Drawk Kwast

Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurship’ Category

We Would Fail Kindergarten

by Drawk Kwast – May 11th, 2010

kindergarten play blocks Drawk Kwast and Mike Murray talk about con artistry, the life of a technology entrepreneur, how they have fun with strangers, and why they would both fail another year of kindergarten.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:01:56 — 14.2MB)

Mike Murray is a serial entrepreneur who has spent more than a decade helping companies and individuals understand how they can be exploited by those with nefarious influence skills. From his work in the late 90′s as a penetration tester and vulnerability researcher to leadership positions at nCircle, Neohapsis and Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, his focus has always been on using vulnerability assessment through penetration testing and social engineering to proactively defend organizations. Mike co-founded MAD Security, where he leads engagements to help corporate and government customers understand and protect their security organization . He is also in charge of the advanced curriculum of The Hacker Academy, an advanced online training environment focused on the newest methods of computer penetration testing and social engineering. Mike has a variety of other diverse interests, from his work on human systems and influence to his work work with many people on their careers both within the security industry (through InfoSec Leaders with Lee Kushner) and outside of security (through the Connected Career). Mike’s thoughts on security can be found on his blog at Episteme.ca, and his work on helping build careers can be found at InfoSecLeaders.com and ConnectedCareer.com.

Drawk Kwast’s methods have been called unconventional, and he makes no apologies as he teaches men how to dominate the competition at work, attract the most desirable women on the planet, and ultimately achieve a fulfilling life. Forbes, USA Today, Details, Worth, and Entrepreneur have all recognized his ability to transform clients’ desires into reality through his 60-day Total Experience Immersion training program. His first book, Domination Basics: Secrets of the Alpha Male Book 1 (ISBN 1453801898), is available at Amazon.com and wherever books are sold. Visit his website at www.drawkkwast.com.

Leave a comment »

Cheeseburger Model for Success

by Drawk Kwast – February 8th, 2010

Everything I ever needed to learn about how to live a successful and balanced life I learned from eating cheeseburgers. The average person needs to eat 2,000 calories a day. A Double Quarter Pounder Meal, super-sized, from McDonald’s is 1,840 calories. This is the reason why McDonald’s no longer gives you the “super-size” option, because eating that, plus anything else over the course of the day, will cause the average person to get fat. It’s not one trip to McDonald’s that makes a person fat however; it is the continued trips to McDonald’s over time that have a snowball effect. We can apply this “Cheeseburger Model” to any area of a person’s life to discover the path that will lead to ultimate success or ultimate failure.

The model is easy to understand. Imagine two people eating at McDonald’s over the next 12 months. One of them, Bob, will start tomorrow by eating lunch and dinner there. The other one, Abe, will also start tomorrow by eating lunch there. By the next day, Bob has had enough McDonald’s to last two weeks and begins eating other, healthier food. Abe loves McDonald’s, and continues to have lunch there every weekday because it is right across the street from where he works. Abe tells us that it is “just so close and convenient.” After one month, we see that Bob has eaten at McDonald’s only three times, while Abe has eaten lunch there 20 times. After one year, Bob is at 10 meals while Abe has eaten at McDonald’s 248 times. At this point, do you think Bob looks much different from how he did a year ago? No. How about Abe? Oh baby, did he get fat! The point of the Cheeseburger Model is to illustrate that success or failure in your life tends to be a snowball effect.

One day of sluffing off followed by a year of hard work will not doom your prosperity any more than one day of hard work followed by a year of sluffing off will guarantee your success. It’s a matter of consistency. Here are some practical examples of applying this model in real life.

Starting a Business. It takes a matter of only hours to start a new business. What most people don’t realize, however, is that spending a Saturday ordering business cards and setting up a website is only the first step. You will not have much of a business if you only work on it when you feel like it. There is quite a bit of trial and error when you start a new business, and you will find that it’s mostly error for the first few months, or even years, which will leave you wanting to give up. Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to start-ups. If you have an idea that you truly feel is worth it, devote one hour or more, five days a week, for one year to it.

