Strength In Business Krisz Rokk

I failed many times in the past and will continue to do so in the future. I’m addicted to failing fast, readjusting my approach, tweaking the strategy, and moving forward. Does this make you (if you do the same) or me a failure? NO!







You must move out of the comfort zone bubble to grow and accomplish your dreams. The moment you do that, your rate of failure will increase exponentially. The trick is to fail quickly and learn from those failures. Another trick is to learn from other people’s failures.







Will you repeat certain “mistakes” or “failures” (for lack of a better word) over and over again? Probably. I do it until my biological computer inside this physical avatar gets it on a deep subatomic level. The moment the cells integrate the information and lesson that comes with it accordingly, I will stop repeating the so-called “failure.”







This is what people get entirely wrong. They associate failing with being a failure. And that my friends is very dangerous.







Failing and Succeeding are on the Same Spectrum







… more specifically, they are one and the same thing.







What I just wrote is very difficult for the human mind to comprehend. In a world of duality and separation, it’s hard to bring across a concept based on unity.







Good and bad, young and old, female and male, up and down, left and right, light and dark are all part of everything and, consequently, nothing. We thrive when we are one and struggle when fighting our perceived enemy in the mirror, which merely reflects who we are at the core.







Let’s take this quantum physics law and apply it to business as it’s one of the most straightforward fields to dissect based on quantifiable metrics such as revenue, profits, company size, number of employees, etc.







In business and entrepreneurship, we link success to money and failure to lack of it. Obviously, through the rise of social media networks, we added a few more “blurry” components and labels to success, such as influencers or number of followers, to add a couple; however, the main pillar remains money.







Unless you inherited loads of money from a generational endeavor or married a wealthy fellow/lady, chances are you’ll fail your way to success and, if all goes well, to money and wealth.







The following quote by Winston Churchill comes to mind:







“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”







A Failure? Really? Come On, Wake Up







You’re a Diving Spark, a beautiful soul, a quantum architect, and a powerful being.







Stop associating failure with you.







Stop believing all the narratives cleverly perpetrated throughout various mediums and networks. They are meant to keep you small. Their primary purpose is to make you drop into the low-vibrational frequency of fear so that you allow your precious energy and life force to be sucked out of you.







Remember who you are. Know that you are amazing, a supersonic beacon of light with stellar capabilities.







Step up to the game of business and life. Fail forward, fail fast, and get up. You’ve done this for billions of years. Trust your innate intelligence. Own your outcomes.







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Image by the blowup via Unsplash

Test, iterate, and retest. Testing the variables, and refining a product or service through repeated adjustment cycles is in essence marketing and this is what people get wrong.







I’ve been operating in this space for more than two decades now and whenever I’m asked what precise code will unlock the treasure trove, I humbly reply with: “We’ll need to test it.”







There is no recipe for success to be replicated 1:1 to achieve the same results. Variables differ across businesses, time, ecosystems, economies, etc. Everything is in a constant flow and therefore you’ll need to test what works best for you in that specific time frame.







Yes, there are key ingredients to success that are the foundation aka the main pillars required to attain a certain outcome. Those should be included in the recipe. Apart from that, you’ll encounter a plethora of variables that add a specific flavor and a unique spice to what it is you’re offering.







Indeed, success leaves clues, and there’s a lot of wisdom in adhering to core principles that enable you to mirror processes and fast-track the learning curve.







However, testing will reveal the good and the bad to help you understand where you’re at.







Get As Many “NO”’s As Possible Out of Way







So then, what’s marketing all about?







Here’s the non-academic and non-mainstream approach to marketing:









* Test as many variables as you possibly can. Test them in sequence but also test groups of variables at once.







* Adjust continuously. Be ferocious when it comes to improving your copywriting, the imagery, the color palette, etc.







* Take ownership of testing results. This will catapult your ability to deal with rejection.







* Test quickly. Don’t wing it. Communicate the steps to your team.







* Use the feedback loop to improve.







* Test again. And again. And again.







* Build a marketing bouquet of “NO”s. Learn from the journey.







* Sharpen your skills and acquire new ones.







* Stay open-minded.







* Be flexible.







* Tweak your approach to testing aka marketing as you move along.









This gives you a fair insight as to what blueprint my team and I follow when we embark on a new marketing adventure with a client.







Here’s What Marketing Is NOT …







Marketing is not your brand, story, tagline, website, or some fancy ad on Facebook.







If we reverse-engineer the concept of marketing we end up with testing.







Big retail companies continuously test the store layout. They even have a department in charge of this task; it’s the category managers. Ecomm shops always test their color palette, the position and size of the search icon, and how related products and bundles are displayed to ensure their marketing enhances and influences customer behavior.







Furthermore, marketing works in tandem with sales. Those who understand the power of this lethal combination rarely think and design campaigns in silos.







So, what’s it going to be? Will you adhere to the mainstream narrative of what marketing is supposed to be, or are you open to new perspectives that embrace the notion of marketing as a gigantic pool of testing?







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In the world of entrepreneurship, uncertainty prevails. The journey is chaotic, full of traps and pitfalls thus adding a special flavor to the adventure while shaping the individual accordingly.







