Eight years ago, Facebook was a coding project in Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room.

Now its a global business with $4 billion of revenue that is used by 1/8th of the world’s population. And it’s worth more than $100 billion.

When Facebook started, there were dozens of other social networks going after the same opportunity.

Facebook won. They lost.

Here are some reasons why–reasons that apply to almost every business.

1. Move fast.

Mark Zuckerberg built the first version of Facebook in his spare time in his Harvard dorm room.

He didn’t write a business plan.

He didn’t endlessly ask friends and advisors what they thought of the idea.

He didn’t “research the market,” apply for patents or trademarks, assemble focus groups, or do any of the other things that entrepreneurs are supposed to do.

He just built a cool product quickly and launched it.

And Facebook was born.

 

 

2. Remember that ideas are a dime a dozen–it’s all about execution.

From the moment Facebook was launched, there was a huge fight about whose idea it was.

Two Harvard seniors, the Winklevosses, said it was their idea–that Mark Zuckerberg had “stolen it.”

This led to a legal fight that has lasted for nearly a decade.

Meanwhile, outside the clubby world of Harvard, there were dozens of other entrepreneurs who had similar ideas. And lots of them launched those ideas. But, today, there’s only one Facebook.

Why?

Because ideas are a dime a dozen.

What matters is making them happen.

As the fictional Mark Zuckerberg told the fictional Winklevoss brothers in the movie: “If you had invented Facebook, you would have invented Facebook.”

Don’t waste time congratulating yourself for having a good idea. Just go make it happen.

 

3. Keep it simple (don’t overbuild).

Many companies get so entranced with all the amazing features they want to build into their products that they make their products so complex that no one can figure out how to use them.

Or they take so long to develop their products that by the time they come out, they have already been leapfrogged.

The first version of the “thefacebook” was very simple. It did one thing well.

Then Zuckerberg and the Facebook team improved it over time. And, each time, they made sure that the service was still easy to use.

(Okay, the privacy controls are ludicrously complex, but no one pays attention to those).

4. Figure out what will kill you… and make sure it doesn’t.

Most people have long since forgotten, but Facebook was far from the first social network.

There were several other college networks in existence before Facebook launched in 2004, including at Columbia and Stanford.

(The latter, called Club Nexus, had been around since 2001. But, in violation of Facebook Success Secret No. 3, it was too complex. So it never really took off.)

Out in the real world, meanwhile, Friendster and MySpace were taking the world by storm.

But then Friendster committed suicide.

How?

By failing to restrict usage until it had the back-end infrastructure in place to support it.

Demand for Friendster became so intense that the service slowed to a crawl. By the time the company finally fixed the back-end, a year later, most of Friendster’s U.S. users had defected to other networks.

When Zuckerberg and his co-founders rolled out Facebook, they carefully controlled new registrations. They added one school at a time, waiting until they were certain that their infrastructure could handle it. Thus, Facebook always “worked.”

In other words, Zuckerberg correctly identified one of the things that could kill Facebook–and he made certain not to fall prey to it.

 

5. Make your primary focus the product, not the “business” or “shareholder value.”

Facebook Roadshow

Mark Zuckerberg was famously uninterested in Facebook’s business in the early days. Instead, he focused all of his energy on Facebook’s product.

This product obsession went so far that Zuckerberg continually turned away advertising clients, because he didn’t want ads to muck up the service. Ads weren’t cool. Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to be cool.

As Facebook grew, Zuckerberg retained his focus on the product. He then hired senior executives–Sheryl Sandberg and David Ebersman–to run the company’s business and finances.

As Facebook prepared to go public, Zuckerberg wrote a letter to shareholders in which he stated the company’s intention to focus on its “social mission” first and its business second.

On Wall Street, not surprisingly, this is heresy. In Wall Street’s view, companies are supposed to focus all of their efforts on creating value for their shareholders (translation: making the stock price go up.)

As Amazon and other companies have demonstrated, however, one of the best ways to create huge amounts of shareholder value over the long-term is to focus obsessively on the your product and your customers. If you do that, the business will follow. And you won’t make the mistake that a lot of companies make, which is to focus on the business at the expense of the product. Nothing exposes you to the risk of disruption or mediocrity like emphasizing “business” and neglecting the product.

6. Get really really good at hiring… and really really good at firing.

Dylan Love

The strength of a company has nothing to do with its technology or current products. It has to do with its people.

(Why? Because technology and products change. Quickly.)

Even Steve Jobs was quick to admit that no one can do it alone.

So if you want to build a great company, you have to build a great team. And building a great team means two things:

• Hiring well, and
• Firing well.

It’s easy to understand how to hire well: You have to find the best people for each position and then persuade them to join the company.

Firing well, meanwhile, is critical for two reasons: First, no matter how careful you are, you’re going to make hiring mistakes, and you need to fix them quickly. Secondly, if your company is growing rapidly, it will eventually outgrow some of your early executives–and you’ll need to replace them. In short, if you don’t “fire well,” your company will slip into mediocrity.

In Facebook’s early days, the company made lots of hiring mistakes, but it addressed them quickly. Facebook was also good at replacing executives as the company outgrew them.

7. Maintain control.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Every company has three main constituencies:

• Customers
• Employees
• Shareholders

The best companies balance the interests of all three of them.

