Tag Archives: Entrepreneur

How Do You Learn How To Learn? Learn From Learners

learning how to learn

Are you learning as fast as the world is changing? A constant state of change requires a constant state of learning. Only a handful of companies, and people, cultivate learning as a skill.

Put simply:

Cultures of innovation = Cultures of learning

With that said, there is one skill that will always be relevant in the future: continuous learning.

There is a dominant belief that learning stops once you put your diploma to use and get a job. Wrong! Learning is a skill that can be improved, and it never stops.

So, how do you learn how to learn?

Learn From Learners

Sound simple, right? Here’s the thing, there are ways to learn faster and better than how one is taught throughout school.

From Chris McCann’s class notes from Class 18 of Stanford University’s CS183C — Technology-enabled Blitzscaling — taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Chris Yeh, and Allen Blue. This class was an interview by Reid Hoffman of Brian Chesky — the founder and CEO of Airbnb.

This is Brian’s response on an audience question about learning how to learn:

I don’t have all the answers but here’s a tip.

If I was to ask you to learn about a topic in a week ex. the basics of UI design — how would you do it?

Read a ton of books, talk to people, do exercises? This is a fairly exhaustive process but you could do it.

Now what if I said in the same week you have to learn UI design, front end development, accounting, and how to incorporate a company — how would you do it?

There isn’t enough hours in the day to learn everything. So you have to short circuit the process somehow.

One approach is to learn from definitive sources. The downside is, if you pick the wrong source, you learn the wrong thing; however, if you pick the right source, you don’t have to read anything else.

For example with management I read High Output Management. I just read one book so I don’t need to read anything else about management. Paul Grahamwas a version of this at Y Combinator and he would point us to the resources that mattered.

One benefit of being more successful is you have access to talk to more successful people. But even before being successful, you can read about the best people.

Another tip is most people will help you if you ask a question — we are here to share information and knowledge. I was shameless in asking Reid Hoffman questions — I was probably annoying but I didn’t care — I just wanted to learn.

My own method for learning varies, but right off the bat I develop a list of questions about a topic, ask people in the know, and immerse myself in the topic. I also read lots of biographies of interesting people; my goal is to understand how they think and then add that to my cognitive toolbox.

Hack Learning By Breaking It Down

Some people have even hacked the learning process. For example, Tim Ferrisshas made his name from hacking fitness and cooking. In doing so he identified a process for quickly mastering any skill, which he shares in a talk:

Ferriss has taken his method a step further, and also has a well known podcast where he interviews interesting people who share their own approach to how they learn.

Similar to Ferris, Josh Kaufman has taken a similar approach to hack learning:

Put Yourself In The Context Of What You Want To Learn

Learning how others learn isn’t the only way to understand a topic quickly, putting yourself in the context of what you want to learn is another approach.

For example, my buddy Ivan, who I recently had on the podcast to discuss the ethics of artificial intelligence, is a self-taught programmer. How did he do it? He started hanging out with other programmers and got involved in their projects; and then coded is own projects.

It took him time, but that’s what it takes.

Start From The Basics

Another well known innovator who learns quickly is Elon Musk.

How does he do it?

He learns the foundations and then moves from there.

Here’s what Elon responded to a question on Reddit AMA about how he learns so much so fast:

I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying.

One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.

Interestingly, as I’ve written about before, starting from first principles is an effective approach to innovation.

Leaders Are Learners

Great leaders simply aren’t satisfied with what they know. They possess an insatiable curiosity for discovery and learning – they are in constant pursuit of what they don’t know.

That’s why the best and most innovative leaders are pattern thinkers, that is they are intensely and endlessly curious. They all have that in common, the skills necessary to innovate: ask questions, pay attention, seek and talk to interesting people and lastly, experiment with ideas.

Bottom line: When we stop learning we stop growing. Continuous learning is a life skill, an antidote to irrelevance. So teaching yourself to master any skill is a powerful investment in yourself.

Techniques for Establishing First Principles

Techniques for Establishing First Principles

There are many ways to establish first principles. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

Socratic Questioning

Socratic questioning can be used to establish first principles through stringent analysis. This a disciplined questioning process, used to establish truths, reveal underlying assumptions, and separate knowledge from ignorance. The key distinction between Socratic questioning and normal discussions is that the former seeks to draw out first principles in a systematic manner. Socratic questioning generally follows this process:

  1. Clarifying your thinking and explaining the origins of your ideas (Why do I think this? What exactly do I think?)
  2. Challenging assumptions (How do I know this is true? What if I thought the opposite?)
  3. Looking for evidence (How can I back this up? What are the sources?)
  4. Considering alternative perspectives (What might others think? How do I know I am correct?)
  5. Examining consequences and implications (What if I am wrong? What are the consequences if I am?)
  6. Questioning the original questions (Why did I think that? Was I correct? What conclusions can I draw from the reasoning process?)

This process stops you from relying on your gut and limits strong emotional responses. This process helps you build something that lasts.

“Because I Said So” or “The Five Whys”

Children instinctively think in first principles. Just like us, they want to understand what’s happening in the world. To do so, they intuitively break through the fog with a game some parents have come to hate.

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Why?”

Here’s an example that has played out numerous times at my house:

“It’s time to brush our teeth and get ready for bed.”

“Why?”

“Because we need to take care of our bodies, and that means we need sleep.”

“Why do we need sleep?”

“Because we’d die if we never slept.”

“Why would that make us die?”

“I don’t know; let’s go look it up.”

Kids are just trying to understand why adults are saying something or why they want them to do something.

The first time your kid plays this game, it’s cute, but for most teachers and parents, it eventually becomes annoying. Then the answer becomes what my mom used to tell me: “Because I said so!” (Love you, Mom.)

Of course, I’m not always that patient with the kids. For example, I get testy when we’re late for school, or we’ve been travelling for 12 hours, or I’m trying to fit too much into the time we have. Still, I try never to say “Because I said so.”

People hate the “because I said so” response for two reasons, both of which play out in the corporate world as well. The first reason we hate the game is that we feel like it slows us down. We know what we want to accomplish, and that response creates unnecessary drag. The second reason we hate this game is that after one or two questions, we are often lost. We actually don’t know why. Confronted with our own ignorance, we resort to self-defense.

I remember being in meetings and asking people why we were doing something this way or why they thought something was true. At first, there was a mild tolerance for this approach. After three “whys,” though, you often find yourself on the other end of some version of “we can take this offline.”

Difference between Analogy and The F.P

Another way to think about this distinction comes from another friend, Tim Urban. He says[3] it’s like the difference between the cook and the chef. While these terms are often used interchangeably, there is an important nuance. The chef is a trailblazer, the person who invents recipes. He knows the raw ingredients and how to combine them. The cook, who reasons by analogy, uses a recipe. He creates something, perhaps with slight variations, that’s already been created.

The difference between reasoning by first principles and reasoning by analogy is like the difference between being a chef and being a cook. If the cook lost the recipe, he’d be screwed. The chef, on the other hand, understands the flavor profiles and combinations at such a fundamental level that he doesn’t even use a recipe. He has real knowledge as opposed to know-how.

Examples of First Principles in Action

So we can better understand how first-principles reasoning works, let’s look at four examples.

Elon Musk and SpaceX

Perhaps no one embodies first-principles thinking more than Elon Musk. He is one of the most audacious entrepreneurs the world has ever seen. My kids (grades 3 and 2) refer to him as a real-life Tony Stark, thereby conveniently providing a good time for me to remind them that by fourth grade, Musk was reading the Encyclopedia Britannica and not Pokemon.

