Building a Mindset for Business Success: Leadership, Time Management & Success Strategies | Roy Abdo

One rule in my life: if you want to find an excuse, do you know how many excuses you can have? What? You said it last time. Yeah, over a million. If I want to have an excuse for you right now, I can state for you 3 million excuses for anything. But if you want to do something, I can find you a million ways to do it. And I gave you the breakdown last time. Do you remember the breakdown? Uh, okay, take a guess. So how many hours you have to spend in school right now every week? 6. 6 every day? 12 hours. 12 hours the entire week? Okay, how many hours you have during the week? If you take 10 hours a day, times 7, you have 70 hours, right? And you spend how many hours in school? You said 12? Times 12 hours total? Per week, yes. Per week? Okay, so minus 12. And how many— okay, let's say every time you have— how many hours for transportation? 15 minutes. No, 15 minutes plus. Which one of you drive like 30 minutes to get here? To get here? Yeah, to get to class. Who drives an hour? Anyone drives an hour? So most of you drive 30 minutes, right? It's pretty much you have an hour back and forth commute, right? That sounds fair? So if you do that 5 times, you basically have 5 hours, right? That's for your whole commute, correct? And let's say you want to eat lunch every day and dinner every day, so those are what? 2 hours? 2 hours times what? Times 7? So that's 14? Is that good? Is there anything else you want to spend time on? So how much? 70 minus 12 minus 5. Anyone who's good at math? 31. 31 hours? Okay, so you have 31 free hours to do anything you want to do in life. If you want to study, let's say you study 10. Let's say for those 12 hours you study 12 hours. Actually, you know what? Let's say you study 20 hours a week, which is a lot of studying. You still have how many? 19. 19 hours to do anything you want, whatever you want to do in life. So don't spend your 19 hours on TV and browsing Facebook and Instagram. Do something that matters in your life. Oh, I'm sorry, I know. It's not you, right? Yeah, I lost like, uh, 21 plus 2. Anyway, so basically you have 9 hours. 9 hours is a lot of time, right? It's a whole day. So you have a whole day that you could waste on 2 things. You could do 2 things with that 9 hours. What? Keep browsing Facebook, keep browsing Instagram, keep watching Netflix, or put it to something that matters to build something something that one day you're going to use for something. Understand? So excuses, there's millions of them, but actions are rare. People who make things happen, who understand the value of time, are very successful. So be those people and don't go— don't think, you know, business is a magic trick. Business is hustle and hustle and hustle, which means wake up every day doing something better than you did yesterday and put your time to use to do something that matters. Good? I'm going to lecture you a lot. If I'm too much, let me know. I'll stop. So yeah, but what I'm trying to tell you is don't make excuses. Put stuff to action. I understand some things are above your control, but in life there's two things, okay? There's things within your control and things above your control. The biggest failures happen when? Take a guess. Come again? There's two things. There's things within your control and things above your control, right? When do you fail in life? When you have things in your control. When what? When you have control. When you have control? Yeah. Sometimes you get lost. You get lost? Why? Because you think like you get everything. You have to control everything? Yes. But in reality you can't, right? Yeah. Because things are what? Change. Yeah. Okay, so keep this in mind. What? Intangible? There's a lot of stuff in life that are above your control, and if you worry and want to control things that are above your control, you're going to fail at what? What you have control over. So if an earthquake is going to happen, if Obama is the president, if Trump is president, that's above your control. You don't worry about it. But for you to wake up every day, try to get a job and send another resume, another application, another LinkedIn message to someone, that's totally within your control. If they respond to you, that's above your control. But if you worry about their response, that's going to be— and if you stop living your life because I sent that thing to that person, never responded, you're gonna fail at it, whatever you're trying to do, right? So make sure, make that distinction. Any action you take, there's two sides to it. There's things within control and things above your control. And don't worry about things above your control, go back always and scale down to what's within your control now and what matters now. You get it? Capiche? What is capiche? What language is that? Spanish? Anyone speak Spanish? You? You? No? Anyone speaks Arabic besides you? No? What do you guys speak in India? What's the language? Hindi? Hindi? Is there multiple Hindi versions of Hindi? No? Just one? It's not like Chinese, India, right? Where's this million? But they have like different languages, like each state has like stuff. But Hindi is the common one? Yeah, Hindi is common. Okay, that makes sense. Sometimes. So they speak like 3 languages? English, Hindi, and Telugu, right? But I heard that you have others. Yeah, they have like 4. What's one of them? They have like 30 languages right there. What's the biggest social network in India? Social