Category Archives: concepts

Find someone who can connect the dots for you to shortcut to success.

concepts, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, The World, , , , , ,

So the connecting the dots blog seemed to be popular. (Read that first if you have not done so) As I said in the article, I like to help people become successful. The other day I was chatting online to a 20 year old guy, located in the Philippines. He wanted to become a successful business person, but had no education about business and was working a low level, normal job. He had a web site that he started but there was nothing on it really. His goal was to become an online business phone book for his city, a city where no such thing existed. He then would charge people for premium listings. This is a sound idea but after 5 months doing it he had only 8 listing, all of them free listings.

To me it was obvious what was needed for him to be successful. I told him to get a paper phone book and call business people and verify that their company exists. Tell them about the website, and ask them if they want a premium listing. Give every verified company a free listing. He could probably add over 100 new listings per day. In a few short weeks he would have the largest listing site in the city, and once he has that he can start to advertise it. Maybe even do a customer review page for each customer. He had everything in place on the tech side, just lacked the business side. I hope that I helped him.

This is an example how, finding someone who has more dots can you can rock your company in just a few minutes. Having these dots is a huge asset. I think that I would be a great small business consultant. Maybe I can do that on the side. I basically have been doing that for businesses in the world of computers.

Jason Dragon

The KEY to success in this world. It will surprise you. How to get the next big idea.

concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Marketing, The World, , , ,

What is the key to success? I think the key is DOTS….let me explain.

You need to recognize dots. Put yourself in a position to see dots. Remember dots. But most importantly connect the dots creatively. Once created these connected dots can be acted with to create something new. Of course success is more than just dots, but dots are the key that unlock the whole thing.

This is the blog I have been thinking of writing for months now, and I finally am getting it done for you to read.

So what are dots, well dots are ideas, facts, and thoughts. Dots are EVERYWHERE, there are many dots in everything you see and touch. In the world of products you can ask: Why is something made like that? How did they make it? How is it marketed? How is it given to the customer? In the world of human relations you can ask: What motivates that person? What is important about they way they do that? How do they spend their time? Why did that person do that?

The basic questions that you need to ask are:

  • Why is this important?
  • How did this come to exist?
  • What can be done with this?
  • How can this be done better?
  • Who could use this?

Most people spend their whole life going around, surrounded by these dots but almost never thinking about them. They don’t think about the why, or the how of the things that surround them. I have ALWAYS been someone who sees these ideas and concepts and I have “collected” thousands of dots in my mind. I much rather watch an educational show on TV then entertainment. I watch to see what leaders do. When I am in public, I watch the way that people move and interact, and try to figure out what is important for them. I spend huge amounts of time on the internet trying to figure out how stuff works.

Most people see success as money so I spend a lot of time figuring out how money and business works. One thing that I just totally love to do is to go to shows, you know the kind were businesses set up these 10”x10” square boots and try to get people to see the vision of their idea. I can not get enough of these shows. I go to everything, from the state fair to the home shows, to CES in Vegas, to the small local business expos with 30 people there. You get more dots each time. Sometimes you get very little of value but other times it is huge.

I also watch commercials. I like to see products marketed, and I think about how effective that form of appeal is working, who the target is and if what I see will work. The worst thing is when they repeat the same commercial over and over, I can’t stand that. So the key is to keep your mind open, always be looking around.

It is important to remember these ideas, I usually have a great memory and do much if it in my head, but I also make lists, and more recently write blogs. I have always written, I have 10 page “blogs” that I wrote about many things before blogs were even invented. When you get a few parts of an idea then put it together, write it down and label it for easy retrieval in the future.

Once you have a ton of dots you can start to see how they can connect. This is the hard part, it takes creativity, and looking out of the box. You see a want over hear and then a solution over there. Once you start thinking like this you will start to see how poor many things are done. It is often hard for me not to complain about something, but I am only doing it because I see how it could be so much better, and have much more potential. Often, now, I don’t bother trying to help, because most people don’t listen anyway, and most of those that do will never act on it. Here is an example: One idea I often have is that a buffet is going to have to fill you up, so they may as well fill you up with soda, because it is cheap and very filling, yet about half of the buffets I go to charge extra for soda and many people there do not buy it, so they then fill up on meat and other expensive foods. So I did research on this and found that almost all the successful buffets include soda, and the ones that don’t often fail. This one simple thing determines the success of a buffet restaurant more than almost anything yet when you explain it clearly to a buffet owner they don’t get it and just think I am complaining.