What’s most interesting about Musk is not what he thinks but how he thinks:

I think people’s thinking process is too bound by convention or analogy to prior experiences. It’s rare that people try to think of something on a first principles basis. They’ll say, “We’ll do that because it’s always been done that way.” Or they’ll not do it because “Well, nobody’s ever done that, so it must not be good. But that’s just a ridiculous way to think. You have to build up the reasoning from the ground up—“from the first principles” is the phrase that’s used in physics. You look at the fundamentals and construct your reasoning from that, and then you see if you have a conclusion that works or doesn’t work, and it may or may not be different from what people have done in the past.[4]

His approach to understanding reality is to start with what is true — not with his intuition. The problem is that we don’t know as much as we think we do, so our intuition isn’t very good. We trick ourselves into thinking we know what’s possible and what’s not. The way Musk thinks is much different.

Musk starts out with something he wants to achieve, like building a rocket. Then he starts with the first principles of the problem. Running through how Musk would think, Larry Page said in an

interview, “What are the physics of it? How much time will it take? How much will it cost? How much cheaper can I make it? There’s this level of engineering and physics that you need to make judgments about what’s possible and interesting. Elon is unusual in that he knows that, and he also knows business and organization and leadership and governmental issues.”[5]

Rockets are absurdly expensive, which is a problem because Musk wants to send people to Mars. And to send people to Mars, you need cheaper rockets. So he asked himself, “What is a rocket made of? Aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, plus some titanium, copper, and carbon fiber. And … what is the value of those materials on the commodity market? It turned out that the materials cost of a rocket was around two percent of the typical price.”[6]

Why, then, is it so expensive to get a rocket into space? Musk, a notorious self-learner with degrees in both economics and physics, literally taught himself rocket science. He figured that the only reason getting a rocket into space is so expensive is that people are stuck in a mindset that doesn’t hold up to first principles. With that, Musk decided to create SpaceX and see if he could build rockets himself from the ground up.

In an interview with Kevin Rose, Musk summarized his approach:

I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. So the normal way we conduct our lives is, we reason by analogy. We are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing… with slight iterations on a theme. And it’s … mentally easier to reason by analogy rather than from first principles. First principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world, and what that really means is, you … boil things down to the most fundamental truths and say, “okay, what are we sure is true?” … and then reason up from there. That takes a lot more mental energy.[7]

Musk then gave an example of how Space X uses first principles to innovate at low prices:

Somebody could say — and in fact people do — that battery packs are really expensive and that’s just the way they will always be because that’s the way they have been in the past. … Well, no, that’s pretty dumb… Because if you applied that reasoning to anything new, then you wouldn’t be able to ever get to that new thing…. you can’t say, … “oh, nobody wants a car because horses are great, and we’re used to them and they can eat grass and there’s lots of grass all over the place and … there’s no gasoline that people can buy….”

He then gives a fascinating example about battery packs:

… they would say, “historically, it costs $600 per kilowatt-hour. And so it’s not going to be much better than that in the future. … So the first principles would be, … what are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the spot market value of the material constituents? … It’s got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, and some polymers for separation, and a steel can. So break that down on a material basis; if we bought that on a London Metal Exchange, what would each of these things cost? Oh, jeez, it’s … $80 per kilowatt-hour. So, clearly, you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell, and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.

BuzzFeed

After studying the psychology of virality, Jonah Peretti founded BuzzFeed in 2006. The site quickly grew to be one of the most popular on the internet, with hundreds of employees and substantial revenue.

Peretti figured out early on the first principle of a successful website: wide distribution. Rather than publishing articles people should read, BuzzFeed focuses on publishing those that people want to read. This means aiming to garner maximum social shares to put distribution in the hands of readers.

Peretti recognized the first principles of online popularity and used them to take a new approach to journalism. He also ignored SEO, saying, “Instead of making content robots like, it was more satisfying to make content humans want to share.”[8] Unfortunately for us, we share a lot of cat videos.

A common aphorism in the field of viral marketing is, “content might be king, but distribution is queen, and she wears the pants” (or “and she has the dragons”; pick your metaphor). BuzzFeed’s distribution-based approach is based on obsessive measurement, using A/B testing and analytics.

Jon Steinberg, president of BuzzFeed, explains the first principles of virality:

Keep it short. Ensure [that] the story has a human aspect. Give people the chance to engage. And let them react. People mustn’t feel awkward sharing it. It must feel authentic. Images and lists work. The headline must be persuasive and direct.

Derek Sivers and CD Baby

When Sivers founded his company CD Baby, he reduced the concept down to first principles. Sivers asked, What does a successful business need? His answer was happy customers.

Instead of focusing on garnering investors or having large offices, fancy systems, or huge numbers of staff, Sivers focused on making each of his customers happy. An example of this is his famous order confirmation email, part of which reads:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box money can buy.

By ignoring unnecessary details that cause many businesses to expend large amounts of money and time, Sivers was able to rapidly grow the company to $4 million in monthly revenue. In Anything You Want, Sivers wrote:

Having no funding was a huge advantage for me.
A year after I started CD Baby, the dot-com boom happened. Anyone with a little hot air and a vague plan was given millions of dollars by investors. It was ridiculous. …
Even years later, the desks were just planks of wood on cinder blocks from the hardware store. I made the office computers myself from parts. My well-funded friends would spend $100,000 to buy something I made myself for $1,000. They did it saying, “We need the very best,” but it didn’t improve anything for their customers. …
It’s counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they’ll tell everyone.

To survive as a business, you need to treat your customers well. And yet so few of us master this principle.


Employing First Principles in Your Daily Life

Most of us have no problem thinking about what we want to achieve in life, at least when we’re young. We’re full of big dreams, big ideas, and boundless energy. The problem is that we let others tell us what’s possible, not only when it comes to our dreams but also when it comes to how we go after them. And when we let other people tell us what’s possible or what the best way to do something is, we outsource our thinking to someone else.

The real power of first-principles thinking is moving away from incremental improvement and into possibility. Letting others think for us means that we’re using their analogies, their conventions, and their possibilities. It means we’ve inherited a world that conforms to what they think. This is incremental thinking.

When we take what already exists and improve on it, we are in the shadow of others. It’s only when we step back, ask ourselves what’s possible, and cut through the flawed analogies that we see what is possible. Analogies are beneficial; they make complex problems easier to communicate and increase understanding. Using them, however, is not without a cost. They limit our beliefs about what’s possible and allow people to argue without ever exposing our (faulty) thinking. Analogies move us to see the problem in the same way that someone else sees the problem.

The gulf between what people currently see because their thinking is framed by someone else and what is physically possible is filled by the people who use first principles to think through problems.

First-principles thinking clears the clutter of what we’ve told ourselves and allows us to rebuild from the ground up. Sure, it’s a lot of work, but that’s why so few people are willing to do it. It’s also why the rewards for filling the chasm between possible and incremental improvement tend to be non-linear.

Let’s take a look at a few of the limiting beliefs that we tell ourselves.

“I don’t have a good memory.” [10]
People have far better memories than they think they do. Saying you don’t have a good memory is just a convenient excuse to let you forget. Taking a first-principles approach means asking how much information we can physically store in our minds. The answer is “a lot more than you think.” Now that we know it’s possible to put more into our brains, we can reframe the problem into finding the most optimal way to store information in our brains.

“There is too much information out there.”
A lot of professional investors read Farnam Street. When I meet these people and ask how they consume information, they usually fall into one of two categories. The differences between the two apply to all of us. The first type of investor says there is too much information to consume. They spend their days reading every press release, article, and blogger commenting on a position they hold. They wonder what they are missing. The second type of investor realizes that reading everything is unsustainable and stressful and makes them prone to overvaluing information they’ve spent a great amount of time consuming. These investors, instead, seek to understand the variables that will affect their investments. While there might be hundreds, there are usually three to five variables that will really move the needle. The investors don’t have to read everything; they just pay attention to these variables.

