Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.

People you meet on regular basis are shaping your life more than you would ever admit.

It is difficult to be optimist when you spend time with pessimists.
You will not get new ideas and inspiration from people who only talk about other people (instead of ideas, events, opportunities).
You will end up earning +-20% as people you meet on regular basis.
You get same old things if you meet same old people.
If you meet people who have their opinion from TV or newspaper, soon you’ll lose yours.

Think about it and turn all above to you advantage:

Meet people who are optimistic, cheerful and enthusiastic.
Meet people who talk about ideas and opportunities.
Meet people who earn more than you and learn from them.
Meet new people to get new ideas.
Meet people who have their own opinions and are challenging yours

Question to think over is simple: Who Do You Spend Your Time With?

Related posts: When Do You Stop? What’s Your Horizon Regardless

If nobody knows you – nobody will buy from you.

When you start new business or enter new territory you need to
build awareness of your brand / company.
Awareness is first step and then it follows like this.

AWARENESS (they know about you)
TRIAL (they try your product/service; mostly for free)
PURCHASE (they buy for first time)
REPURCHASE (they buy again)
LOYALTY (they keep on buying)

The more people know about you the better.
Numbers are decreasing from Awareness to Loyalty.

For example out of 1000 people that know about you (Awareness) only about 50 will try your product/service (Trial).
Out of these 50 only 10 will come again (Purchase / Repurchase).
And out of these we can have 2 loyal customers (Loyalty).

If we increase number of people who know about us, we will also increase number of people who will come over and buy something.
(obviously, conversion rate will drop, but absolute numbers are higher)

Building awareness must be targeted. You should build awareness among your target audience.
These people are much more likely to buy from us.

Given limited budget for start up, it is most efficient to build awareness via internet.

Apart from cost, big difference between internet and “old media”
(print/billboards/TV/radio) is that on internet your potential customer is „one click away“ from your website where he is likely to be converted.

With “old media” the gap between seeing you and time time they will get to PC is so long, they will forget about you.

Related posts: How Much is Marketing?

Any fool can do a marketing with million dollars in his pocket.
Most can’t even with million dollars.

I never had million dollars budget for marketing at Chefparade.
And you don’t need it either.
There are three categories of marketing tools / channels you can use to promote your business.

i) free (no money required, only your time and effort)
ii) cheap (little money required; up to 100USD)
iii) expensive (more money required; over 100USD)

Key here is to sit down and think about your WHO and find all TOUCHPOINTS.

WHO – is my customer
You need to know everything about your customer.
Age, gender, income, hobbies, what they read (blogs, magazines, websites, newspaper…), do they have a dog, a cat. Where they like to go eat, what do they wear, what sports do they do… the more you know the better.

Touchpoint – is every point in time or space where you can talk to your WHO.

Start with “free” touchpoints and talk to your customer.
Send him your message.
Don’t spend any money until you have exhausted all free touchpoints.
Then spend little money. Once you run out of all “free” and “cheap” options then and only then you should go for “expensive”.

To be honest, in 7 years and 5 companies I have never went for “more money” option.

Training for Ironman taught me one important lesson:
“I don’t stop when I am tired, I stop when I am done”

I believe this is one of key differences between winners and losers.
Between those who make it and those who don’t.

So, when do YOU stop?

Do you stop on friday 3pm because it’s weekend coming?
Do you stop because you just don’t feel like doing it now?
Do you stop because …. fill in your excuse

Or you don’t. You keep on working ’till you done.
No stopping ’till you deliver.

Hang in there and I’ll see you at the finish line.
Any race, any business.

Related posts: Three kinds of dogs, Hard work explained, Regardless

Every problem you have, somebody had this problem before.
Most likely it is described in a book.

Before I started Chefparade I read all books I could get my hand on on running a restaurant, cooking, ingredients, kitchen design etc

When starting our Chefparade food-truck I bought top 5 rated books from Amazon about foodtrucks and this saved us loads of money and headache.

Now I am working on “content marketing” project …. guess what I am reading these days…

For most of your problems there is an answer and solution in a book somewhere outthere. (or youtube, wikipedia or some website)

In last 10 years I have read more than 500 books.
Where did I find time for all this reading?

If average reader spends 30 min a day reading he will read like 500 books in a lifetime.
That is 5 times amount of books you need to read to get through college.

This can easily be done during your (public transport) commute to work or 30 minute before you go to bed.
Not to mention 3 times 10 minutes spend on toilet every day 🙂

Not that much of a investment into changing your life for better and finding solutions for your problems.

read on!

Where you are today is the result of choices you made yesterday.

Having a great to-do list will make you efficient
but you may end up executing loads of useless tasks.
To-do list lets you see your life in daily portions which is not enough.

At my personal efectivity trainings I meet many people who are not happy with their present situation.
They don’t realize that this is result of what they did yesterday, last month, a year ago.

Still, if I ask them if they have plans and goals for next month, year or five years; whole life perhaps they look at me in disbelief.
Why would they?
They prefer to live for the moment, go with what life brings
and similar bullshit.
Their horizon is next moment and then moment by moment I will meet them couple years from now in same sad situation.

You need to look further into future. To increase your horizon.
Daily and weekly is not enough.
Your horizon must be year, five years, whole life even.
Once you’re clear on this, then and only then you can live for the moment.

