From whence doth conspiracy the’ries stem into society?

 

Every event happening in human kind from political upheavals to anxieties about sex, technology and women all somehow get entangled into some sort of conspiracy theory.

Right from the time of the Salem Witch Hunt to the recent Covid Pandemic, people are eager to pin the blame on anyone and to accept answers on any matter.

Simply put, the human mind is wired to make sense of everything we see around us. So when something obscures happens and we can’t find an answer, the brain seeks patterns to help put our mind at peace. 

Ramsey theory states ''If there are enough elements in a set or structure, a pattern will emerge within it.''

 

Let’s look at an example using the Ramsey Theory. When Covid- 19 first started spreading around the globe, it caused confusion and chaos everywhere. The first instinct was to find out where and how it arrived. When there wasn’t a clear answer; a news media reported that it was transmitted from bats. This led people to connect the consumption of a bat to the emergence of Covid-19 in humans. Now I am not saying that was a conspiracy theory but we can quite easily see how the human mind tries to find patterns so any theory could make sense.

 

Similarly, there is by and large a lot of news these days, which leads to a lot of fake news, which can be deemed as a conspiracy theory, because they are not supported by facts. And supported by the speed of the internet, I am sure conspiracy theories are not going away any time soon.

Why is the term Tin Foil Hat associated with conspiracy theories?

 

Whether we are talking about the Flat Earth society, the Illuminati or about Pizzagate, everyone has heard about and knows a thing or two about conspiracy theories. And a term most often associated with conspiracy theorists is the tin foil hat.

 

Where did this terminology come from and how has it become a mainstay in describing paranoid and lunatic people as well as embedding itself in our culture? Let’s dive in find out…

 

From what we know the term tin foil hat first appeared in Julien Huxley’s ‘‘ The tissue culture king’’ published in 1926 which became notable for containing the earliest use in fiction of an anti- mind control cap made of foil, later more commonly known as the tin foil hat.

 

The book illustrates the core concept of the tin foil hat, and how it acts as a mechanism to block various kinds of electromagnetic waves.

 

Over time, as conspiracy theories grew and started confronting issues like alien invasions, Area 51 and crop circles. The fame of the tin foil hat grew with it. But it was during the 80’s when the phrase started having a real meaning of what we see today, as it slowly became associated with individuals who would wear them in the belief that they would protect them from being brainwashed or influenced by outside forces.

 

And with the growing popularity for TV shows, it slowly became a full- fledged trope in popular media in the late 90’s. In a 1999 episode of The Simpsons, titled ‘’Brother’s little helper’’, Bart becomes  a paranoid conspiracy theorist wearing a tinfoil hat because he fears Major League baseball was spying on everyone. Apart from the Simpsons, many other movies and shows have taken a similar approach in entertaining and spreading the term of the tin foil hat.

 

Riding on the wave of its popularity, in 2005, an experimental study revealed that tin foil hats do in fact shield wearers from radio waves, which prompted the notion that if indeed, we are to be mind-controlled, it would require radio or microwave signals to do so.

 

And as conspiracy theories do not seem to be going away any time soon, the term tin foil hat is definitely going to live on for many years to come.

Rags to Riches story: The Richest Man in Babylon

Many people who read '' The Richest Man in Babylon'' take away as it's core message, the seven cures for a lean purse. The lesson is an important one for it dwells on the matter many face as their first obstacle to being wealthy. What many over look though, is the story leading up to the cure. The chapter that is the title of the book itself. 

Chapter 2: The Richest Man in Babylon

In many ways it tells the story of us. People who are seeking to be free from this constant cycle of working day after day with little to no hope for a financially free future. 

I most enjoyed the use of words from the old english in the book, which gave it a type of historical lore and feeling. 

The story has resonated with me and I hope it stays with me, so that I too may pass on the knowledge held by the richest people in Babylon.

Once there was a young man who worked the scribes in the old city of Babylon. He laboured the whole day, in the hopes, that he could earn well for he desired to be rich. 