“All the good ideas are taken.”
A common way that people limit what’s possible is to tell themselves that all the good ideas are taken. Yet, people have been saying this for hundreds of years — literally — and companies keep starting and competing with different ideas, variations, and strategies.

“We need to move first.”
I’ve heard this in boardrooms for years. The answer isn’t as black and white as this statement. The iPhone wasn’t first, it was better. Microsoft wasn’t the first to sell operating systems; it just had a better business model. There is a lot of evidence showing that first movers in business are more likely to fail than latecomers. Yet this myth about the need to move first continues to exist.

Sometimes the early bird gets the worm and sometimes the first mouse gets killed. You have to break each situation down into its component parts and see what’s possible. That is the work of first-principles thinking.

“I can’t do that; it’s never been done before.”
People like Elon Musk are constantly doing things that have never been done before. This type of thinking is analogous to looking back at history and building, say, floodwalls, based on the worst flood that has happened before. A better bet is to look at what could happen and plan for that.

“As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”

— Harrington Emerson

Conclusion

The thoughts of others imprison us if we’re not thinking for ourselves.

Reasoning from first principles allows us to step outside of history and conventional wisdom and see what is possible. When you really understand the principles at work, you can decide if the existing methods make sense. Often they don’t.

Reasoning by first principles is useful when you are (1) doing something for the first time, (2) dealing with complexity, and (3) trying to understand a situation that you’re having problems with. In all of these areas, your thinking gets better when you stop making assumptions and you stop letting others frame the problem for you.

Analogies can’t replace understanding. While it’s easier on your brain to reason by analogy, you’re more likely to come up with better answers when you reason by first principles. This is what makes it one of the best sources of creative thinking. Thinking in first principles allows you to adapt to a changing environment, deal with reality, and seize opportunities that others can’t see.

Many people mistakenly believe that creativity is something that only some of us are born with, and either we have it or we don’t. Fortunately, there seems to be ample evidence that this isn’t true.[11] We’re all born rather creative, but during our formative years, it can be beaten out of us by busy parents and teachers. As adults, we rely on convention and what we’re told because that’s easier than breaking things down into first principles and thinking for ourselves. Thinking through first principles is a way of taking off the blinders. Most things suddenly seem more possible.

“I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can,” says Musk. “They sell themselves short without trying. One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e., the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”

Elon Musk 如何比其他人學得更快更好

為什麼 Elon Musk 可以在四十歲中期於四個不同的領域（軟體、能源、運輸和航太）創造四家數十億的公司？

為了解釋  Elon Musk 的成功，其他人指出了他冒險犯難的工作倫理（他每週定期工作85個小時），替未來設定扭轉現實的願景，以及他難以置信的韌性。

但是所有這些我都覺得不夠解釋他的成功。很多人都有這些特質。我想了解他做了什麼與眾不同的事。

當我不斷閱讀關於 Musk 的幾十篇文章、影片和書籍時，我注意到一大塊拼圖失踪了。傳統的智慧說，要為了成為世界級的人物，我們只應該專注於一個領域。 Musk 破壞了這個規則。他的專長從火箭科學 、工程、物理、人造智能到太陽能和能源。

在前一篇文章中，我稱像 Elon Musk 這樣的人為 “專家通才”（由 Bain＆Company 董事長 Orit Gadiesh 創造的一個名詞）。 “專家通才”在許多不同領域廣泛學習，了解連接這些領域較深層的原則，然後將原理應用於其核心專長。

根據我對 Musk 生活的回顧和與學習和專業知識相關的學術文獻，我相信我們應該在多個領域學習，以增加我們突破性成功的機率。

旁注：想把你的學習習慣提升到一個新的水準？我創建了一個免費“學習如何學習”的線上講座，你可能會喜歡。

樣樣通樣樣鬆的迷思

如果你是一個喜歡學不同領域的人，那麼你可能很熟悉這個善意的建議：

“成熟點。專注於一個領域。“

“像傑克那樣什麼都懂，沒一樣專精“。

隱含的假設是，如果你在多個領域學習，你只能學到表面，無法精通。

長時間以來”專家通才”的成功顯示這說法是錯誤的。跨多個領域的學習提供了資訊優勢（因此也是創新的優勢），因為大多數人只關注一個領域。

例如，如果你在技術行業，而其他所有人都只是閱讀科技出版物，但你也對生物學了解很多，你有能力提出幾乎沒有其他人可以想到的想法。反之亦然。如果你在生物學，且你也了解人工智能，那麼你比其他所有人都有資訊優勢。

儘管有這個基本的見解，但是很少有人實際上超越他們所在的行業

我們在自己領域裡其他人陌生的新領域學習，將讓我們做出別人無法做到的組合。這是專家通才的優勢。

一個有趣的研究反應了這個觀點。它研究了20世紀前五十九位歌劇作曲家如何達到精緻工藝。相較傳統說法-表現最好的人只能通過刻意的練習和專業化達到成功，研究員基斯·西蒙頓（Dean Keith Simonton）發現剛好相反：“最成功的歌劇作曲家的作品傾向於推出混合種類的作品，作曲家通過交叉訓練來避免過多的專精（過度訓練）造成的僵化，” 這也總結了 UPENN 研究員Scott Barry Kaufman 在“科學美國”雜誌上的文章內容。

Musk 的“學習轉移”超能力

根據他的兄弟 Kimbal Musk 描述，從他十幾歲的年紀開始，每天都會閱讀兩本不同學科的書。置入這個情境，如果你每個月讀一本書，Musk 可以讀你所讀書籍的60倍。

起初，Musk 的閱讀跨越了科幻小說、哲學、宗教、程式設計和科學家、工程師和企業家的傳記。隨著年齡的增長，他的閱讀和職業興趣擴展到物理、工程、產品設計、商業、技術和能源。這種對知識的渴望使他能夠接觸到他從未在學校學到的各種科目。

Elon Musk 還擅長一種非常具體的學習方法，大多數人甚至不了解的“學習轉移”。

學習轉移正在將我們在一個環境中學到的東西應用到另一個環境中。它可以將我們在學校或書中學到的內容應用到“現實世界”中，也可以將我們在一個行業中學到的東西應用到另一個行業。

這是 Musk 閃耀的地方。他的幾次採訪表明，他有一個獨特的兩步過程來促進學習轉移。

首先，他將知識解構為基本原裡

Musk 在 Reddit AMA 上的答案描述了他如何做到這一點：

將知識視為一種語義樹是重要的 – 確保你在進入葉子/細節之前，了解基本原理，即樹幹和大樹枝，不然沒有辦法掛任何東西在上面。

研究表明，將你的知識轉化為更深層次的抽象原理有助於學習轉移。研究還表明，一種技術特別強大，可幫助人們直覺的潛在原理。這種技術被稱為“對比案例”。

我們來看看它的工作原理：我們假設你要解構一個字母“A”，並明白什麼使“A”成為A較深層的原理。我們進一步說，你有兩種方法可以用來做到這一點： 

A

你認為哪種方法比較有用？

方法＃1。方法1中的每個不同的 A 讓你看出每個 A 哪些一樣哪些不一樣。方法2中的每個 A 都一樣無法讓你有任何洞見。

當我們學習任何東西時，通過觀察許多不同的情況，我們開始直覺什麼是必要的，甚至製作我們自己獨特的組合。

這在我們的日常生活中是什麼意思？當我們進入一個新的領域時，我們不應該只採取一種方法或最佳實踐。我們應該研究很多不同的方法，解構每個方法，然後進行比較和對比。這將有助於我們發現潛在的原則。