Weaker companies, meanwhile, emphasize the interests of one constituency at the expense of the others. They pay employees too little to make ends meet, for example. Or they try to save on manufacturing costs and produce crappy products. Or they pay their managers so much for mediocre work that they lose their edge.

One of the reasons some companies fall into this trap is that they end up controlled by short-term shareholders who have very different interests than the company’s customers and employees.

If Facebook had been controlled by its venture capitalists, it is likely that the company would have sold out long before now. If, as a public company, Facebook were beholden to the short-term needs of public shareholders, it might be tempted to cut research and development costs or take other shortcuts to meet its quarterly numbers.

But Facebook has always been controlled by Mark Zuckerberg. And Zuckerberg has always been more focused on building his long-term vision than on capitalizing on short-term financial rewards.

One way to ensure that your company won’t get pulled off course, therefore, is to maintain control of it. If not by owning complete voting control, the way Mark Zuckerberg does, by having key shareholders who support your vision.

 

8. Don’t endlessly “focus group”–just roll out new features and adapt to the screams.

Steve Jobs also famously said that customers don’t know what they want.

It was Apple’s job, Jobs continued, to figure out what the customers would want–and then give it to them.

Facebook has always operated the same way.

Instead of “focus-grouping” new features, Facebook has just rolled them out. Sometimes, these new features have been met with outrage and screams. Facebook has then adapted or killed the new features based on what it learns from the screams.

In the case of “News Feed,” for example, Facebook kept the feature but tweaked it to address some of its users’ concerns. And this feature, which was initially hated, has gone on to become one of Facebook’s most important features.

In the case of “Beacon,” meanwhile, Facebook ultimately withdrew the feature completely.

Each time Facebook has rolled out a product that was greeted with screams, some observers of the company have concluded that the company “made a mistake.” Although in a limited sense, these features might have included “mistakes,” the process itself is deliberate. And it works.

9. Cultivate smart advisors and learn everything you can from them.

Leadership and management are skills.

As such, they can (and have to be) learned.

As venture capitalist Ben Horowitz puts it, CEOs are made, not born.

Mark Zuckerberg’s skill as a CEO, which is now prodigious, was deliberately acquired.

Early in Facebook’s development, Zuckerberg was such a lousy leader that one of his executives cornered him to tell him he needed “CEO lessons.”

From then on, Zuckerberg dedicated himself to learning as much and as fast as he could.

To help with this, he cultivated a group of advisors, including some of the best entrepreneurs, investors, and executives in the country. This group included Steve Jobs, VC Marc Andreessen, investor Peter Thiel, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, Warren Buffett, Donald Graham of the Washington Post, and many others. Zuckerberg learned as much as he could from each of these men, as well as from many of the executives he recruited to Facebook. And, gradually, he became a great leader.

No one has all the answers. And the more talented people you surround yourself with, the more likely you’ll be to be exposed to some good ones.

10. Grow skin as thick as a pachyderm’s.

Na Son Nguyen/AP

If you’re doing something hard, innovative, or interesting–in short, something worth doing–you’re going to get criticized.

The more successful you are, the more this criticism will increase.

You don’t have to enjoy the criticism, but you do have to learn to tolerate it. Because there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

People will be jealous. They will be angry. They won’t understand. They will have agendas (the media, competitors). They will be frustrated at the way they were treated (ex-employees). They will want money and credit.

In short, they will lob no end of hell-fire your way. And, sometimes, the criticism will be accurate.

Some of the immense amount of criticism directed at Mark Zuckerberg over the years has been accurate. In the beginning, he was a lousy leader. He has made many mistakes. He did do some things (very early on) that were questionable ethically. He pissed a lot of people off.

This criticism had to have hurt.  How could it not?  But Mark Zuckerberg never let it derail his desire to continue to build Facebook. And he never let it get to him to the point where he quit.

No matter what you do in life, if you’re successful, people are going to throw rocks at you. If you’re going to keep succeeding, you have to grow skin thick enough that they’ll just bounce off.

11. If you ever think that you’re done–you’re done.

When Facebook finally blew past the collapsing MySpace a few years ago, it “won” the social-media race.

At that point, it could have settled back and congratulated itself for a job well done.

Fortunately for everyone at the company–and its users and shareholders–it didn’t.

Facebook kept running as fast and hard as it could, putting as much distance between itself and its competitors as possible. It kept poaching talent from competitors and would-be competitors. Every time a new startup invented something cool, Facebook copied it. It kept its progress in perspective: Mark Zuckerberg is fond of saying that the company is only 1% done. And so on.

Andy Grove famously said that “only the paranoid survive.” In most businesses, that’s accurate. If you ever think that you’re done, you’re done.

 

 

 

12. Ignore Wall Street and other would-be deal-makers (unless you really want to make a deal).

If things are going well, your doors will be knocked down by people who want to meet with you to see how you can “work together” or “learn more about where you’re headed.”

These potential partners and service-providers will include consultants, bankers, investors, potential acquirers, and competitors. They’ll also include any number of other folks who want to sell you things.

Some of these people will be extremely smart, rich, and powerful. They’ll talk a great game. And they’ll talk your ears off.