network. Like, is Facebook as big? Yeah. Facebook is the biggest one? What about Snapchat? Is it as big yet? Not yet? Instagram. Instagram is big? Second one? People use Google a lot? They Google everything? Yeah. Google. Email? A lot of emails? People email a lot? Do you speak Russian? No. You're the only one. Well, you're the winner. French? Is that it? Uh, so Facebook is big in India? Yeah. Instagram is big in India? Yeah. What else is big? Like, do you use— what about Amazon of India? It's good. They have Amazon? Yeah, yeah. What's— is there a local site that became big? Is it like Amazon? In here it's amazon.com. Amazon.in. Uh, what about the big— what about, uh, what do you call it? Not Amazon, the other one. eBay? eBay? Yes. eBay. Uh, what about What about the food thing? The review? Food review? What's it called? Zomato? Yeah, Zomato, right? You don't have Yelp. We do. We don't have Yelp. Yelp does not make it. No. Guess what happened? So people build up Yelp here. It was booming. This other bunch of dudes built up Zomato, expanded all over the Middle East and India and Asia, and they went the whole market. And then good luck Yelp figuring that out. You get it? Moving opportunities. What about— you say you're from where? Russia? No? Yeah, Russia? Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan. What's the biggest, uh, Facebook— what's the biggest social network there? Here? Instagram. Instagram? In the— it's like Facebook but Russian. It's called VKontakte? So they took over— VKontakte. VKontakte? Like, in contact. In contact? That's not Facebook? It's not owned by Facebook? So most people are on that site? What about the other side? All, uh, like Russia, Tajikistan, like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan. Is there Tinder there yet or not? Tinder? Tinder? No. You don't know what Tinder is? No, I know, but— It's not there yet? Why doesn't anybody build it yet? Go out and build it. You'll be a multimillionaire. Sure, people want to meet people, you know? Alright, cool. So yeah, anyway, so this thing, the technological change is changing fast, and the goal is what? As I told you, you have to build the future today, so once you're out in the market, you already have the product and the mindset, the technology, You know, like if you want to be like an IT manager at a company, you have to understand what the trends are going and where this whole world is moving. Otherwise, they're not going to hire you, you know, because you don't understand where things are going. But also be grounded to the future. It doesn't mean like you have to be out there already. So that was Chapter 1. Oh, the break rule. The break rule, there's no limit on how long you can take the break, but I only start when everyone is here. Does that make sense? So— The longer you're here, the longer we're going to stay long at night. There's no rule on when to start or not. All right, Chapter 2, Ethics and Social Responsibility. Do you know what the word ethics means? Anyone does not have ethics here? I think I know. Everybody here has ethics. Ethics is basically good business manners. So what about social responsibility? What does that mean? Give them love. What? Give them love to society. That's a good one. Any other ideas? Any of you here feel that they have a social responsibility? Paying taxes. That's supposed to be a word. I'm just saying. So social responsibility. So the world we're moving in, our generation, the millennials, Millennials. Wait, anyone here born after 1990? 1990? '90s. Okay. What year? '97. '97? Really? So you're the XYZ generation. We're millennials. Wait, anyone born before '75? '74? No? Okay, so we're all the same generation, the millennials. We're the only generation in the world who what? They played outside and they also went back home and sat on the computer. Hopefully. All of you were on the computer all the time, right? You know what I'm saying? We were the generation where we saw the Atari, which is like the small video game. So we saw now the virtual reality. She was— I did. You did? Are you sure? Yes. Wait, you're not born in the States though, right? No. OK, so yeah, that makes sense. But I had console and everything. Yeah, again, what I'm saying. Because it takes 10 years for the technology to move globally. Yeah, but I'm not that baby. No, it's not about being baby, it's about trends in the world, right? You get what I'm saying? Like, people, like right now, think about people who are born in the States. They already are born with iPads, virtual reality, all this kind of stuff. Well, I was not born with an iPad. I had a magazine and I was like going through it. I had the Backstreet Boys on my wall and Britney Spears and all this kind of, you know what I'm saying? Like, we had the magazine. Those kids don't have a magazine. They don't even know what that's for. Do you understand? The world is changing. So our generation, going back to the idea, We have social responsibility, which means we're going to be— I'm like, no, yes, I want to make money, but I also want to be a good person. That's why tons of companies came out with this. So this chapter is going to be talking about those two things. And the objectives of this chapter, you'll be able to say, what's the order of priorities of a business person? What are the four ways organizations can foster high ethical standards? And what are corporate social responsibility blended with values and social auditing? And what do customers, owners, employees, suppliers, And the community benefits from ethics. And