How to Be Productive About Regret

Entrepreneurs are commonly advised to regret nothing, as regretting is perceived to inhibit growth and entrepreneurialism. But regrets are completely natural and unavoidable. We cannot simply wish them away.

We cannot, for example, avoid regretting losing out on opportunities that were almost in our grasp. Recall gymnast McKayla Maroney's crestfallen face at the London Olympics after winning a silver medal -- an image that went so viral, it inspired President Obama to tweet a picture with her in the same "I am not impressed" pose. Why did Maroney feel so bad? Research shows that for silver medalists, it is a case of "too close, yet too far." What is true for athletes is true for entrepreneurs -- especially those who were locked in close finishes or were working on opportunities that became big. For them, regrets are not only unavoidable -- they are expected.

In a study at Syracuse University that was recently published in Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, my co-authors and I examined these issues at some length. Several entrepreneurs in our study reported regrets along the lines of: "I failed to launch an idea due to a personal setback. Now I get emotional when I see so many players in my space." Can we really avoid regretting missed opportunities? And is it even necessary?

Regrets do not necessarily stop us from acting. Quite the opposite. Regretting smartly prepares us for the future. How many times has someone told you: "I wish I had not wasted my time on X" or "I should have done Y more wisely"? These regretful thoughts could potentially be used to deconstruct failures into meaningful scenarios for learning and growth.

Many people also use regrets to feel better about their situation by imagining how it could have been even worse. Imagine if you were speeding in your car to deliver your bid for a contract and got into an accident. You might find yourself saying, "Thank God I am alive," and, yet, of course, you would still regret the lost opportunity. That is exactly how many cancer survivors find solace, according to research. Sometimes, it is comforting just to have an opportunity to start all over again.

The question then is not whether entrepreneurs should regret or not, but rather how they should be productive about such feelings. If you are going to be an entrepreneur, you better have loads of self-confidence. In the aforementioned study, we found entrepreneurs with high self-esteem learned from regretful thoughts and were more likely to retry and be successful, while those with low self-esteem tended to feel inhibited.

The road to entrepreneurial success is paved with failures, and there will be plenty of them all along the way. Most people do not succeed on their first or even second attempts, and even successful ventures emerge from a recurring cycle of mistakes and rejection.

One effective way to deal with regrets is to break problems into bite-sized chunks. For example, instead of berating yourself with blanket statements like "I am no good," try generating specific alternative scenarios detailing what could have gone wrong. Perhaps, it was as simple as not knowing how to manage cash flows. This approach will help you learn and grow, rather than dwelling on what went wrong.

Use your good days to build a reservoir of self-belief and determination despite the obstacles of the inevitable bad days. The simplest way to do this is to remind yourself of past successes anytime you think of a failure. Sit down with a blank piece of paper and write down your top five successes. Search your email for kind notes from customers praising your work. Seek out mentors or friends who believe in you and can remind you why you got involved in the business in the first place. Look back only to learn what you must to move forward. And remember, in the end, as Henry Ford said: "Whether you think you can or you think you cannot, you are right."

www.entrepreneur.com

Richard Branson on Taking Risks BY RICHARD BRANSON

When was the last time you stepped out of your comfort zone? It's easy to get stuck in a routine, especially at work (more so if you've been doing the same job for a while), and taking on a new challenge is a great way of getting out of that rut. At Virgin, I use two techniques to free our team from the same old routine: breaking records and making bets. Takingchances is a great way to test myself and our group, and also to push boundaries while having fun together.

I have always loved a challenge. When my family and I went to the British county of Devon on holiday when I was four or five, my Auntie Joyce bet me 10 shillings that I wouldn't learn to swim by the time we returned home. And somehow I didn't learn while thrashing about in the sea.

I was determined to prove her wrong, so when I spotted a river during the drive home, I asked my dad to stop the car, then ran out and jumped into the water in my underwear. At first, I sank and started swallowing water, but I kicked upward and, to my amazement, soon began to swim downstream. My reward for passing the sink-or-swim test was a crisp 10-shilling note -- the most money I had ever held in my hands.

That and later challenges taught me that it is important to try things that might not work, and then improvise solutions along the way. I've found that attempts to break records can result in technological leaps forward. For instance, the businessman and adventurer Steve Fossett flew our Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer nonstop around the globe in 2005, becoming the first person to complete such a flight solo and without refueling. Our plane was built using carbon fiber, at a time when other plane manufacturers relied primarily on heavy materials.

