As human beings, we all desire to ‘live bigger’. Let’s take a look at the different categories of living bigger so you can get in touch with the desire that’s close to your heart.
The Five Primary Categories of Living Bigger
1. Money
When starting out in the entrepreneurial journey, almost everyone thinks the end game for developing an app is to increase the dollars in their pocket. Money is often the main reason that drives people to develop their app ideas in the early days. The thought of increased wealth and all things that come with it – new homes, cars, toys, etc. – are enough to get people started and moving forward. Money bring you options in life that you never had before. It provides the freedom to do and have what you want. In many cases, however, people focus on their desire for more money until they make more than they need, and soon realize what they are really looking for is a lot different than just money.
2. Time
Given the speed with which life is currently lived, time is one of the most valuable things we can gain back in our lives. Many people desire their time with family, friends and loved ones more than anything else. Working in a full-time job may not provide you with the amount of time you desire to spend with your loved ones or to do the things you love. You may want to create an app business so you have a greater choice around how much time you want to spend on what and when.
3. Experience
For a special few, the Living Bigger dream is to increase the caliber and variety of experiences life has to offer. Creating an app business is sure to bring new opportunities to experience people, places, and events you would not have the opportunity to experience any other way. Many people are passionate about certain hobbies or activities and they want to live and share their passion through their business.
4. Legacy
For some people, becoming world famous and creating a legacy gives more satisfaction than money, time, or experience. The desire to create a legacy drives people to do amazing things. Think about boxers who risk their life fighting, or young Olympians who spend all their time training to win championships. I am not saying that all sportsman are only driven by the desire for being famous and creating legacy but for many this seem to be the motivating factor.
5. Happiness
In the end, it all comes down to this. Everyone seeks happiness in life. We think more money, more time, being famous, etc. will make us happy. After having all of that, we realise that the feeling of fulfilment and gratification is what really makes us happy.Creation by itself gives that feeling of fulfilment and gratification. It comes from taking a concept that doesn’t exist and creating something meaningful. It comes from you being the solution to the problem you see every day. Often startups are created because of the founder’s frustration about a problem they see. There are not many things more fulfilling than acting on your idea and being the change you want to see.
Whether you desire more money, time, fame, experiences, or happiness, creating a successful app business can provide you with all of that.
What you desire the most can also help you choose what type of app business you want to build. If you desire money or legacy the most, you may want to create a big scalable app business like Facebook.
If you desire more time, you may create a buyable app, sell it for millions of dollars to a bigger company, and retire early like Instagram founders in their mid-twenties selling their app business for a billion dollars to Facebook in 2012.
If you desire experiences and living your passion the most, you may create a lifestyle app business around what you are passionate about. The Zumba founders are great example of how any passion can be turned into a scalable and successful business. They also launched an app for the Zumba teachers to get access to a wide range of music for their Zumba classes and a dance party app for the customers to dance Zumba with a tablet.
Steps to Living Bigger
Your dreams of Living Bigger will not come true automatically when you start building your app. You need to work smart on your app business and on yourself. The growth of your app business is only limited by your growth. Here are a few key steps you can take to grow yourself and Live Bigger.
1. Keep learning
Your chances for substantial success increase as you continue to cultivate your mind through learning more. The mind is a unique and fascinating tool. Unlike the body, which typically hits its peak one day, the mind has a nearly infinite ability to learn, grow, and develop.
When I refer to learning here, I don’t mean the academic learning you experienced through primary and secondary school. I mean the ability to think differently, or more broadly, in ways that ultimately have a significant impact on the app you develop, as well as your dream to Live Bigger.
Einstein was misquoted many times, (and I’ll attempt to do it again here) when he said “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” This is infinitely wise and could not be more applicable to app development. The whole idea behind new app concepts is to solve problems using thinking that is categorically different to how problems have been solved historically.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”
– Albert Einstein
Looking briefly at AirBnB, we find the challenge of making extra money in a difficult economy by using assets you already have. While this problem can be met many ways, AirBnB looked at it differently. They took a leap that people would be willing to rent out their homes, apartments, and rooms to complete strangers. The corresponding leap was that strangers would be willing to pay to stay in another stranger’s home or room rather than commercially available options. The worlds of modern technology and age-old accommodation problems were mashed up to create one of the world’s most wildly successful apps. In the end, we have happy home owners and happy renters – the ideal win-win.
