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When it comes to making critical decisions in business and politics, leaders have the option to make two types of decisions, they can opt to get the most rewards in the short term and judge their success by arbitrary metrics or they can instead make plans based not solely on profit or political victory but rather for advancing a just cause.

The former approach to leadership is dubbed playing the game of life with a finite mindset while the latter is l the very definition of having an infinite mindset. Extensive research in the lives of top leaders in all facets of the global communities prove that almost all of them operate and make decisions with an infinite mindset and prioritize longterm prosperity of their vision and furthering of a cause over short term wins and losses.

Ultimately leaders are not responsible for the results, rather they are responsible for the people who are responsible for the results and for this exact reason they need to be concerned with their people first and doing so will allow them to make more ethical decisions. Also thinking long term ironically leads to better overall metrics, be it the revenue or the votes, and being concerned with a big cause and committed to advancing a cause is what also bring about the best results since it brings the best in the people that a leader is responsible for.

Having read the book the Infinite Game by Simon Sinek I not only recommend it to all leaders and entrepreneurs but also encourage you to start making more decisions with an infinite mindset so that we all can enjoy living in a better world tasked with advancing a cause for the greater good and building a magnificent future!

In the book Talking to Strangers: What we Should Know about the People We Don’t Know, Malcolm Gladwell conducts extensive research in the lives of police officers who misinterpret the intentions of motorists, experienced judges who allow dangerous criminals to roam free, intelligence officers who fail to recognize that their colleagues might be double agents, parents who cannot even assume that their daughter’s coach is a pedophile, and teenagers who don’t know what the opposite gender would do and how they would reveal their true intention while intoxicated. 

All the evidence proves that we are poor at understanding strangers even though we think we are good and that we are only 51% good at knowing whether someone is telling the truth or not, better to flip a coin! The reason for this is two fold: the first is dubbed the Truth Default Theory and the second is called Transparency. 

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The Truth Default Theory states that we all have a bias to believe other people more than we have a bias not to believe them and that has been necessary throughout the history of humanity so as to make living and functioning in group settings and societies possible but defaulting to truth means that in order for us to feel secure and have normal lives devoid of constant mistrust and fear we end up trusting and cooperating with those we should not. 

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The error of transparency is another serious issue when it comes to misunderstanding strangers, we assume that what people show on the outside is what they actually feel on the inside. There is a false myth that all facial expressions are universal but research done by anthropologists proves that facial expressions are tied to the location and the culture of the individual as well as his or her unique temperament. This means relying solely on facial expressions is flawed and unreliable when dealing with strangers who might come from a different  background. 

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Additionally people can fake facial expressions or even emotions which make them mismatched, that is how they seem on the outside is not how they feel on the inside. When people are mismatched and they go unnoticed because of transparency fallacy then people like Bernie Madoff can run Ponzi schemes and dangerous criminals can be let go by experienced judges! 

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The last main issue covered in the book is coupling and that by solely looking at the person and making judgments right then and there, we fail to take into consideration the cultural and environmental factors that play a major role in how they act and what attitudes they have. This means that we won’t be able to understand the context in which the stranger is operating. 

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Ultimately, by becoming aware of our inherent incompetence at understanding strangers and being cognizant of the three errors of defaulting to truth, transparency, and coupling we become far more careful when it comes to judging the characters and intentions of others if not more adept. 

Solo entrepreneurs a.k.a solopreneurs are by no means something new nor are they rarities, in the United States alone there are 33,000 businesses registered as a one person company. The good news is that many such businesses are actually scalable and  can reach 7 figure revenues exceeding a million dollars. Whether you are currently working at a job or a university student you can start a one person businesses without quitting your job or your college knowing that you can scale the business in the years to come. 

The biggest element of running a one person business is passion and liking the business since working on your own means having to do many things all by yourself and dealing with many problems that you might not like so if you lack interest in the field and are concerned solely with profitability then you might give up before succeeding. With that being said passion is of no use if no one else cares about it so between what you are really passionate about that has no significant market and something that you are a bit less passionate about but has a clear demand in the market then you are better off choosing the latter since monetizing your effort must be a goal from the get go! 

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The most common types of one man businesses are e-commerce, manufacturing products, informational content creation, professional services, personal services, and real estate and the following are the most important tips to succeed at each one of them:

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E-commerce: Selling your products online by fist testing the market on a small scale to determine whether the products are sold well. An example is selling your products by Amazon and using Fulfillment by Amazon to deliver the products to the customers. In essence you can become a seller for someone else’s product or better yet tap into arbitrage via buying the products at a cheaper price in one market and selling those very products at a higher price in another market. 

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Manufacturing products: You can think of any product that you can manufacture by yourself but you are better off using a co-packer since the packaging of a product is indeed very important in addition to its pricing. Selling your own products will inevitably require much more marketing and advertisement than e-commerce and using paid ads along with social media activity will be essential to generate demand for your products.

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Informational content creation: Whichever area that you are an expert at can be monetized by creating informational content and sharing it on social media such as YouTube or as a podcast that can then generate revenue from advertising for other people and use your content as an advertising platform that attracts a lot of attention and thus can convince other businesses to pay to advertise on your platform. 

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Professional and personal services: The key to generating a revenue exceeding a million dollars is having a strong personal brand and social media have proven to be the best tools in developing your personal brand and making it more known. Being able to generate content on social media in a way that is consistent to give people the incentive to follow you and simultaneously reaching other users directly by following them or sending them messages can get your personal brand more known. Ultimately the strength of your personal brand depends on your credibility and how well you know your stuff or get the job done. The biggest issue with these two categories is that scalability often requires you to hire new people or at least use freelance help but regardless, tapping into the power of the internet can give you a huge boost and by having more demand for your professional and personal services you can scale by increasing your fees. 

