Top Tips for Protecting Your Privacy Online by Scott Assemakis

If you are an entrepreneur on the path to success working tirelessly to build a business, chances are you’re spending a lot of time online. Are you playing safe? The internet is the ideal forum for learning, communicating and making connections, however safeguarding your online privacy should be a very real concern in this digital day and age.

Do Not Forget the Basics: Scott Assemakis

Complex passwords, which use a seemingly random collection of characters, remain a crucial part of keeping your identity safe. Install security software and keep it updated to protect against keystroke logging programs. Save any sensitive or important documents on a USB drive rather than in cloud based services, such as Google Drive.

Think About Wi-Fi Connections: Scott Assemakis

When you're travelling for business or working remotely, you’ll most likely find yourself using public or hotel Wi-Fi spots. Ensure that your connection is safe by downloading software like AnchorFree's Hotspot Shield. A virtual private network that masks your IP address and is great for adding additional security for when you’re on the go.

Consider Encryption

Keep your entire sensitive information safe, and make it much harder for people to invade your privacy, with the help of free encryption software. Services such as Silent Circle and Voltage Security can be a good place to start.

Cleaning Up After Yourself

Of course, even if you're conscious of your privacy online, there's a good chance that you weren't always. Tools such as SafeShepherd.com can help you clean up after yourself by searching for places online that store any of your personal details, making it easier for you to have these issues addressed.

More Business Tips from Scott Assemakis

Did you enjoy reading our article? You can get more amazing business advice from Scott Assemakis, an experienced entrepreneur and Consultant.

He loves talking to people about entrepreneurship and business endeavors. Go connect with Scott Assemakis now on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Scott Assemakis: How to Succeed as a Young Entrepreneur

As Scott Assemakis points out, more and more young people decide to become entrepreneurs instead of following the less-exciting linear path of going to school, university and then finding a job.

The internet supplements these young entrepreneurs well by offering them early access to unlimited information on everything they need to get started.

But in a world with so much mixed information, how do we know who to listen to? What advice can get us real, tangible results?

Scott Assemakis’s Entrepreneurial Success: 5 Golden Rules

To address that question, we will look at Scott Assemakis’s 5 Golden Rules to success for young entrepreneurs. We use case studies to accompany these rules and demonstrate the importance and applicability of each point.

1. Follow Your Passion – But Not Blindly

This is regular advice given by people every day. We’re being told to follow our passion everywhere: TV, blogs or social media – you name it.

However, no one seems to address how to find your passion before we start following it. And so the question inevitably arises: how exactly do you find your passion before you start following it?

In our opinion, there is only one way: you try different things out.

Did you do one thing, really enjoyed it and think you just might be able to do that for potentially tens of years to come? That’s great!

Keep practicing. Keep doing it and achieve some tangible results in that specific area. Making your first money in the niche might be one example of such a tangible result.

Then look back. Are you still enjoying it as much as you did in the beginning? Is your initial enthusiasm just as pronounced, or has it faded away in time? If you’re still feeling the same way you used to, you might’ve just found (one) of your passions.

Experiment with different things. Try out whatever you think you might be interested in. Then do it for a while. Achieve some tangible results.

After you’d proved yourself that you can provide real value in the area, look back and decide if you want to keep doing it in the long run. That is the key to finding your passion.

As an extra piece of advice - while you experiment with all of these different things in your journey to finding your passion, learn generally useful skills. Become a jack of all trades. Get to know a bit of everything
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Develop your communication skills. Attain basic knowledge in globally useful subjects such as Negotiation. Marketing. Accounting. Maths.

All of these will likely come in handy at some point in your life, no matter what you end up doing in the long run.

Try to do all of this while you’re young. Later on when you’ll have a spouse, mortgage and kids, your time will be much more limited – and finding your real passion does take time and dedication.

Clippykit is one great example of an entrepreneur who has experimented with different things before she found her profitable idea mostly by chance.

