Do you know what your life priorities are? Take this quiz to find out

The time you spend doing most of your time defines your life’s priorities and sometimes we get into situations where we had to prioritize and take a decision without a second thought. Figure out the meaning behind the decisions that you are about to make through the following quiz:

Imagine that you are sitting in your house, and suddenly

Your Niece’s baby is crying

Your Dry Clothes are outside and it started raining

Someone is knocking on the door and the doorbell is ringing

The water is running from the faucet in the kitchen.

Your cellphone is ringing

How would you prioritize your actions if all of the above occurred at the same time?

Take a second to think about it and scroll down to know the meaning behind each action.

 

Each decision you made reflects the priorities you programmed subconsciously in your life.

Let’s say for example you picked the phone first, then your number one priority would be your job. Write down your answer by arranging what you would do from one to five.

 

Ready to know the meaning behind each decision you made?

• Taking care of your niece’s baby means the importance of family according to your priorities.
• Picking your clothes is related to the importance of sex in your life.
• Switching the tap water off is related to the importance of money and to be rich.
• Answering the doorbell reflects the importance of your friends & relatives in your life.
• Finally, picking the phone up reflects the importance of your career in your life.

Are those conclusions accurate? Comment and share your thoughts in the discussion below.

If you ever start a Business-The Shark Tank Series

The Shark tank show to many business students is a business degree by itself! For those of you who don’t know shark tank, tune in to a great reality show connecting billionaires willing to invest their money with future entrepreneurs and businesses. They present their ideas, products or services and sharks decide whether to invest  or not. Famous billionaires such as Marc Cuban, Kevin O’Leary, Daymond John, Robert Herjavec, Barbara Corcoran and Lori Greiner surely get things interesting with their questions and usually put contestants in a tough spot.

After watching 8 seasons of shark tank over and over again, I took the liberty of compiling a list of questions asked on the show that might come in handy when considering starting your own business endeavor!

The Basics

What is your product or Service?

This might seem very obvious, but you really need to define the product or service you are offering

What need does it fulfill in the market?

In many situations, an idea pops up that really does not fill any need in the market. Take it behind the barn and shoot it as Kevin O’Leary says

What are your target markets?

it is very important to have a target market that is properly defined

What is the business model you want to use?

If you dont have a business model in mind, get to work

Are you in the right place?

Are you in the right country and starting at the right time? is it politically unstable? are the laws of the country in your favor or against you?

Where do you see the business in 3 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years and 10 years?

having a definite plan for the upcoming short and long term periods keeps things in check and steady.

The Technical Stuff

Do you have a proper valuation?

Make sure the numbers make sense when presenting your business or doing the “Pitch”. If you ever want to get investors, don’t ask for a 100,000$  for 10% of your company if your yearly sales is 50,000$.

What Costs Do you have ?

Many contestants fail to know the fixed and the variable costs that they have which is usually a red flag. So, if your ever pitching in an accelerator or for angel investors, know your costs!

What are your projected sales and growth rates?

There are multiple ways to forecast projected sales for the upcoming year or quarter, make sure you use a reliable projection method which is realistic compared to your previous ones!

 

Stay tuned for more related articles!

Enhancing Your Emailing Skillset: The Official Guide 101

You know when you meet all these people who are in the midst of their careers, telling you that you will not learn everything in business school. Well, one of the main things I learned when I first started my career is that business school will not prepare you for all the emails you will be sending back & forth. As you start your career, you will discover that it really is not about the content as I know most of you graduates are smart enough not to mess up content, but rather it is a matter of how you communicate something. For someone who’s been seasoned in an agency, I can tell you that it is okay to try and prove a point to a client and release your frustration as long as you communicate it properly & politely.

That saying “the client is always right” doesn’t always apply, sometimes the client pays for peanuts & asks for the stars. You not only need to know when to say no, but how to say it. When I first joined the PR field, I thought all I needed was the proper English. I turned out to be wrong & that was a tip that should have been narrated to me earlier when I first started business school. After a couple of years in practice, I have come to know all the “dos and don’ts”. This series will tackle all the frequent email mistakes with live examples & scenarios. I will try & cover every possible mistake done by new comers to the business field.