Embarking on this journey, putting on the solopreneur or small business owner hat, requires resilience and a strong willingness to learn. While increasing mental stamina, knowing how to juggle with numbers (e.g. cash flow), and being a visionary and avid salesperson are key ingredients, there’s always room for someone to bring on the team to help you with most of the above.







However, there is one component, you won’t be able to outsource and that’s your ability to deal with or better yet, embrace uncertainty.







If I say to you, that you’ll have to learn to dance with uncertainty, you might laugh at me.







But think about it:







Can you predict your future?







Yes, you can set time aside to strategize where you want to take your business.







Obviously, it’s wise to have money parked in the business to grab an opportunity when it shows up or cover certain losses when they arise.







Indeed, you can hire top people on the team to help you scale the business and increase your base line but at the end of the day, there’s always going to be a blind spot, a space I like to call mystical that will surprise you and take you to places you never thought existed.







Therefore, instead of dwelling and torturing yourself with the notion of the unknown, rather giving in and embracing the magic of uncertainty is an interesting way of approaching challenges in business and life in general.







Staying Open to the Marvelous World of All Possibilities







We see and know so little about our business, life, and the universe, and yet we think we have it all under control. What a fallacy.







Over the years, I’ve come to understand, appreciate, and value the importance of bouncing ideas back and forth with people who have a different perspective on business and life.







Realizing that I can’t see the picture when I’m in the frame has opened my mind to a plethora of new, revolutionary insights. For example, a few weeks ago, I visited an exhibition on astrophotography and was struck by the concept of making sophisticated patterns look easy to grasp and for the mind to digest.







We tend to over-complicate processes in business ending up mesmerized by the sheer amount of tasks that cripple our creativity and drain our most vital source of energy, our life force.







Stress, frustration, anxiety, and similar low-vibration feelings hijack our consciousness thus urging us to avoid the unknown and run away from everything that is unfamiliar or might sprinkle a dust of uncertainty onto our well-shaped reality. We think that protecting our ‘Escape-land’ will somehow move us forward and bring us closer to our goals while the exact opposite happens.







“Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.” – Tony Robbins







We’ve heard this quote so often and despite being regurgitated all over the web, we continue to run after the first part of the equation which more often than not is associated with money and fame, disregarding the crucial second part.







How well is numbing your senses working out for you?







For well over a decade, I played the success roulette running around like a hamster convinced that climbing at the top of some random mountain would give me everything I always wanted, only to end up feeling empty.







It was one of the most precious lessons I learned in ...

How many boxes can you juggle in life without burning out? Have you discovered the sweet spot that enables you to move swiftly and friction-free between your pots?







Some boxes are more important than others. The core ones stay with us our whole lives whereas the seasonal ones will leave us at a certain stage aka cycle in life. The fundamental boxes are pretty much the same for all of us: health, love in the form of family, relationships and friendships, and career or business.







Is there a main box? And if so, which one is it?







Well, it’s the one that is with us from the first until the last breath we take. It’s the SELF box – not to be confused with the “shelf” box, although more often than not, we place ourselves last.







And then, there are the seasonal boxes as I like to call them. Some of the most prevalent ones are the sports, hobbies, and passion boxes.







Obviously, none of the boxes will ever be 100% pure; in the sense that you will have sports, passion, hobby, health, and love, for example, intertwined.







Stacking or Juggling Boxes – What’s it going to be?







Let me start by confessing that I’ve not figured this out for myself either. More so, I’m not over-analyzing or obsessing with it, as I think we’re here to experiment and try out as many things as possible.







Recently, I published an article on the Hive blockchain where I shared some insights about the act of balancing my core boxes in life. I defined my three main pots as health, family/relationships/friendships, and business. Furthermore, I shared Baroness Karren Brady’s three boxes which are similar to mine, except that she has “self” instead of my “health” box.







Yes, we can argue whether health is part of the “self” box and so forth, but that’s not the point of this topic. What I want to emphasize, is the importance of the following two aspects:







1. Knowing your boxes







2. Consciously choosing between boxes







How often have you tried to multi-task and have gloriously failed at it?







If the answer is “always”, you’re at least not lying to yourself.







This is where the SELF box comes into play. Investing time into knowing ourselves is crucial. As we move along in life and things get thrown at us aka life happens, we need time to adjust to external factors. This enables us to navigate the stormy waters with a heightened consciousness, without destroying ourselves and those around us.







Let’s tackle the terminology of “truth” in this context.







We all define and perceive truth differently. There is no universal truth albeit there are physical laws that apply to our physical reality as well as quantum principles that govern higher dimensions.







I’ve seen the concept of truth best play out in presentations and conversations. A couple of weeks ago I was part of an exercise where we had someone recite 20 words that were associated with going to bed at night. Funny enough, the word “bed” was never mentioned. Instead, words such as a pillow, dreams, snooze, alarm, night, etc. were enumerated.







When asked what words were used, one-third of the audience said “bed”. And here’s the kicker: This very same third of the audience was convinced that the word “bed” was among the 20 words spoken out loud. Even when the words were played back from a recording some of them couldn’t deal with the fact that they were wrong.