Calypso Rose, the founder of Clippykit, dropped out of a geography degree after just 6 weeks – plenty of time to find that being a weather girl was really not her passion as she had initially thought.

Going out of that and into starting her own business was the best decision she could make.

2. Be Flexible and Adapt Quickly

The business world is changing rapidly – especially in the era of Google, blogs and social media. Today, information travels at unprecedented speed. This has opened the door for new possibilities, especially for start-ups and small businesses.

However, one requirement of entrepreneurs that is more valid now than ever is having the ability to adapt
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Andrew Slack, young founder of a very successful affiliate marketing business, has talked about the importance of adaptability, especially in rapidly-changing industries such as internet marketing.

Having a vision and sense of direction for your business is essential. You also need a highly detailed business plan – especially if you’re going to apply for finance in order to grow that business.

However, you shouldn’t be reluctant to change those initial plans as results of your work start coming in. Always look for what works best and what doesn’t in your industry, and adapt accordingly.

Try to think forward and make maximum use of new opportunities – especially in the area of internet marketing. Andrew, for example, was one of the first ones to try out things such as Facebook Advertising and promoting his brand on Twitter.

As a result of his openness to trying to leverage new technology and next-gen marketing strategies, he was able to grow his More Niche website to be one of the best in his industry.

3. Act. Learn. Build and Repeat: Scott Assemakis

This case study by Forbes has identified a proven path that increases an entrepreneur’s odds of succeeding.
As they say, the first step is to determine what it is that you want to do, and then take a small step towards that idea. The second thing is to pause for a bit and take your time to learn the lesson that resulted from your action.

Then, you can proceed to build on what you’ve learned and take it one step further. By continuing to repeat this process, your chances of success will increase considerably.

Learn from both success and failure, and apply what you learn to your future actions. Even if the whole idea fails altogether, you know that you’ve gathered a lot of experience for the next thing that you figure you’ll want to do.

Just as with finding your passion, finding a profitable idea and going for it is a repetitive process that involves active pursuit of potential markets.

4. Make Your Customers Happy

If there is one thing everyone should take away from Andrew Slack’s More Niche case study, it is making sure your customers are happy with you.

This way, they won’t even need to check out your competition – because you’re already offering them what they need and more.

By overpromising and overdelivering with your products and services, you create unique connections with your clients.

People do business with people they like – and boy will your clients like you if you understand their problems and overdeliver on the solution.

The extra time spent doing the best quality work for them will later on pay back tenfold in strong relationships and long-term commitments between you and your clients.

5. Action Trumps Everything

Entrepreneurs are people who love action. The fact is, no matter how much theory you read and how many books you buy – you won’t become an entrepreneur by simply knowing everything about the process.
You have to get out there and act. That is the first step, and also the best method to learn. Because action is so important, Forbes has dedicated a whole resource page dedicated to motivation and doing as opposed to passively aspiring about results.

To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to try things out yourself and learn the lessons. Risk small at first. The internet is one great place to start exploring with new ideas for cheap – especially as a young entrepreneur.

Go out there and find your own idea. Learn. Act. Build.

Connect With Scott Assemakis

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One experienced entrepreneur we're learning a lot from lately is Scott Assemakis. He loves getting in touch with like-minded young entrepreneurs, so why not connect with Scott Assemakis now on Twitter and LinkedIn?

Scott Assemakis: 5 Principles of Successful Entrepreneurs. You Will Love #3

As Scott Assemakis says, daily habits are an essential part of an entrepreneur’s life – one that can make the difference between success and failure. As a self-employed person you have to be able to motivate yourself, since there will be no one there to do it for you. This calls for a strict set of principles.

As Scott points out, what you do daily creates and shapes your business. This is why today we will look at the 5 most common principles and habits of successful entrepreneurs.

1. Successful Entrepreneurs Don’t Make Up Excuses

Successful entrepreneurs are aware of how the human mind can sabotage our thinking and make us believe in our own excuses for not getting important work done.