Following the GlobalFlyer's success, Boeing and Airbus both started using carbon fiber in the manufacture of some aircraft. This technology will make planes lighter and is likely to dramatically reduce the carbon output of the airline industry in the future. (The plane is now on display at the United States National Air and Space Museum.

When you need a boost, it can be a lot of fun to pit yourself against one of your competitors. The most recent bet I lost was with my friend Tony Fernandes, who now runs AirAsia, but used to work with us at Virgin. In 2010, we both owned Formula One teams that were doing badly and decided to perk things up. It was agreed that the owner of the team that finished lower in the standings would work as a cabin crew member on the other's airline.

In May I honored the bet on an AirAsia flight from Australia to Malaysia, putting in a shift wearing the full stewardess's uniform, which took a few hours of preparation.

Although I've always wanted to help out on a cabin crew, I've never had a boss, so I didn't enjoy it when Tony ordered me around. I ''accidentally'' spilled a tray of drinks over him, and was sacked when we landed. (On the other hand, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a passenger aboard the flight, described me as “voluptuous,” so I must have gotten something right.)

Business owners and executives usually take themselves very seriously, so the story of our wager was widely circulated in the media. Everyone had a good laugh, and nothing was lost on either side (except my pride). It was the right approach: The publicity helped both AirAsia and Virgin to build customer bases in new markets, while the charity flight on which I served raised more than $300,000 for the Starlight Children's Foundation, which provides support for sick kids and their families.

One of the great benefits of taking on challenges in your working life is that you and your team learn to confront risk together – and also to lose sometimes, because when you make a good wager, the odds are not going to be in your favor. The calculated risks you and your team take should be strategic judgments, not just blind gambles: Protect the downside by figuring out the odds of success, working out what the worst possible consequences would be, then deciding whether to accept.

You need to hone these skills, because you and your team are going to face adversity at some point. No matter what industry you work in, the nature of business is change, and so while you can prepare for every possibility, some new, unexpected circumstance is likely to thwart you. The only thing that's meaningful about such setbacks is whether you bounce back. In 1998, Steve Fossett, Per Lindstrand and I had to abandon our attempt to fly around the world nonstop in a balloon. Rather than feeling sorry for ourselves, we at Virgin continued working on some of the problems we had encountered through our other businesses.

But aside from any business concerns, one of the main reasons my colleagues and I undertake any adventure is because it's fun, whether it's a bet that ends with me serving drinks to passengers in a skirt or whether it's one that leads to the creation of a company that transforms the space industry. Should you say yes the next time somebody proposes a challenge? You bet!

www.entrepreneur.com

How Failure Made These Entrepreneurs Millions BY JANE PORTER

When Steve Blank appeared on the cover of Wired magazine nine years ago, his company then, Rocket Science Games, was expected to revolutionize the videogame industry. At the time, Blank didn't let the skepticism of critics faze him.

"I thought I was a genius," he says. Three months later, when he called his mother to let her know he was about to lose $35 million in investor funding, he wasn't feeling quite so genius anymore.

"I had lots of choices, including that I could have quit," he says. "Learning from that failure for me was one of the best experiences of my life." And learn he did. In 1996, Blank founded the startup E.piphany, which went on to earn $1 billion for each of its investors.

In the past 10 years, says Blank, the culture around entrepreneurship has become increasingly failure-friendly. Serial entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley hop from one failed business to the next and billionaire entrepreneurs like Richard Branson wax on publicly about their failures almost as much as their successes. Still, "no one likes to fail," says Blank. "We are hardwired for success."

But what if you could actually use failure to help you succeed?

Here are five keys to start failing your way to success:

1. Call failure something else.

When was the last time anyone got hired for a senior-level position without any experience? For serial entrepreneurs, "experience" is simply another word for "failure," says Blank. By labeling a failed effort an opportunity to expand your knowledge base, you're framing it in a more positive light, allowing yourself to add to your credibility as a more seasoned entrepreneur.

2. Use failure as a stepping stone.

With every failure, identify what you know you did wrong and be conscious not to repeat your mistakes. This will bring you one step closer to success, says Steve Siebold, a Palm Beach, Fla.-based consultant who works with corporations and entrepreneurs on mental toughness and critical thinking.