Some of the these people may also actually be able to help–doing favors, providing information and suggestions, making introductions, etc.

But what these folks won’t do is help you produce a better product or service. And mostly they’ll just distract you and waste your time.

If you ever need bankers or other service providers, they won’t be hard to find. Pick up the phone, and dozens of highly qualified ones will instantly appear at your door.

The same goes for most other would-be partners and service providers.

There are only 12-16 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. If you let would-be partners and service providers drive your agenda, they’ll take all that time and then some. So don’t let them. Focus on your product and your customers. Let would-be partners and service providers “learn where you’re headed” by watching you.

13. Focus on the long term.

Ignore them. It’s just noise.

If you read the financial media, you could be forgiven for assuming that success is all about “months” and “quarters.”

Every quarter, every public company goes through a ridiculous ritual in which announces that it has either “beaten expectations” or “missed estimates.” And its stock then soars or plummets. And the media then trashes or applauds it. And so on.

In case you don’t realize it yet, these quarterly rituals are usually staged rituals: Companies issue “guidance” to analysts, publicly or privately. The “guidance” is designed to set expectations so low that even a mediocre quarter will “beat expectations.” Investors know this and therefore have “whisper numbers” that represent their real expectations. And that’s why stocks often go down even when companies “beat expectations.”

Meanwhile, some companies get so focused on “making the quarter” that they begin to warp their sales processes and pricing just to meet this random time hurdle. Customers soon learn that if they wait until the end of the quarter to sign their deal, they’ll get a much better deal. And, soon, no one signs anything until the end of the quarter.

So the short-term quarterly game isn’t just about wasting time managing investor expectations…it also hurts the business.

The best approach to this whole quarterly game is to minimize it as much as possible. No great companies are built by obsessing about quarters. Great companies are built by focusing on a vision that will create many years or even decades to create. In addition to Facebook, think Walmart, Google, Apple, and Amazon.

Put differently, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. And you should obsess about getting to the finish line in the marathon, not about each “beating expectations” with each individual mile-time.

Minister of Youth Development, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi

Sometime ago, a former Minister of Information sparked a debate over what the word ‘Naija’ truly means. Her argument was that ‘Naija’ is simply a bastardisation of the name Nigeria; a derogatory term that tends to surmise all that have blemished our national identity, the least of which is our so-called desperation to get rich and do so quickly and by any means, fair or foul. ‘Naija’, she argued, signifies a Nigeria that has internalized its own irredeemably corrupt nature and the term is actively embraced and promoted by the Nigerian youth who are at conflict with their ‘Nigeria (n)’ identity and therefore have to find comfort in a colloquial identity expressed as ‘Naija.’

Even in the context of rebranding, some considered this issue trivial at the time. The counter argument however, which is the one I align myself with, is that ‘Naija’ is actually a postmodern Nigerian identity whose affirmation can be largely explained by globalization and the rise of popular culture. Rather than serve to deny who we are; Naija could actually be seen as an answer to the question “who are we?”

Viewed this way, ‘Naija’ would simply be a re-affirmation of the uniqueness of the Nigerian identity and character in an age of globalization and its pervasively homogenizing forces. As a post-modern identity, Naija generation also tends to subsume all the primordial sentiments that make us less Nigerian in the first place (tribe, religion, region etc) and affirms our common identity as Nigerians. Naija Generation is, in fact, that generation of Nigerians who has embraced the totality of its Nigerian identity.

Having settled the debate on ‘Naija’; we may conveniently adopt it as a generational identity for those Nigerians who came into adulthood post-cold war. The Naija generation is therefore a generation that is born into a global and globalizing culture that is driven by the media, especially the satellite television and the Internet, which are in turn part of a popular culture that is sustained by the logic of the mass market and consumerism, including the glamour and the glitz. The Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are only products of this culture. As children of this post-modern culture, the Naija generation is uniquely empowered and is aware of this power, especially the power of language, images, virtual relationships, and identity construction in the formation and promotion of ideas, beliefs, and actions.

In considering the dynamics between the Naija generation and the new media therefore, we have to start by examining the intersection where patriotism meets popular culture in the promotion of democratic values of participation and accountability. My argument would be that while popular culture has great potentials in mobilizing for citizens-engagement and participation in governance, the philosophy of mass market and consumerism that underpin it may render such engagement and participation merely farcical as ‘engagement’ and ‘participation’ become an end by themselves rather than an opportunity to actually affect how decisions are made and how the business of government is done.

The goal of youth activism is mainly participatory democracy, defined as “a political model in which empowered people associate and organize” in order that they can gain influence on issues and decisions that affect their lives. The question therefore is whether the new media can give real power to young people, not only to organize and associate, but also in improving the quality of participatory democracy and bringing about positive change.

Recent experience has shown that the new media, as component of a global popular culture are very powerful indeed. They have been deployed in crushing repressive regimes and have helped ordinary people to overcome extra-ordinarily powerful dictators. The new media can help in contracting the space for impunity and in strengthening accountability and transparency. They can help in making hierarchical systems more horizontal by multiplying arenas of participation and diffusing civil society powers across boundaries in a way that was previously unimaginable. The new media can do so much more; but most of these are only in the normative sense.