One bad thing about having a creative mind is that before you get a chance to do much with an idea you get another idea that makes you excited. I have had so many ideas that I have had to suppress or let go simply because I knew that if I would go after it, I would be distracted from the idea I am working on now. What a creative person like me needs is a partner that can get these things done and run with it after I create the ideas. This is what most of the rich and successful people do. Look at Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet. Warren looks at a business idea and can see in a few minutes the potential or lack of it, he then makes a decision, buys it then connects it with his business model, and his leaders and they run it and turn it into something much more successful.

What I want to do more than anything in life is help people reach their potential, but I can never do this unless I am very successful. So the plan for me to reach this is to implement my ideas. I have spent much of my life collecting dots, and then creating new creative structures with these dots. The problem is that I have lacked the resources to do much with these great ideas that I have come up with. Other times I just see something as obvious but not worth fixing.

One recent example of this is my idea to “recycle” the heat from clothes dryers. People always want to save energy, and recently this has been taken to a new level. So I have always thought that when you dry clothes you are creating all this hot air and just venting it outside. Why do people do that? How could it be done better. So a year ago I simply unhooked the dryer from the vent. It quickly made the house hotter, and allowed for me to save on my heating bill, but quickly lint started to form. So then I decided to hook up the airhose to a cloth laundry bag, about the size of a king pillow case, that had a cinch cord on it. And “Ah Ha” it worked. I now can dry my clothes and not waste the heat. When the cloths are drying the bag blows up and a nice warm smell fills the house. Of course, during the summer I want the heat to go outside, so I simply hook it back up to the vent. This is an example of a way to do something better, that most people have not thought of. This is also an idea that could be a huge business or product for someone, but I have too much on my plate right now.

Another idea that I am doing right now is the idea of allowing computers to be sold by charities as a fundraiser. It solves two needs at once. It solves the need of my computer company to sell more products, but it also solves the need of charities to have a better product to sell. We have started it recently to limited success. There are finer points that will need to be figured out, but in just a few months I hope this idea will make a ton of money.

Other ideas that we have tried simply suffered from bad situations. One idea was that I saw a very nice a beautiful stone tile produced in a third world nation using cheap labor to make a great products. I also saw the need for these decorative products upscale homes and businesses. So we borrowed money and imported three containers of this stuff, spending a ton of money, because we had a tile distributor that saw the vision. But later on that distributor changed his mind. (I still think he would have had great success). So we looked for another vendor and finally found one, but this new vendor has not given our tile the proper promotion and it is buried in with hundreds of other products in a place that get limited exposure, so it has not sold. At the same time the real estate market crashes and the dollar dropped like a stone, making the tile cost more to import by 20%. I still think it is a great idea, and with the proper tweaking, it will be a huge success.

Now I have another great, and huge idea I am working on. I think, of all the ideas I have ever come up with it is the best, the one that will help the most people and be very successful. But once again I need the resources. I am working on that, I hope my business partner really comes through for me on this, because we need it, and people out there need this idea. More details on it when I have it all set in place.

So I hope you now see the important of this idea. I have been thinking about the how, why, and who along with how to make things better for as long as I can remember. I have memories when I was very small wondering these things. Most smart kids naturally wonder this, that is how their brain is wired, but many adults train their kids not to think that way, to just follow the rules, and don’t ask to many questions, and by 5 years old they learn this, and by 10 or so they are set in their ways for the rest of their life. So for most of you reading this, finding, collecting and connecting dots will not be easy for you. You probably have not been practicing your whole life. But it is very worthwhile to change, to start today.

90% of people just let life happen to them, they don’t plan and dream about the future, they don’t see what they can really do with their life, they have given up. I refuse to give up, I dream every day about how I can change the world. And I hope I have made you dream a bit, and start thinking about dots.

Jason Dragon
Jasondragon.com

What's the Big Idea

concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, , , , , ,

There is a show that is on every weeknight on CNBC, it is called the Big Idea with Donny Deutsch.  If you have not seen this show and you are at all interested in being an Entrepreneur then you are really missing out.  This show is full of concepts and ideas about how to successful, how to start your business and how to make that business successful.  Look for it.

The flow of investment capital and how to keep it active

concepts, Investment, , , , , , ,

Well here is a quick mental exercise. I am going to think about, and share with you, my thoughts about investment money.

Well the main areas of investment I see are:

  • Real Estate (Commercial and Residential Property)(I am not counting owner occupied housing because that is not primarily an investment.)
  • Securities (Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, Futures)
  • Private Equity (Direct investment in private companies)
  • Metals and Jewels (Large amounts of money are kept in Gold, Silver and other precious metals)
  • Cash (Yes many people keep money in cash, CD’s and deposit accounts.)
  • International Investing (All of these areas but outside of the US)

Now, because the total amount of money is VERY QUICKLY increasing, the actual value of a dollar must be going down. This is evident by looking at the price of the dollar verses most any investment. You could have invested in most any are for the last 5 years and had a positive outcome vs. the dollar. Over 90% of this money is owned by less than 3% of the population. The total size of all of this investment money is well in excess of 70 TRILLION dollars. That is more money than most people can even imagine.

