How to Reinvent Yourself and Become the Successful Entrepreneur You've Always Wanted to Be In order to be successful, you may have to change a few things – the way you think, the people you associate with, the way you do business. These tips can move you in the right direction.
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The following excerpt is from Manny Khoshbin's book Driven: The Never-Give-Up Roadmap to Massive Success. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | IndieBound
Reinventing yourself means you have to accept and agree to change yourself, which may mean changing the way you think, the way you live, the people you associate with, the way you do business and so forth. As you grow and mature, your priorities change and you gain valuable resources to help you achieve your goals. The world around you also keeps changing, so you need to adapt and explore. If you don't stay current, you run the risk of falling behind your competitors and missing opportunities. Or maybe you just have a desire to expand into something new.
Whether you reinvent yourself to stay current or to add a new "flavor" to your business, you have to keep on learning. For example, here I am, almost 50, and I'm still learning new things. In recent years, I've been learning a lot about technology. I even started my own venture: I launched an app called Fuzul.
Are you curious about how I, a long-time commercial real estate investor, reinvented myself and expanded into the technical world? As with everything in my life, it was a journey down an as-yet unexplored path.
Expanding limits
One day, I was having a parking lot repaved at one of my large shopping centers in Pennsylvania, and a vendor wanted payment. Being in California, it's hard to see what's going on with properties hundreds or thousands of miles away. I thought, "What if someone could be my eyes in the many different places I was having work done on my properties?" I realized how cool it would be if I could post a job on an app to have a local resident in the area go out and do a live streaming video or take photos of the job for me so I could see how the job was going before rendering payment.
It was from that experience that the idea for Fuzul, which in Farsi means "nosy person," was born. Two years and a few hundred thousand dollars later, and I'm suddenly in the tech business with Fuzul, which is an app that utilizes a smartphone's camera to give you the opportunity to be in as many as 10 or 20 places at once. It's an on-demand marketplace of eyes-for-hire.
My first test for Fuzul came when my wife and I were discussing the products she sells in numerous stores and locations. She can't fly or drive to all the stores to check up on inventory and to see if everything is displayed properly. So we decided to test out the new app. We posted jobs offering $10 each for people to go into each of the stores and let us see through their smartphone's cameras if the racks were in the correct places and to make sure the products were properly displayed. Within two hours, we had videos coming in! She was able to call the stores and place orders with them on the items they were out of, which more than paid for the Fuzul jobs!
What's your fuzul?
Do you have the drive to reinvent yourself? Can you start fresh or add something to your repertoire?
The way to reinvent yourself is to stay on top of what's trending in the world, what's popular and what people are excited about. People are using technology to change their businesses and revolutionize industries. For example, Netflix used to send DVDs by mail to its customers, and now it's a huge online network featuring movies and original programming. And let's remember that Amazon started out only as an online bookseller. And how about George Foreman? He was a heavyweight champion. Now he's world-famous for the hugely popular George Foreman Grills.
The point is, you don't have to keep on doing what you've always been doing if you're falling behind or simply want to expand your repertoire -- the world keeps changing, and you can reinvent yourself to change with it. The problem is that many people have a good, or even fantastic, idea, but it stops right there. They don't actually do anything about it. They don't have the drive to keep on going in a new direction.
You need to have a passion and a sense of adventure, to start exploring to see if it's a feasible idea. If it makes sense and you have a new destination, then you need to start planning how you will get there.
Whatever you do, don't get complacent. Many people find that once they reach some level of success with their business, they often become too comfortable. They don't try as hard anymore, but then they want a bigger house or a nicer car. The only way to get those things is to expand and grow the business, take on new challenges, network and be on the lookout for the next opportunity and try to find a way to add to what you do or reinvent yourself.
There's no real magic to reinventing yourself. I'm still always looking to upgrade by trying new ideas that make sense to me. I'm always doing research online, looking to educate myself, and seeking successful people who I can learn from. Remember, you won't end up being rich if you don't try, so you'll simply have to keep on trying.