Finding a Girlfriend. The average guy asks out fewer than three girls per month and is heartbroken when his rare attempts fail. This is the same guy who isn’t comfortable talking to women because, quite simply, he never talks to women. Finding a girlfriend isn’t about making one approach every few weeks, it’s about talking to every woman you can, every time you leave the house. You get comfortable talking with them by, quite simply, talking to lots of them. This increases your chances of getting a date by not only learning to talk with them, but also by asking more of them out. Don’t fish with a spear gun, use a net. You can always throw back the ones you don’t like.

Party Time. I grew up in an environment where I was told that listening to music with friends would inevitably turn me into a heroin addict. To this day I cringe when I hear idiots say things like, “if you never take that first drink, you cannot become an alcoholic.” It’s not the first drink; it’s the seventh before noon, every day for a month that wrecks a person. Humans are social creatures and that is why we group together to have fun. It is in our nature. It’s ok to have some fun, and the right amount of fun will actually make us more productive once it’s time to get back to work. Be an adult by knowing and respecting your limits, then enjoy life by playing like a child. Everything in moderation.

Getting in Shape. Every athletic club makes the majority of their money because of January 1. If it were not for New Year’s resolutions, most gyms would go out of business. It is the same thing every year. A tidal wave of people sign yearlong contracts in that first week of January, and by the end of the third week, half will never walk into the gym again, until next January. Now, for the people like me who actually keep going regularly, we love new sign-ups because without them we would never get new equipment to play with, but we do laugh at them. These people do not realize that one week at the gym is not going to get them into shape. This is the opposite of eating at McDonald’s. If over the next year they would come to the gym 248 times, they would have the bodies they want. If you want to look like the people who work out all of the time, you are going to need to work out all of the time.

Life is a Journey. One step in the right direction followed by a few hundred in the wrong direction will not get you to your goal, but it is fine to take a few steps on the scenic route from time to time.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

One comment »

Weak Economy Success Secrets

by Drawk Kwast – July 23rd, 2009

Being an entrepreneur is about living a few years of your life now in a way that most people wouldn’t, so that you can enjoy the rest of your life the way most people can’t. The most advantageous time for an entrepreneur to spend money is when no one else has any. You are about to learn how to put these two concepts together to insure that you can successfully build wealth in today’s weak economy.

The information I am about to give you comes with a few words of caution: It is designed for entrepreneurs only. I say this because it is powerful and, if misused, it will financially destroy the average person. I will answer the questions of “when” and “how” but I can only point you in the direction of “what.” Follow this advice, choose wisely, and succeed. Now on to the good stuff…

The best time to spend money is when no one else has any. This is when your costs will be the lowest. What I am about to tell you will sound counter-intuitive, but one of the best times to get a new business going is in a changing and weak economy. Not only are your costs of goods and services low, but no one else has any money to compete with you.

Now I can hear what you are saying as you read this. You are saying that you are one of those people who have no money. You are remembering a saying that it “takes money to make money.” You are correct, but I am about to give you perspective that will change everything.

The reason that you have no money to invest now is because your ego has made a slave of you, doing whatever you can to hold on to all of the things you acquired when the economy was strong. Everyone did it. They moved into houses they could barley afford, filled with toys that they spent their last dollar on every month including the new car in the garage. They could barely afford living that way then and even though they are making less money today, they do everything they can to keep those things today. People are silly.