Become a learning machine. Every time you use an app, analyze it critically. What is good, what is bad? When you read app success stories, inquire why.
Google Alerts is a great tool to educate yourself with the latest of business and technology world. Add keywords like app startups, app entrepreneurship, and many other relevant topics you will learn in this book to your Google Alert, and it will email you any information and news published in those topics.
I did research the main skills early stage app entrepreneurs should master. I researched by looking online, by asking successful app entrepreneurs, and from my own observations of people I have worked with. This is what I found as some of the main skills you should master as an early stage app entrepreneur.
- Sales. At early stages, all you have is a concept, an idea, or maybe a product, but with no users. You need to sell this idea to your friends, family, and team members to get them on board to support you. You need to sell the idea to your customer to get their buy-in. And the most challenging sales of all is selling to great people you want as partners and investors in your business. Sharpen your sales skills by taking courses and by working with mentors and coaches.
- Networking. In the app start-up world, often what separates wildly successful entrepreneurs from the rest is who they know. You need to surround yourself with great people who have been there, done that. You can reach anyone in the world through people you meet. You need to master your networking skills to develop good relationships, build a great team and have the right people to support you. You will be surprised by how much people are willing to help you. You will find that the most experienced and knowledgeable people are often the most approachable and willing to help.
- App business knowledge. The app start-up world is very different from traditional business world. You need to understand the way app products are built, sold, and monetized. The chapters of this book will help you learn this very topic.
And learning does not stop with knowledge and skills. The most powerful learning of all is learning about yourself. Reflect, journal, meditate, and ask for feedback from friends and colleagues to learn about yourself. Know your strengths, your weaknesses, what you love, what you hate, your values, and your purpose.
These 5 self-awareness questions you can ask your friends, family and colleagues will help you greatly to learn about yourself.
- 1. What do you think is my biggest strength?
- 2. What do you think is my biggest weakness?
- 3. What is 1 thing you can always rely on me for?
- 4. What is 1 thing you can never rely on me for?
- 5. What would be 1 piece of advice you would give me right now?
When my partner and I asked these self-awareness questions to each other while trekking to the beautiful Sealer’s Cove in Victoria, Australia it took our relationship to the next level. I highly recommend this exercise and the trek down to stunning Sealer’s cove. (Thanks to the leadership training company, www.integrityandvalues.com where I first learned this exercise)
2. Maintain a happy mind
The secret to happiness rests in your mind. I know – big concepts for an app book, right? But this is at the heart of the Living Bigger movement. We all want to be happier and have fun.
What if there were things you could do to bring the happiness you expect to result from your successful app to you RIGHT NOW? Well, you can.
While this book isn’t here to provide you a happiness formula in detail, here is a prescription to move you in the direction of increased happiness. These five activities will help you feel the great feelings you expect your app to bring you – before you even do the work!
- Keep a Gratitude Journal. Every day, write 3 things you are grateful for. This brings into your consciousness all the good things in life you already have, and helps create a “glass half full” mentality that will serve you during future challenges, app-related or otherwise.
- Help Other People. This has been shown to increase happiness levels – and who knows, the people you help might end up helping you achieve your dream (although that’s not the only reason to give help). Science has proven that when we help someone else, we feel better about ourselves. Feeling deflated because your app failed its first attempt in the App Store? Go do something nice for your partner, and it will lessen the stress.
- Exercise. Exercise has been proven to help stimulate the brain and bring about greater levels of satisfaction. Now, you already know this, so the real key is to find the type of exercise you enjoy! Yoga, dance, cycling, swimming, UFC, basketball, walking – the list goes on and on. Find the thing you enjoy, and do it because you enjoy it, not because you think you have to. You’ll see and feel the benefits quickly.
