Stop playing small: Think big and travel the world

If you play not to lose rather than play to win, you are possibly playing small. Fortunately, there are many ways to stop playing small from now on.

Meet the best mentors by traveling the world.

Spending lots of time with those who cannot give you the right advice on your future is not the best growth-driven habit. To think big, you must have mentors and coaches who are able to give you helpful advice and valuable feedback.

I have traveled the world in order to meet the right mentors for my career. The best mentors are obviously living in different countries. You can hire at least one mentor if you are able to afford that, for formal mentorship brings results pretty fast.

However, if you are unable to afford that, you may find some informal mentorship by reading self-help books and listening to personal development podcasts.

The ability to think outside the box is key. Looking at what your competitors are doing is quite limiting. As I see it, you should think outside the box – how about looking at other industries?

When Marie Forleo was preparing for her book tour recently, she actually looked at a totally different industry – the entertainment industry (the show business). As a matter of fact, Marie Forleo’s book tour totally imitated Beyonce’s concert. Clearly, her book is very successful in terms of sales and marketing.

Also, you would be well-advised to do something that slightly scares you each day. Indeed, you have to expand your comfort zone by thinking big and traveling the world if possible. Truthfully, everything you would like to achieve is literally outside your comfort zone. Period. Hence, you may do something that scares you a little bit every day. Perhaps you can reach out to a social media star who may give you a rejection? Maybe you will start your own YouTube channel?

The reality of entrepreneurs who have the time to travel the world:

Most entrepreneurs don’t really want to talk about their realities because not every part of their entrepreneurial journey is glamorous.

First of all, the initial stage of entrepreneurship is very difficult, stressful, and lonely. Apparently, entrepreneurship sounds pretty cool nowadays. Yet frankly, I must tell you that entrepreneurship is not fun as it’s pretty hard. American author Robert Greene famously said, “If you cannot stand loneliness, you can only go so far in your career, as in order to become successful, you must spend many, many hours working extremely hard all by yourself.” This is pure gold because it’s so true and so profound. As an entrepreneur or a business owner, you might think that your employees work for you, yet in reality, you possibly work for your employees, for running a business while managing a team is basically like adult-sitting.

Also, the majority of businesses fail. The failure rate is higher than the divorce rate in western countries. Having said that, entrepreneurship is very meaningful as it changes society. Don’t assume that your government is changing society. In fact, entrepreneurship definitely changes society in tremendous ways. After traveling the world, I’ve noticed that entrepreneurs create jobs around the world, which plays a key role in the economy. What’s more, entrepreneurs come up with revolutionary ideas, e.g. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg fundamentally changed how individuals communicate forever.

Take a brick-and-mortar business online so that you can travel the world.

If your business is a brick-and-mortar business, you should consider taking it online so you will be able to do whatever you want.

First of all, you have to list your business on Google. Then you need to create a website that is SEO-optimized. Most customers will visit your website before visiting your social media pages. That’s why your website is more important. After that, you can create your social media accounts and be active on social media platforms. Usually, the mature audience is on Facebook, whereas the younger audience is on Instagram.

But if you are looking to start a brand-new online business so that you can travel the world at any time, please be aware of the following key ideas:

First and most importantly, your online business has to be polarizing. You can’t make everyone happy, so your online business should be relatively polarizing, thereby making the wrong audience leave as quickly as possible and keeping the right audience effectively.

Second, these three topics always work well online: health, wealth & love. Obviously, these three areas influence people’s happiness tremendously. By contrast, teaching your audience how to choose the right Christmas gift probably can’t be a viable business idea.

Lastly, your business revenue probably has nothing to do with how many followers you have on social media platforms. In theory, having more followers means having more customers. But in reality, that is often not true.