plan

The first thing you have to do is get your action plan straight. Here are 7 steps that will help you get the position of your dreams:

Decide exactly what kind of job position you’re after. It doesn’t matter if it already exists, just make sure you have a description of your dream job.
Choose the company, organization or individual you want to work for.
Study your prospective employer extremely thoroughly, as to policies, personnel and chances of advancement.
Analyse yourself to determine what you have to offer and plan ways and means of giving advantages, services, developments and ideas that you truly believe you can successfully deliver.
Forget about just a ‘job’. Forget about whether there is an opening or not. Forget asking people if they have a job for you. Concentrate on what you can give.
Once you have your plan in mind, put it to paper in neat form and in full detail. You can choose to have this done by an experienced (copy)writer, which is preferable. Make sure you present the full details of your plan to the copywriter, so they can truly understand it and write your brief.
Present your brief to the proper person with authority and he or she will do the rest. Every company and organization is looking for someone who can give something of value, whether it concerns connections, ideas or services. Every company and organization has room for the person who has a definite plan of action which is to the advantage of that company.

What your brief should contain

The brief should at least contain the following information, in full detail and neatly organized so it can easily be read quickly:

Education; state briefly, but definite, what schooling you have had. State which subjects you specialized in at school and make sure to give the reasons for your specialization.
Experience; if you have experience in connection with positions similar to the one you are after, describe them fully. State names and addresses of former employers. Also be sure to bring out clearly any special experience you may have had which would equip you to fill the position you’re after.
References; practically every business firm wants to know all about the previous records, antecedents, etc. of prospective employees who are after positions of responsibility. Attach copies of letters to your brief from:
- Former employers
- Teachers under whom you studied
- Prominent people whose judgement may be relied upon
Photograph of yourself; make sure there’s a good photograph of yourself in the brief. Preferably shot by a professional, in a studio, while wearing the attire suitable for the position you’re after.
Apply for a specific position; avoid application for a position without describing exactly what particular position you seek. Make sure your brief doesn’t apply for ‘just a position’. That indicates you lack specialized qualifications.
State your qualifications; make sure the brief states your qualifications for the position you are applying for. Give full details as to the reason you believe you are qualified for the particular position you seek. This is one of the most important details of your application brief. It will determine, more than anything else, what consideration you will receive.
Offer to work on probation; I can’t tell you how much prospective employees will love this one. If you offer to work for free for a week, or a month, or a sufficient length of time to enable your prospective employer to judge your value to the organization without pay, you will open doors you thought would never open.It seems radical, but it hardly ever fails to at least get you a trial. If you are sure of your qualifications, a trial is all that you need! Make sure you indicate the fact that your offer for the trial is based upon:
- Your confidence in your ability to fill the position.
- Your confidence in your prospective employer’s decision to employ you after the trial period
- Your determination to have the position you seek.
Knowledge of your prospective employer’s business; before applying for any position, do extensive research in connection to the business to familiarize yourself with that business thoroughly. Indicate in your brief the knowledge you have acquired in this field. This will be most impressive, as it indicates that you have imagination and a real interest in the position you are after.

Remember that it is not the lawyer you knows the most law, but the one who best prepares his case, who wins…

Size doesn’t matter

Do not worry about your brief being too long. Even in today’s fast-paced world, employers are still as much interested in purchasing the services of well-qualified applicants as you are in getting the position of your dreams!

The finishing touch

This little tip, which I call the finishing touch will actually make you stand out whether your resume is the worst in the history of mankind or you’re the best qualified person for the job in the universe. It simple guarantees your resume gets the attention it deserves!

When your brief is completed, have it professionally bound and lettered similar to the following:

Brief of the Qualifications of

Jesse Meijers

Applying for the Position of

Private Secretary to
The President of
My Dream Company, Inc.

This will certainly attract attention. Make sure that your brief is printed on high-quality paper, not the laser-printer stuff you buy for 1 buck per 500. A last touch is to hand-sign the brief, preferably on the same page as your photograph is. Make sure your name is stated near your autograph.