One day, Algamish, the money lender came to the master because he needed a copy of the Ninth Law. He promised the young man a gold coin, if he finished the task in two days. The young man was eager to earn the gold coin and laboured hard for two days, but alas the law was long and when the money lender returned, the scribes were not yet finished. The money lender was very angry, but the young man said,

'' Master Algamish, you are a very rich man, if you share your wisdom about your wealth and how I too can be rich , I will labour all night upon the clay and have the scribes ready by the morrow.'' 

Algamish smiled but nodded. 

All night long the young man worked, though his back ached and the smoke from the lamp did make his head hurt, he did not stop, and by the time the sun rose, he had the scribes ready before the money lender. He said '' Algamish, I have fulfilled my share of the bargain, now pray tell me what you promised.'' Algamish, the money lender agreed and said 

'' Just like the sun that is shining today, is the same sun that shone when our ancestors were alive, the wisdom of wealth remains the same no matter the passage of time.''

He warned, '' Mark my words, for if you do not, you will fail to grasp the truth that I wish to tell you, and your night's work will be in vain. I found the road to wealth when I decided that a part of what I earned is mine to keep.''

The young man was clearly confused. He asked '' Is not all of what I earn, mine to keep?''

''Far from it.'' He replied. 'Do you not pay the garment-maker for your clothes? Do you not pay the butcher for your meat or the farmer for the milk you drink? You pay everyone but yourself. Hence, why your purse is lean. You labour not for yourself but for others.If you save one-tenth of your earning every month, how much would you have in a year?'

The young man replied '' Why, I would have one-tenth of what I earn in a year.''

''What about in ten years?''

''I would have a year's worth.''

''That is but half the truth'' replied the money lender. ''Every gold piece that you save, is a slave to work for you. Every copper it makes is it's child that can earn for you. If you wish to be wealthy, what you save must earn, and it's children must earn, that all may work to give you the abundance that you crave. 

Wealth like a tree, grows from a tiny seed. The first copper you save is the seed from which your tree of wealth must grow.'' So saying, the money lender picked his tablets and went away.

The young man pondered on what he had learnt and decided that he would save a tenth of his monthly earnings.

After a year had passed, Algamish reappeared at the master's workshop and inquired about the young man. When he was bought to him, Algamish asked '' Son, have you paid to yourself every tenth of what you earned?''

The young man answered proudly, '' Yes master, I have.''

''That is good and what have you done with it?''

'' I have given it to Azzur the brick-layer, who was travelling across the sea to Phoenix, from whence he will buy gems, which we will sell for a tidy profit.''

'' Every fool must learn'' growled Algamish 'But why trust the knowledge of a brick maker about jewels? Would you go to the baker to inquire about the stars? No, you would go to the astrologer. You have uprooted your wealth tree and given it away. Plant another, but this time if you wish to get advice about jewels, go the jewel merchant. If you wish to know about sheep, go to the herdsman.'

So saying, the money lender left and returned after another year. He again inquired about the young man and asked him, 'What progress have you made since last I saw you?'

'I paid myself faithfully' replied the young man, 'and I have entrusted my savings to Aggar the shield maker, who buys bronze and pays me a rent every fourth month.'

'That is good, and what do you do with the rental?'

'I have a grand feast with honey and cakes with special wine. I buy a grand tunic and one day I will buy a horse upon which to ride.'

Algamish laughed, ' You have but, eaten the children of your savings. Then, how do you expect them to work for you? And how can they have children that will also work for you? First get thee an army of golden slaves and then you can feast without regrets.' So saying, he went away again.

The money lender returned after two years, he had deep lines upon his face and his eyes drooped and he tired easily. But he went to the young man and asked '' Hast thou yet achieved the wealth thou dreamed of?''

''Yes, I take advice from brick layers only in the business of laying bricks, and my golden army doth serve me well.'' replied the young man.

The money lender smiled and said ''You have learned your lessons well. First, you learnt to live upon less than you earn. Then, you learned to seek advice from those who were competent through their own experience. And lastly, you have learned to make gold work for you.