Efficient entrepreneurs immediately recognize the unjustified excuses that their mind makes up, and then they crush those excuses by changing the way they look at the problem.

Lack of finance, for example, is one of the biggest excuses aspiring entrepreneurs have before starting their own venture. Experienced entrepreneurs, however, know that you don’t need a lot of money to start.

Thinking that you need a lot of money to start your business is dead wrong and limiting. In the modern era of internet, a business can be started with as little as £100 – the cost of basic website design and hosting.

Besides, even if you need more than that, there are infinite ways of getting finance support these days. As long as you have a genuinely good idea that truly provides value to your market – and are committed to making it happen – you will eventually find a way.

Moreover, if you can’t start a business that requires a £1000 investment and make profit from that, then why on earth would you believe that you could run a £100,000 business to begin with?

Making a £1000 business profitable is, from many points of view, the same as making a £100,000 business profitable. The most important difference is that, with the latter, you will risk a lot more – and you can’t afford to do that when you’re just starting out as an entrepreneur.

Start small instead. Achieve success. Prove yourself that you can do it, and gain some experience in the process. Only after you were successful with your small venture should you start thinking about building big.

2. Good Entrepreneurs Trust Their Team: Scott Assemakis

Good entrepreneurs hire smart people – actually, they often times hire people who are more intelligent than themselves.

Then, when they face a problem or have a question that they know they aren’t the most qualified to answer, they turn to their team for assistance.

They seek the counsel of the people around them, and trust the judgement of their team.

Successful entrepreneurs know that, by trying to do all the thinking and decision making by themselves, they severely limit the potential of their organization. Generously rewarding these smart people for the real value that they produce is also essential. By compensating the people that work for you properly, you make sure that they are focused on the organization’s goals, as opposed to being worried about their continued employment.

Trust the people around you. Hear their opinion, and keep an open mind. You might be surprised of the great insight and ideas you can get from your team.

3. Successful Entrepreneurs Don’t Complain About Problems

They simply don’t waste time doing it. Instead, they use this time to find solutions.

Successful entrepreneurs are on a constant lookout to provide real value to the world.

Where other people see problems and crises, entrepreneurs see business opportunities and challenges that they’re looking forward to.

Moreover, entrepreneurs specifically seek to find these problems that people have, and only once they had found a persistent problem, do they go on to develop a solution.

Even famous inventors thought this way. Thomas Edison once said: “I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.”

And this stays true today more than ever. Dane Maxwell, a popular multi software business owner and entrepreneur, has developed a system he calls the idea extraction process.

This is basically a framework he uses to find common problems that people are struggling with in different industries, and then coming up with software solutions for those problems.

However, Dane is not a programmer himself, nor is he a computer tech savvy – so how does he do it? Often times, he manages to get payments upfront for a certain product, from people whom he knows want a problem solved in their businesses. He then uses that money to hire programmers and develop the actual product. Thus, he delivers huge value to other businesses by simply using his problem solving ability and mind-set – without any self-funded investment at all.

Find a problem, develop a solution. Deliver real value, and you will get paid for it.

4. Don’t Stress About Money: Scott Assemakis

Stress is one thing entrepreneurs continually put up with. You have to know how to handle this stress in order to stay rational and make the right decisions.

Cash-flow issues are common, and there is no guaranteed way to be in total control of that as an entrepreneur. To keep financial stress to a minimum, however, you have to face the problem directly.

If you don’t have a permanent solution, be satisfied with a temporary one until you can find something better.

Eliminate the features of your products and services that you or your business don’t specifically need, and focus on its existing strengths instead. Keep doing this until you build up the revenue to sustain additional features.

5. Efficient Entrepreneurs Commit to Useful Habits

They establish routines and stick to them. A huge part of working smart is knowing how to handle the limited human ability to motivate oneself.

Transforming temporary energy bursts into permanent habits will greatly improve the quality of your life.

This, in turn, will reflect on your business and the quality of work that you do for your business.