Ways to find positions and companies

There are many ways to find companies and/or positions to apply for. Here is a list of ways that I prefer when I look for applicants:

Employment agencies; take great care in only selecting agencies with a good track record and reputation. These agencies will cost money for the prospective employer when they hire you, but if you’re after a position of responsibility; that will be the least of their worries. This strategy will ensure you end up with serious interviews for great positions.
Advertising in newspapers, trade journals and (online) magazines; this is a great way to get yourself known. Place your ad in between job offers. Many prospective employers who place ads in magazines will look them through to see their own ad and also to make a decision whether to place their ad in the first place. That is exactly the audience you need. Make sure you get an experienced copy-writer to write your ad. This will make all the difference!
Personal letters of application; directed to individuals at particular organizations that are in need of the services you offer. This is my personal favorite, if done well. Make sure the letter is hand signed and always address it to a person of authority if you can. Again, have a copy-writer create the letter for you, as this makes a huge difference in results!
Application through personal acquaintances; if possible, this will yield the highest success ratio. Especially when seeking executive positions, this is the way to go.
Application in person; in some instances this may be the most effective solution. Especially when you have a connection with the person you are applying with.

The secret ingredient for success

Jesse Meijers — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:37:19 +0000

There is a secret ingredient that successful people have, and others lack, or don’t use. This ingredient is a personality trait. One that you can learn if you are not in posession of it already. And train if it is not yet at the level it should be.

Thomas A. Edison

When Edison was trying to perfect the incandescent light, he ran into a problem. He didn’t know which gas to put into the bulb. But he never gave up … he tried 10.000 different gases. None solve the problem.

Yet, he still didn’t give up. Instead he tried a vacuum, which turned out to be the solution to his problem!

Persistence

Every person who is successful at what they do, is persistent. Persistence is the personality trait you must have to succeed. Since success is only the last step of a long process which includes many temporary defeats.

Luck has nothing to do with it!

In the media you never hear the true story about success. Since success sells, the story of the many temporary defeats people have suffered is rarely given more than 2 lines in a complete cover story. This makes it look easy, or may even cause the reader to think that the successful person was just lucky.

In reality, successful people may be lucky, but it isn’t luck which causes success. It is the persistence those people have when everything seems to be going wrong, which causes them to be successful.

Learning and training persistence

If you want to learn persistence, or train it, there are many exercises you can do. Basically, they all amount to the same simple process:

Find an activity or task of your choice
Determine the edge of your comfort zone
Plan the activity/task in such a way that the goal takes you over the edge of your comfort zone

For example, I like hiking. If I want to use this activity to improve my persistence, I can plan a hike which takes me through terrain which is slightly out of my comfort zone. For me that would be cold environments which means ploughing through snow fields.

If I plan such an activity it means that I can mentally prepare for it. Nonetheless, I will still have to show persistence not to quit after a day or 2 of hiking, because I don’t like the snow or the cold.

I bet you can find an activity that you can use to apply this very simple principle. You can even do this with changing a fosset in your house (if you’re not the DIY type of person for example), as long as it means you have to show persistence.

The most important thing: make a deal with yourself that you won’t give up until you’ve completed your goal. If you have to get creative, call in the neighbour, wait a long time, whatever. As long as you reach your goal and don’t give up!

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Go R.O.W.E – Results Only Work Environment

Jesse Meijers — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 19:00:40 +0000

Recently I posted about location independency. This is one of the great opportunities that the Internet has given us. But it also means that we need to adopt our management strategy, to match the location independency of our team. The Results Only Work Environment is a proven strategy used by a few very successful companies (large and small) to do just that.

The idea behind R.O.W.E.

R.O.W.E. is a strategy which focuses not on how many hours we make, but on the results we achieve. This means that workers have complete freedom in choosing their hours, and choosing in which way they do their work.

Obviously some jobs don’t allow for completely free choices, but there are strategies to make this work well. An example would be a system where you’d have to make sure, as a team, that the presence rate is at a certain level. This is true for call centers for example. However, if done well, it doesn’t matter whether the call center agent works from the office or from home. Or from the beach on Hawaii for that matter.

What counts is results. And results are measured in happiness of workers, the retention rate of workers/talent, worker productivity, and lastly financial results. The key thing here is that R.O.W.E. focuses on the people, not the finances per se.