Here is your new plan. It’s very simple. Get control of your ego, and get your expenses down to the absolute bare minimum so that you can invest at the most opportune time, which is now. I am talking about sacrifice. I am talking about operating at the bare minimum. You need food, basic shelter, a phone, and a computer with an internet connection. You do not need cable TV. You do not need beer and cigarette money. You do not need Sparkletts water and other such stupid wastes of money delivered to your home. In most major urban areas, you do not need your car. Get a bicycle, use public transportation, and be amazed how much more money you have at the end of every month to invest. Hey, you want to be successful in a weak economy, this it what it will take. It will take everything. That is what you will have to invest. At that point, the “everything point,” it is only a matter of time before a very interesting thing happens to the wise entrepreneur with resources in a weak economy. They hit a point where they start to profit, and then they can buy all that stuff back for pennies on the dollar. When the guy who lives next door to you hasn’t been able to feed his kids for 3 days, don’t be surprised when he offers to sell you his 3 month old 52 inch TV for $300.00 because he has no other options.

Now we need to figure out what type of business you are going to start and invest that money in. First a point of clarification: A person who has started only one business, let’s say a flower shop, is a florist and NOT an entrepreneur! A person who has started a flower shop, opened a deli, a dry-cleaning business, and a worm farm is an entrepreneur. The difference is diversification. They could wake up one morning, decide to sell Michael Jackson merchandise on eBay and be successful at that also. You see the florist wants to be a florist and will open and operate that business in any economic climate, which can be a financially fatal mistake. An entrepreneur doesn’t have their heart set on one kind of business. They have their heart set on making money. They look at the economic climate and pick a business that suits the climate. Think of the florist as a woman who just bought a new mini-skirt, but the next day she walks out of the house wearing it even though it is pouring rain. The entrepreneur walks out of the house with a rain coat and an umbrella.

We are in a bad economy. It is raining outside. Stop trying to sell flowers and start selling rain coats. Shortly after September 11, sales of emergency supplies and gas masks went up. Start thinking in terms of what people feel they need and what problem you can solve for them rather than “what you want to do when you grow up.” As the economy gets worse, people are using cash advance places more and more and paying the owners of those businesses huge interest. The banking and real-estate system is falling apart, enabling people who are doing loan modifications to get rich very fast by cleaning up the mess. There is opportunity everywhere. When World War III happens, I’ll be the guy who made a fortune selling weapons and ammunition, hiding out safely in the bomb shelter I just built with all the profits. I may not be powerful enough to change the course of history but I am smart enough to ride the waves as they happen.

Being an entrepreneur is about living a few years of your life now like most people won’t, so that you can enjoy the rest of your life like most people can’t. Make sacrifices to invest in something that is profiting more and more as the economy gets worse. Now is the time to build your empire.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

Leave a comment »

Bill Gates: McDonalds Employee of the Month

by Drawk Kwast – July 21st, 2009

Today I asked myself what would have happened if Bill Gates would have taken some bad career advice and just gotten a job at McDonalds rather than starting Microsoft. I’m picturing Bill Gates wearing a McDonald’s uniform, including the stupid hat, standing behind the counter at McDonalds, ready to take your order with a smile. This is one of the more amusing images that have ever run through my mind. As an entrepreneur, my brain considers some wild “what if” questions to learn from.

There is something I have to remind myself of on the rare occasion that I eat fast food. It is that if the people working there were competent, they would not be working there. Something will happen, like getting soggy fries, at which point I’ll say to myself, “What type of an idiot could miss the fact that the fries are soggy?” Or, maybe the person at the cash resister just cannot figure out all of the complicated buttons on “order-takey-thingy” and I’ll start to get impatient. At those times I have to remind myself that if they were competent, they would not be working at McDonalds. Competent people are doing things like landing airplanes and getting paid much, much more.

At one point I actually figured out the costs to have a completely competent staff at McDonalds. The cost of my double quarter pounder meal would go up to about $11.97, at which point I wouldn’t buy it. Well, in all honesty, I probably would go just once. Just one time I would like to get things perfect. No ice in the drink. No onions on the burger. Maybe I could get fries that were pulled out of the fryer exactly when the buzzer went off leaving them cooked perfectly. Service with a smile. I know, I ask for too much.

