Rule 1: Have a Vision Have a clear vision, a set of ultimate goals you want to reach, an idea of the contribution

you want to make to peoples lives; and a set of basic values to rule your behavior and your relations in pursuing these goals. Making money should be the end, not the cause of the business you want to be in. Rule 2: Share the Vision You cannot reach your vision alone. You must share it with others who are willing to walk down the same path as you. Some will walk at the same pace, staying next to you. Others will walk at a slower pace than you and be left behind. And a third group will walk faster than you and get ahead of you. But you should all remember that you walk towards the same destination. Rule 3: Execute Keep your sight on the dream, the business you want to build, and get the job done. Develop a network, a form of collective entrepreneurship that allows you and your associates to nurture and grow your business. Rule 4: Lead by Inspiration Never become complacent with what you have accomplished in the past. Always persuade and inspire your associates, serve as their role model and mentor to help them overcome the many hurdles of building a successful business.

Rule 5: Train and Support Constantly train and support your associates. Train them on new products and new technologies, and on emerging trends. Support them with state-of-the art logistics and business practices that create the right mid-set, the morale for remaining focused and executing the business. Rule 6: Share the risks and rewards with those who are prepared to share your dream and contribute resources and energy to it. Business builders are like community leaders. They begin with people, vision, and relationships and advance with the creation of an organization and the shaping of a strategy. But unlike conventional community leaders who offer people charity and philanthropy, business builders offer choice and opportunity Choice about what to do with their lives, and opportunity to better their lives. Step 1: Stop being self-absorbed, get out of your cocoon, and search for a purpose that will add meaning and excitement in your life. Step 2: Move to a new neighborhood, a new town, where people appreciate different ways of thinking. Go to a new school; find a new mentor. Step 3: Acquire new acquaintances and new friends, who appreciate who you are, and help you find your element, your passion the right field of study, the right occupation, sport or activity that matches your inner strengths and capabilities which you might or might not even know

you possess. Spending countless hours with your friends criticizing others for what is wrong with your life may give you comfort, but it distracts you from your search for your element. Step 4: Develop good habits. They are, in essence, behavioral autopilot, argues Chip Health & Dan Health in Switch. To change yourself or other people, youve got to change habits. Another way of putting it is this: very often we find ourselves involved in jobs and various occupations, which we derive little to no satisfaction or they dont totally fulfill us. Yet we continue on the same line because this is what we have been taught to do and dont have the guts to walk away from a well-paid job. There comes a time to move away from unfulfilling contexts. Step 5: Change the Choice Architecture of your life, as Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Suntein put it in the Nudge. Arrange your choices in a way that makes the desired choice most accessible to you. For instance, if you are good as a dancer, you may want to live near a theater district. If you are good in sports, you may want to live near a sports center, and so on. If you are an impulsive shopper, dont be a frequent visitor of the local malls. If you are concerned about your weight, dont pass by the hamburger restaurant. The bottom line: If you arent happy with your life, change your lifestyle, your personal attitudes, and the context you live in. 1. Get your Priorities Right

Setting priorities right is about making intelligent choices, deciding what goals to pursue in which order, which takes vision and foresight. Intelligent people rise over the hills and valleys of the present to gaze over the hills and the valleys of the future and see the invisible and the challenges it holds. Renowned entrepreneurs like Microsofts (NASDAQ:MSFT) founder Bill Gates, Apples founder (NASDAQ:AAPL) Steve Jobs, and Facebooks founder Mark Zuckerberg had such vision and foresight; they could see how technology could change the lives of everyday people; and came up with products and services that will turn their vision into reality. Getting your priorities right is about choosing whether to go to school, start your own business or working for somebody else; whether to get married or stay singled; whether to have children or not; whether to stay married or get divorced; whether to remarry if widowed or divorced; and you have to choose how to spend your money. 2. Use Resources Wisely Using resources wisely is also about making intelligent choices. It is about deriving the most value out of limited resources; shopping around for the right merchandise by asking three simple questions: Do I need this piece of merchandise? Is the price right? Is this merchandise the best use of my money? In some cases, using resources wisely means more than shopping around for bargains for the right merchandise. It also means paying the least interest and finance charges

for the things you buy on credit. Shop around for the lowest interest rates on a home mortgage; refinance when interest rates fall sufficiently; and stay away from consumer debt and finance charges that add to the price of the merchandise you buy. 3. Stay Focused Staying focused means sticking with your priorities and goals; focusing on the message, not on the background noise; and executing. Take the right steps to reach your goals. Thats all that matters in the end. It takes patience, persistence, and discipline to stay focused. Patience to overcome the hurdles that stand between you and your goal; persistence to overcome the failures, setbacks, and temptations that may take you off course; and discipline to play the game right, to comply with all the rules: know what you are doing, be punctual, and work out all the details. 4. Develop the Right Relations Reaching a certain goal requires moral and psychological stamina. It takes skills and resources no single individual possesses. This means that in pursuing personal success, people need friends and partners to overcome the many obstacles that stand between them and their personal goals. At school, friends can provide the moral and psychological support to endure and overcome the pressure that comes with class lectures, homework, exams, and term paper deadlines. Partners provide the information and expertise to go over complex concepts and

to complete coursework projects, sharing of class notes, participating in discussion groups. At work, friends provide the moral and psychological support to endure and overcome workplace-related stress, meeting project deadlines, handling customer complains, and dealing with internal politics. Partners provide skills and expertise to complete complex projects that require cooperation among several parties. Friendships and partnerships is a trait shared by many successful company founders, including HP (NYSE:HPQ) founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen. 5. Dont be Greedy Greed is the idolization and relentless pursuit of something that lets people distinguish and set themselves apart from othersmoney, power, status, and so on; the feeling that they never have enough of it, and nothing can stop them from amassing and accumulating it. Greed is an obsession thatlike alcoholnumbs peoples senses, blurs their vision, and makes them lose sight of the Big Picture. Greed leads people to live a life of imbalance and disproportion, a life of reckless and dangerous behavior. People who want everything in life fail to negotiate with others and compromise, and end up losing everything. People, who want everything from personal friendships and partnerships and become selfish and arrogant, end up destroying them.

6. Dont be Complacent Complacency is the opposite of greed. Its the idolization of things people have accomplished, the feeling that they have reached the telos (ultimate destination). This may sound contradictory to what was argued earlier about staying focused, but success isnt an entitlement. It cannot be taken for granted. Successful people cannot afford to be complacent because good times do not last forever, especially in a rapidly changing world. Thats why complacency is dangerous. People who are complacent with their accomplishments fail to catch up with the rest of the world and are left behind. At school, students who are complacent about their performance at the beginning the semester eventually lag behind their peers and end up failing the course. At work, workers who become complacent and take their jobs for granted fail to keep up with the demands of the marketplace by upgrading their skills and are the first in line to be laid off in an economic downturn. In marriage, people who become complacent about what they have accomplished and take each other for granted, end with apathy and indifference for each other.