You have taught yourself how to acquire money, how to keep it and how to use it.''

The young man's name was Arkad who would go on to become the richest man in Babylon, and who spread the wisdom of wealth to his friends and neighbours. Many who left his teaching were skeptical, many failed to act on his advice but a few had new light in their eyes and a determination to act and succeed as he did.

Similary, We have the opportunity to save one-tenth of our income and plant seeds of wealth in our own lives, and live finacially free lives just as the money lender of Babylon hath advised.

Atomic Habits by James Clear: How you can turn your resolutions to habits

Over the years, like many people, I have made multiple resolutions to create a healthy and productive habit only to end up failing. After reading the Atomic Habit, author James Clear makes it clear that the reason we fail to develop these habits is because we do not follow the four laws of Behaviour change. We fail to make our new behaviour ''Obvious, Easy, Attractive and Satisfying.''Failing to abide by any one of these laws, means you will fail to adopt a new behaviour. 

What this means is, the next time you make an effort to go the gym you have to be aware that if you do not post obvious cue's like setting a reminder on your phone,or writing it down on a to-do list, you may not be inclined to follow up on that routine till it becomes a habit. Furthermore, if you make going to the gym a hassle or constantly complain about it being strenuous, you will not find it easy or attractive. And finally, if on a day to day basis you got more satisfaction from going to the bar with your friends than going to the gym that would mean that the act of working out wasn't satisfying enough to pull you away from other activities.

After reading Atomic Habits, I found two powerful strategies that can make every new habit obvious, easy, attractive and satisfying, so that you can become a happier, healthier and a more productive person.

Stack and Start:

The first strategy for developing a habit is called the stack and start. This is a strategy where you attach a new habit to a habit you already have. For eg: When I wanted to start the habit of flossing my teeth, I would grab my floss stick and floss one tooth as soon as I finished brushing my teeth. In this strategy, you use an old habit to trigger a new habit. Over time, my brain learnt that as soon as I was done brushing, I needed to floss my teeth. Thus, I managed to stack a habit on another habit.

When you stack habits, you are using the momentum of the old habit to make the new habit easier to initiate. This strategy makes the cue of the new behaviour obvious and it makes the requirements of the new behaviour easy.

Sync and Score:

Secondly, To make a new behaviour attractive and satisfying you need to synchronize and score. What this means is, you need to synchronize something you enjoy doing with a new habit. For eg: If I enjoy listening to a certain type of music, and I listen to it only when I am doing a certain workout, I will eventually look forward to doing the workout.

James Clear says ''if you only allow yourself to enjoy all your favourite experiences while you execute a healthy and productive new habit, you'll find the new habit is something you actually look forward to doing.''

Syncing is a great hack for habit building but to make a habit stick you must make the habit satisfying and you want to do that you must keep score.

Scoring let's us know how far we have come and motivates us to keep going in the long run. After a month of workout, how satisfying is it to see a calendar full of  red ticks that indicated a successful work-out five times a week. The calendar is a visual proof that you are someone that cares about your health and you should take pride in that. It acts as a score card and let's you stick to your new habit.

Everytime you write, you are a Writer 

Everytime you play an instrument, you are a Musician

Everytime you exercise, you are an Athlete

So when you stack new habits to old habits, and sync new habits with things you enjoy and keep score, you will be able to finally make that resolution a habit.

I hope you enjoyed this breakdown of the book Atomic Habits. Please share your thoughts down in the comments below. If  you have a recommendation, please let me know. Bye for now.

A Breakdown of: '' Ego is the Enemy'' by Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday had achieved extraordinary success early on in his life. He became the director of marketing for ''American Apparel at the age of 21. He went on to be a best selling author of four four books by the age of 29. 

With all this success, Ryan got to experience and witness the destruction of unchecked Ego in many of his employees and also within himself. In his book, he talks about when Ego appears in our life and how we can defeat it.

So what exactly is Ego? why is it a bad thing? And why does Ego have to be the enemy? 