"I've never heard [a millionaire entrepreneur] say they hit it right the first time out," says Siebold, whose book How Rich People Think (London House Press, 2010) is a culmination of nearly three decades of interviews. "The bigger they are, the more they've typically failed."

3. Never fail alone.

Entrepreneurs like to be trailblazers. But make a mistake on your own and you might have a hard time determining what went wrong. Having a partner you trust and respect can turn every failure into an opportunity for collaboration. "A good partner can help you determine what not to do again," says Karl Baehr, director of business and entrepreneurial studies at Emerson College, a private four-year college in Boston focused on communication and the arts.

4. Don't hide your failures.

Be proud that you were brave enough to take a risk in the first place. By being forthright about your mistakes, you open yourself up to learning from others.

Baehr's mentor, Walter Hailey, whose insurance company Lone Star Life Insurance went on to become a Kmart insurance company, used to take an hour-long walk at 5 a.m. every morning with a group of close friends to talk about ideas, successes and failures. "By the time they got back to the house, they had solutions," says Baehr. "They had a plan for the day."

5. Redefine what you want.

Revisit and refocus why you got into business in the first place. "Look for your emotional motivators. We are emotional creatures. Logic doesn’t motivate us," says Siebold, who launched five consecutive unsuccessful businesses before he started his current consulting company. For Siebold, that motivator was one day becoming a millionaire, a goal he achieved at age 31. "Most people only half-heartedly decide they want a lot of things. You have to get really clear on what you want," he says. "The question is: How badly do [you] want it?"

www.entrepreneur.com

How I Built GoPro Extreme Sports Camera

Surfer, Seeking a Way to Film His Outrageous Stunts, Realizes He Has to Invent It

Nick Woodman longed for a way that he and other surfers could photograph their most outrageous stunts.

Using rubber bands and a Velcro surfboard leash, he attached hundreds of waterproof cameras to his wrist. But the rough Northern California surf proved too powerful, flooding every model he tested.

Mr. Woodman concluded he needed to build his own camera, and he soon began assembling a prototype with hot glue and plastic. He raised $235,000 from his parents to perfect his invention and hired a manufacturing firm in China to produce it in bulk.

In 2004, he started selling the cameras under the brand name GoPro at surf shops and trade shows. Six years later, he landed his first big retailer, Best Buy Co.

Today, Mr. Woodman's company, Woodman Labs Inc., pulls in $526 million in annual revenue, and its cameras have become the gold standard for self-documenting extreme sports. The matchbox-sized devices, which range in price from $200 to $400, are mounted on helmets, bike handles, surfboards and snowboards of both weekend warriors and professional athletes, including Olympian Shaun White and sky diver Felix Baumgartner.

But keeping up that momentum may be tough. Such major brands as Sony, Coleman and Swann have started selling sports cameras similar to GoPro's. Google Inc.  and Apple Inc.  are also expected to introduce wearable gadgets with photo and video functionality in the near future.

Mr. Woodman, 37 years old, recently spoke with The Wall Street Journal about bootstrapping his business and landing in major retail stores. Edited excerpts:

WSJ: How did you create a consumer product without having a background in engineering?

Mr. Woodman: I realized I just needed to communicate with engineers to build a cool product. When I was a visual-arts major [at University of California, San Diego], we were asked to execute lots of projects with found objects. So I used that approach, looking for existing cameras that were close to what I needed and then asking manufacturers to make changes.

WSJ: You previously launched two startups that failed. What did you learn from those experiences?

Mr. Woodman: I convinced people to put their money in, and I didn't come through. It was terrible. That's why I started Woodman Labs by bootstrapping it. I'd given myself until 30 to make it as an entrepreneur. I was 26 and had just failed. So I figured I had four years left to make it or I'd have to go and get a real job.

WSJ: You exhibited at trade shows for years before you broke into the big stores like REI, Best Buy and Walmart. How did you make that jump?

Mr. Woodman: The buyer for REI came through my booth at a trade show. He gave me his card and said stay in touch. At first I emailed him every week, and then it went to every few weeks. Finally our product was good. We got a test number of cameras in REI and then a display with video. Best Buy was another big one. There were just nine or 10 of us at GoPro when the buyer invited us to come in and test in the stores. I didn't know whether we were ready, but when opportunity knocks, open the door.