As humans, we have a limited reserve of motivation at our disposal every now and then. Instead of using that to get one-time activities done, we can be much better off using it to form long-lasting habits that will serve us tenfold better.

Once a long-term habit is formed, you won’t need to use any of your limited motivation to keep getting it done. Instead, you will be doing it naturally and as part of your daily routine – much like brushing your teeth before going to sleep.

Developing your morning routine is a great way to get started experimenting with long-term habits. Decide on one thing that is important to you and you want to be doing every morning from now on.

Is it writing? Or maybe exercising and stretching? Set a single goal. Don’t try to start with multiple habits at a time, since this has been shown to not work.

Then stick with that goal for at least 21 days. Studies have shown that it takes three weeks of daily practice for an activity to become a habit.

For the next 21 days, do that activity at the set time no matter what. If you miss as much as one day, the chances of it becoming a habit will fall drastically.

More Great Tips From Scott Assemakis

Did you enjoy reading about the principles that successful entrepreneurs share?

Scott Assemakis is an experienced entrepreneur and definitely one to know about habits and how important they can be in one’s pursuit of success – you should definitely connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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10 Essential Tips for a Successful Start-up from Scott Assemakis

Scott Assemakis is one to know how difficult it can be to get started building your own business. Statistics tell us that three out of four start-ups fail. It only makes sense that you don’t feel exactly comfortable at the beginning of this journey. The odds are against you, after all. But in the end, why even bother? Why go through all that effort knowing that there’s a high chance you’ll fail?

As Scott points out, it is because you have a dream. A great idea, and an ambition to improve other people’s lives. It’s about the entrepreneurial spirit within you, and this is not something you can exactly explain.

And that is why today we are going to look at 10 tips that are sure to improve the chances of turning your start-up dream into reality.

1. Believe in your idea: Scott Assemakis

If you don’t believe your idea has a great potential, then why would anyone else? Why would other people believe and buy from you? No matter what happens, always believe in yourself and don’t let anything stop you.

Be prepared to be accountable for your actions. Many start-ups fail because as unexpected limitations arise, their founders don’t believe enough to get over the obstacle.

No matter how much you research, sometimes you make mistakes. Continue believing in your idea and learn from failures. You and your business will move forward.

Your confidence in the real value you’re offering your customers will often times make the difference between sale and no-sale.

2. You don’t have to do everything by yourself

Find an experienced partner who shares your passion for what you want to do. Bring them aboard and use their knowledge and experience to boost your way towards success. You should also outsource things that you’re not very good at, and focus on your strengths instead. Studies have shown that the biggest indicator of why start-ups fail is sole-time founders trying to do everything by themselves. Greatly improve your chances of success by getting a co-founder to work with. Have someone to watch your back, and be the one to watch his.

3. Have a great vision, and keep perfecting: Scott Assemakis

Never stop perfecting. Your idea is great, but nothing is perfect. Keep improving it by constantly brainstorming with other members of your team.

Even when everything is going well, keep thinking innovatively and develop new features for your products and services.

How can we serve our customers even better? This is a question you should ask yourself and your team every once in a while.

Steve Jobs never stopped improving Apple. Constantly redesigning the iMac, following up with new generations of iPods, introducing Siri to the world – all of these innovative developments constantly perfected Apple’s products.

Many see Jobs as a leader in the field, mostly for his futuristic vision of achieving perfection. Have an ambitious vision, and keep working your way towards it.

4. Learn how to communicate your ideas efficiently

You will be dealing with important people whose services you’re going to need. Whether its funding or design you want to bring an improvement to, you have to communicate it efficiently.

If you’re not confident speaking in front of people, you will subtly communicate lack of confidence in your idea. Your ability to communicate your vision correctly, in a strong and confident manner, is essential. Communication skills can be developed, and there are numerous great books out there on the subject.

You should develop positive communication within the business, as well. Many start-ups fail because of lack of communication.