I will come back to itemize what I believe are conditions that must exist, if the new media must contribute meaningfully to democratic development in our country. But permit me to briefly expand on my earlier thesis on popular culture and popular participation. I argued that the popular culture is generally driven by the market imperatives and this ironically is also its major drawback as a vehicle for popular participation.

Hannah Arendt noted that where the media is driven by the logic of the market, real culture is soon supplanted by the dictates of entertainment. Our most persuasive values are then drawn from the entertainment industries. Rumours, gossips, sleaze and caricaturing soon take the place of real political education and informed debates as everything of value gets “dumbed down” for mass appeal and mass consumption. Out of this, a celebrity culture emerges which produces superstar “opinion leaders” drawn mainly from the ranks of entertainers and entertaining media. What is most sensible is then replaced by what is most marketable.

Even political mobilization soon becomes show business. Rigorous political campaigns on programs of parties and candidates are replaced with music carnival and dances. Politicians have realized that musicians and comedians are more likely to pull the crowd to the polls than a clearly thought out policy arguments and therefore have yielded the task of political mobilization to them. Politics then becomes big drama.

The rise of the new media has more or less dismantled the last barrier to free press; which is a major pillar of any democracy. This by itself should expand the scope for real participation by offering meaningful political education to a larger number of people. Instead, the market forces have invaded the media practice. Celebrity columnists, bloggers and publishers are emerging by the minute. Wild rumour-mongering, cheap sleaze and crass abusiveness have become the new definition of youth activism. Form has captured content and both have been hijacked by the quest for internet hits, media subscription and Twitter following and the quest for celebrity status. And, of course profits. The new media have become the virtual shopping mall where commerce determines commodities. Clearly thought out and informed comments have been taken over by 140-word “fast-food” content, which even if easily digestible has very little or no nutritional value. Even on television, politically educative drama and really informative documentary have since disappeared and given ways to all kinds of reality shows and “idol worshipping.”

Like I said earlier, the new media can so much help the cause of youth activism and truly empower the youth to actively participate in governance in a way that honours and enriches our democracy. However, for the Naija generation to truly take advantage of its unique power as offered by the new media, it must recalibrate quickly and begin to pay serious attention to the following.

1. We must seek and cultivate opportunity for knowledge and meaningful information on a broad range of policy subjects. We must understand how governments at all levels operate beyond what anecdotal reports and rumours have to offer. We need to be conversant with the legislative processes and the executive policy contexts. Access to government annual budgets is an important progress that has been made in strengthening accountability. But merely circulating figures and numbers does not amount to much if we cannot make that knowledge count to effect real change.

2. We must be interested and active in politics. Having a voice is not enough if we must do more than perch on our moral high grounds and criticize government and lament how bad things are. The only process of political recruitment is through the political parties. I am not suggesting that we should all become politicians or start contesting elections. But real participation can only come from real engagements with the political systems at all levels. The work that young people did to mobilize and monitor the 2011 elections remains commendable. However, the process of democratization goes beyond elections alone.

3. Youth Activism must also become more inclusive, democratic and representative. We all know that our conversations take place over the heads of majority of Nigerian youths, whose reality does not even get represented on the agenda. We must therefore create opportunities for multiple platforms for engagement and be more tolerant of alternative viewpoints even among those who are actively engaging in our conversations. We must forget the illusion that whatever we do on the Internet involves everyone or can be seen by everyone. We must also understand the nature of youth activism and not confuse it with labour unionism, gender activism or even pro-democracy activism that even though includes the youth is not limited to them.

4. We must seek to build mutual respect. As long as young people continue to create the impression that other people and government officials especially, cannot disagree with them without standing the risk of being insulted, cursed, and abused, they would not be able to create the right environment for constructive engagement.

I will conclude by arguing once again that unless the enormous power that is conferred on young people by the new media is harnessed to constructively engage the actors who have been vested with the power to act on behalf of the people, on the platform of knowledge and in an atmosphere of mutual respect; organizing and associating will continue to be their own justification as an end by themselves. An adversarial relationship that pitches “us” against “them” cannot bring about any enduring or positive change.

Culled from Ynaija.com

Several factors are at work. First, let’s say that I am an unhappy and negative person. I depress the emotions of those with whom I come in contact. As a result, happy positive people try to avoid me as much as they can, while unhappy people, plus any previously happy people who are bound to me through family or career, are further depressed by contact with me. I tend to feel uncomfortable around happy people because I’m jealous of their happiness, while I create a misery-loves-company kind of bond with other unhappy people.

If I am a happy person, all this works in reverse. I uplift the emotions of those I come in contact with. As a result, happy positive people love being in my company. Unhappy people, however, either respond to my joyful positivity, thus beginning their journey toward their own happiness, or they find themselves feeling frustrated and jealous, and sever their relationship with me. I become even happier when I am around other happy people, while I tend to feel uncomfortable around unhappy people, and will tend to avoid them to the extent that doing so does not conflict with my commitment toward those people.

People sort themselves into groups of happy people and unhappy people through two different, but complementary mechanisms, influence and affinity. I influence those around me with my emotional state, either happy or unhappy. At the same time, I feel an affinity for others who are like me in some way – in this case by sharing my emotional outlook on life.