WSJ: With smartphones, capturing pictures and video has never been easier. How has this affected GoPro?

Mr. Woodman: Smartphones are always in your pocket. They're about reactive capture. GoPro is ideal for pro-active capture, meaning, "Hey, we're going to do something fun and we're going to capture a video of it." The increase in smartphones accelerated GoPro's position in retail stores in terms of how much floor space we got. At Best Buy we were scheduled to test GoPro on a limited basis during the 2011 fourth quarter, but when Cisco pulled the Flip camera there was a void, so instead they said forget the test, let's go full bore in all stores.

WSJ: You raised an $88 million Series A round led by Riverwood Capital in May 2011. How come?

Mr. Woodman: We didn't need the money because we've been profitable since day one, but we didn't have as much experience in the company as I wanted. We had a successful product, and it had grown way faster volume-wise and revenue-wise that we'd intended. When I should have been happy, I was stressed because I realized we should have had 50 people and we only had seven. We needed to build an experienced board that will help us attract top talent and help us scale this business.

online.wsj.com

Ideas are like children… most of them are horrible: 5 tips to check you’re not firing blanks

Ideas are a bit like children – some of them are nice, a lot of them are horrible, but either way, they’re bloody everywhere. Running around, making noise, demanding attention, competing with each other, falling over.

While their parents seem to love them all with equal enthusiasm, you’re mostly indifferent. That is, I imagine, until you have one of your own. Then it’ll show up when it wants, demand all of your time and attention, force you to sacrifice other parts of your life for it, and then take everything it can from you.

Yet, somehow, you’ll probably end up loving it. You’ll go so gooey and life-blind for it, then you’ll probably find you’re left with no possible way to evaluate it objectively. But if some ideas are nice, and some ideas are horrible, how could you possibly know which one you’ve given birth to? Here are five questions to ask yourself…

1. Does it already exist? If so, good…

I once googled “freelance comedy writer”, and saw there were very few good results. I concluded that I’d found a gap in the market. “We’ll make a killing!” I said. Yeah, maybe, but then since the internet is basically a decentralised global Ponzi scheme created by search engine optimisers and spam artists.

So, maybe our old friend Occam’s Razor is trying to tell us something here – like, for example, no-one’s trying to rank for freelance comedy writers. Because there’s no point ranking for freelance comedy writers. Because no-one is googling for freelance comedy writers. Because, well, the earth needs more freelance comedy writers like the moon needs more biscuit shops.

Very often what looks like a gap in the market is actually a gap in the needs of the market. As in, they don’t. If you google an idea and find out others are doing it, that’s probably a good sign. Just do it better.

2. Can you explain it in a sentence? If so, good…

Unless you want your idea to stay in your head forever, wearing a wedding dress, swinging back and forth on a rocking chair, surrounded by spiders’ webs and old cake, you are going to have to communicate it to somebody.

This is rarely as easy as it sounds. People, despite their best intentions, are a very human mix of busy, lazy and fickle. They mean well, bless them, but you just can’t really rely on them to be as excited about your idea as you are. Only the clearest, more succinct of ideas will find a home in their permanently distracted little heads.

You have to get the idea from your head into theirs, using just the primitive tools of language and miming. If you want have them reach their hands into their pockets, pull out all their money, then throw it directly at your face, best keep it simple. Like, one sentence simple. While your idea might be great, to them it is only as great as you can explain it. Whether it’s your mother, an investor, a customer, a teacher, whoever. In all areas of life, there are gatekeepers. It doesn’t matter which, the same rules will have them reaching for their keys:

• One sentence to hook them (eg a short little story, or a problem you know that they have): “Girlfriend, I see that as yet, we have no plans for this evening?!?!”

• Another to reel them in (eg your super effortless, really brilliant way to solve that problem): “I propose to solve this scheduling mishap by allowing you the chance to have sex with me!”

• Last sentence serves them up on a plate (eg dates, times, prices, and why they have to act right now!!!!!): “If you say yes, right now, not only will you get the “sex with me” experience, but I’ll also do the washing up, and throw in a seven minute massage to be redeemed at a time of your choosing.”

Easy as that.

3. Does it age like wine? If so, good…

A friend once coined the term “possibilityrush” for that feeling you get when you’re unstoppably high on caffeine and creativity. Those moments when initial ideas just surge outwards, gleefully fuelled by all that initial enthusiasm and joy, to a chorus of “Oh! and we can also do this!” and “Oh! Oh! wouldn’t it be great if?!”