接下來，他重建新領域的基本原理

Musk 學習轉移過程的第二步涉及將他把人工智能、技術、物理和工程方面學到的基礎原理重新構建到不同的領域：

  • 在太空領域，如此創造了SpaceX。
  • 在汽車領域，如此創造了特斯拉與自駕車功能。
  • 在火車領域，如此預見了超高速管道列車(Hyperloop)。
  • 在航太領域，如此預見了起飛和垂直著陸的電動飛行器。
  • 在半機器人(cyborg)技​​術上，如此預見了接觸你的大腦的神經介面。
  • 在支付技​​術上，如此幫助建立PayPal。
  • 在AI技​​術上，如此共創 OpenAI，一個非營利、限制AI往負面發展的機率。

加州大學洛杉磯分校心理學教授和世界領先的類比推理思想家 Keith Holyoak 建議人們問自己以下兩個問題，以磨練他們的技能：“這讓我想起什麼？” 和 “為什麼會這會讓我想起那呢”

通過不斷地查看你環境中的物件和你閱讀的資訊，並詢問自己這兩個問題，你可以在大腦中建立起幫助你跨越傳統界限進行連接的肌肉。

底線：這不是魔術。這確實是正確的學習過程

現在，我們可以開始了解 Musk 為何會是世界一流的專家通才：

  • 他花了很多年時間以60倍速度閱讀，盡可能像一個狂熱的讀者。
  • 他廣泛地涉略不同的學科。
  • 他不斷地把所學解構成基本原理，以新的方法重新建構。

在最深層次上，我們可以從 Elon Musk 的故事中學到，我們不應該執著專業化是事業成功和發揮影響力的最佳或唯一的途徑的教條。傳奇的專家通才巴克明斯特·富勒（Buckminster Fuller）總結了我們都應該考慮的思維轉變。他幾十年前就分享了這一點，而今天也是如此：

我們正處於一個時代，狹隘地走向認為專業化趨勢才合乎邏輯、自然以及符合大家想要的;如此想的同時，人類已被剝奪了全面性的理解。專業化促成了個人的孤立感 、徒勞感和混亂感。這也導致了個人把思考和社會行為的責任留給其他人。專業化產生的偏見最終會導致國際和意識形態的不和，從而導致戰爭。“

如果我們投入時間學習跨領域的核心概念，並將這些概念關聯回我們的生活和世界，那麼在各個領域之間的轉移變得容易和快速。

隨著我們建立“首要原理”水庫，把這些原理與不同領域聯繫起來，我們突然獲得了能夠進入以前從未學到的新領域的超級力量，並迅速做出了獨特的貢獻。

了解 Elon 的學習超級能力有助於我們深入了解他如何進入一個已經有 100 多年的行業，並改變這領域競爭的整體基礎。

Elon Musk是其中一種，但他的能力並不是神奇的。

想要像 Musk 一樣學習嗎？我建了一個你可能會喜歡的免費“學習如何學習”線上講座。它是基於世界頂尖企業家最佳實踐的學習。

本文獲得原文 How Elon Musk Learns Fast and Better Than Everyone Else 的 Michael Simmons授權。

照片來自 Elon Musk – How I Became The Real ‘Iron Man’ 2017

How to Start a Kid-Focused Business

If you’re a child at heart and an entrepreneur in spirit, you have what it takes to start one of these 5 fabulous kid-oriented businesses.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Do you fondly remember your favorite childhood toys? Do you have happy memories of long games of Monopoly or Risk? Do you find younger kids’ perspectives interesting and often funny? When you see older kids horsing around, do you sometimes get the urge to join in?

If you answered yes to these questions, chances are you enjoy children and the way they play. Chances are also good that you’d enjoy being a part of that play time. You can achieve that by starting a kids-related business. As you’ll discover in this article, now is a great time to do it.

What’s Inside

First things first, however. No matter what your background, skills or interests might be, a solid understanding of the kids’ industry is crucial before you decide where your own special niche might lie. Read on to find out whether a business catering to kids might be for you.

Kids’ Industry Overview

There’s no shortage of potential customers in this industry: According to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, more than 73 million children under age 18 live in America, and this number is growing every year. Birth rates in the late ’80s and ’90s were the highest recorded since the end of the famed baby boom in 1964. By 2020, the number of children is projected to reach 80 million and to account for approximately 24 percent of the U.S. population.

The size of the kids’ population is good news. So is the fact that parents and grandparents are spending more money than ever on children. Most compelling of all, however, is the surge in kids’ own purchasing power.

Because of changes in the social and family roles of children, recent decades have seen sharp increases not only in kids’ direct spending but also in their influence on household spending. In the 1960s, an era when kids were largely expected to be “seen and not heard,” children influenced an estimated $5 billion of their parents’ purchases. Kids now influence upwards of $500 billion in household spending, including food, toiletries, and a host of other items (even the family car!) outside the traditional realm of kids’ products.

So how much do kids spend on products for their own use? According to research conducted by American Demographics magazine, 4-to-12-year-olds spend more than $40 billion, while teenagers (ages 12 to 19) spend $155 billion of their own money.

There’s no question children have more money of their own than ever before-and businesses know it. Children today are the subjects of an unprecedented marketing blitz, not only on TV, but also in school. According to the American Psychological Association, Madison Avenue spends more than $12 billion a year on marketing to children. Child psychologists estimate that the average child sees 40,000 advertisements each year, and that the average 3-year-old can identify 100 brand logos.

What does this mean to you? Children are savvier consumers than ever before. They know what products and toys are out there. To make sure your business will stand out in this marketplace, you have to be sure you’re providing something that kids want-and that means doing lots of research. Let’s start with the following overview of the five kinds of kids’ businesses profiled in this book and the trends shaping each of their industries. In the next chapter, you’ll find more details about how to carve out a specialized niche in one of these businesses.

Trends in Kids’ Businesses Each of the following kids’ businesses-party planning, gift and bath products, educational toys and games, plus-size clothing and cooking classes-is covered in-depth in separate chapters in Kids’-Focused Businesses Startup Guide. For now, here’s a quick industry analysis for each.

Kids’ Party PlanningThis is a booming industry, especially in the teen party sector, where coming-of-age parties are increasingly popular. In addition to the traditional birthday and graduation events, bar and bat mitzvahs and sweet 16 parties signal a trend toward increased celebration of kids’ milestones. Given the significant Hispanic population, quinceñera (age 15) parties in particular can be expected to rise in popularity.

Although no numbers exist for this market, experts predict that the industry will continue to grow, as parents provide not only a greater number of parties but also more expensive ones for their children.

Kids’ Gift and Bath Products The sheer breadth of this category, which encompasses everything from books and music to fragrances, makes it a promising market.

Just to take one tiny subset of the market as an example, parents spend more than $80 million annually on baby soaps in food, drug and discount stores (and that’s not even including Wal-mart), according to market research company Information Resources.

Consider, too, another small segment of the market: baby gifts. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, American births are holding steady at approximately 4 million per year. Multiply that 4 million by the number of gifts given per baby, and you get promising potential in baby gifts alone.

Since spending on and by children typically increases every year, kids’ gift and bath products should be a strong market for the foreseeable future.

Kids’ Educational Toys and GamesThe Toy Industry Association estimates that the traditional toy industry (which doesn’t include electronics such as video games and handheld electronic games) is worth an estimated $22 billion in annual sales, with nearly half those sales being generated during the holidays (see “Toy Story” on page 1.4 for a breakdown of popular toy categories). Educational games like Cranium have enjoyed huge mass appeal. In the eight years since its inception, this board game, together with its sibling titles, has sold more than 15 million games in 10 languages and 30 countries. Educational toys like the LeapFrog learning laptops have also been popular. Industry observers believe that educational toys’ mass-market appeal will only continue to grow, as parents continue to search for meaningful enrichment activities for their children.