Today I asked myself what would have happened if Bill Gates would have picked the McCareer path. The guy is competent and takes great pride in what he does. We can assume that he would have been a manager in no time. Once he was a manager, I would bet that his location would be one of the cleanest and most efficient restaurants in the chain. Being that he would do such a good job compared to all the idiots around him, he would no doubt get lots of positive reinforcement as to how good he was at his McJob. The saddest thing would be that all of the positive reinforcement would motivate him to stay at that job and prevent him from becoming the billionaire he was capable of being. I am sure in that case his parents would have been just as proud of him. His mother would have loved him just as much. He just wouldn’t have any money.

Just because someone is the best at shoveling horse manure doesn’t mean that they are living up to their potential. In fact, it is the opposite that is true. Anyone who is perfect at what they do isn’t pushing themselves. Consider Bill Gates. He would have been perfectly capable of running a McDonalds, while on the other hand starting Microsoft looked more like a train wreck that he somehow made it through. That is what entrepreneurship is all about. Surviving the train wrecks you create until you lean enough from the experiences to build wealth.

We all know about that underappreciated and underpaid secretary who does all the work and believes that she could never pull it off on her own. She is wrong. How about the starving artist who believes that no one else could love his work? He is wrong also. How about you? What is your passion? Are you a creative person working a not so creative job? Has your self doubt lead you to a life of being good at shoveling horse manure? Just because you’re good at what you do now doesn’t necessarily mean that you should be doing it.

It may be time to start looking at things from a different perspective. It may be that you are limiting yourself because you are good at your current mediocre task. What if there is a billionaire hiding inside you? Do you ever feel like the life you have now may not be the life you were meant to live? If so, it may be time for you to explore the perspective of people who are getting everything they want out of life.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

2 comments »

START-UP STRATEGY: Stop Lying To Yourself And Start Accomplishing

by Drawk Kwast – July 9th, 2009

If you are planning on becoming an entrepreneur, the first thing you need is a start-up strategy. I am going to give you 7 start-up strategy secrets that will increase your chances of success ten times or more.

Secret 1: Stop lying to yourself and start accomplishing.

For everything that is said and done, so much is said and so little gets done. I frequently receive email from people telling me about their business ideas. Most of these email messages read exactly the same. They tell me how great their idea is and how easy it would be to do. These people aren’t looking for my advice as much as they are hoping I send them back a message telling them how great their idea is. I always reply in the same way. I ask them, “What actions have you taken towards making this happen?” Most people who talk about their ideas are just looking for validation from others telling them, “You are so smart and cool for having such a brilliant idea.” They are never going to take action or do anything about it. They are lying to themselves. The reality is that because they have never taken any steps toward their idea, they have no clue as to what it would actually take to accomplish it. Believing it would be easy makes them feel better, and lets them believe it would be easy for them to be a success. The entrepreneur is a person of great action and little talk. If you truly have a great idea, take action and make it happen.

Secret 2: Know it is possible and find the way yourself.

As I said above, you are going to have to take action, and as you do you will discover all kinds of things standing in your way. There are no problems. There are only challenges. For every challenge that you discover standing in your way, know that there exists a solution. Know that there is no one more excited about your idea than you. Because of that, no one is as motivated as you are to find the solution to that challenge. Know that there is an answer, it can be found, and take the responsibility to find it yourself.

Secret 3: Understand the difficulty reward connection.

There is very, very little that is truly impossible. The fact that something is difficult only makes the reward more valuable because it is available to less people. If you want easy, sell lemonade during the summer in Las Vegas. It is something that anyone can do, and that is why you will not make much money at it. If you want to be as wealthy as the top 5% of the world, you will have to accomplish something that 95% of the world cannot. You don’t need to work harder that the other 95%, just be smarter that the other 95%.

Secret 4: Ready, fire, and then aim.

