What I learnt from Bruce Lee: How to set a goal

In January 1969, Bruce Lee wrote a letter to himself (My Definite Chief Aim) - the letter read thus:

I, Bruce Lee, will be the first highest paid Oriental super star in the United States. In return I will give the most exciting performances and render the best of quality in the capacity of an actor. Starting 1970 I will achieve world fame and from then onward till the end of 1980 I will have in my possession $10,000,000. I will live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness. Bruce Lee, Jan 1969

Bruce lived just for 3 years after he made the laudable pronouncement. But you know, he achieved his goals.

I liked the fact that he was very specific about what he wanted to achieve, he included a deadline and above all, he wrote what he would have to give to achieve his goals. You can't set a goal and not be ready to commit to it - that's recipe for failure.

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Learn everything Google - Google Africa Engage Academy

Another great Youtube channel I discovered today is Google Africa Engage Academy.

If you own an online store and you have signed up for Google Adwords, you should visit the Google engage Academy often.

Speakers share tips and techniques of Google Adwords.

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How to Register a Business in Nigeria

Perhaps you will think registering a business is something quite difficult to do, I have registered a number of businesses and it’s quite easy.

This post shows you the steps to follow if you want to register a business name in Nigeria. In most cases the process is the same if you want to register a limited company – albeit with differences in documentation and the amount required.

Here we go folks:

Step 1:	Think about your business and then a name that fits. (often times we can create brands around any name) for example what has Apple got to with technology, or Konga 'well' got to do with selling things online?). The rule of thumb to fast track your registration process is to find a unique name, otherwise you will find yourself enmeshed in the roller-coaster of name rejection and thereby filling several availability forms. Avoid that stress by thinking of a unique name – I guess Steven Covey was right here “Begin with the end in mind”
Step 2:	Find the nearest CAC office. Apparently Corporate Affairs Commission have a website – here it is http://cacnigeria.org/
Step 3:	Pick up the necessary forms and fill them - the first you need is availability check and reservation of name.
Step 4:	Submit the availability form to the CAC office you picked it. You would be asked to check back in 2 weeks for the result – either your names are available or not. If they are not, you start the search process again. Each time you conduct a new search, a search fee is charged and of course paid by you.
Step 5:	Yaay, your name is available, so what’s next? You proceed with the registration process.

The total amount you get to pay for all these shouldn't be up to N10,000 – see breakdown of fee here. 

If you are lazy like me and you don’t like wasting too much time, you may employ the services of a lawyer – they sweat it out for you and you pay for their time.

Now you don’t have an excuse – make your business official and important with a great name (or a name that can become great if you get your acts together).

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When hope is gone, Life is gone.. but God is in control over brokenhopes

This article was culled from the book "God Built" by Steve Farrar.  I am blessed by the book. I hope you enjoy this piece and know that whatever situation you find yourself, you don't give up. God is in control. He has a plan for you.

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.  Romans 5:5 (NIV) 

Hope is the pillar that holds up the world.” - Pliny the Elder

Howard Head was a lousy athlete who radically changed two sports: skiing and tennis. And it was all because of his broken hope to be a capable athlete. Howard had wanted to be a good skier since he was a kid. But because of his poor athletic ability, just about every time he tried to tackle a slope, he wound up breaking wood skis. Even so, he held on to the hope of one day becoming a skillful skier.

That hope may have looked pretty faint to Howard at times, but not faint enough to keep him from trying something that seemed crazy at the time. The more Howard thought about it, the more he convinced himself that his problem with skiing wasn’t his skills on the slope, it was the skis! So in 1941 Howard Head, who was a brilliant engineer, took $6,000 in poker winnings, and focused his entire life on building skis out of air-craft materials. His friends thought he was nuts. Everyone knew the best skis were made out of hickory. Undaunted, Howard invested several years developing a composite ski that was virtually unbreakable- and the skiing world was changed forever.

Head skis became dominant company in the industry. Eventually, Howard Head sold his company and became a multimillionaire. Along the way, he also realized his dreams of becoming a better skier. Now rich and retired, Howard built a tennis court in his backyard and spent $5,000 on tennis lessons. But once again, his lack of athletic ability seemed to stymie him. He bought a ball machine to help him practice on his own, but he became convinced that the prince ball machine could be improved. So he bought the company and spent months improving the machine. Within a very short time, his improved ball machine captured 50 percent of the market. But he was still a lousy tennis player. Then it dawned on him that his trouble might be with the racquet. He should make it bigger.