Every idea seems to start an awesome domino effect of more and more ideas, an avalanching tsunami tornado of potential, until, eventually, you’re as close to the edge as you can possibly get, then you hit the orgasmic, ecstatic point of, “YEAH, LET’S DO THIS!!!!”

You run to the laptop, the notepad, the piano, the door. Sometimes you forget to dress. It’s frightening, but exciting. Then you start taking all those first little steps towards getting your idea into the real world. Then the possibilities start collapsing one by one, deflating like sad balloons stabbed with realistic little pins. Time, money, workload, ability, etc.

Of course, while it’s tempting to do so, it’s better not to validate your ideas in the heat of the possibilityrush, when they seem like the best thing since sliced Facebook. But days, week, even months later. Then you can see how they hold up to later scrutiny.

Do they age like milk, or like wine? Mature or curdle? Still excited about working on it after you get in from a hard day at your real job, a quick TV dinner, and just as you get comfy on the couch, but know you should get up, and do something hard. How is the idea then? Still a good one? Still worth all the sacrifices?

4. Are you sure it’s not just for you? If so, good…

Sigmund Freud is pretty much one of the most wrong people that has ever lived. If you rented a hall, filled it full of climate change deniers, homeopathic feng-shui astrologers, and people without Google, then asked them to fling bad science and wild conjecture at each other until nightfall, the outcome would probably still be less wrong than with Sigmund Freud. Who has since had about 90 per cent of his ideas shitcanned, according to my father penis estimates.

Why was he so wrong? Well, he suffered from projection. Which was an inability to separate his ideas, desires and feelings from the rest of humanities. If he felt it, or believed it, or wanted it, then he believed everybody must. Right? Well, no Siggy, not really. We’re unique little snowflakes, you know? I don’t fancy my mother.

It’s the same for your good idea. It might solve a very real and immediate problem of yours, but don’t assume it does for everybody. The only way to find that out is to get out there and ask them, which is our next point.

5. Can you quickly get validation on the idea? If so, good…

Good ideas are like parking tickets, easy to validate. They’re also like metaphors, easy to make. Bad ideas, however, are the opposite. They take a long time to get from Point A, eg I have this idea and I think it’s good, to Point B, eg humanity saying yeeeeah, thanks, but no thanks.

If you would have to toil away at your idea for months or years, before reaching Point B, that’s bad. This is where the minimal viable product (or, since we’re talking in general terms, minimum viable idea) of the lean startup methodology can help you. If the idea feels too big, or requires too much money thrown at it to get you started, then slice it into smaller and smaller pieces until it is a size you can deal with.

Focus on where you can add the most value, for the lowest investment of time and/or money. Keep that part. Mercilessly cut away everything else until what is left is the smallest, leanest incumbent little idea you can get. It’s a mindset shift from “if I build it, they will come”, to, “where should I build it and what the hell should it look like in order to make them come”.

venturevillage.eu

People, Planet, Profit: Introducing the B Team, the Branson Initiative

Visionary business leaders, Virgin's Sir Richard Branson and former Puma boss, Jochen Zeitz have joined together to launch a new global not-for-profit organization called The B Team. The idea is to put some real hard-core corporate muscle behind the “people, planet, profit” mission that nonprofits have been striving to push forward, while unifying like-minded companies around a common global agenda.

As for that agenda, The B Team mission pivots around a ten-point plan they’re calling Plan B. The choice of name is an interesting coincidence here in the U.S. given the media attention surrounding the over-the-counter emergency contraceptive Plan B, which has been the subject of a fierce court battle as the Obama Administration sought to limit younger teens from obtaining it without a prescription. The coincidence is more than just superficial, though, as the two Plan B’s share a strong message of personal empowerment and the right to direct and improve one’s life.

Beyond Branson and Zeitz: The B Team

The B Team venture launched last Thursday, with Branson and Zeitz being joined by a select group including Shari Arison (Arison Group), Kathy Calvin (United Nations Foundation), Arianna Huffington (The Huffington Post Media Group), Mo Ibrahim (Celtel), Guilherme Leal (Natura), Strive Masiyiwa (Econet Wireless), Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Government of Nigeria), François-Henri Pinault (Kering), Paul Polman (Unilever), Ratan Tata (Tata Group), Zhang Yue (Broad Group), Professor Muhammad Yunus (Yunus Centre), Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland (The Elders), and Mary Robinson (The Elders, Mary Robinson Foundation).