You will not know all of the roadblocks until after you start your journey. Without action, you get nowhere. The most powerful part of your start-up strategy is that it starts with action and then self corrects as it is moving. It never stops and is always collecting more information as it fine tunes it’s direction. An entrepreneur operates like a guided missile. A decision is made to hit a target and the missile is fired in the general direction of that target. As the missile is in a state of continuous movement toward the target, it collects data on the target and adjusts its course to ensure hitting that target.

Secret 5: Get out of bed every morning for 3 reasons.

Failing to plan is planning to fail. You need to keep a list of 3 things you are working on to bring you closer to your goal. Each day you will take action on each item, and because of it each day you will get closer to your goal until you achieve it. Think of this as your “Challenges List.” If any item on your list cannot be done in one day, that item needs to be broken down into smaller steps that can be accomplished inside of one day. An example of a bad list item would be “write a book.” This will not actually happen in one day. Break it into multiple steps that can be done in one day. Start off with, “Decide what I want to write about. Go to a bookstore to look at similar books already published, taking notes on things I see that I find interesting. Write a chapter outline for my book.” Then write down your list of what 3 things you will get done the following day. Baby steps.

Secret 6: Failure is a requirement.

The biggest factor keeping people from success is the massive failure that it requires. One of the most important things any successful entrepreneur will tell you is that most of our ideas never work. In fact, very few of our ideas ever turn profitable. Keep your motivation and realize that successful people fail more times than the unsuccessful. They never give up and when things finally work out, it’s all worth it. The fastest way to increase your rate of success is to increase your rate of failure and learn something every time you fail.

Secret 7: You don’t know what you don’t know, but others do.

Once you are in a continuous state of action toward your goal, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Chances are good that whatever roadblocks you have hit have been hit by other travelers. The chances are also very good that some of those travelers have written about how they got past those same challenges and posted that information to the internet. Part of your start-up strategy is discovering how others got past the same challenges.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

Leave a comment »

Economy Proof

by Drawk Kwast – November 20th, 2008

Say of me what you will, but I never pay any attention to the news.

While the world is busy talking of economic collapse, I remain almost oblivious to it. I learned long ago that the only time opportunities are in short supply is when the market is unchanging. As long as things are changing, whether for the better or worse, there is opportunity.

One of the biggest problems with paying attention to the news is the tendency to believe what they are saying. What I am talking about is the power of suggestion. This is the reason companies spend so much money on TV advertisements, because they work. If you sit a group of people in front of a TV set for long enough and keep on telling them the news that “the economy is collapsing,” they start to believe it. Sooner or later, that belief will be reflected in their performance at work. If you keep on telling a person who sells widgets that people just don’t have any money to spend on widgets these days, sooner or later, that salesman will start to believe it. When he does, that belief will become a self fulfilling prophecy as he begins to give up and accept what he now believes. As that salesman gets an ever decreasing paycheck, he has less money to spend with his local butcher. When the butcher asks the salesman why he is buying less meat, the salesman will reply by saying, “the economy is getting bad.” The butcher will tend to believe the salesman as he tells of his slumping sales. The butcher has good reason to because he isn’t selling as much meat to the salesman. The butcher with less money in his pocket and a good story to tell will spread this to the remainder of the town.

So what am I telling you? There is no recession? Nope. I pay the same outrageous prices at the gas pump and grocery store that you do. What I am telling you is that you will not win by rolling over and playing dead. That only makes things worse. Successful people know that the best time to make moves is when the economy is going down.

There is too much competition when the economy is going up and everyone has the resources to do anything. It’s when times are tough, when 90% of the competition has given up, that’s the time to make your moves.

Consider the butcher from our above example. If the economy “goes bad” in his town and every other butcher shop gives up and closes, who has all the business when the economy inevitably gets better? He does. No matter how bad things get, as soon as people start buying more meat again, they will be buying all of it from him. Sure, as the economy continues to get better, other people will open butcher shops and compete for that business, but the advantage is always to the first person with an open store and existing customers.