Business Culture Shift

The old business culture where we try to make people fit into the 9-5 schedule isn’t working anymore. We are in a global financial crises because our old bonus structure isn’t doing a good job in making good executives, there are traffic jams longer than ever before every day and many, many people are not happy working the job they have. Something needs to change. Now.

I have often stated things as ‘I do not care whether you earn $10.000,- an hour’ and people look at me in amazement, because they don’t understand. What I mean by this is that I only care about results. If I pay you $5.000,- because what you give me as a result is worth $5.000,- to me, does it really matter whether you do that in 30 minutes or 100 hours? No!

This is a very big culture shift for business owners and managers alike. We were taught from pre-school on that there are set times to do almost everything. Especially work. But studies have shown that 9-5 are not good times for everyone. People will be happier when they can pick up the kids at 3 pm from school, without discussion. And as a result people have more fun in their work and yield a higher productivity!

Example Companies

Great examples of companies who have adopted R.O.W.E. like mindsets are Atlassian and Google. Atlassian has gone completely R.O.W.E. and while at first the company had some struggles (people had to get used to it and kept showing up 9-5), eventually everyone was very happy about it. Some employees who couldn’t handle the newly given freedom and responsibility left, but as a result the team is much more in sync now.

The second example is Google. Google has a 20% rule. 20% of your time is spent on doing something that you choose to work on. A pet project for example, or a crazy new idea you have for an online service. People work on these things with all their heart, because it is something they love. Things that have come out of this? Maps and GMail are only two examples of fantastic services that are directly a result from the 20% rule. Isn’t that amazing!?

Go R.O.W.E. too!

If you are intrigued by this, there is a website which explains in more detail what R.O.W.E. is about. They also offer consulting on the topic. As a note, I am completely unrelated to this company, and make no money at all from mentioning them. I just found them via Google when searching for R.O.W.E. implementors, so go ahead and have a look too: www.gorowe.com.

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How to bring good news and bad news

Jesse Meijers — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:12:51 +0000

From time to time we have to bring people bad news. Luckily, we also have good news to bring them now and then, so all is not lost. But how do we make sure that we take advantage of good news, and we minimize the impact of bad news?

Bringing the Bad

If you’ve got some bad news to tell someone, there are a lot of ways to do this. There is the hamburger method (good news, bad news, good news), but that is not what I want to tell you. Mixing good and bad news is fine, but there is something else which is far more important when it comes to bad news.

When you have bad news, the best thing to do is to spill ALL the bad news at once. Get it off your plate as soon as possible. This accomplishes two things:

It will take a load off of your shoulders. Walking around with bad news, not having shared it with the people it concerns, is a stressful situation you do not want to be in.
It makes for a short, effective and efficient way of dealing with the problem. It may not make you the most likeable person at that moment, but it makes sure you don’t have to bring more bad news the next day.

Psychologically, people tend to forget bad news and remember good news. That is why ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’. In the long run.

In the short run, a heap of bad news is annoying. But the long run is more important. So get your bad news off of your chest as fast as you can, and get it all off.

People have a tendency to drag bad news. If you battle this tendency, you’ll be much more effective at what you are doing and it will also help you build great relationships.

Bringing the Good

Where people have a tendency to drag out bringing bad news, their enthusiasm usually leads them to spill good news all at once. That is a shame, because then the effect of the good news is short-lived.

When you bring good news, you want to drip it. Tiny bits at a time, with time in between the bits. This accomplishes two things again:

It will create a good feeling for yourself, since you have ‘more’ good news to bring than bad news. Each drip should make you feel good.
Other people will pick this up, and the overall picture will be that there is mostly good news. So other people will get a good feeling for the project, business or whatever else it is you are dripping good news about.

Good news thus needs to be stretched to make its impact last longer. Use this technique to your advantage!

Intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation

Jesse Meijers — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 18:56:54 +0000

The current economic crisis has led to a lot of new insights in how we should deal with our economy. On of those insights is that it seems that big bonuses don’t seem to work well. The banks of who the top executives had huge bonuses, haven’t exactly performed very well. There is a different way to get results, and would you believe me if I told you this has actually been scientifically proven and has been known for over 60 years?