Once again, his friends thought he was nuts- it was against the rules to have a bigger racquet. Howard Head looked up the rules and discovered that there were no regulations on the size of the racquet. As far as the rules were concerned, you could play tennis with a waffle iron. So he began to work on an oversized racquet that was two inches wider and three inches longer. He personally played with it, amazing even himself at the improvement in his game. After much trial and error and extensive tests in the lab, Howard eventually had test results that proved the sweet spot of his racquet was 20 percent greater than a normal racquet.

The prince racquet became the gold standard in tennis, and in 1982 Howard Head sold prince Tennis for $62 million. Because he had virtually no hope of becoming a better tennis player unless he improved the equipment, Howard Head did just that. And everyone benefited.

When most people lose hope, however, it’s usually about things significantly more important- and nearer to the heart-than skiing or tennis. How important is hope? It’s a fact of life that a man can live without water for only several days, and without food for a matter of weeks. But nothing kills the heart of a man more than the absence of hope. When hope is gone, life is gone.

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The Wisdom to Make a Difference

Inspiration from the book “THE INFLUENCER: THE POWER TO CHANGE ANYTHING” by Kerry Patterson et al

We've all almost certainly heard of the serenity prayer, and perhaps have said it at some point in our life. Just in case you don’t remember the prayer, here it is: ‘Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference”

THE SERENITY TRAP
We’ve come to believe that when we face enormous challenges that can be solved by only influencing intractable behaviors, we might attempt a couple of change strategies. When they fail miserably, we surrender. It’s time to quit and move on. We turn our attention to things that are in our control. We seek serenity.

This would be a good tactic were it not for the fact that the problems we’ve listed- along with everything from changing the culture of an organization to limiting divorce - can be and have been resolved by someone somewhere. That’s right. There are actual people out there who- instead of continually seeking the “wisdom to know the difference”- have sought the wisdom to make a difference. And they’ve found it. They’ve discovered that when it comes to changing the world, what most of us lack is not the courage to change things, but the skill to do so.

The key step to changing anything is to think differently and then act differently. All the profound pervasive, persistent problems we face in our lives, in our companies, and our world can be solved. They can be solved because these problems don’t require solutions that defy the laws of nature; they require people to act differently.

So instead of pleading for the wisdom to know when to give up, we should be seeking to expand the list of things we can change so that we don’t need to seek serenity so often. We should be demanding the names and addresses of influencers who have found solutions to the problems we face every day.

WE’ RE BETTER AT COPING THAN AT EXERTING INFLUENCE
People tend to be better copers than influencers. In fact, we’re wonderful at inventing ways to cope. For instance, at work we abandon our quality-control program and install full-time inspectors. Nobody will listen. Instead of fixing lousy schools, we complain to our friends and then backfill by tutoring our children. It’s the best we can do.

THE WISDOM TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Over the last year U.S. airlines lost over $10 billion and shed tens of thousands of jobs. At the same time, Southwest Airlines racked up its 14^th straight year of profits and double-digit growth. What do Southwest’s leaders do that others haven’t figured out? They engage everyone in doing more with less. They turn planes faster at the gates. They treat customers better. And they get a higher percentage of bags and passengers to arrive at the same location. In other words, they’ve perfected an  influence strategy that produces the behaviors that drive stellar results across their entire company.

While this has been going on in the business world, another influence genius in Dhaka, Bangladesh, helped over 4 million of the Developing World’s poor to emerge from poverty.

Likewise, thousands of previously overweight Americans declared victory in the battle of their bulges by developing sustainable influence strategies over their own unhealthy behaviors.

And finally, in Thailand alone, over 5 million people avoided contracting HIV because of a remarkably effective influence strategy developed by a quiet but enormously effective influence genius who has a lot to teach us. Read more on this here under Prime Minister, Anand Panyarachun. You may also check out this UNDP's report on Thailand's progress.

So there is hope. In a world filled with those content with seeking serenity, there are people who know exactly what it takes to exert influence over human behavior- and change the world in a good way.

We can all make a difference by avoiding the serenity-trap and praying to God instead for the wisdom to make a difference.

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Around the world this week

This week has been mixed with peaks and valleys, the post is a recap of selected happenings around the world.