In his book, Ryan defines Ego as an ''unhealthy belief in our own importance''. Ego takes a look at our self-image and 

turns it into an obsession. 

It takes confidence and turns it into arrogance. It is like a disease where the infected puts 'ME' first. 

Ego is the enemy because it sabotages our long term goals, and it distracts us from achieving Mastery in our craft. Ego is a threat to people's long term success.

Here are three ways you can notice Ego working against you:

1. Ego shows up when you aspire to do something great. When we start doing something prodcutive, Ego gets busy seeking out constant approval from others around us.

It's always asking us '' What are people thinking about me?'' It prefers talking about what you want to do, rather than actually doing it. 

2. The second way Ego shows up in our lives is when we experience noteworthy success. This could be anything like, launching a successful business or winning a sports Championship. Our Ego leads us to believe that all our future endeavours are likely to be a success. Instead of remaining focused and building upon our previous success, we have the tendency to be over-confident in our abilities and take on too much.

3. The third way Ego shows up in our lives is when we experience failure or set-back. At this time Ego shows up just in time to save face and try to dodge responsibility.

In an effort to defend our Ego, we lose sight of what we worked for and try to blame it on someone or something.

In all the three phases, ego distracts you from focusing on your work and producing something you can be proud of. So if Ego is the enemy, how do we defeat it?

One way we can defeat Ego is using the ''Plus (+), Minus (-), Equal (=)'' method, which was coined by the great UFC fighter Frank Shamrock

Frank says 

''For each fighter to be great, they need to have someone better to learn from (+), someone lesser they can

teach (-) and someone equal they can challenge themselves against(=)''.

For the first form of Ego which shows up when we are aspiring to something great, we need to find an equal(=), in order to challenge and defeat it. This means, we need to find another person with a similar ability to challange and grow. This way we have no time to obsess over public opinion as we will be busy trying to outperform our equal and not risk falling behind.

The second form of Ego that shows up when we are succeeding, needs a plus(+) or a person with more success to be look up to.When Ego starts generating stories of our greatness, we quickly need a dose of humility in order to remain focused on our ultimate goal. 

Humility comes from remembering that there is always someone better and something bigger than us. Reflecting on someone bigger than yourself is necessary to quieten the Ego and avoid getting caught up in your own personal story of greatness, preventing you from taking on too much and being careless with your time and resources.

To combat the third form of Ego, that shows up when we fail, we need a minus(-). 

A minus can be a person that we mentor or someone that we teach through a book or a blog. Having a minus forces you to look objectively at your failures and gather the lessons learnt to pass down.

When you have the responsibility to teach others, you spend less time complaining and more time looking for ways to improve.

So if you are in search of excellence and want to do work that you will be proud of one day, then know that Ego is the 

enemy, that will show up to stop you and in order to fight back that ego day after day, you will need the plus, minus

and equal rule.

This was another breakdown. Let me know what you think about Ego and if you have any other ideas to combat them. Also let me know which book you would like me to breakdown next on our series. 

A Breakdown of: ''Rich Dad Poor Dad'' by Robert Kiyosaki

Imagine If you were to stop working, how long will you be able to survive on your remaining savings? What I just asked you was the definition of wealth. Acquiring wealth makes a person truly rich, and that is what the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad strives to teach us.

Rich Dad Poor Dad teaches us that the reason the rich stay wealthy is because they acquire assets whilst the poor or middle class people acquire liabilites.

An asset is anything that puts money in your pocket while a liability is anything that takes money out of your pocket.

Let's compare a cashflow of how the poor, the middle class and the rich use their income:

A poor person earns his income from a job and his expenses are things like food, clothes, shelter and entertainment. He

has no assets. But his expense becomes his liability as it keeps taking money out of his pockets.

A middle class person earns more income from a job so he can save money. He purchases things, that he thinks are assets but are actually liabilities. He purchases a home and has a mortgage, transportation, credit card debt etc. Hence why it stops him becoming wealthy.

On the other hand a rich person, instead of looking to earn more money from their normal job as their only source of income, buys and owns assets that bring them a form of Passive Income.