“Those who do not find time to exercise now will have to find time for illness later.”
- Spend Time with your Top Five. Relationships are critical to satisfaction in life. Identify the Top Five people who inspire you, lift you up, and/or you aspire to be like, and spend more time with them. You’ll be glad you did.
- Set Goals. This is a big enough category to merit more attention. You will read more about goal setting in the next section.
By the way, scientists have proven that humans are more creative, collaborate more effectively, and are more productive in a happy state of mind. So instead of waiting for what you want to become happy, be happy to get what you want.
3. Set goals and make plans
To achieve your dream, you will benefit greatly from describing what it looks like in as much detail as possible and writing it down. Did you know that written goals are ten times more likely to be achieved than goals that are just in your head and don’t make it to pen and paper? There are many studies on the power of setting and writing down goals, but here is one to help pound home the point.
In his book, What They Don’t Teach You in Harvard Business School, Mark McCormack wrote about a 1979 study conducted on Harvard MBA students. The students were asked, “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” Only 3% of the students had written goals. Ten years later, the study revisited the students to see how they were going. The ten-year check-up revealed that the 3% who had documented goals were earning, on average, 10 times as much as the other 97% combined! It might be time to put pen to paper around your app goals and, just for good measure, throw in a few other goals around health, relationships and finance. You won’t regret it.
Take actions
Were you ever in a location where you needed a map to find how to get to your destination? The map by itself is not going to get you where you want to go. You need to put one foot in front of the other, or get in the car and hit the accelerator, or call an Uber; all of these approaches require action on your part. Once you’ve set your app goals and a high-level plan (your map), you need to take the required action to get to your destination. Break down your plan into detailed action steps and keep implementing your actions every day. Learning, planning and goal setting without implementing your actions is not going to get you any further. You learn the most from taking actions. The #1 reason that stops people from taking action is fear of failure. Failure teaches you faster than anything else would.
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
So observe yourself. Are you taking regular action, or just dreaming, learning, and talking without any real action due to fear of failure? Take at least one step every single day that will move you towards your goal.
4. Set your brain for success
Successful people are obsessed with their success. They don’t complain about working long hours. They act on their plan and work towards their goal. Are there ways you can wire you brain to stay focused and automatically take actions in the direction of your goals?
There are numerous scientific studies about how to program your brain by using different media to feed information to your brain’s RAS (Reticular Activating System). RAS is the part of the brain that filters which information we are tuned to, and as a result, controls our thoughts and actions. Here are some ways to tune your RAS so it filters information that supports your goals to your brain.
- Feed your ‘why’ and your goals into your subconscious mind by creating a vison board. Find images that represent your goals, print them, frame them, and put them in a place you can see every day.
- Practice visualization. Close your eyes to see and feel all your goals and dreams coming true. In one of the conferences I attended, I heard from this lady who said she grew her finger she lost from an accident back by visualizing it growing back every single day for many months.
5. Build a great team
People see successful apps and say, “Wow, what a great idea. Wish I came up with that idea.” But it is never just the idea – it’s always the people behind it who turn the idea into a successful business through great execution. A business will never outgrow its founders and the team behind it.
In his book Good to Great, author Jim Collins explains the findings of five years of research by his team on what it takes to change a good company into a great company, i.e. Generate stock returns that exceeded the general stock market by at least three times over a 15 year period. His research found that the leaders of great companies start with ‘who’. They work on building the right team before doing anything else. If your team cannot execute your idea better than anyone else can, then you have no reason to win big. Instead of spending energy on protecting your idea, focus on building a great team by inspiring people with your idea and your purpose. By team, I mean your founding partners, investors, employees and suppliers. When you know that even if someone copies your idea, they will not be able to execute it like your team can, you are on the road to success.
Knowing which category of desire (“living bigger”) you are most connected to and taking these 5 steps will set you in the right direction of living bigger.
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