Extrinsic Motivation

Whenever we encourage someone to do something in exchange of a reward, we are extrinsically motivating them. In simpler terms, their motivation should come from external stimuli, such as a money bonus for example.

The financial crisis has shown that these extrinsic motivations do not actually produce the results we expect from them. We would expect people to improve in performance if we give them the proverbial carrot to chase. Using the proverbial stick to ‘punish’ unwanted behavior has the same counter-intuitive effect.

Our society is drenched with extrinsic motivation. From a young age, we are given rewards and punishments for wanted and unwanted behavior respectively. It is no wonder we don’t know better than to use extrinsic motivation to get what we want from others…

Intrinsic Motivation

The opposite of extrinsic motivation is intrinsic motivation. It is the motivation we get from inside ourselves, without any other external rewards, when doing something.

Intrinsic motivation is what drives people to play an instrument, do sports, learn photography, etc, without ever having a chance to make a single dime from their efforts. Their intrinsic motivation consists of a form of fulfillment they get when pursuing the activity.

This intrinsic motivation is hardly used by entrepreneurs, executives and managers. While we all know what it is, because we all have activities we do without any gain other than personal fulfillment (i.e. fun).

Scientific Proof

There is actually scientific proof that extrinsic motivation isn’t nearly as effective as intrinsic motivation. As early as 1949 an experiment was conducted by Harry F. Harlow, that suggested that intrinsic motivation was present in primates.

The experiment showed results that were so controversial, that the idea was completely ignored until 1969. In that year Edward Deci got interested in the topic, and decided to use it for his dissertation at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Soma Cube

Edward Deci used the Soma cube, which is a puzzle consisting of 7 pieces which look like Tetris blocks. Deci divided his test subjects into two groups; group A and group B. Both groups were taking part in three sessions of one hour each, during three days.

Each session took part as follows. The participant entered a room where the pieces of the Soma puzzle were placed on a table, drawings of three possible configurations of the puzzle and copies of Time Magazine, The New Yorker and Playboy (remember, it was 1969). Deci was on the other end of the table to give instructions.

During the sessions the participants of both groups had to reconstruct the configurations they were presented on paper, using the Soma puzzle pieces. During the second session they did the same with new drawings, but now Deci told the participants from group A that they could earn a dollar (equivalent to roughly 5 dollars today) for every configuration they successfully built. Group B wasn’t given a reward.

The last day was the same as the first, so neither group was given a reward. The final schedule looked like this:

	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
Group A	No reward	Reward	No reward
Group B	No reward	No reward	No reward

The crucial part took place half way during the second session. When the participant had reproduced two of the three configurations, Deci stopped the experiment. He told them he had to enter the results in a computer (big, slow machines back then) to determine which drawing to give the participant next. This meant that Deci had to leave the room. In the meanwhile, the participant was allowed to ‘do something for themselves’.

Instead of entering the results, Deci went to a room with a two-way mirror to observe the participant. During exactly 8 minutes he observed the participant’s behavior.

Day 1 showed little difference between group A and B. Both continued with the puzzle for roughly 3,5 minutes before starting to do something else. On day 2 group A (the paid group) performed better than group B (non-paid group), spending over 5 minutes on the Soma puzzle.

But the interesting thing happened on day 3. Deci told the participants from group A that there was only enough money to pay them for one day, so that the last day was unpaid. The participants from group B spent more time on the puzzle than they had before. But the participants from group A (the previously paid group) spent far less time on the puzzle.

This led to the conclusion that human motivation works in completely different ways than we had until then taken under consideration.

Other Experiments, Same Conclusion

There have been countless other experiments that have been conducted since, that all prove the same thing. The reason to conduct so many experiments was that the results are so counter-intuitive, that they are hard to accept.

The conclusion always was that when people are motivated intrinsically, they perform better and more consistently than when they are motivated extrinsically.

Extrinsic motivation works very well for a short duration. Much like caffeine does, before the effect wears off. But if you want to have good performance from your employees or team members, they need to be intrinsically motivated!

Title image copyright by Paul Foreman – Mindmapinspiration.com

How to create a location independent office

Jesse Meijers — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 12:34:48 +0000

With the internet becoming an ever greater part of our lives, there are more and more possibilities. One of those interesting possibilities is to make yourself, and your office, location independent. As an entrepreneur, there is no greater feat than location independency. It makes your life so much easier and much more fun!