Kids’ Plus-Size Clothing Childhood obesity has become an important issue over the past decade. According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, one-third of U.S. children and teens are either obese or on the brink of becoming so. Babies are also larger than ever before, so interest in clothes and equipment for bigger babies and children can only continue to increase.

What’s the size of this market? According to a new study from the Packaged Facts Division of Marketresearch.com, sales of women’s/girls’ plus-size apparel is $47 billion, accounting for 27 percent of all clothing sales and nearly 40 percent of all women’s/girls’ apparel sales. And let’s not forget the boys: Men’s/boys’ big-and-tall sales are $29 billion, representing more than 16 percent of all clothing sales and 50 percent of all men’s/boys’ apparel. And there’s no sign of this market slowing down any time soon.

The NPD Group estimates that in the 9-to-12 age group, 31 percent of boys and 38 percent of girls are sizing up and wearing men’s, juniors’ or women’s sizes. Global Purchasing Co., a retail strategy planning and training firm, notes that the availability of attractive, flattering and stylish children’s plus-size clothing is scarce, and that mothers and children alike are dissatisfied with the selection and styles.

Kids’ Cooking Classes

Parents want their kids to be well-rounded and high-functioning adults. Yet many people either do not have time or do not feel qualified to teach their children traditional skills. Interest has grown in classes that teach cooking, sewing, carpentry and even etiquette. Cooking classes and products for kids have become especially popular.

The proliferation of cooking shows on TV and a recent educational emphasis on health and cooking in response to the childhood obesity epidemic have also added to the number of kids interested in experimenting in the kitchen. According to the Food Network, TV chefs such as Rachael Ray often draw more tween fans than 35-to-45-year-olds at public events. The Bay Area is currently leading the kids’ cooking trend, with interest high in cookbooks, cooking demos and classes, but this market can be expected to keep growing nationwide.

What It Takes

Do you have what it takes to run one of these businesses? Not surprisingly, the typical owner of a kids’ business enjoys being around children. Even if you’re not dealing directly with kids on a daily basis, you’ll still need to get feedback from them and be sensitive to their interests, so having an appreciation for how they think, learn and play is essential.

Personality Matters

Being interested in kids isn’t all you’ll need. Depending on what kind of business you start, you may need some of the following traits as well:

Patience: Working with kids takes patience, even under ideal conditions. Accidents and bad moods can create a tense atmosphere, not to mention you may need to deal with a wide range of behavioral issues, personality differences, energy levels and attention spans. You need to be able to work through it.

Flexibility: The ability to deal with the unpredictable glitches that arise is essential.

Sense of fun and wonder: Kids live in a world of magic, excitement and endless possibilities. Try to enter that world with them. This is especially important if you’re designing kids’ gifts or toys.

Empathy: Remember what it was like to be a kid? The better you are at putting yourself in the place of your young customers, the stronger your business will be.

What’s Inside

Persistence and energy: As with any business, perseverance is an important success factor. Launching a business is a time- and energy-consuming venture. It’s not unusual to work 70 to 80 hours per week during the first year, or even longer.

Helpful Experience In addition to having a personality that meshes well with children, there is an entire range of skills and experience needed to run a business. If you’re operating your business solo, you’ll need all of them to at least some degree, unless you outsource the work. If you hire employees, make sure to hire people whose skills complement, rather than duplicate, yours.

As a general rule, you should have some kind of experience with whatever you’re selling. You or your employees may need a background in the following:

Sales/marketing: While you don’t need a degree, you do need to be good at selling-or hire someone who is.

Public relations: Any business owner needs to know some basic guidelines for dealing with the public and the media.

Accounting/bookkeeping: If you don’t have an employee to handle these tasks, consider outsourcing them. To tackle them yourself, you’ll need some previous experience and preferably a bookkeeping class.

Management: Chances are, you’ll start out with no employees and therefore won’t need this experience. As your business grows, it may become more important. The more employees you have, the more time you’ll spend on management-type tasks. Informal management experience is usually sufficient for dealing with a small number of employees.

Design: If you’re planning to design the products you sell, you’ll need some design experience, preferably with the particular kind of item you have in mind.

Sewing/arts/crafts: Launching a custom sewing business (for custom-made plus-size kids’ clothes) naturally requires skill at sewing.

Teaching: A teaching background is helpful, although not mandatory, for conducting cooking lessons. You can get by without formal training, but it’s best to have at least some practical experience.

Cooking: As common sense would indicate, you need cooking experience, even if it’s not formal training, to teach cooking classes. Even if you hire all your teachers, knowledge of cooking basics is important.

Event planning: There’s no substitute for experience in party planning. Consider volunteering to help at a few children’s events or getting a part-time job with another party planner to learn the ropes.

Parenting/mentoring: No matter what kind of kids-related business you decide to start, experience with children is important. If you don’t have it, do whatever it takes to get it.

Niches Business by Business

Following are some niche possibilities for each of the five types of kids-related businesses. Keep in mind, however, that children’s products and services already constitute a niche market. For some of these business types, further specialization may not be practical.

What’s Inside

Kids’ Party Planning You already know you’ll need to make yourself stand out in kids’ party planning by establishing some kind of niche, but where should you look for one?

Probably nowhere, at least not immediately. Instead, you should try different types of parties to see which work best for you and which offer the best market for you. This strategy will also help ensure that you don’t wind up without enough parties to plan..

Even once you’re better established, be careful not to restrict your market too much. You can become known for, say, tea parties and yet still produce other kinds of children’s, and even adults’, events. In all but the biggest, most affluent markets, too narrow a niche is a problem in children’s event planning.

With the understanding, then, that perhaps only about half your business may be in a niche market, here are some possible ideas:

Tea parties: Usually these are dress-up parties at which “tea” is served and often a little etiquette lesson given. These are popular for girls in the 4-to-9-year-old age range. With the proper marketing and adjustment of activities, the age range could probably even be extended beyond 9.

Spa parties: Any kind of “pamper me” party is popular with girls 10 and up. Hair, makeup, manicures or pedicures, facials and any other pampering activity are good entertainment ideas.

Holiday parties: Christmas parties are the most common, but any holidays are possible. You’ll need to target a geographic area with high levels of disposable income.

Bar or bat mitzvah parties: These can be a good bet in areas with a significant Jewish population. “About 40 percent of my business is bar and bat mitzvahs,” says event planner Beth Shubert, owner of Glen Rock, New Jersey-based Evention Inc.

quinceñera (age 15) parties: In areas with relatively higher Hispanic populations, this is a good niche possibility. Overall, as the U.S. Hispanic population increases to a projected 25 percent, this niche will get even better!

Sweet 16 parties: So far, this type of party is prevalent only in the trendiest, wealthiest areas. But that could change.

High school-related parties: Prom, homecoming, winter formal, senior breakfast and graduation can provide a niche market in areas of the country with large schools. Currently, California seems to be the main market for professionally planned school parties, but the market may expand.

If you decide to try a niche, keep in mind that what’s trendy or popular in one area of the country may not be in another. How do you find out this information? One way is by interviewing professionals in related fields. Photographers, florists and caterers know what types of events are popular in their areas. They may even have suggestions for site personnel (such as hotel managers, for example) you should talk to.

In addition, interview prospective clients in affluent households. Doctors’ offices and law offices are good places to start. Also, joining local business organizations can put you in contact with businesspeople with high levels of disposable income. If you say you’re conducting market research and then keep your questions to a minimum-four at most-people will usually cooperate.

Kids’ Gift and Bath Products Creating a product to fill a need that you have in your own life is one good way to find a niche. When Nicole Donnelly, for example, wanted her baby to go diaperless for a while to clear up a rash, she needed a way to keep the baby’s legs warm and her knees padded for crawling. “I cut up a pair of my socks and made little baby leg warmers,” she says. The idea was an instant hit and she sold 100 pairs in two weeks. She launched her company, BabyLegs, in Seattle in 2005.