While we can observe the effect of clusters of happy and unhappy people in our lives, quantifying this effect is beyond our personal experience. A large-scale long-term research study published in 2008 by James Fowler of UC San Diego and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School documented the profound effect a happy, or unhappy, person has on their acquaintances. This study showed that you are 15 percent more likely to be happy because you are in contact with someone who is happy; 10 percent if a friend of a friend is happy; and 6 percent if a friend of a friend of a friend is happy. Just think about that – your own happiness has a measurable effect on the happiness of the friends of the friends of your friends. What an amazing power you hold!

In addition, the study revealed that while unhappiness is also infectious, an unhappy person doesn’t exert the same influence over large groups as a happy person does. I visualize this difference with the example of a candle being brought into a dark cave. The candle illuminates the darkness rather than the darkness snuffing out the candle.

As a happy person, you radiate happiness to the world. While the study only measured the effect to the third level of acquaintance, visualize your light radiating throughout the world, passing from person to person until the whole earth is uplifted by your happiness.

A great Egyptian pharaoh summons his two young nephews, Chuma and Azur, and he commissions them to a majestic task: Build two monumental pyramids as a tribute to Egypt. Upon completion of each nephew’s pyramid, Pharaoh promises each an immediate reward of kingship, retirement amidst riches, and lavish luxury for the rest of their natural lives. Additionally, each nephew must construct his pyramid alone.

Chuma and Azur, both 18, know their daunting task will take years to complete. Nonetheless, each is primed for the challenge and honored by the Pharaoh’s directive. They exit Pharaoh’s chambers ready to begin the long pyramid-building process.

Azur begins work immediately. He slowly drags large heavy stones into a square formation. After a few months, the base of Azur’s pyramid takes shape. Townsfolk gather around Azur’s constructive efforts and praise his handiwork. The stones are heavy and difficult to move, and after one year of heavy labor, Azur’s perfect square foundation to the pyramid is nearly finished.

But Azur is perplexed. The plot of land that should bear Chuma’s pyramid is empty. Not one stone has been laid. No foundation. No dirt engravings. Nothing. It’s as barren as it was a year ago when Pharaoh commissioned the job. Confused, Azur visits Chuma’s home and finds him in his barn diligently working on a twisted apparatus that resembles some kind of human torture device.

Azur interrupts, “Chuma! What the hell are you doing!? You’re supposed to be building Pharaoh a pyramid and you spend your days locked in this barn fiddling with that crazy machine?”

Chuma cracks a smile and says, “I am building a pyramid, leave me alone.”

Azur scoffs, “Yeah, sure you are. You haven’t laid one stone in over a year!”

Chuma, engrossed and unfazed by his brother’s accusation retorts, “Azur, you’re short-sightedness and thirst for wealth have clouded your vision. You build your pyramid and I will build mine.”

As Azur walks away, he chides, “You fool! Pharaoh will hang you in the gallows when he discovers your treason.”

Another year passes and Azur solidifies the base of his pyramid and begins the second level. Except a problem arises. Azur struggles in his progress. The stones are heavy and he cannot raise them to the pyramid’s second level. Challenged by his physical limitations, Azur recognizes his weakness: he needs more strength to move heavier stones, and to do so, seeks the counsel of Bennu, Egypt’s strongest man. For a fee, Bennu trains Azur to build bigger and stronger muscles. With great strength, Azur anticipates the heavier stones will be easier to lift onto the higher levels.

Meanwhile, Chuma’s pyramid plot of land is still barren. Azur assumes his brother has a death wish since, by all appearances, Chuma is violating Pharaoh’s mandate. Azur forgets about his brother and his nonexistent pyramid.

Another year passes and Azur’s pyramid construction slows to a disheartening crawl. It often takes one month just to place one stone. Moving stones to the upper levels require great strength and Azur spends much of his time working with Bennu to build greater strength.

Additionally, Azur is spending most of his money on counseling fees and the exotic diet required for the training. Azur estimates at his current construction pace, his pyramid will be completed in another 30 years. Unfazed, Azur lauds, “After three years, I’ve far surpassed my brother. He hasn’t placed one stone yet! That fool!”

Then, suddenly, one day while hauling a heavy stone up his pyramid, Azur hears a loud commotion erupting from the town square. The townsfolk, regular observers to his work, abruptly abandon his plot to examine the celebratory fuss. Curious himself, Azur takes a break and leaves to investigate.

Surrounded by a cheering crowd, Chuma trolls up the town square commandeering a 25-foot contraption, a towering machine built from a twisted maze of gantries, wheels, levers, and ropes. As Chuma slowly moves up the village street amidst the buoyant crowd, Azur fears the explanation. After a short trawl to Chuma’s barren pyramid plot, Azur’s suspicions are confirmed.

Within minutes, Chuma’s strange machine starts moving heavy stones and begins to lay the foundation to his pyramid. One after another, the machine effortlessly lifts the stones and softly places them side-by-side into place. Miraculously, the machine requires little effort for Chuma’s operation. Crank a wheel attached to a rope and cantilever entwined by a gear system, and bingo! Heavy stones are moved quickly and magically.