So, what’s the truth when we have such discrepancies when hearing a message?

Think big or be realistic which one is it going to be? Have big goals and hunt down your dreams or stay safe and expand your comfort zone step by step? What if the size of our thoughts really matters?







We live in a world of duality and it’s up to each and every single one of us to connect with our innate intelligence to help us navigate through life. Some choose a growth mindset driven by constant education and expansion while others succumb to a limited narrative which keeps them trapped and imprisoned.







Once we decide to pull back the curtains and see behind the illusion, we embark on a journey where we find ourselves diving deeper into what scientists nowadays refer to as a holographic simulation.







We use our fife senses to decode this 3D game which was designed stunningly well. A sophisticated reality based on mathematics, more so sacred geometry with a set of physical laws that apply to the frames of time and space.







Enough with the esoteric and spiritual foam that often distorts our perception and alters our state of being. Now that we set the stage, let’s head back to the world of business and entrepreneurship and discuss the importance of our thoughts in the process of creation.







In Our Material World, Thoughts Become Things







How many times have you achieved what you’ve set your mind to?







Let me guess: Almost always?!







Isn’t it interesting how we manage to transform our MUSTS into reality while we struggle to materialize our shoulds, woulds and ‘nice to haves’.







If we take a closer look into what accompanies the first as opposed to the latter we notice a deep sense of trust and confidence that aligns with our ‘must attain’ goal or dream. Furthermore, we have a clear map of where we currently are and where we want to go and we fill the road with action steps that move us forward.







Nothing can stand in our way when we are headed for our musts. No stone is left unturned, no action step is too big or dangerous when we’re on the ‘battle field’ aiming for our target. As we move along, we adjust aka we drop what isn’t working and we do more of what is delivering positive feedback and results.







Consistency, perseverance, massive action while adhering to strategical and tactical patterns which we polish and elevate as we move along are all but key ingredients to what we call a recipe for success.







Notice anything magical about this process?







The Size of Your Thoughts Matters







Building on the above-mentioned construct, we realize how ingrained and addicted we are to limiting beliefs and small thoughts.







I can’t do this.







I don’t have the expertise.







I lack the knowledge.







I’m not young / old enough.







I don’t have the money.







And on, and on the roulette of the mind chatter goes.







Somehow this chatter didn’t exist or we managed to keep it under control or block entirely when we were hunting down our musts.







So why not increase the size of our musts knowing that we will accomplish them?







We do this consistently by training our mind to familiarize itself with an ever increasing size of thoughts.







This is a process, not an overnight task that we dismiss from the beginni...

Some say we have an economical problem. Than we have those who like to point their fingers towards the political establishment or put the blame on the current financial system. Add to the groups above those who regard social issues as the main culprit.







What if everything we face today stems from a spiritual level? What if business is more of a spiritual game than a money game?







Besides the game of life which I find exquisitely fascinating there are at least two more games I’m passionate about: one of them has to do with sports and the second one is the game of business.







According to our current definition of success, only those with lots of money and / or influence aka fame are considered winners in business.







Apparently they have cracked the code of the business game irrespective of the fact that they might feel lonely, worthless, depressed or burned out. The feelings and emotions of joy, bliss, passion, love, interconnectedness are neglected on purpose when one is lifted on the pedestal and declared a winner.







Power vs Force: An Act of Balance







Seldom do we hear about generational businesses who have started their endeavor hundreds of years ago and have passed on the knowledge and wisdom to the younger generation thus enabling them to run a meaningful family business.







With all the ups and downs, these businesses have proven to have stamina, grit, perseverance and a strong belief system. Through consistent work and understanding the importance of having individuals on the team who share the same vision, they have managed to weather the storm while bigger enterprises were crumbling or were forced to play the merger and acquisitions strategy in order to survive and continue to participate in the game.







Let’s take the field of agriculture for example:







I have not yet encountered a farmer who complains about being depressed or burned out unlike numerous employees and business owners in other industries.







This is not to say that farmers don’t face tremendous challenges such as harsh competition (think of all the agri-business that is run by a handful of corporations), price issues, harvest / crop failure, storage and delivery problems etc.







What I find mind-blowing about these family businesses is the fact that most of them stick to traditions, have a set of habits they rigorously incorporate in their daily lives, they share meals together and invest time into teaching their children what living a happy and joyous life on a farm is all about. Furthermore, the elderly are treated with respect and their wisdom and insights are welcomed and appreciated in the decision process.







Hustle, compete, push, work hard … and maybe one day success will knock on your doors. This is the language that best characterizes the current state of affairs in business.







This is force par excellence. And the direct effect (it’s not a side effect!) of this paradigm is displayed in the amount of mental health issues our society is bombarded with.







Force is hard, short sighted and comes with vast compromise.







Power is easy, provides long-term results and enriches those who’re guided by it.







Although power can be attained through sheer force, in this context I’m giving the term a different connotation.







Power is an inside job. It requires one to learn to quiet the mind and listen to the innate intelligence that will help us navigate in business and ultimately in life more seamlessly. That state of flow can be attained by all of us; no one is so special to be excluded from it.