Passive Income is an income that doesn't require you to trade your time for money, so in other words, you can be earning even when you are asleep. 

Some examples of passive incomes are businesses that do not require your presence, investments in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, income generating real estate, royalties, notes and anything else that has value that produces income.

Take a look at the above cash flow, which category do you fit into? 

Robert Kiyosaki explains that many people think a house is an asset whereas it is a liabilty because it comes with a mortgage along with maintenance costs and upkeep that take money out of your pockets.

Cashflow helps us keep track of our wealth and when we are losing money we need to look at the following simple formula to see where we are going wrong.

             BAD                                        Good

    Income   =  Expense                Income   >  Expense

    Assets   <   Liabilities                Assets   >  Liabilities

                       

If your income is the same as your expense and your assets are lesser than your liability, you will soon go into debt.

If your income is greater than your expense and your assets are greater than your liabilties, you will get wealthier.

And that is why the rich keep getting richer, and the poor keep staying poor. The rich use their assets to pay off their

liabilities and the remaining money is invested into assets again. Therefore, their asset coloumn continues to grow and 

their income continues to grow with it. For normal people, their profession is their income but for the rich, their assets are their income.

On a side note, this book was one of the first financial book I ever read and it introduced to me a new world of managing

my money. It's a great read for beginners starting out, who want to learn more about the finance world. 

Robert Kiyosaki said, 

        ''Don't work for Money, Make Money work for you.''

If you want to learn more about Rich Dad Poor Dad, I encourage you to read the book and let me know whether you have what it takes to be a Rich Dad.

This has been another Breakdown. I hope you enjoyed it. Please let me know in the comments what other books, you would like me to breakdown.

The Breakdown of: '' How to win Friends and Influence People'' by Dale Carnegie

Did you know that having fewer friends, as you grow older is more dangerous than being obese, or smoking fifteen 
cigarettes a day? 
Did you know that having a best friend at work, can make you 7 times more engaged and productive?

But regardless of the recent statistics on friendship, wouldn't it be nice to be surrounded by colleagues and customers that you can call your friends, rather than being surrounded by a group of people, you suspect are talking behind your
back?

Wouldn't it be nice to have a network of friends you could rely on, when your career doesn't go according to plan?
Wouldn't it be nice to have people that help you?

Luckily, all the tools you need to build solid friendships, strengthen your network and make people eager to help you, throughout your career, can be found in an 80 year old book.

The principles of this book are as applicable today as they were back when the book was published in 1936, and you
can be sure they will be used by your kids and your grandkids when they try to influence and win people.

Now there are many different principles that Carnegie talks about in this book but they all center around two fundamental behaviours. These are behaviours that we use everyday but we do not realise their importance. In fact, we take it for granted.

And those two fundamental behaivours are:-

1. Being Genuinely Interested in Others: 
The first fundamental behaivour to win friends is to know what the other person is interested in, and to talk about that subject matter. 
Author Dale Carnegie say's 
'' You can mek more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people, than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.'' 

To spark a genuine interest in others, make it your mission to find out, how someone spends their time and what subjects interest them. Then make their subject of interest your temporary passion. Be fascinated, about what fascinates them.

If you want to make friends and influence people, start by taking a genuine interest in the other person.

2. Give frequent praise: 
Did you ever have a teacher or boss that praised you? What was your opinion of them after that? Did you like them better or not? 

Believe it or not, people crave for appreciation almost as much as they crave food. Everyone wants to hear that they have done a great job or are a great person and an asset to us. We are all starving for appreciation. 

You should always be hearthy in your appreciation and lavish in your praise because it costs nothing but you gain so much from it. Be eager to praise others for their effort. When you notice a co-worker or employee putting in extra effort, walk over to them and praise their commitment to the team.

The best way to practise praising others is to make it a daily habit. If you are honest with your appreciation, it will get you results, whereas criticism and ridicule will push people further away.