While Azur’s pyramid foundation took over a year to build, Chuma lines up the foundation to his pyramid within one week. The second level that Azur so arduously struggled with is even more shocking: Chuma’s machine does the work 30 times quicker. What took Azur two months takes Chuma’s machine two days. After 40 days, Chuma and his machine accomplish as much as Azur’s three years of toilsome work.

Azur was destroyed. He spent years doing the heavy lifting while Chuma built a machine to do it for him.

Instead of honoring the machine, Azur vows, “I must get stronger! I must lift heavier stones!” Azur continues the hard labor of pyramid building while Chuma continues to work the crank of his machine.

After eight years, Chuma finishes his pyramid at age 26: three years to build the system and five years to reap the benefits of the system. The great pharaoh is pleased and does as promised. He rewards Chuma with kingship and endows him with great riches. Chuma never has to work another day in his life.

Meanwhile, Azur continues to dredge away at the same old routine. Lift rocks, waste time and money to get stronger, lift rocks, and get stronger. Sadly, Azur refuses to acknowledge his flawed strategy and endures the same old process: Carry heavy stones until you can lift no more . . . then get stronger so you can lift heavier stones.

This mindless prescription leads Azur to a lifetime of toil. He never finishes his pyramid promised to Pharaoh simply because he decides to do the heavy lifting himself when he should have focused on a system to do it for him. Azur has a heart attack and dies while on the 12th level of his pyramid, just two levels from finishing. He never experiences the great riches promised by Pharaoh.

Meanwhile, Chuma retires 40 years early in a crown of luxury. Sloshing in free time, Chuma goes on to become Egypt’s greatest scholar and an accomplished inventor. He is entombed alongside Pharaoh in the same pyramid he built.

Written by MJ DEMARCO of The FastLane Entrepreneurs

Cheers!!!

I’ve noticed (and I’m sure you have to), while many companies and individuals might be struggling right now, that there is also a group of companies and individuals flourishing. I’ve also noticed there are some common characteristics found in these companies and individuals who seem to be doing well during some of these uncertain times. Here are five characteristics that stand out:

Success

1. These companies and individuals operate from a win/win philosophy and inherently value their business relationships (customers, employees and vendors). When you understand and appreciate this principle it allows you to create and receive value both on a short and long-term basis, as well as recognize and be in line for new opportunities that begin to present themselves.

2. These companies and individuals have an entrepreneurial mindset. Although it’s true that when a boom is going on the entrepreneur is often leading the way, I’ve also noticed that when the water is high (things are going good), everything tends to even out (everyone seems to be doing well). But when it all starts to go south, it is then that entrepreneurs can rise more quickly and distinguish themselves. Their ability to take risks, be decisive, recognize and seize opportunity and to basically “create”, allows them to find a way to make things happen.

3. These companies and individuals have an excellent work ethic and focus. In sports, if you were to ask, who in their respective sport has been a dominant figure, three immediately come to my mind–Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky. Beyond their remarkable ability and talent, there is also something about these three that help propel them into greatness–their fierce competitiveness and their incredible work ethic. How do you beat the most talented person in the world when they will also out work you and have a “will to win” that is not to be exceeded? Well, the same is true in business. The top performers do not get complacent. They do not rest on their laurels. And they don’t decide that because they are doing well or are on top that that is good enough. Their work ethic and drive to be their personal best has allowed previous victories and momentum to carry over into more success (even in difficult times).

4. These companies and individuals have made a commitment to succeed. Making a decision is the prerequisite to all successes. As Jim Rohn says, all good things are upstream, but the natural tendency is downstream. Commitment creates the mindset that allows us to face challenges, shut out negative circumstances and discomfort and then move upstream towards our goals.

5. These companies and individuals operate out of faith. Without faith it is impossible to take risk. Without faith it is impossible to make investments of time and effort in the present hoping for a future reward. And without faith it is impossible to make short-term sacrifices on a consistent basis. Faith allows you to be free to give and be your best, knowing that the reward will manifest itself sometime in the future. Faith also allows you to find the opportunity that often comes disguised in the form of a problem or challenge. While others are “missing it” or spending their time and energy complaining, the person or company of faith is identifying and seizing new opportunities.

Question: How do you rate yourself in these five areas above? I would estimate much of where you find yourself today could be directly related to how well you have fared the past few years in regards to the five points above. The good news is today is a new day, a new opportunity.

Thanks to MyComeUp.com for compiling some of the best billionaire quotes.

“Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.”

The Daily Ticker

- Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

Source: MyComeUp

 

 

 

 

 

“When you live for others’ opinions, you are dead.”

- Carlos Slim Helu, CEO of Telmex, América Móvil, Grupo Carso

 

 

Source: MyComeUp

“I just love it when people say I can’t do it, there’s nothing that makes me feel better because all my life, people have said that I wasn’t going to make it. “

- Ted Turner, Founder of CNN

 

 

Source: MyComeUp

 

 

 

 

“If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.”

Wikimedia

- J. Paul Getty, Founder of Getty Oil Company

 

 

Source: MyComeUp

 

 

 

 

“Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.”

Forbes

- Ingvar Kamprad, Founder of IKEA

 

 

Source: MyComeUp

 

 

 

 

 

“We’re going where no one has gone before. There’s no model to follow, nothing to copy. That is what makes this so exciting.”