The following are some possible niche ideas for children’s gift and bath products:

Craft kits: scrapbooking, knitting, sewing, woodworking, jewelry

Accessories: handbags, totes, backpacks, hats, scarves, gloves, hair décor

Storage containers: hat, jewelry, trinket or treasure boxes

Jewelry: dress-up, casual, “best friends” sets, backpack décor

New baby/sibling items: blankets, T-shirts, photo albums

Bedroom or locker accessories: photo frames, memory books, wastebaskets, desk accessories

Personalized items: Just about anything above could fit into this category!

Ethnic/world culture items: dolls and other toys from around the world, ethnic dolls, world games

Organic bath products: shampoo, lotion, body scrub, bubble bath

There’s no substitute for getting out there, doing the legwork and finding out what’s available. Check out any trade shows or consumer gift shows you can find. While the main trade shows for the gift industry are in major cities like New York, Atlanta and Dallas, many cities across the United States host consumer shows.

Kids’ Educational Toys and Games Whether you’re selling ready-made toys and games or those you produce yourself, it’s a good idea to remember that educational toys and games already make up a well-defined niche. However, if you’re starting up with low costs and you have an expansive reach (such as by using direct mail or the internet to get the word out), you could specialize in one or more of the following ways:

Age group: baby, preschool, primary, tween, teen

Skill type: motor skills, alphabet, reading, hand-eye coordination, cognitive skills

Activity type: toy, game, puzzle, enrichment, sports, dress-up

Play medium: paper, game board, manipulatives, keyboard

Kids’ Plus-Size Clothing Although the children’s casual plus-size clothing market may be well enough served, it seems clear that plus-size clothing for teens and young adults is a good niche opportunity. When LeRona Johnson launched her teen and young adult plus-size clothing store, MerriBella Fashions, in 2006 in Chicago, she knew how hard it was to find fashionable clothing to please her own teenage daughter. For her 15-year-old, the Lane Bryant retail store wasn’t an option. The styles and fabric types were different from what her friends wore. And she had another objection. “She doesn’t want to shop where her mom shops,” says Johnson.

Department stores are problematic, too. Those that carry junior plus sizes are few and far between, and selection is limited.

In her store, Johnson stocks the types of styles her daughter wants to wear. Customer response to MerriBella’s trendy, youthful style selections has been enthusiastic. “It makes me feel good to hear customers say they’ve been looking for a place like this,” says Johnson. One of her customers lives in Iowa. “She comes up here once a month and shops with us because she says she can’t find these types of things for her daughter.”

What’s the secret? Doing something different, according to Johnson. “You really have to have that niche,” she says. “You have to pretty much be doing something no one else is doing, or the competition, the bigger stores, will kill you every time.”.

If you plan to sew custom clothing, your avenues for eventual specialization might be wide open. According to veteran pattern maker Sarah Doyle, who spent several years collecting measurements of plus-size children, current standard industry plus sizes are often not “plus” enough. Although clients are unlikely to pay custom prices for some basic kids’ clothing items like T-shirts and shorts, there are other items Doyle says they will pay more for. These include the following:

Formalwear: bridesmaid and prom dresses, suits

Casualwear: fashionable tops, skirts and pants

Underwear: slips, sport bras

Outerwear: coats, jackets, snow pants, sweatshirts

Nightwear: pajamas, nightgowns, robe

Kids’ Cooking Classes This type of service is novel enough that making parents aware of it, and getting them to pay for it, should be a greater priority than looking for a narrower niche market. A further challenge is that most children are in school much of the day.

You can be creative in structuring your classes, however. For example, what about offering a cooking class that focuses on foods inspired by popular kids’ book characters like Harry Potter or American Girls? Talk to parents of prospective students (starting with your friends and acquaintances) and see what kinds of classes interest them.

Days in the Life of..

Kids’ Party Planning Event planners typically find themselves performing a whole range of tasks, particularly when they first start out. For many planners, this variety in their working life is part of the job’s appeal. From phone negotiations and computer data inputting to shopping around for that perfect site and brainstorming the ideal party theme, planners wear many hats-sometimes even an emergency rescue one!

Yvette Jackson and Tiffany Brown own Wow! Special Events in Huntington Beach, California; the company specializes in high school events such as proms. Jackson recounts the time a deejay forgot to bring the coronation song for the crowning of the prom king and queen. “One of our coordinators ran home, downloaded it from the internet, burned a CD and ran it over to the venue,” she says.

What’s Inside

If your company provides one or more vendor services, such as décor, floral treatments or entertainment, your day will include even more variety, since you’ll add painting, construction, flower arranging and talent scouting to the list of possibilities. Whatever you do, your day will be filled with people, so make sure you enjoy working with others! Solid time management skills and the ability to multitask are also important. All in all, planning parties involves a delicate balance of the practical and the creative.

Kids’ Gift and Bath Products Eleanor Keare, president and co-owner of Santa Monica, California-based Circle of Friends, a children’s bath products company started in 1995, says her day is split between the present and the future. She spends a significant amount of time approving orders, maintaining accounts, dealing with customer service issues, checking inventory and supplies, and making sure that production is moving forward. To develop new business, she oversees accounts, looks into acquisitions and works on developing new products.

Kids’ Educational Toys and Games If you sell ready-made toys and games, your day-to-day activities will be similar to those of other owners of inventory-based retail businesses. If you develop your own toys and games and then sell them, your primary activities will depend on what stage of development your toys and games are in and how you decide to develop and sell them. In general, however, you’ll add research, design, testing, manufacturing and packaging to the general activities common to most businesses.

Andrea Barthello and her husband, Bill Ritchie, started ThinkFun, originally named Binary Arts, in 1985 in the basement of their house. They started out making brain-teaser puzzles based on binary-code concepts of the kind used in computers. “We evolved into calling them mind-challenging games when we came up with Rush Hour, a multilevel game,” says Barthello.

Once they finished their design and development, they found their time sharply divided. “We were trying to sell [our games] during the day and making them at night,” says Barthello. They looked for local target markets, phoned business owners and provided product samples to prospective specialty store customers.

These days, ThinkFun occupies a large two-story building. The company’s award-winning games are sold in most educational toy stores and also in huge retailers like Barnes & Noble and Target. While Ritchie and other company executives head up operations and product development, Barthello handles corporate development and sales and marketing. You, too, can expect to be involved in a variety of different activities, many of them concurrently.

Kids’ Plus-Size Clothing If you’re starting a retail business, then your day will probably be similar to that of any retail store owner. You’ll approve orders, sell to customers, supervise employees, check inventory levels, deal with customer service issues and do a host of other tasks as well, depending on your sales venue.

MerriBella Fashions owner LeRona Johnson spends a significant portion of her time on research. She looks for wholesale clothing online at www.fashiongo.net and www.lashowroom.com . She checks out the competition in local malls. She also keeps a close eye on her customer database. “I want to know who my customers are, who’s shopping with us on a regular basis, and how much they’re spending,” she says. She sends customers coupons and information on new clothing lines. She also stays current on building plans in the area, especially since she’s planning an expansion within the next two years.

Johnson also feels it’s important for her to spend time on the sales floor. “No one should know your business more than you,” she says, “and [you should] know what your customers are asking for.”

If you’re creating custom-made plus-size clothes, then you have a service business rather than an inventory-based one. Most of your day will be spent at your sewing machine, with additional time allowance for consultations, fittings and paperwork. “Sometimes I go fabric shopping with a client,” says Mary Stevens, a Cincinnati-based entrepreneur who started creating custom garments in 2004 under the shingle Majestic Sewing and Apparel.