At Chefparade we believe that successful 2013 was caused by our efforts in 2012. And 2012 by what we did in 2011.
We plan and work on monthly basis.
Plus by end August we need to have one big innovation
and strategy ready for year to come.
This gives us 6 months to get ready for next year.
Should we start thinking and planning in January – it’s too late!

Make sure you work hard today so you can have great tomorrow.
Make your horizon further than daily / weekly tasks, so you don’t wake up next year being where you are today.

About the setting goals read here.

I love dogs.
I divide them into three categories based on their guarding skills.

Group number one consists of most of the dogs.
They run around barking at everyone passing by, everything that moves,
but should you attempt to enter the property they either run away or bark from safe distance at you.

Different is group number two.
Good example of this group being german shepherd.
He’s there protecting the house, barks when somebody approaches and when you cross the line he will bark AND bite you (once, maybe twice),
then bark and bite again and so on.

Third group is reserved for likes of pit bull terrier. He doesn’t bark.
And when you cross the line he doesn’t bark either – he bites. And keeps.
Until job is done.

I believe you can look at people who work for you in same way.

Most of them are like category one dogs – barking but not performing.

Sometimes you get people from second group – those who talk a bit but bite once or twice and most of the time get the job done.

Third group is my favourite – they don’t bullshit (bark) they just get job done – no matter what. Those are the ones who work hard.

When hiring, you should look for people from category two and three
and have mixed group for best results.

Make sure you remember one crucial thing.
You will not make pit bull terrier out of golden retriever.

Here’s how we choose our “herd” at Chefparade.

At Pioneers Unplugged I explained success of Chefparade by working harder than our competition.

I missed opportunity to explain what I mean by hard work.

Hard work means taking responsibility for delivering results.
It means doing what needs to be done when needs to be done.
Hard work means getting things done.

Hard work means to analyse, plan and ruthlessly execute.
Hard work means saying “no” to all stuff that doesn’t add value.
Hard work means firing non performers quickly

If this will take long hours so be it.
Most of the time it is the question of attitude and mindset.

It is easy to put in long hours.
But, did you deliver?
What did you achieve?
Did you add value?

Think about these situations:
a) You own restaurant – meat delivery didn’t show up
b) You ordered posters for tomorrow’s exhibition but
delivery car broke down
c) Your analysis deadline is tomorrow but your colleague
didn’t send you data you need

What do you do? Two options you have
i) you find excuse or ii) you get it done.

For next time I will make sure to include this into my speech.
Obviously, I did not work hard enough on preparation for it.

PS: Pioneers Unplugged speech you can find here
Related posts: Added Value,

Posted in: Uncategorized |

Yesterday I had a privilege to be a guest speaker at
Pioneers Unplugged in Prague. Here’s what I had to say.

Back in 2007 there was no working cooking school in Prague.
We started in September and within period of 3 months 2 other cooking schools started. Currently there are 12-15 cooking schools in Prague.

Second biggest cooking school has around 4 000 people cooking a year.
Chefparade had 13 000 people cooking last year.
This doesn’t include 10 000 people served from our food-truck
and another 10 000 at Foodparade – our food festival.

My question is simple:
What do you think we did to achieve this that others didn’t?
What separates successful from …let’s say “less successful”?

Do you think we had more money? better equipment or marketing?
Should we think we were smarter?
Do you think we had better recipes and more famous chefs?
Or did we have more passion, goals and discipline?

I am convinced none of above was our advantage.
Our competition had everything we had, they did everything we did.

What than did made a difference?
We WORKED HARDER.

I am convinced that in most cases the difference between winner and loser is that you are willing to give it more, push harder, stay longer.

There are 7 billion people on this planet.
Thousands of them are having great ideas just like you, they have same information, same technology… same everything …
the only difference is how much are you willing to work hard.

While you sleep till 9 and get to office by 11
there is somebody out-here who works hard since 6am –
so by the time you get to the office you’re half a day behind!

While you’re on Facebook there is somebody out-there who reads inspiring business book

While you’re having your latte at Starbucks gossiping
somebody out-there is discussing ideas

While you party somebody out-there does what? yes, works hard
While you’re on vacation there is somebody who isn’t, why?
because he works hard

While you don’t feel like working today there’s somebody who does …

I believe that this is all there is to it.
I believe it all comes down to working harder than the other guy
(as all other factors are more or less equal nowadays).

So if you should leave today with 1 thing to remember here it is:
Give it all you have because if you don’t – somebody else will.

Most people send me so called “motivational letter” with their CV.
Mostly full of same bullshit.
How they would love to work with us, looking for new challenge, willing to learn new skills, this is their dream job, finally something they can enjoy… bla bla bla

Why I dare to say most of it is bullshit? Simple reason.
80% of people selected for round 2 didn’t show up.
Why? Simple information saying they will undertake test and will have to answer four specific questions about their previous results (send to them upfront!) will make them not to come.

Where is all that passion and eagerness for new challenges.
Why they will give up job they would so much love to do so easily?
I guess, all of them expect to come over for half an hour interview where they would try to make good impression and be hired because they did so.

Don’t hire so easy.
More difficult is to get in, longer people stay and you get more quality.
Hire slowly and make it hard to get in.
Look for specific examples of job well done from their past, require specific results and hard facts.

It is great the person is likeable and left a good impression but what really counts is results.
Here’s how we hire at Chefparade