One important concept that I have noticed is the fact that money shushes around, from one investment type to another. In the late 1990’s the stock market was all the rage, and most other areas of investment were growing slower than normal, most investment money went there so the values went sky high. Then the hype popped in 2000-2001, and people started taking their money out of stocks, the people who left early took most of the profits.

From 2002 until 2006 the hype was all about Real Estate, as a whole the US made over 6 TRILLION dollars investing in real estate. That is about $40,000 for EVERY adult in the United States, and this number does NOT count the house you live in, only investment properties. By the start of 2007 people made a ton of money and started to see an end to the run-up in prices of Real Estate, so they started cashing out. Again the people who did it first made the most money.

Now this money STILL is out there. Where is it going? The easiest way to find this out is to look at what is going up in value. Metals is one huge area that has seem price spikes from 2007 until now. Another area is Private Equity. Most people who made this huge money qualify to invest in Private Equity and they have done so. They have brought companies private, they have started new companies.

Another area that has seen a huge increase in investment is the INTERNATIONAL segment. New cities are being built all over the world. The rate of investment in much of the world is on record pace.

Because of the vast size of stocks, and the fond memories many investors have, much of the money has returned to stock market. But many people who made a ton of money in Real Estate are looking to return to that market also.

So where should you invest??? The key is to move into the segment first and leave first, but it is hard to predict what will happen. For example I think metals were HOT but they are now near the top, and as we have seen when this happens there often is a fall. A lot of money has gone back to the stock market and more will follow, so there will still be a few years to make money in that area. Real Estate has taken a huge hit but should come up later, the returns will not be huge but at least there will be returns. So the two areas I see, where I would invest my money is in Private Equity and in International. In much of the world the Real Estate boom is just starting.

The best thing would be to start a company in a fast growing nation, and take advantage of the growth. This is hard so the next best thing would be to invest, using Private Equity, in a US company that does a good deal of business internationally.

When we stated Capital Active, this is exactly what we thought about, the fact that there is a huge amount of Capital out there, and that it needs to be kept moving around, kept active doing different things at different times.

Tell me what you think, please leave a comment to this blog, tell me if you agree or disagree.

People with Millions

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Well I have been doing some reading and some of it mentioned stats about millionaires.  This has been something that I have been thinking a lot about, simply because I will soon be a millionaire, in fact it seems quite easy when you follow the steps.

There are only 9.5 million millionaires in the world. (In Dollars) To put that in perspective that is 3 millionaires for every 2000 people on this planet.  These millionaires are worth a total of $37.2 trillion dollars.  That is an average of    1.9 million of these folks are in the United States.  That means that in the US 2 people out of every 300 are millionaires.  Half of all millionaires in the US are retired.

Only 1% of millionaires are worth over $30 million, but of these super millionaires 65% of them are in the United States.  Millionaires are rare, but for the people who really want to be a millionaire it is something that can be done with ease.  You simply need a millionaire mindset, the drive and focus to achieve it then the idea that will make you your money.

95% of the people in the US do not have a millionaire mindset, and will never become one unless they win the lottery or something like that.  The other 5% know what to do, but most of them will never be able to do it because they can not harness the drive or focus because life gets in the way.

It seems that the easiest way to become a self made millionaire is to think of a system, that is easy to reproduce, and allows you to get small amounts of money from many people.  The most common way to do this is to sell a product or service, making a small amount of money from many people.  The same thing applies to people who sell books, or sports players who make their money from the team when they sell tickets and products. The system is your distribution system, you have to make the system in such a way that you can be removed from the system and it still works.  Once you have a system that works without you then you can grow it bigger, as long as you are part of the system, you will always hold the system back, because you have limited time and energy.

For me I have ideas for a few such systems, the only thing is the money required to launch these ideas, so until I have enough I work hard at making the systems not need money, or using my personal efforts to make money to fund these systems some day.

Many others become millionaires by being super executives at huge companies, or by investing the small sums they had in real estate or stocks.  These methods so account for many millionaires also but not everyone can be a high level executive, and many people don’t have the ability to save and invest, this is why making a system is the easiest way.

Because I have the millionaire mindset I am always aware when I meet millionaires, and for them being as rare as they are, they seem to be everywhere.  Many of my best customers are millionaires, many people I know and find interesting are millionaires.  Of the 100 people I have spent the most time with in the last 3 months at least 15 of them are millionaires.  When I am in Asia, I am often surrounded by the top .01% of society.

Any thoughts, then please reply.   Forward this on if you know someone else who may like it.