I will not go on & on, but I will give you the first tip in the emailing world. Sometime in the beginning of my career, one of my clients gave me a list of things to do, ON THE PHONE. So, I complied & did everything he asked for. Three weeks later, he calls my boss & he says I did the worst job ever because I missed tasks A, B & C, tasks that he never asked for. I told my boss about the conversation & guess what, I was blamed for not documenting it.  So let us say that you have a conversation with a client on the phone, no matter what it was (because I used to think that it is rude to document everything, it would look like you are calling your client a liar), you need to document it and the documentation template goes as follows:

 

Dear Erick,

Hope all is well.

As agreed in our phone call, we will be doing tasks:

-A

-B

-C

Kindly note that we need your prompt reply with XYZ so we can move forward with the event.

 

Thank you for your usual cooperation.

 

Best Regards,

 

Yahya Alfreh

4 things to Consider Before Choosing Your Business Major!

Choosing a major when considering to enter a  business school is one hell of a decision. Although most business schools give basic courses that are common to all business majors, what really counts are the 3-5 concentration courses that really make the difference on your career, perspective and mentality.

First, know what are you getting yourself into

Is it something I would handle studying for 3-4 years? It would be a terrible experience to go into accounting or finance major if you hate numbers, Or into economics if you hate charts and graphs!

 

Do your research about the market needs…

What are the future career opportunities? Sure, you can study finance and work in marketing later on, but is it worth all the effort?

Does it align with your passion?

Many people have a knack for investing even before going to business school while others might have an eye for campaigns and generally enjoy psychology related topics. Its obvious!

Finally,

What are the potential post graduate programs you would care to pursue?

While many business majors have multiple postgraduate masters programs, others have less options that would strictly bind you to one career. A Masters in digital marketing would be wonderful, but would not be helpful if you want to work as a banker!

Eventually, make sure you really think well about your options and decisions! you never know where life will take you!

 

Family Business in a Nutshell

Picking a career is a struggle that we have all went through, and having the opportunity to work for a business owned by a family member does not make the struggle any easier. By the time I was getting done with school, the most common question among every group of friends was your career choice. Every time someone asked me what I was planning to do, I smirked and said that I’m planning to work for my dad, selling construction materials. At the time I thought working for your parents meant waking up when you have gotten enough sleep, and going to bed right after you’re done with whatever nonsense you were doing; regardless if it is doing you any good or not.

College years passed quickly, and even though I had already decided that I’m going to be working with my parents, I did pretty well. A few decimal points away from distinction while double majoring in Accounting and Finance is not bad after all. I was very excited to start my career to the point where I was ready to submit a petition allowing me to take 22 credits during my final semester in order to graduate alongside all of my friends and finally start working. Who doesn’t want that right?

I wouldn’t have, had I known what working for your own establishment and having huge plans meant. It has been two years since I started my career and it was very far from my expectations. Having your own establishment does not mean waking up whenever you want, at least not if you want to go bankrupt soon, and it definitely doesn’t mean going to bed late at night. It didn’t take me long to learn that, and I started working real hard shortly after entering the industry. My alarm is set at 5:30 am every single day and my bed time is rarely before 12 – 1 am. But I have Saturday and Sunday to myself right? Absolutely not! One of our secrets is that Saturdays and Sundays are no different than other days of the week. Fatigue becomes your companion and coffee your only friend. You could see your social life deteriorate in front of your eyes because eventually your friends give up on asking you to go out every single night, and your associates become your friends.

As worn out as I may sound, if I get the chance to go back I’d do it again and again. I couldn’t imagine having to wake up in the morning and not do what I have grown used to do every single morning.

The Art of Picking Professors

No matter what university you pick, everyone goes through the same hassle. The hassle of picking professors. As I was going through my university years I had my experiences with professors & picking them. So here is an unbiased perspective of some things I learned:

Don’t Listen to the voices around you

I was told by some friends that  finance professor X was the best & that I should avoid professor Y. To my surprise, professor X failed me & I repeated the course with professor Y getting a grade I didn’t expect. Moral of the story don’t listen to the voices around you & search harder than just student gossip.

Seek knowledge, not grades…

There are always professors that go by the book, who tell you what to study & facilitate the searching process therefore giving you grades. Avoid these professors as they will make you lazy in your search for knowledge & they won’t teach you the necessary out of the box skills that you will need in your jobs.