Watch TV news if you must, but realize that not all are suffering economic hardship right now. I know many, including myself, who are making more money month after month as everyone else is telling us how bad things are. We know how to ride the waves. We know that change in any way presents opportunity. Most importantly, we know that it will be us who will be in the best position to ride the next wave of change when things get better.

Rather than giving up, you need to ask yourself where you want to be when the economy changes. Then figure out how to move in that direction. The closer you can get to your goal today, the quicker you’ll get there tomorrow. The most advantageous time to invest resources is when your competition won’t.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

Leave a comment »

Features vs. Solutions

by Drawk Kwast – November 16th, 2008

There are two factors that will always, without question, separate the successful entrepreneurs from those who struggle. The first is that successful entrepreneurs understand the difference between features and solutions. The second is that they tend to ignore features and take action based on solutions.

A feature is a prominent part or characteristic of something. A solution is an answer to a problem. In some cases it is a prominent part or characteristic of something that is the answer to a problem. Put simply, in some cases a feature will provide you a solution.

The most important aspect of a feature providing a solution is that the solution must be to an existing problem. When a person makes a purchase or takes an action based on a feature that doesn’t solve a pre-existing problem for them, they are wasting resources because they are solving problems that do not exist.

I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I am the most organized person I know. When I was a young entrepreneur just starting out, I was the most organized business owner I knew. There were two main reasons for this. The first was that I spent all of my time organizing everything. The second was that because I spent all of my time organizing, and no time gathering clients, I never actually did any real work that would mess up my perfectly organized system. My problem was not disorganization. My problem was a lack of clients. Being organized was a feature and a waste of my effort at that point. I should have invested my energy into solving the problem of not having any clients. After that, once I was generating an income, I could solve the problem of disorganization if and when it came up.

Successful people have a specific goal and solve problems on their way toward achieving that goal. Anything that doesn’t move them toward their specific goal is a waste of time and money.

Most people suffer from consumerism. The “new features” looked cool on TV so now they feel compelled to spend money. They are spending money to solve problems that they do not have. Money is a limited resource and the more they spend solving problems they don’t have, the less they have to spend on solving problems they do have.

Some people suffer from analysis paralysis. This is the difference between overloading yourself with information and actually getting things done. One of the greatest tools for research and the greatest cause of paralysis in our time is the internet. You can find information quickly and easily. The problem is that there is so much information that some people never take action as they attempt to read and digest everything. Successful people research just enough to start taking action and then solve problems as they come up. They know that you can only win the game by actually playing the game (taking action). They know that the game is not won by knowing every feature but by knowing how to find any solution.

Managers know that employees are suckers for features. An employee will ask for a raise (a solution for not having enough money) and what will the manger do? The manager will give them a new title. The employee will walk into the office a “supervisor” and walk out a “regional supervisor” with the same pay, a slightly increased workload, and a promise that his next “promotion” will include a pay increase also. The employee got played. And what happens if the employee figures the title game out? Then he gets a parking space with his name on it. It’s just another feature for the employee that doesn’t solve his problem of needing more money. How much did this parking space cost the company? Nothing. For the company it’s a solution because it solves the company’s problem of shutting up the employee without any cost.

Have you ever seen an advertisement from Lamborghini talking about improved miles per gallon? Nope, and you never will. The people who buy Lamborghinis have money by the truckloads and don’t have a problem paying for gas no matter what the cost. Fuel efficiency for the rich is a feature. Successful people tend to ignore features.

Now if you go to the office of anyone who actually owns a Lamborghini, you will notice that all of their decisions are solution based. If you are trying to sell something to the owner of that company, sell solutions, not features. Offer to solve an existing problem for the company at a reasonable price and you will have a sale. Present him with the idea of a hot tub to be installed in the lunch room because “it would be so cool” and expect the idea to be rejected.

What this all comes down to is ignoring some of the comforts (features) and using your resources to solve problems that keep you from your goals. Entrepreneurship is about living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

Leave a comment »