So if you want to win friends and influence people, be genuinely interested in others and give others frequent praise. Give people the joy of talking about their interests and satisfy their craving with praise and appreciation and soon you will find yourself surrounded by friends, who are eager to help you succeed. It could not be harder.

Dale Carnegie talks about other important behaviours and if you want to learn more about that, I would encourage you to read the book and then let me know how it helped you win friends, and influence people.

This has been another Breakdown. I hope I'll see you in the next one. 

The Breakdown of: How to stop Worrying and start Living by Dale Carnegie

Worry is a complete waste of time. No problem has ever been solved by worrying about it. It is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do without taking you anywhere.
Problems can only be solved with rational thought and decisive action,Not Worry. 

Nearly a century ago, author Dale Carnegie taught public speaking courses in New York city. There he noticed how much his students struggled with unproductive worry.

 After learning a series of anti-worry techniques, he used his 
public speaking courses as a labratory to test the techniques. For the next five years, students from Carnegie's class tested his anti-worry techniques, and reported their effects from it, back to the class.

There are many remedies to combat worry and start living more productively but there are three worry remedies
that Carnegie found to be particularly effective. 

The first worry remedy will eliminate 90% of your worry. The second worry remedy will elminate 10% of your worry and
the third worry remedy will prevent worry from creeping back into your life.

Worry remedy #1

Anaylze your Worry: 
When you are sick with worry, take a piece of paper and write down two questions, What am I worried about? and What can I do about it?
Take your time and describe your worry in precise detail, then write down the different courses of action you can take to eliminate your worry. Write at least three courses of action. Then decide which of these actions has the highest percentage of a positive outcome.

Experience has proven that 50% of your worry dissappears when you make a clear, definite decision regarding your worry, and 40% of your worry goes away when you carry out that decision. The more action you take, the more your worry will fade away.

Worry remedy #2

Accept the worst and improve it:
Now to get rid of the remaining 10% of your worry, all you have to do is imagine and accept that the worst case scenario has occured. What happens next? You still have your health, your future, maybe even your family. Think of the positive things that will stay in your life no matter the outcome of this worry. Now, collect your thoughts and know that this worry is not the end of everything. 

By learning to live with the worst case scenario, this remedy has helped many people think clearly and find solutions
for the worry at hand.

Worry remedy #3

Live for today:
To eliminate future problems, we need to create a better today. Every morning when you wake up, wake like it's the
first day of your life. No yesterday's worry, only today's oportunities. 

Carnegie says 
'' The best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your 
enthusiasm, on doing today's work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.''

When you know you have achieved what you set out to do today, today's worry won't be transferred to tomorrow. Do your best to take care of today, and tomorrow will take care of itself! 

That was my take from the book. As always, I encourage you to read the book and let me know, how it helped you to stop worrying and start living.

The Breakdown of: The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufaman

When Josh Kaufman was a senior in collage, he accepted a job offer at P&G, to be an assitant brand manager. In this new position, he'd be working alongside people who had MBA degrees from top universities.

Josh didn't have an MBA and he couldn't justify going back to school to get an MBA and put himself in a massive student debt. So he wondered if there was a way he could master the fundamentals of business without getting
an MBA.

When he researched top business people that didnt have an MBA, he came across a brilliant business investor named 
Charlie Munger. 

Charlie Munger is the business partner of Warrent Buffet with whom he had developed the company 
Bershire Hathaway into a $400 billion dollar business. 
Munger doesn't have a formal business education. He is a meterologist and a lawyer from Omaha. Everything he knows
about business, he taught it to himself by analysing a latex work of mental moduls. 

Josh was inspired by this and started reading hundreds of books on business. Slowy, he started noticing a pattern. He discovered that at the heart of every business, is a five part frame-work.

1. Value Creation
2. Marketing
3. Sales
4. Value Delivery 
5. Finance

Josh says that without anyone of these parts, you don't have a business. 

A venture that adds no value to others is a hobby. 
A venture that doesn't have proper marketing is a flop. 
A venture that doesn't sell the value it creates is a non-profit. A venture that doesn't deliver what it promises is a scam and A venture that does not bring in enough money to keep operating, will inevitably close.