• US STRIPPED OF ITS AAA CREDIT RATING:

"John Santiago works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Friday, Aug. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) Photo: AP"]

The US was stripped of its AAA credit rating by S & P. Following the downgrade, the US stock market which has witnessed continuous plunge since late July 2011 got its worst hit on Monday August 8th - the S&P index plunged by 6.7 percent in the first trading session (the biggest slump since December 2008). In response to the downgrade, the Federal Reserve said "it will leave benchmark interest rate at a record low through mid 2013. Amidst uncertainty and fear and slump in major banks stocks in the US, the stock market remained largely volatile during the week - on this note it was reported that "never before has the S & P 500 index reversed moves that large each day over four sessions."  Read more here & here.

CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA NATIONALISE 3 BANKS: The Central Bank of Nigeria issued a press statement stating it's support for NDIC's (Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation) resolution to recapitalise Spring Bank Plc, Bank PHB Plc and Afribank Nigeria through Bridge Banks namely Enterprise Bank Limited, Keystone Bank Limited and Mainstreet Bank Limited respectively. In reaction to this move, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) directed stockbroking firms and dealing members to withdraw their settlement accounts from the three nationalised banks. The move by the CBN also led to stocks value plummeting consecutively for three days. The drop culminated in a N339billion drop in total market capitalization with the banking stocks losing 9.2 percent of total value in three days. Read more here.

SAM LOCO PASSES ON:

Sam Loco

Veteran actor & comedian Sam Loco passed on, you can read more here. May his soul rest in peace.

GOVERNOR FASHOLA SIGNS LAW AGAINST ABANDONMENT OF PREGNANT WOMEN:

A pregnant woman"

Governor Fashola signs law against abandonment of pregnant women. Read more here. It is now illegal in Lagos State for any man to impregnate and desert a woman.

JAPAN CUTS GROWTH FORECAST TO 0.5%: To reflect the slump in output following the March earthquake, Japan cuts its economic growth forecast for 2011 to 0.5% from 1.5%. Watch Video here.

MASS UPRISING IN LONDON:

"A woman leaps from a burning building in Surrey Street, Croydon into the arms of police officers. The town was hit by rioting and a huge fire"
Civil unrest /riots in London by citizens who are perhaps discontent with simmering poverty and neglect in the city, according to a report, Martin Fletcher says "caught in a poverty and joblessness cycle, young people in many British urban areas have little hope of a better life." The killing of a 29 year old father, Mark Dugan, heightened the spark for an uprising whose time had come.. you can get the scoop here and more here.

THE WEB (WWW) TURNS 20



On August 6th, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), in Geneva, created the first-ever web page—a summary of his WWW project along with explanations to help visitors build websites of their own and to search the web for information... today, the rest is Web History. It has dramatically changed the way we do things. Read more here.

INSPIRING STORY: THE BOY WITH THE BACKWARD LEG

A turned around leg, and still cheerful..

A 10 year old boy, Dugan Smith, diagnosed with cancer had his leg amputated at 11. He went through an unusual surgical procedure that allowed him to keep the remainder of his leg, but reattached backward - that way the cancer is cut out, but the nerve that controls the foot is intact by turning it around backward. According to the report, Dugan's calf now acts as his thigh, his ankle acts as his knee and his foot acts as his shin bone. He also uses a prosthetic ankle and foot.

For Dugan, now 13, despite a slight limp and some lingering troubles with running, he is not giving up, he says "Never give up, because 90 percent of it is in your mind. Read the full story here.

We would love to hear from you, share your thoughts, your stories just in case we missed it.

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INSPIRING STORY: THE BOY WITH THE BACKWARD LEG

INSPIRING STORY: THE BOY WITH THE BACKWARD LEG

A turned around leg, and still cheerful..."

A 10 year old boy, Dugan Smith, diagnosed with cancer had his leg amputated at 11. He went through an unusual surgical procedure that allowed him to keep the remainder of his leg, but reattached backward - that way the cancer is cut out, but the nerve that controls the foot is intact by turning it around backward. According to the report, Dugan's calf now acts as his thigh, his ankle acts as his knee and his foot acts as his shin bone. He also uses a prosthetic ankle and foot.

For Dugan, now 13, despite a slight limp and some lingering troubles with running, he is not giving up, he says "Never give up, because 90 percent of it is in your mind. Read the full story here.

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THE WEB (WWW) TURNS 20

THE WEB (WWW) TURNS 20

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="416" caption="The Web turns 20"][/caption]

On August 6th, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), in Geneva, created the first-ever web page—a summary of his WWW project along with explanations to help visitors build websites of their own and to search the web for information... today, the rest is Web History. It has dramatically changed the way we do things. Read more here. and here for timeline.

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