Wildaid

- Richard Branson, Chairman of Virgin Group

 

 

Source: MyComeUp

 

 

 

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

- Steve Jobs, Co-founder of Apple

 

 

Source: MyComeUp

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You become what you believe. You are where you are today in your life based on everything you have believed.”

- Oprah Winfrey, CEO of Oprah Winfrey Network

 

 

Source: MyComeUp

 

 

 

 

“We’re all working together; that’s the secret.”

- Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart

 

 

Source: MyComeUp

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.”

Wikimedia Commons

- Aristotle Onassis, Greek Shipping Magnate

 

 

Source: MyComeUp

 

 

 

“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”

wikipedia

- Andrew Carnegie, Founder of Carnegie Steel Company

 

 

Source: MyComeUp

Brian Tracy

Start Your Day Right
Take 30 minutes each morning to sit quietly and to reflect on your goals. You’ll find when you read the biographies and autobiographies of successful men and women that almost everyone of them began their upward trajectory to success when they begin getting up early in the morning and spending time with themselves.

Feed Your Mind With Positive Ideas
This is called the Golden Hour. The first hour sets the tone for the day. The things that you do in the first hour prepare your mind and set you up for the entire day. During the first thirty to sixty minutes, take time to think and review your plans for the future.

Use Your Quiet Time Effectively
Here are four things that you can do during that quiet time in the morning. Number one is to review your plans for accomplishing your goals and change your plans if necessary.

Number two is think of better ways to accomplish your goals. As an exercise, assume that the way you’re going about it is totally wrong and imagine going about it totally differently. What would you do different from what you’re doing right now?

Number three, reflect on the valuable lessons that you have learned and are learning as you move toward your goals.

Practice Daily Visualization
Number four, calmly visualize your goal as a reality. Close your eyes, relax, smile, and see your goal as though it were already a reality. Rewrite your major goals everyday in the present tense. Rewrite them as though they already existed. Write “I earn X dollars.” “I have a net worth of X.” “I weigh a certain number of pounds.” This exercise of writing and rewriting your goals everyday is one of the most powerful you will ever learn.

Fasten Your Seatbelt
Your life will start to take off at such a speed that you’ll have to put on your seatbelt. Remember, the starting point for achieving financial success is the development of an attitude of unshakable confidence in yourself and in your ability to reach your goals. Everything we’ve talked about is a way of building up and developing your belief system until you finally reach the point where you are absolutely convinced that nothing can stop you from achieving what you set out to achieve.

Everything Counts
No one starts out with this kind of an attitude, but you can develop it using the law of accumulation. Everything counts. No efforts are ever lost. Every extraordinary accomplishment in the result of thousands of ordinary accomplishments that no one recognizes or appreciates. The greatest challenge of all is for you to concentrate your thinking single-mindedly on your goal and by the law of attraction, you will, you must inevitably draw into your life the people, circumstances and opportunities you need to achieve your goals.

Become A Living Magnet
Once you’ve mastered yourself and your thinking, you will become a living magnet for ideas and opportunities to become wealthy. It’s worked for me and for every successful person I know. It will work for you if you’ll begin today, now, this very minute, to think and talk about your dreams and goals as though they were already a reality. When you change your thinking, you will change your life. You will put yourself firmly on the road to financial independence.

Action Exercises:

Now, here are two things you can do every single day to keep your mind focused on your financial goals:

First, get up every morning a little bit earlier and plan your day in advance. Take some time to think about your goals and how you can best achieve them. This sets the tone for the whole day.

Second, reflect on the valuable lessons you are learning each day as you work toward your goals. Be prepared to correct your course and adjust your actions. Be absolutely convinced that you are moving rapidly toward your goals, no matter what happens temporarily on the outside. Just hang in there!
____________
Brian Tracy is one of the world’s leading authorities on personal and business success. His fast-moving talks and seminars are loaded with powerful, proven ideas and strategies that you can apply immediately to get better results in every area. Be sure to visit the Brian Tracy web site.

-Are you an early riser? How has it made a difference in your life? What things do you do upon first waking up that help you.

There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it:

FIRST: EMERGENCY

The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number112can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.

SECOND: HAVEYOU LOCKED YOUR KEYS IN THE CAR?

Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their mobile phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. It saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of kilometers away, and if you can reach someone who has the other remote for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk). Editor’s Note: It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a mobile phone.

THIRD: HIDDEN BATTERY POWER

Imagine your mobile battery is very low. To activate, press the keys*3370# Your mobile will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when next you charge your mobile.

FOURTH: HOW TO DISABLE A STOLEN MOBILE PHONE

To check your Mobile phone’s serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: * # 0 6 # a 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. If your phone gets stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset, so, even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won’t get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can’t use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.

 FIFTH: ATM – PIN NUMBER REVERSAL

GOOD TO KNOW If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your PIN # in reverse. For example, if your pin number is 1234, then you would put in 4321. The ATM system recognizes that your PIN number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine. The machine will still give you the money you requested, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately dispatched to the location. This information was recently broadcast on CTV by Crime Stoppers, however, it is seldom used because people just don’t know about it. Please pass this along to everyone. This is the kind of information people don’t mind receiving, so pass it on to your family and friends.