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Real estate: The key to success in making money in real estate is to do solid research to find a good property that is rent worthy and work on one property at a time, especially if you have limited access to cash or credit. The formula is simple, you buy or mortgage a property and generate cash flow from rent and once your savings or credits allow it then you move on to purchasing the next good property to increase your cash flow and you can scale the business by gradually and overtime increasing the number of your properties that generate cash flow while appreciating in price overtime. 

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The good news is that it does not take a lot of capital to start a one person business and in the majority of cases most one person businesses were started with $1000 to $5000 in initial investment. It does not take full time hours to start a business which is why having a job on the side is actually a good thing which gives you stability and time to start the business on the side and without any sense of urgency since not only it won’t be stressful but actually turns the whole process into a fun pursuit. 

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Dan’s Action Plans: 
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– Running a one person business is something that almost anyone can do primarily through sweat equity and effort while still keeping a job or academic pursuit on the side. Creativity, dedication, and passion are what make starting a side business with very little starting capital possible.

-Social media, social media, social media! Your consistent and disciplined online activities on social media are essential to success in running any one person business. All entrepreneurs have tapped into the power of social media and if you are serious about entrepreneurship you should officially treat activity on social media as an essential and regular part of your work because people stare more at their phones and particularly social media than they ever do at TV, billboards, or brochures. 

– As an entrepreneur you must always be thinking about scaling your business, which is a fancy term that means generating more profit in the same amount of time dedicated to your business since doing so is not only essential for success, but in fact it is required for its very survival. Always think about scaling and use your effort and creativity along with the help of others to do so. 

Mental toughness is an asset for all of us in every situation, especially in cases where competition is tough and winners take all such as business, sales, entrepreneurship, athletic events, and tournaments. Apart from being mentally stronger you ought to be able to project that image into others so that they do know that you are a person with clear red lines and distinct rules and that challenging you will have consequences. 

Displaying a willingness to embrace pain will project that image and encourage others not to challenge you since they know that when it comes to protecting your territory or defending your values you are willing to go places where they are not. In other words, your willingness to rock the boat, demonstrate your dissatisfaction openly, or walking away in cases where doing so would not be in your best interest but you do so for the sake of demonstrating your willingness to embrace pain to protect your values and rules will make others think twice before attempting to challenge you again. 

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Being emotionally strong is also about not being afraid of biting more than you can chew but to do so you need work hard to develop your skills because you need to get good if you want to take on challenges that at first you are not fit to take on. Winning in life and business requires you to also observe your opponents, particularly their weaknesses, and then make those weaknesses your strengths. So for instance in business, if your competition is superior in quality but also more expensive, you try to focus on pricing and make your product or service much more affordable, or in politics if your opponent can gain more votes among the elite you need to focus on gaining the votes of the lower and middle class who are of lower overall education and wealth. 

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There is a time to be nice and cooperative and there is a time to be bent on viciously winning by willing to fight and do whatever it takes. Being nice and cooperative in a situation where you need to be combative and aggressive not only does not help you but could actually be the end of your success or even your life! At the same time you should never underestimate your opponents you are trying to gain victory over no matter how much better you think you are, this will compel you to remain humble and constantly work on getting better and avoid complacency. When engaged with fierce competition in any area of life you must avoid overthinking since doing so would lead to paralysis by analysis and you getting in your own way. All competitions or fights in life and business will inevitably arouse a lot of negative emotions which is why in such cases actually doing less thinking and relying more on using your strengths and experience will be far better. 

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The most important element of being able to last in competitive situations or fights, be it in business, politics, or personal life, is your ability to implement compartmentalization, meaning that you will have specific mental spaces for specific things, so for example, you will not take your standoff with the clients or business partners to your home, or anytime you enter the gym your mind is free of the competition. By being able to have locations or activities in your life that are associated with peace you will be able to last much longer in all stand offs or tolerate inevitable defeats than your opponent who might take that fight, competition, or losses too personally wherever they go. 

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Dan’s Action Plans

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– Everyone who knows you, whether they are on your side or on the other side, your friend or foe, partner or competitor, they all should know that if push comes to shove you are willing to rock the boat and go places where they are not willing to go be it to negotiate more aggressively, end a relationship that is valuable, walking away, or even starting a war if that is what it takes to contain their other side. 

– Winning in life is more often a result of offense rather than defense which is why you need to focus on developing your strengths instead of fixing your weaknesses and then use your strengths against the weaknesses of your competition. 

– The ability to distance yourself emotionally from all confrontations, competitions, and losses is the key to winning in life, most people avoid those negative emotions by avoiding confrontations, competitions, or loses which is why they cannot win. So instead of avoiding these situations that demand courage learn to distance yourself emotionally from them when you are away from the scene of action. 

Getting ideas, products, or brands to become popular is not a matter of luck since now we know that there is a science behind why certain things catch on while others don’t.

Studies have now proven that word of mouth marketing is far more effective than traditional marketing because we trust our friends more than we trust advertisement and the next question that immediately pops up is how do we generate word of mouth marketing? If you answered online and social media then you should know less than 10% of word of mouth marketing is done via social media which is why you need to be talked about when people are not online. So how is that done? One of the ways to do so is to create content online that gets shared and only then you can get the consumers to think about you in their personal lives when you are not there.

Dan’s Action Plans

• Obscurity is the worst thing that can happen to any idea, product, or service because people don’t necessarily buy what they like but what they know!

• Include free stuff in promoting your product or service, free tips, free videos, free podcasts, free donuts, free trials, etc so as to take your brand in for a ride!

• The value of your brand is a function of what others think not necessarily its real value so focus on marketing and advertisement as much, if not more than, enhancing its quality and using STEPPS can help you to do just that!