From the day you start, talk to your employees and find out what can be improved. Be open to hearing their point of view. Their insight can make the difference between failure and success.

5. Research is Key

You need to know your target market, your competitors and your potential suppliers. With this knowledge, you will enter the business with a full understanding of your industry.

Google Answers is one popular start-up example that failed because they didn’t respect this rule. They didn’t realise that people weren’t willing to pay for a service that their competitors were offering for free elsewhere.

If Google had done their market research, the time and money may not have been wasted.

6. Make sure your idea is profitable

By researching, you’ll find if your product is profitable or not. Look for a source with the lowest cost and highest quality, but don’t let bulk buying fool you. Whilst it may lower costs, if you cannot sell your stock, you will be stuck in an economic crisis. To prevent this, plan your production runs carefully and forecast sales as well as you can.

Most medical innovation start-ups are subject to this. Despite an amazing breakthrough by Novartis in a breast cancer drug, the NICE decided that it was too expensive to fund, resulting in the innovation to collapse.

7. Don’t compromise on quality

Every start-up makes sacrifices to save money. Don’t let quality be one of them. Your business’s reputation is at stake, and making big quality sacrifices to save money as a start-up can make your image very difficult to fix later.

Additionally, make sure your product passes all of the required quality control tests, especially if your industry is particularly sensitive to this.

Chobani is one example of a product that was eventually forced to recall from the market because it didn’t meet imposed quality standards. After their failure, they tried to improve PR by donating 10% of their profits to charity. Being a large established company, they were able to pick themselves up. For a start-up however, everything would have ended there.

8. Learn to fight procrastination

Procrastination happens to all of us. One key skill entrepreneurs share, however, is their ability to fight it. Time is money, and you have to learn how to make efficient use of it.

Moreover, because you’ve decided to provide value to the world by yourself instead of being an employee, there will be no one out there to make up the schedule for you, or to motivate you when you don’t feel like working. All of this falls on your shoulders now.

The good news is that, as with most entrepreneurial skills, becoming more productive can be learned. There are a lot of great books out there on the subject, and Tim Ferris’s 4-Hour Workweek is a great one to begin with.

9. Patience: Scott Assemakis

The average start-up takes 10 years to mature. Take your time, enjoy everything you’re doing and the things that you’re learning. Be in it for the long run, because building a business is definitely not a get rich quick solution.

You’ll come across unexpected situations and you will be unsure of how to approach them. Don’t rush any decisions if you have the option to sit back and think it through. Avoid tunnel vision and seek to better understand the big picture instead.

10. Don’t forget about the other aspects of your life

You are your start-up. If you neglect yourself, you neglect your business. Work smart and remember that your results don’t depend solely on how much you work, but on the quality of the time spent working as well.

Look to increase your productivity by taking good care of your health and sleep schedule. Don’t forget to also indulge in leisure from time to time. Have some fun and forget about business once in a while.

When you return, you’ll be fresh and ready to work smart again.

Connect with Scott Assemakis

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An experienced entrepreneur who loves speaking with like-minded business enthusiasts, so you should definitely connect with Scott Assemakis on Twitter and LinkedIn.

The 4 Critical Factors for Success by Scott Assemakis

Scott Assemakis is constantly speaking and consulting with entrepreneurs, the amazing things they do and the great life they live. But what makes a successful entrepreneur? Are there specific traits that entrepreneurs have? Are entrepreneurs born, or can they be made by developing specific skills?

He believes that entrepreneurs are made, and there is evidence to back this up. In this article, we are going to explore the 4 critical success factors that every entrepreneur should keep in mind.

1) Scott Assemakis says Attitude and Mindset

This report based on extensive academic research has shown that entrepreneurs are made rather than born, all of them sharing attitude and mindset characteristics that can be learned and honed through practice.

Compiling their findings in what they call The DNA of the Entrepreneur Model, the study highlights the most important common traits successful entrepreneurs share. At the nucleus of the model is the specific attitude entrepreneurs have towards spotting opportunity and taking calculated risks. Where most people see problems and chaos, entrepreneurs see solutions and business opportunities.