A designer’s day includes reading current fashion magazines, newspapers, and other media that reflect current trends and tastes. You might attend fashion shows or meet with customers and contractors. You are constantly on the look-out for new ideas, whether you do that by sketching new designs or scanning the net.

Kids’ Cooking Classes Just imagine it: You tool through the farmers’ market in the morning, picking out the freshest produce and the most tempting cheeses. You stop at the coffee shop, where you sip your favorite brew while researching French history on your laptop. At the bakery you buy two baguettes. Then it’s onward to pick up four aprons donated by a local gourmet shop.

Back at the office, you collect the recipes you’ll need and put the finishing touches on your lesson plan: Dinner in Paris. Then you open mail, collecting several deposit checks. After school, the kids arrive. They make a perfect tarte a l’oignon (onion tart) appetizer, followed by an equally wonderful boeuf bourguignon, salad and crepes. You send them off and leave the remaining cleanup to your assistant while you answer messages and book four more 6-year-old girls into your Eloise in the Kitchen summer camp.

You’ll probably do at least some of these things, although you’ll also undertake many other less glamorous tasks, like testing recipes, mopping up assorted spills and figuring out a last-minute substitute for that burned tray of hors d’oeuvres.

Start-Up Costs for.

Kids’ Party Planning Your startup costs will vary tremendously, depending on where you locate, what your insurance costs will be and what kind of equipment you decide to buy. Let’s look at two hypothetical party-planning businesses. The low-end business is homebased with no employees. The sole proprietor already has a computer, online access, a printer/copier/fax machine, a cell phone, a digital camera and office furniture. She used her startup money to buy liability insurance, event-planning software and business cards. She also paid for licenses, taxes and website design, for which she employed a computer science major. She needs $3,520 to launch her business.

The higher-end business is a LLC. It occupies 800 square feet of office space in a large city. Its owner has a full-time planner and a part-time bookkeeper. She upgraded her computer equipment, bought office furniture, and added a phone line and a professionally designed website. She also bought high-priced liability insurance because of her location in the greater Los Angeles area, which has experienced terrorist activity. She invested in business cards, stationery and an ad in the Yellow Pages. Her startup total is $29,183. Both owners derive their income from pretax net profit. Annually, these businesses will gross $70,000 and $200,000, respectively, after the first year or two.

So how much can you expect to bring home in the first year from a kids’ party-planning business? Keep in mind that it will probably take you two to three years to make a healthy profit. Why? Because your most effective advertising will be word-of-mouth, and that takes time.

Industry expert Laurie Saunders estimates that a new kids’ party planner with a business similar to the lower-end one in our example might be able to make a first-year salary of about $20,000.

Kids’ Gift and Bath ProductsStartup costs for this kind of business will depend on what you sell and how you sell and store it, as well as where you locate and how much equipment you buy.

Nicole Donnelly’s initial sales of baby leg warmers to friends and acquaintances required only enough money to buy socks to alter, but once she decided to launch her business and get an overseas manufacturer, her costs went up. She needed a minimum order of 500 pairs of leg warmers, at $3 per pair, making her initial product investment $1,500. Her other costs were few, since she started homebased.

Let’s again look at preopening costs for two hypothetical gift and bath businesses. The first is a homebased business with no employees. The sole proprietor designs her own product and sells it at fairs, shows and other events, as well as online. She already has a computer, online access, a printer/copier/fax machine, a cell phone, a digital camera and office furniture. She used her startup money to pay for production supplies, product liability insurance, booth construction and site rental, some travel expenses (mostly local) and business cards. She also paid for licenses, taxes and a website that a college student designed. In addition, she applied for a provisional patent for her product. At minimum, she needs $4,180.

The more expensive business is an online corporation, operated from a 1,000-square-foot warehouse. Its owner has a full-time fulfillment employee and a part-time bookkeeper. She upgraded her computer equipment and bought some low-cost office furniture and warehouse equipment. She has a multiline phone system and a retail store on Yahoo! She also invested in business cards. Her startup cost is closer to $26,763.

Both owners derive their income from pretax net profit. Annually, these businesses will gross $90,000 and $250,000, respectively, after the first year or two.

How much can you expect to make in the first year from a kids’ gift and bath products business? That depends in large part on how much selling you do. It also depends on how much of your revenue goes back into building your business. It took Nicole Donnelly only a year and a half to make a profit because her Seattle company was growing quickly. But in some cases, it takes longer to make a profit.

Alternatively, if you sell popular products at a booth in a region where you can do shows most of the year, you could make $40,000 the first year.

Kids’ Educational Toys and Games Startup costs are hard to quantify in this type of business. The ranges are huge, depending on what you sell and how you sell it. For example, a homebased business selling only a few different games or toys might cost anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000 to launch, or even more, depending on how much inventory and equipment you buy and whether you have a website.

When Andrea Barthello and her husband, Bill Ritchie, started ThinkFun in 1985, they worked from home. “We literally made stuff in our basement,” says Barthello. They needed no office equipment. They did buy wood, wire and some woodworking equipment for assembling prototypes of their brain-teaser puzzles. “We probably spent a couple thousand dollars,” Barthello says. They also spent about $3,000 on the services of an expert woodworker and additional funds on other general startup expenses. But theirs was still a small initial startup.

For a sole proprietor who designs her own toys, manufactures them overseas and sells them to retailers, her startup funds-spent on inventory, provision patent and trademark protection, licenses and taxes, product liability insurance and packaging supplies-the startup costs could be $7,400, assuming a friend designs her website and she already owns office equipment.

For a 600-square-foot retail toy and game store, let’s assume the business partners have one part-time employee. They used their startup money to rent their store space, equip their store and buy inventory. They also have utilities, insurance, advertising and promotion costs. Since they use their home to run the business, they did not need office equipment, and they have no website yet, although they expect to add one later. Their total startup cost is $44,330.

Both owners derive their income from pretax net profit. Annually, these businesses will gross $60,000 and $200,000, respectively, after the first year or two.

What can you expect to make the first year? Again, income ranges are equally broad in the toy and game industry. Earnings depend on how much you sell, how you sell it, and how much you put back into the business. Barthello estimates that in their first year of business, they sold $50,000 worth of product.

Kids’ Plus-Size ClothingAccording to MerriBella Fashions owner LeRona Johnson, the typical startup figure for a small brick-and-mortar retail clothing store is more than double what her own startup costs were. “Most people I know spent close to $50,000 starting up,” she says. Johnson, however, spent $20,000. What made the difference for her? Four years of careful planning and resulting stellar deals on inventory, equipment and furniture, all of which are major expenses. By keeping her eye out for store closings and furniture cast-offs, she shaved thousands of dollars off her startup costs.

She also prioritized and made sure she got the most bang for her buck. “The most important thing was to make sure we had great inventory. I knew that was the key to everything.” Accordingly, she spent half her startup money, or $10,000, on the best fashions she could find. But even though her inventory costs were proportionately high, she still spent thousands less than average. Starting well ahead of her opening, she scoured the inventory of Chicago-area stores that were closing. “I got a lot of stock at very low prices,” she says.

The financial investment required to start a homebased custom clothing business is “very minimal,” according to industry expert Sarah Doyle. If you locate in commercial space, however, your costs will naturally be higher. Depending on how much equipment and supplies you already own, plan on spending $900 to $12,000 for startup.

How much money can you make selling plus-size clothing? Johnson expects MerriBella Fashions to break even after two years. Currently, most of her revenue gets pumped back into the business. However, within the next year and a half, she expects to achieve gross revenues of $240,000 per year and an annual net income for herself of $50,000. Once she expands, as she plans to do within two years, those figures will go higher. “You have to start small,” she explains.

Income from a custom clothing business will depend not only on what you sew, but also on how fast you sew. Doyle estimates that a business owner with considerable sewing experience (who therefore sews fairly rapidly) could make approximately $30,000 the first year. Since, as a general rule, profits are higher on formalwear, you could make even more than that. And if you expand your business and hire help, you could increase your earnings still more.