Location Independency

With the term ‘location independency’ I mean the fact that you can work from ‘anywhere’ in the world. Basically, it doesn’t matter whether you’re enjoying a cappuccino in Italy or you are sitting in an office in New York. Either way, you can do your job.

To translate this to an office, let me first say that I view an office as a place where my employees can work. We prefer an office because it is a place to go to every day, to do our job. However, I want to make sure that my employees can do their work from home, or better yet, from a nice cafe if they want to. That is what location independence is all about: working from where ever you are.

Internet

We recently moved our office and it amazed me how easy it was. We picked up our laptops, some small stuff like a printer and some ordners and we were basically good to go.

When we arrived in the new office, all we had to do was enable the new wireless internet connection on our laptops, and we could continue to work. We moved in about 2 hours. Okay, we moved one door down, but still, 2 hours is pretty fast.

All we need for our employees is for them to have internet access, and their laptop.

Our Setup

The setup we use is pretty simple. We use only hosted applications for our main business applications. This allows us to access them through a web-browser from anywhere that we have an internet connection. In our case, this is our customer portal, project management system and CRM (Customer Relation Management) system.

Our e-mail is hosted through Hosted Exchange, which means we can connect our laptops, home computers and mobile phones to it easily to get any mail or calendar updates we get.

We use a file server which is also hosted, and connect through a VPN (Virtual Private Network). Then we can easily access the files as if they were stored locally.

All our mobile phones have internet access, with a flat fee subscription service. The mobile phones can be connected to the laptop and function as a modem. This means that we can go online anywhere that our mobile phone has internet access.

My Location Independency Gadgets

It has happened on many occasions that I was sitting at a road side cafe, waiting to go to a next meeting, that I had to get some work done. Simply connecting my mobile pho

The simplest, easiest way to have less problems INSTANTLY!

Jesse Meijers — Sun, 23 May 2010 11:31:23 +0000

We all have problems from time to time. Without problems, you could even argue that life wouldn’t be worth living, since the good times wouldn’t feel as good without a reference to problematic times. But let’s face it, when it comes down to it, we would all like to reduce our problems… This post is about the simplest, most effective way to reduce your problems … INSTANTLY!

Your own problems

There are 2 categories of problems. Those that are really yours and those that are not yours. Problems that are yours are those problems that truly originate from you. A very good example is money shortage. This is a problem that many people face, and which originates from a poor spending habit. This is the type of problem that you can only solve by self improvement.

Other people’s problems

The second category is other people’s problems. A good example is when a friend of yours is in money troubles. You lend him money, which effectively makes this your problem. Especially when you are a little short on cash a month later and are stuck, because your friend is out of money still…

This is how we make other people’s problems our own problems. I bet that when you think it over, you can identify a bunch of problems that you’ve had or still have, which are actually other people’s problems.

Eliminate problems of others

The simplest way to eliminate problems is to identify the situation when someone is trying to shift their problem onto you, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The same holds for situations where you are trying to ‘help’ people, but in effect you are creating extra work or stress for yourself. You can easily eliminate these problems once you have identified them.

In the example of a friend who has run out of money, there are a few simple ways to avoid this problem becoming your own. The first is to not lend the money, but in exchange, offer him help with getting his finances sorted out. After all, the real problem is his spending habit most probably, so try to work your way to the real problem.

Another way to solve the problem is to let him earn the money. For example, I could have him do some work at the office which needs to be done such as filing, or some other chore that is not urgent but important and never seems to get done. This way we create a win-win because I get cheap labor, and my friend gets some money. If you don’t run a company, you can have your friend help you out with a day of hard gardening, home improvement or other things that you can use a hand with.

Less problems instantly

If you adopt this method of problem solving, you’ll notice that the amount of problems you have is greatly reduced. Instantly. And if you solve it by creating a win-win, you don’t even have to disappoint people by not helping them!

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The OTOM principle: Other people’s Time, Other people’s Money

Jesse Meijers — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:15:20 +0000

There is a principle that is widely used amongst successful entrepreneurs, and especially those with the aim of making money. This principle is called the OTOM principle: Other people’s Time and Other people’s Money.