Let's explore each part so we can better analyse a business and make better business decisions as an employee of the 
business or as an enteprenuer thats trying to start a business.

1. Value Creation

When we create or sell something, we need to ask ourselves, are we creating something that people will actually pay for? 
The first thing to figure out when starting a successful business is to understand what drives people to buy a service or product in the first place.

Two primary characteristics that drive buyers decisions are convienience and high-fidelity. 

Convienience means a product being quick, reliable, easy and flexible. People always pay a premium for convienience. It's why departmental stores are so successful. You can get a whole range of products under one roof. A product maybe cheaper elsewhere else but because it's so convienient at a departmental store, people dont mind paying a little extra.

High fidelity means high aesthetic appeal, emotional impact or social status. An example of this is Apple computers.
People pay a premium for apple products because they love the way it makes them feel and it shows other people of 
their status and choice.

Sometimes, a product can be convenient and have a high fidelity but people may still not buy the product. Hence, why a new product should always go through ''The Lean Startup'', (something I have covered in the last blog).

2. Marketing

The question we need to ask ourselves here is, ''How well are we attracting and holding our customers attention?''

When apple lauched the original I-pod, they told the world that this device would hold a thousand songs in your pocket.
This statement and idea was remarkable at the time and violated people's expectations. It made people pause and take notice of this new product. Any business that can hold the attention of their customers has a great chance of getting their customers to the third stage.

3. Sales

In the area of sales, we want to ask ourselves, '' How well do our customers believe and trust us?'' 

People are not going to give away their hard earned money unless they believe and trust the product. The best way to build belief and trust is to get social proof. The way businesses make customers trust them is to get an influential celebrity to advertise their product or getting 5 star reviews on Amazon, etc.

If a business cannot get social proof, it needs to perform on a consistent basis and be around long enough for 
people to trust it. The more trust a business has, the more sales a business makes.

4. Value Delivery

The fourth part of every business is value Delivery. The question here is, ''Are we exceeding the expectation of our customers?'' 

Costumer expectations should be high enough to purchase your products but, let's say, after a customer purchased something, they got a coupon saying their next purchase would have a 10% discount, it would suprise the customer in a good way, since there was no mention of a discount and they were not expecting it. So your business performace has
exceeded the customers expectation. If your customer's expectation is exceeded, they will be satisfied and come back to buy again along with recommending your business to their friends.

Another way to exceed customer expectation is to have very good customer services. Make it convienient for your 
customers to return products as well as exchange them.

5. Finance

Finally, we have to ask ourselves, ''Are we making more money than we are spending?'' 

If not, you need to reduce spending on one of the four above mentioned parts, or produce something of more value. Make sure your Incoming is more than your outgoing.

Josh says that at the end of the day, you are simply using numbers to decide whether or not your business is operating the way you intended.

Being a great business mind is not about knowing all the answers, it's about asking the right questions and having
the right mental models. With this five part frame work, you can ask the right questions and understand any business
and skip MBA school.

I hope you enjoyed this breakdown, and as always I suggest reading the book to get your own take and earn your own ''Personal MBA''.

The breakdown of: The Lean Startup by Eric Reis

In 2004, Eric Ries was a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of a Silicon Valley start-up called imvu. IMVU's vision was to create a new online product that would allow users to build 3D avatars and interact with friends using their existing instant messaging network. Their product would combine two popular trends at the time.3D gaming and Instant Messaging. 

However they grossly misjudged what their customers wanted and with complete confidence, put in crazy hours to complete their product. 

On launch day, they eagerly waited for people to download their product but, No one was willing to download it. In an act of desperation, they invited target customers into their office and asked them questions, as they interacted with the product. It became obvious after a few interviews, that their basic assumption of what the customer actually wanted were completely wrong. 

It turned out that people did not want to use existing instant messaging networks to invite their friends because they did not know if the product was cool or not. However people were willing to install a new instant messaging service that would allow them to talk to strangers using their 3D avatar. This meant Eric and his team had wasted a lot of time integrating existing messenging services like AOL and MSN among others into the product.