Surrounding this attitude is the internal locus of control which refers to one’s belief in control over his or her environment. Entrepreneurs have a strong sense of direction and prefer to take control over their life and success, as opposed to leaving everything to abstract concepts such as destiny or the existence of a pre-written fate that one is not able to change or alter.

Further away from the model’s core we see the six guides to action, as the study’s authors refer them. Passion, persistence, good team-worker and leader, having an eye for market opportunities and having the know-how to support the venture are all traits successful entrepreneurs share.

All of these characteristics are based on a survey of 685 entrepreneurial business leaders from around the world, and are informed by a series of in-depth interviews with Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Award winners.

Finally, the outer ring refines the model by accounting for key traits identified in previous studies.

The attitude and mindset of successful entrepreneurs play a big part in their success, and this study does a good job of defining such important traits.

2) Prior Work Experience

A different study conducted by the Kauffman Foundation documented the factors that influence the success or failure of startups. It revealed the important role that previous work experience can play in many entrepreneurial ventures, especially those conducted by mid-career entrepreneurs.

Out of 549 company founders of successful businesses in high-growth industries, 98% ranked prior experience as an important success factor in their ventures.

This does not mean that entrepreneurs without previous experience cannot be successful. They should, however, be aware of the areas where they still need to improve in order to better their chances of succeeding.

Another study conducted on 14 mid-career entrepreneurs has further shown the importance of previous experience in developing the actual business ideas for their ventures.

Having already worked for large companies in their specific industries, these individuals were able to spot gaps in what the large enterprises were already doing, while their entrepreneurial attitude enabled them to fill those gaps themselves.

When asked about the process of coming up with their business idea, this is how the 14 mid-career entrepreneurs answered:

These two studies confirm the importance and influence that previous work experience can have in pursuing a new, better idea in the industry that one is already involved with.

The ability to spot current problems and develop solutions, however, is still essential. Prior work experience is not enough to guarantee success by itself.

3) Ability to Learn From Failures : Scott Assemakis

Many successful entrepreneurs say that they don’t mind, or even that they enjoy failure. They believe failure is the best way to learn, and without past failures, they wouldn’t be and they wouldn’t know what they know today.

A successful entrepreneur I once interviewed told me that whenever you are doing something for the first time, you are going to fail anyway – so why postpone that moment?, he asked. Fail as fast as you can, learn the lesson, and move on. Failure is something you have to go through before you can achieve success.

Kauffman’s study seems to confirm this mindset, with 40% of the 549 successful company founders citing lessons learned from failures as being extremely important in their journey towards success.

Learn to embrace failure and learn from it. Know that without past failure, you wouldn’t have the experience you have today.

4) Finance and Funding

Asked what held them back in their ventures, 45% of the 685 entrepreneurs surveyed responded that Funding had been their greatest problem: both during the startup process and in their venture’s pursuit of growth.

Cash is king is one thing accountants love saying over and over again, and it does seem to be true.

Having the financial resources and the know-how in this field is proving to be an important success factor that stops many from putting their ideas into practice, as well as further growing their already established businesses.

Funds to start and develop your business can come from many different places. When the 14 mid-career entrepreneurs were asked about their sources of financing, this is what they answered (broken down into their 3 specific industries):

Remember that no matter how great your idea and how honed your skills – you will need resources to kickstart and grow your venture.

By no means does this mean that you should not pursue an idea you know has potential simply because you don’t have the funds right now. Funding is always there for great ideas – but you do have to look for it. Set your priorities right and keep finances in mind when creating your business plan.

More Business Tips from Scott Assemakis

Did you enjoy reading our article? You can get more amazing business advice from Scott Assemakis, an experienced entrepreneur and Consultant.

He loves talking to people about entrepreneurship and business endeavours. Go connect with Scott Assemakis now on Twitter and LinkedIn.