Leverage

The first thing you have to understand about the OTOM principle, is the principle of leverage. In very simple terms, leverage means that you use less to achieve more. The term comes from mechanics, but is very easily explained by a simple picture:

You can achieve more with less, by using leverage. In this case, the 50 lbs weight tips the scale in its favor, even though the 400 lbs weight is obviously heavier. This is exactly what leverage does.

Other People’s Money – Financial Leverage

Leverage in financial terms means to use debt to supplement investment. But it can be explained simpler than that. You borrow money at a certain expense (interest) to earn more money than you have to pay in interest.

There is a great example which will immediately show you the power of using Other people’s Money to yield higher percentage returns on your investment.

Let’s assume we are buying a property at the cost of $100.000,-. If we buy this property with our own money, we have nothing to pay in interest. If we sell this property after a year for $120.000,- we have made a whopping $20.000,- profit (we won’t take into account any rental income you could have earned for the sake of simplicity). This comes down to a 20% return on investment ($20.000 / $100.000).

Not bad, considering the bank gives you about 3-5% return on investment per year (interest on your savings account) currently!

But now consider this. Instead of pouring in $100.000,- of your own hard earned cash, you only pay $10.000,- and borrow the other $90.000,- against 10% interest at a bank (current interest rates are actually much lower). This means if you sell the house after a year you have not earned $20.000,- but only $11.000,- because you have to pay $9.000,- (10% of $90.000,-) interest. But after paying back the loan and paying the interest, you have made $11.000,- by investing $10.000,- which equals a whopping 110% return on investment ($11.000 / $10.000)!

Here’s an overview of the numbers:

	Your Own Money	Other People’s Money
Downpayment	$100.000,00	$10.000,00
Loan	$0,00	$90.000,00
Interest Payment (10%)	$0,00	$9.000,00
Gross Profit *	$20.000	$20.000
Profit (Gross Profit – Interest)	$20.000	$11.000
Return on Investment (Profit / Downpayment)	20%	110%

* Based on selling the property for $120.000,- after 1 year

This means that you could do 10 investments by using the Other People’s Money principle, than you could with the Your Own Money principle, if you had $100.000,- to invest with. This would mean that you could make $110.000 in a year with the Other People’s Money principle, whereas with the Your Own Money principle you would only make $20.000!

Other People’s Time – Time Leverage

Using other people’s time is a form of leveraging the time you have to spend. Let’s face it, here we are all equals, we all live NOW and none of us really knows how much time there is for us on this world. Or more philosophically speaking: time is your most valuable asset, and you’re running out of it at a steady pace.

Basically Other People’s Time can be explained along the lines of an investment as well. Let’s say you have a project which would mean you’d earn $100.000,-. The project would cost you 10 weeks working full time to do by yourself, so this means you earn $1000,- per week.

The Other People’s Time solution to this problem would be to hire someone else to do the work for you, for example, an employee or a third party company. The trick is to find a cheaper way to do this, for example a company or person that can do it in the same amount of time for $80.000,-.

Your income would suffer, because the Other People’s Time solution would only mean $20.000,- in your pocket. While the Your Own Time solution would yield $100.000,-. But the big advantage is that you’ll spend far less time on searching a company or person to handle the work (let’s say 1 week) which means your weekly rate is much higher!

Here’s how the numbers work:

	Your Own Time	Other People’s Time
Turnover	$100.000,00	$100.000,00
Third Party Costs	$0,00	$80.000,00
Your Share	$100.000,00	$20.000,00
Time Spent (weeks)	10	1
Weekly Rate (Your Share / Time Spent)	$10.000,00	$20.000,00

As you can see, using Time Leverage can mean increasing your weekly rate with 100%!

Combining Other People’s Time and Other People’s Money

I hope that this article will lead you to understand the reason why people borrow money to build businesses. The borrowing money part is Other People’s Money, which is then used to hire people, the Other People’s Time part. This combination greatly increases your money making ability and is key to building a successful business.

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The harsh truth about pension plans

Jesse Meijers — Sun, 09 May 2010 15:59:00 +0000

Let’s face it: we all grow old some day. And when we do, we want to keep living in the same way we have become used to. Which means we need some sort of income. The standard way this desire is met, is by using a pension plan. However, did you know that most people with a pension plan will never see all of that money?