Eric was frustrated having wasted nearly 6 months of work, building something nobody wanted. But he was thankful for having learnt what his customers actually wanted before the company ran out of money.

However Eric couldn't help but wonder, did he really have to waste months of work to learn what his customers actually wanted? He quickly realised that the answer was ''No, of course not.'' He could have simply integrated one instant messaging network (and not the twelve that he did) and shown it to his customers, and learnt that no one wanted to use it.

Eric took a step back and saw that his approach to building an innovative product was fundamentally wrong. His focus should not have been on executing the perfect plan.
Rather, his focus should have been learning which of his plan was valuable to his end user in the least amount of time. Instead of relying on past experience, intuition or focus groups to determine, what he was doing was valuable, he should have been deploying ''Minimum Viable Product''.

A ''Minimum Viable Product'' or ''MVP'' is a product made with a minimal amount of effort, that is used to test specific assumptions, regarding the value of an idea. (don't worry it gets simpler to understand it when you read below)

Ries realised that in order to validate if an idea or project is useful for the end user, he had to follow a few steps, which would help him to understand if the product or idea would be a success and that is what Ries ended up doing. 

1. User Experience Vision: 
Firstly, an entrepreneur has to write down his vision for what the user will experience with the product, when the product is complete.
For eg: I have an idea of a new board game which is a combination of Monopoly and Risk. The game lets players go round the board, collecting properties while at the same time collecting an army to take down your opponent. 

The first step in developing this product would be to come up with a brief step by step description of how the game is played. From the inital setup till the end of a single game.

2. Identifying Critical Assumptions: 
Now that you have created your idea of the game, you can now tell your friends about it. Let's say, they absolutely loved it and they tell you that they will definetly buy your board game when you complete it. You maybe tempted to build it already but you must remember one critical assumption. Will your target audience actually buy the product? People can say they will buy something but when it comes to actually paying for it, many people tell a different story. Hence why we need the third step.

3. Build an early version to validate a critical assumption: 
To test whether your customers will buy your product you will need to build an early version of it, so you know the response to it by the consumers. 
The two most common ways to do this is to build:
a) a Concierge MVP or 
b) a Smoke screen MVP.

The Concierge MVP is a manual method, which is quick and cheap to test an automated process. An example of this is the FIFA demo that is released every year.FIFA can test how many customers are actually buying or testing the product.

The Smokescreen MVP is about creating a front, or an illusion that you have a great product and it's at the final part of it's development. It's about marketing without a finished product and collecting pre-orders before you have a finished product. People do this by making animated videos, that talk you through the product or in this instance, our game.

4. Release and Measure: 
In this step, it's time to show your MVP to a small segment of target cusotmers and then measure their behaviour. At this point in our board game example, we can buy a few ads on FB and target a small group of boardgame players. The advertisment will include the name of your game and a catchy sub-title and a link to your animated video, with the option to pre-order. After releasing your ad, you can measure the amount of clicks your ad gets vs a typical FB ad, or you can compare the average amount of people watching the videos and your number of orders.After allowing sometimes to measure this you can go to the next step...

5. Pivot or Persevere: 
You can now decide to pivot or persevere based on the above steps. If your ad gets a lot of clicks but you don't get many pre-orders, it might be worthwhile to spend a bit more time tweaking the design of your boardgame. 

However, if after a couple of retweaks you still don't get more than 2 or 3 pre-orders, it might be worthwhile to pivot to another boardgame strategy or an entirely different business idea. 

Eric Ries says ''The sign of a successful pivot is that,these engine-tuning activities are more productive after the pivot than before.''

And that is it, now you can have all the ideas in the world and use the Lean Startup method to test which ideas are worth pushing forward and which require more improvements. I hope this breakdown was helpful and worthwhile your time. In the next breakdown I will be tackling ''The personal MBA'' by Josh Kaufman.

As always, I suggest you to read the book to get your own take from    ''The Lean Startup''.