Instead,

Go out of your comfort zone !

Go for professors that won’t tell you what to study. Ones that will give you case studies every week while rotating you into different groups & have long open book exams. These professors will not give you the grades you want, but their lectures will be the ones that stick with you for life.

Go the extra mile

Visit professors in their visiting hours before you register for them, ask them about the curriculum, the assignments & what their program looks like. That should give you the proper insight on whether to pick them or not.

Experts Differ from Novices

Avoid business professors with no business experience in their bags & pure academia backgrounds. Business is a hands-on skill & can only be taught if you have your hands in it.

Expand your knowledge

Go for electives that you aren’t familiar with in both humanities & social sciences. Your business degree could be a tool to sustain the existence of a service or product that is out of your major. Always remember that the first creative idea in Apple computers was the calligraphy fonts in the typing program that was due to Steve Jobs dropping into calligraphy classes at his university.

Finally, remember that the money you put in your university is an investment in your future. It is your legitimate right to hand pick your professors & to make sure you’re attending classes aligned with your visualization of your future. Make sure you pick these professors for the right reasons. Grades will not give you the experiences and skill sets you will need in your business career. Don’t always get mad when you don’t get the classes you want, it could be a hidden blessing.

Be a Sponge!

Start by looking backwards. Now look forward. Do you spot anything? Do you see a pattern? Perhaps you don’t. Don’t worry,  most people between 18 and 25 have the same result, nothing.

So who are you? Are you a student that just graduated from high school? Are you ready to experience the famed university life style? Oh no, your a junior and your circle of friends just shrunk. You could also be that recent graduate with a bachelor degree. In every second of every moment that just passed you are wondering the same thing. What now?

Students are expected to graduate the same way babies are expected to cry at birth. When you first graduate with your bachelor degree, they’ll throw you a party with endless congratulations as if you won the lottery. Fail in courses, skip semesters, or earn below average results, they’ll start looking at you as a failure. It’s funny how there is no middle ground here! In the eyes of family and friends, their behaviour is merely them setting you in the right path trying to encourage you & set a motivational path along the rest of your journey. By then, you would be thinking that you’re going to become the next bill gates, or startup the next Google. Unfortunately, you are falling victim to the survivorship bias, you tend to overestimate yourself. That is definitely okay. We tend to overestimate what we can do in a year & underestimate what we can do in 10 years.

Nobody is interested in failures since people like to shed light on the superstars, the people who made it. But what about the other millions who try their best but fail for a certain reason, where are they now?

Nobody cares about failures, nobody cares about our fellows at the cemeteries, such as no one will care about you if you don’t find a way to continuously “add value” and develop “irreplaceable skills”. You graduated, and you think you’re going to conquer the world; chances are you’ll likely hit countless roadblocks.

Now, this is not made to de-motivate anybody, but simply to reflect on what the rational unbiased outsider look is without succumbing to this illusion. Unfortunately, people between the age of 18 to 25 expect that everything is going to fall into place smoothly, they tend to inflate the ease of their forecasted near future. Whether it is finding the right job that keeps them sharp and motivated, or knowing what major they should go for. It is good to simplify this idea in our mind, it makes us feel better.

Given the competitive world we live in now, it is vital to find a reason why you are better than your classmate sitting next to you. Be a sponge and absorb as much knowledge as possible, to jump ahead of your age and beat the competition, this is how you can measure your success. What kind of value are you adding?

Refer to the statement at the beginning of this article. Looking backwards, you should see a downhill, representing how your journey is leading upwards as you add more value and build skills. Looking ahead, you should see a steep upward hill representing the rest of your journey.

Go back to the statement in the beginning. You should see that you are starting downhill gazing upward to the top of a mountain built by experiences & skills that you will gain along the way giving you more value in this fast-paced world.

Show me the Money!

This is the kind of article talking about a couple of examples where some kind of knowledge comes in handy. For a young business student or fresh graduate,

Why We Did It?

 

 

Dear reader,

 

 If you are reading this, then you are most probably a lost high school student hoping to go into a meaningful business school, a current student or a recent graduate from university who has just graduated & doesn’t know whether to find a job or to continue to masters. Well you have come to the right place.