The 2 type of pension plans

There are basically 2 types of pension plans that you can enter into. In the most fashionable pension plan today (we’ll call this Pension Plan A), this is the deal:

You add amount X to the pension every month
The pension plan then invests your money
At the end of your working life, you have a huge amount Y

The idea behind this plan is that you can enormously benefit from compound interest. The second pension plan type (let’s call it Pension Plan B) is different:

You add amount X to the pension every month
The pension plan invests your money
At the end of your working life, you get amount Z every month for as long as you live

Most of it is the same. But the huge difference is in the end. With Pension Plan A you have a big amount of cash to do with as you please. With Pension Plan B you have an amount per month and that’s it.

Pension Plan A: The Good

Obviously, having a huge amount of money is a good thing. So the good thing is, that the potential of this pension plan, when started at a young age, is very good.

Pension Plan A: The Bad

The bad thing, which has happened to millions of people world wide the last few years, is when the money isn’t enough. For example, if you have an investment of $ 1.000 because you have just started with your pension plan, losing 50% of it due to a rocky stock market isn’t a big thing. The stock market will pick up and you have ample time to get your money back.

If you have $100.000 in there and you are at the end of your career, losing 50% of that money due to a rocky stock market means you’ll have to work longer because you’ve just lost half of your nest egg!

The second bad thing is that you have to use this money over an unknown period of time. It can be 1 year until you die, or it can be 40… Hard to determine how to spend your cash huh?

Pension Plan B: The Bad

Well, the only really bad thing about this is that it isn’t sexy. It is old-school, boring and won’t give you a chance of scoring insane amounts of money.

Pension Plan B: The Good

The good thing is obviously that it is relatively safe. Let’s face it, if the world economy plummets, no pension plan will likely stand the test. But all in all, Pension Plan B is good security. And most people are building a pension to provide themselves with security after their working days are over.

Conclusion

Know which pension plan you want. If you go for plan A, know the risks. If you go for plan B, know it ain’t nothing sexy. But know the details of the plan you choose, and what can go wrong with it. I would also advice to sit down with your pension planner at least every 2 years, but better yet every year. Discuss with him the performance of your pension and assess whether the choice you made back when you started your pension plan, is still worth it today.

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Create a win-win with these 3 simple rules

Jesse Meijers — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:33:07 +0000

The concept of win-win was introduced by Stephen Covey. A win-win situation is one where both parties in an agreement ‘win’. For example a customer of mine wants a special software application. I know that I can sell the same application to another customer, with a few minor modifications. So I give my customer a discount (his win) in return for the right to sell the application to another customer (my win).

In this situation I have applied 3 rules for creating a win-win. If you use these rules you will make sure that any agreement you will make is a win-win agreement.

Rule 1: What don’t you want?

The first rule is to make sure you know exactly what you don’t want. If we use the above example, I don’t want to give a discount without a benefit on my side.

The idea behind the first rule is to get yourself comfortable with the option of not making an agreement. If the agreement can only be made with you ending up in a situation you do not want; then don’t make an agreement.

Always remember: it is not a bad thing to not make an agreement!

Rule 2: What do I have to offer?

The second win-win rule is that you identify exactly what you have to offer the other party. In our example, I have a certain discount to offer. I could decide to be willing to offer a 5-10% discount, so that is what I have to offer. Another possibility would be to offer extra functionality for the same price.

Again this rule determines, in a way, what you do not have to offer. I do not have 25% discount to offer. If you have a clear picture of what you have to offer, it makes the process of making a win-win agreement much easier.

Rule 3: What do I want?

The final rule is concerned with specifying exactly what you want from the other party. In the example, this would be the right to sell the application to another customer, including minor modifications.

This final rule is used to identify whether what the other person has to offer to your own needs.

Preparation is key

Whenever you are about to make an agreement, make sure you use these rules before going into the meeting. Just make a quick note for yourself with the answers to rule 1, 2 and 3.

This way you will make sure that you do not give away things you don’t want to give away. It also makes sure that you know what you want in return. And above all, that you do not end up in a situation that you absolutely don’t want to be in!

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