Called from article by: Folashade Benedicta Oyewole

The origins of Facebook have been in dispute since the very week a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg launched the site as a Harvard sophomore on February 4, 2004.

Then called “thefacebook.com,” the site was an instant hit.  Now, six years later, the site has become one of the biggest web sites in the world, visited by 400 million people a month.

The controversy surrounding Facebook began quickly.  A week after he launched the site in 2004, Mark was accused by three Harvard seniors of having stolen the idea from them.

This allegation soon bloomed into a full-fledged lawsuit, as a competing company founded by the Harvard seniors sued Mark and Facebook for theft and fraud, starting a legal odyssey that continues to this day.

New information uncovered by Silicon Alley Insider suggests that some of the complaints against Mark Zuckerberg are valid.  It also suggests that, on at least one occasion in 2004, Mark used private login data taken from Facebook’s servers to break into Facebook members’ private email accounts and read their emails–at best, a gross misuse of private information. Lastly, it suggests that Mark hacked into the competing company’s systems and changed some user information with the aim of making the site less useful.

The primary dispute around Facebook’s origins centered around whether Mark had entered into an “agreement” with the Harvard seniors, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and a classmate named Divya Narendra, to develop a similar web site for them — and then, instead, stalled their project while taking their idea and building his own.

The litigation never went particularly well for the Winklevosses.

In 2007, Massachusetts Judge Douglas P. Woodlock called their allegations “tissue thin.” Referring to the  agreement that Mark had allegedly breached, Woodlock also wrote, “Dorm room chit-chat does not make a contract.” A year later, the end finally seemed in sight: a judge ruled against Facebook’s move to dismiss the case. Shortly thereafter, the parties agreed to settle.

But then, a twist.

After Facebook announced the settlement, but before the settlement was finalized, lawyers for the Winklevosses suggested that the hard drive from Mark Zuckerberg’s computer at Harvard might contain evidence of Mark’s fraud. Specifically, they suggested that the hard drive included some damning instant messages and emails.

The judge in the case refused to look at the hard drive and instead deferred to another judge who went on to approve the settlement. But, naturally, the possibility that the hard drive contained additional evidence set inquiring minds wondering what those emails and IMs revealed.  Specifically, it set inquiring minds wondering again whether Mark had, in fact, stolen the Winklevoss’s idea, screwed them over, and then ridden off into the sunset with Facebook.

Unfortunately, since the contents of Mark’s hard drive had not been made public, no one had the answers.

But now we have some.

Over the past two years, we have interviewed more than a dozen sources familiar with aspects of this story — including people involved in the founding year of the company. We have also reviewed what we believe to be some relevant IMs and emails from the period.  Much of this information has never before been made public.  None of it has been confirmed or authenticated by Mark or the company.

Based on the information we obtained, we have what we believe is a more complete picture of how Facebook was founded.  This account follows.

And what does this more complete story reveal?

We’ll offer our own conclusions at the end.  But first, here’s the story:

Q: Please tell us about yourself, your background and interests.

A: Hi my name is Mayowa Anibaba , a graduate of the university of Lagos and web developer .  Wrote my first lines of code back in 1998, was in JSS 3 then and a friend and I decided to VISUAL BASIC cause we wanted to create our own video game lol. I didn’t quite get the game done but I never stopped coding.

Q: How easy was starting up?

A: Forget what you have read, Start ups are HARD there are so many factors that determine the success or otherwise of a startup, I unfortunately learnt the hard way, am currently working on my second start up the first didn’t quite turnout as planned but it taught me a whole lot.

Q: Tell us about your startup FlyMyAds.Com

A: Flymyads is a Nigerian online advertising network designed to make online advertising and online ads publishing accessible and easy to the everyday Nigerian.

We didn’t see the point or reason why anyone would have to through so much stress (getting a verified paypal acc, changing foreign currency) just to get paid for ads published on their sites.

Flymyads was founded by me and two other co-founders (Ayodeji Agboola and McNeil Afegbah).

Q: What were your biggest failures and how did they affect your success?

A: Wow I have had a lot of failures each one major in its own right.

Q: What did you learn from your failures?

A:  I leant that in the end we are only human and thus failing once in a while is inevitable.

Q: What milestones have you achieved so far?

A: Building an online ads network that generates millions of impression, pays relatively high returns to publisher while giving advertisers a good return on investment and still generates income, all in less than six month.

Q: If you are not into web business, what business would you have been doing?

A: If I wasn’t a web developer I would have been a 3d animator, dabbled into 3d animation but had to drop it for my first love programming.

Q: What impact have social media had on you personally and business wise?

A: It’s been good, in the early stages of Flymyads when we were very short on cash (as most bootstrapping start ups usually are) we relied solely on social media networks for publicity and marketing, and we got fairly good results.

Q: Going forward, what should we expect from you and any announcements or upcoming projects?

A: Flymyads has a lot planned for 2012, in the next few weeks we would be rolling out mobile ads on our network amidst lots of other products.

Q: Any final advice for budding entrepreneurs?

A: Yeah don’t start a business doing what you don’t  genuinely enjoy doing, cause some times the only reward you would get is the joy you derived doing it, and lastly be original.

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culled from http://www.iroy.in