Kids’ Cooking ClassesIn this industry as well, startup costs and income ranges vary tremendously. The amount of your overhead is the biggest factor. Others include how many students you teach and how much you charge each student per hour.

Let’s list preopening costs for two hypothetical kids’ cooking businesses. The first is homebased with no employees. The sole proprietor already has a fully equipped home kitchen. She also has a computer, online access, a printer/copier/fax machine, a cell phone, a digital camera and office furniture. She needs no state culinary licensing and has no website yet. She used her startup money to buy liability insurance, kids’ kitchen tools and aprons, pantry supplies and a small amount of advertising. She also paid for general licenses and taxes. Her business cost just $3,080 to start up.

The higher-end business is an LLC. It occupies 900 square feet of retail space in what used to be a small restaurant. Its owner has a full-time teacher and a part-time helper. Although major appliances and plumbing and gas hookups already existed, she bought one new (noncommercial) oven range, kitchen tools and supplies, three kitchen work tables and 12 chairs. She also paid for a phone line, utilities and a professionally designed website. Since she uses her home office, she needed no office equipment, except for a filing cabinet. She did have to pay for liability insurance, state-required culinary licensing and general licenses and taxes. She invested in a brochure and some advertising. Her startup cost is closer to $20,820.

Both owners derive their income from pretax net profit. The homebased business averages three students per class, because four is the largest number that will comfortably fit in her kitchen. The commercially located business averages six students per class. Annually, these businesses will gross $60,000 and $240,000, respectively, after the first year or two.

So how much can you expect to make in the first year from a business offering kids’ cooking classes? “Don’t expect to make money right away,” cautions industry expert Julia Jordan. Keep in mind that it will probably take you two to three years to make a healthy profit. Why? Again, as with most service-related businesses, your most effective advertising will be word-of-mouth, and that takes time.

Resources

What’s Inside

Associations

  • American Apparel and Footwear Association
  • American Culinary Federation
  • American Home Sewing Association
  • American Sewing Guild
  • American Specialty Toy Retailing Association
  • Association of Game and Puzzle Collectors
  • Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association
  • Craft & Hobby Association
  • Craft Retailers Association for Tomorrow
  • Game Manufacturers Association
  • International Association of Culinary Professionals
  • International Council of Toy Industries
  • International Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association
  • International Special Events Society
  • Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association
  • National Association of Independent Artists
  • National Craft Association
  • National Retail Federation
  • National Specialty Gift Association
  • Toy Industry Association
  • Women In Toys

Publications

  • Apparel News
  • Playthings Magazine
  • Special Events Magazine
  • Toy Book

Trade Shows

  • Accessories the Show
  • ASAP Global Sourcing Show
  • Boston Gift Show
  • Chicago International Toy and Game Fair
  • Dallas Men’s and Boys’ Apparel Market
  • MAGIC Marketplace Fashion industry
  • National Stationery Show
  • New York International Gift Fair
  • New York International Toy Fair
  • San Francisco International Gift Fair

相信自己、要求自己，更要會鼓勵自己

What is 自己？ how to know them?

  1. 價值觀 >> Internal
  2. 熱誠 >> Internal
  3. 志向 >> Internal
  4. 適合的環境For 居住 and 工作 >> Internal
  5. 你有什麼影響力？ >> External

今天跟你分享一個人，叫「羅傑．羅爾斯」他的故事。他出生在一個聲名狼藉的貧民窟裡面，在這個貧民窟裡面長大的孩子，很少有很好的成就。 但是呢，在羅爾斯讀小學的時候，他的校長就曾經對他說。他說：「我看你修長的小拇指，就知道你將來會是紐約州的州長。」 在那個時候呢，羅爾斯很驚訝，因為從來沒有人這麼看重過他；而後來呢，他也牢牢的記下校長對他說的這句話，而且還深信不疑。 從那天開始他就奮發圖強，他不再把自己全身弄得髒兮兮、他也呢不在課堂上搞怪，認真學習；他相信自己未來真的可以成為州長。 結果呢，在他51歲的那一年，還真的當上了紐約州的州長。就在他就職演說的時候，他說了一段話。 他說：「信念到底值多少錢？信念本身是不值錢的。它有時候甚至只是一個善意的欺騙；然而呢，你一旦堅持下去，它就會迅速升值。」 這個故事很雞湯我知道，但它是一個真實的故事；然而這個真實的故事，它還有另外一個特別的價值。 就是羅傑．羅爾斯，他除了是紐約州的第53任州長之外；他也是紐約歷史上，第一位黑人州長。 這個故事，其實就是體現一個心理學的詞彙，叫做「畢馬龍效應」。 我們每個人，會因為他人的期待、讚美跟肯定，去影響自己的情感跟觀念；繼而去改變自己的行為，以符合他人的暗示或期待。 這就是「畢馬龍效應」能夠帶給我們的。我們相信什麼，我們就會成為什麼；我們期待什麼，就會得到什麼。 其實這也是心理學家，威廉．詹姆斯他說過的話：「人類本質當中最殷切的需求，就是渴望被別人肯定。」 所以呢，當你聽到這裡，先不說你怎麼看待你身旁的人，我要先說的是，你怎麼看待你？ 我常常遇到很多朋友，尤其是愛學習的朋友，往往是自我要求高的。自我要求沒什麼不好；但是呢，我常常會遇到很多人，他把「自我要求」變成是一種「自我批判」。 他總看到自己做的不好的地方，然而他事實上，從來不好好的鼓勵自己，做得好的地方。 他總是去看自己距離完美的差距，而不去看他從過去是怎麼走到現在；而在這個過程當中，一點一滴到底是怎麼前進的？ 我常常會跟我的員工、我的同事，跟他們分享我自己一路以來的信念；就是相信自己、要求自己，然而要更會「鼓勵自己」。 然而這個時候，我的同事就會問我：「那麼相信、要求自己，在具體的呈現會是什麼呢？」；我會說喔：「你要能夠看得很遠，但是你要能夠做得很近。」 看得很遠，這意味著你不斷的去看，你可能走到的最遠的地方，也就是那個目標、也就是那個夢想，你要永遠把目光放在那裡。 但是呢，你要做的很近，你要做好眼前的事情；你眼前的哪怕是再小、再微不足道的事情，你都要能夠做到位。 我還記得自己當年用一個很爛的器材，而且呢，完全沒有概念的做「有聲書評」的狀況底下，我其實在心中就一直相信，這是能夠走出一條路的，而這一條路可以去成就我自己。 然而在那個想法底下，我也很務實的、一點一滴的去升級不管是我的器材、我的認知、我的錄製技巧。 而且呢，我更在那一點一滴的過程當中，不管是這個市場有沒有看中我、這個市場有沒有人在乎我？我都是專心的去做好，每一步我該做的事。 所以呢，在看的很遠，但是做眼前的狀況底下，我一步一步走到了今天。如果你一路聽我的「一天聽一點」，覺得受到了一些啟發與幫助、受到了一些鼓勵。 事實上，除了內容的分享之外，我更希望讓你知道的是，我是怎麼看待自己？我是怎麼樣相信自己，並且要求自己？ 因為相信，你就會看得遠；因為要求，你就會把眼前的事情做好。 而不是像有一些人既看不遠，但是又沒有把眼前的事情，真正的做到位。你可以說是不上不下、你也可以說是半吊子。 不管你用什麼形容詞，你永遠記得相信自己、要求自己，更要懂得適時的鼓勵自己。或許在這一步一步、一點一滴的累積底下，慢慢的你就可以活出你想要的樣子。 希望今天的這一段話，能夠帶給你一些激勵。沒有錯！