pretty much, in a nutshell, what you're going to remember out of this chapter is that we're the generation where we believe that we have to do good and feel good and make money rather than just make money. That's why Starbucks now, they give back. And Dunkin' Donuts have their own nonprofit. And all this kind of stuff. Because we're the people of the world who, not like our parents, there's more information out and that information brought a lot of responsibilities on companies because transparency became big. Think about it, you know, back in the days you had no idea how much each month company is making. It was hard for you to find out a lot of information. Now with how much it takes you to know something? A second? A little bit? Just a little— how about more than— does it take you more than 10 seconds? No. And that alone brought a lot of, you know, changes to the business world. So what are the ethical dilemmas that you could have running in the world right now? Do you know what dilemma means? What's the— Like kind of problems? Like the whole trade-off, all right? I'll give you an example. Right now, I can start a website that has a subscription model where you buy a product from me once, and I'll have a subscription to you just because you bought it. You tick that little box. Every month, I'm charging your credit card and sending you something. Do you guys think that's ethical? No, no, no, I think it is because you sign it, so you know. She did. She said, oh, you ticked on it. Okay, yeah, but I'm charging you. Okay, do you guys have those subscription emails you get every month? Yeah, yeah. Who does? Who gets an email every month from this company who signed up to— he signed up to their newsletter? Any of you sign up to a newsletter email? No. You did? You get that email every month? Okay, sometimes you do, like, uh, do you still like it? Have you unsubscribed yet? You did? Good for you, man. I'm like, 25, can you come to my— because most of people don't. They sign up to something, it's hard for them to go back and unsubscribe. And you know, like, same thing, they charge your credit card every month because they understand people. Not every one of them— like Blue Apron. Have you heard of Blue Apron? No one heard of Blue Apron? So it's a company that basically, let's say you want to cook something with your friends. Who likes to hang out with friends? A lot of you said that. You order Blue Apron Blue Apron, a box comes in the house, it has the perfect amount of meat, the perfect amount of seasoning, the perfect amount of greens. You put them together and you get your meal. So Blue Apron, every time, the first time you order, they give you— actually, the first order is for free. But what happens is once you order your first order, they take all your information out with your credit card and they send you a second one and they charge you for it. You get it? Without letting you know? They told you. But what happens is, I don't think it's ethical, like, doing that to people, but that's one way, you know, where there's a dilemma. Okay, people opted into it, but I do know also from people's behaviors that most people don't have the patience to go back and— So if you will order the second time, they will charge you for two meals? For first and for second one? No, you get the first one for free, but they've told you that the next one you're gonna get it at X date, and you know, you're gonna charge this amount of money for it unless you cancel next 30 days. You get it? So you get— you go online, make a profile, you get your first meal. That's for you to make the profile You put your credit card. When you're doing this, you tick the box saying that I agree. You agree that I'm gonna, you know, get this for free and I'll be charged for a second one. So you close the account, you get the box for free, you go home, forget about it because it's done. You know, like we live in the moment, most of us. What happens is you get a charge on your credit card after 30 days. You've got your other box in the mail, you open it, oh my God, I have this box and guess what? They're charging my credit card. Do you get it? Like most companies do this practice right now. I know there's a whole dilemma. You will not order the second one. It comes automatically. So what happened? Okay, the ideal scenario would be order that thing for free so you try it, then go back online, remember your username and password, unsubscribe from the box. Most people won't do that unless you're him, which he did. I did, and I got 2 meals. And I went on and called him, like, Chad, you agree with this? I'm like, no, I didn't agree. Like, yes, you agree. Oh yeah, you're right, I did agree. So I end up eating the second meal, and I unsubscribed and blocked them and bumped I would never talk to them again in my life. They're good people though, I just didn't want the meal. So that's one of the dilemmas they have. So that's what's called ethical dilemma, where, okay, is it right to make more money versus you taking advantage of people's behavior? Top managers strongly support an ethical climate. We're not just giving lip service. What does that even mean? So the idea is saying they're not just making your lips get better, they're helping you look good, feel good. You know, it's about you what matters. We want honest, responsible people working here. Okay, those are boring stuff. Okay, this chapter, that's why in the syllabus I blended a lot of chapters together because look at this, we really want to spend our time looking at