The group aims to focus on tackling three interlocking challenges that, according to Branson and Zeitz, are too overwhelming to be addressed by a consortium of nonprofit organizations.

The “Future of Leadership” Challenge will focus on establishing a moral compass for business leadership characterized by inclusion, creativity and fairness. The “Future Bottom Line” Challenge seeks to shift corporate accountability from next-quarter results to long term economic, environmental and social improvements, and the “Future of Incentives” Challenge will explore corporate and employee compensation practices that support the first two challenges.

In that context, of particular interest to TriplePundit is the leadership role adopted by Unilever. Unilever is the only major global manufacturing corporation represented in the B Team’s kickoff circle, and earlier this month, we took note that Unilever USA has stepped up to lead a major public-private food waste/greenhouse gas management initiative in support of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency.

We’ve also noted that despite a weak global economy, Unilever has achieved zero waste goals at its factories while seeing sales improve, and the company’s Sustainable Living Plan has received its third number one score in a row from the Globescan Sustainability Leaders survey.

The Team B agenda: Plan B

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the B Team agenda, the aforementioned Plan B. The launch statement for participants explains that members of Team B will:

…work alongside a global community of partners, advisors and supporters to deliver a new way of doing business that prioritizes people and our planet alongside profit – a ‘Plan B’ for businesses the world over.

More specifically, the B Team seeks to accelerate sustainable business leadership by serving as a community platform for stakeholders and the general public, with the ultimate goal of developing “a new charter that aims to redefine the purpose of business.”

The Plan B agenda itself is fairly straightforward. Branson and Zeitz have organized it around ten key areas that need to be addressed in order to translate good intentions into action, which overlap to varying degrees with the three challenges they have identified.

Though necessarily vague on the details, the list starts with “The Right Aspirations,” underscoring the need for a global platform that recognizes, celebrates and incentivizes businesses that do the right thing.

Other items on the agenda include establishing an openness to new business forms, which brings to mind the kind of public-private partnership that Unilever has engaged in, and promoting accounting systems that favor transparency and factor in externalities rather than treating them as, well, externalities.

Also included are redefining profitability in terms of environmental and social well being, and integrating that model into business education curricula.

The last two items are basically an appeal for businesses to operate with the “planetary boundaries” in mind, recognizing that resources are finite and that business goals must be oriented toward long-term, sustainable boundaries.

What about Plan A?

Although Branson and Zeitz have assembled a powerful, influential kickoff team, it’s still tempting to say, “Yeah, good luck with that,” when you snap back to the reality of a Plan A world, which is basically a room inhabited by an 800-pound gorilla that Plan B does not forcefully address, namely, climate change.

Until more business leaders step up and confront companies like TransCanada and ExxonMobil directly and aggressively, the real push for environmental sustainability will continue to come from nonprofit organizations and citizen action.

In addition, although The B Team recognizes population growth, income inequality and unemployment as being among the key challenges facing business, Branson and Zeitz do not directly address the role of female empowerment (or lack thereof) in these issues, particularly relating to family planning and reproductive rights, with religious identification piling on an additional layer of complexity.

It will be interesting to see how these issues come into play as more stakeholders contribute to The B Team and the Plan B agenda.

www.triplepundit.com

Alex Atala, The World's Most Influential Chef, Shares 8 Simple Rules For Success

How much would you pay to hear tips on how to become successful from one  of the 100 most influential people worldwide? Would you pay an extra premium if the guidelines came from the only chef in the list?

Brazilian superstar chef Alex Atala shared tips on how to achieve success in a conference organized by Sebrae, The Brazilian Service of Support for Micro and Small Enterprises, in Mogi Mirim, a small town nearby Sao Paulo, Brazil’s financial capital. 

Before the highlights of the conference hosted at the headquarters of ACIMM, Mogi Mirim’s Commercial and Industrial Association, a short introduction on Alex Atala:

Alext Atala is a renowed chef and the owner of Sao Paulo based restaurants “Dalva e Dito” and D.O.M. – the sixth best restaurant in the world, which has been in the list of the world’s best restaurants for the past eight years. During his speech, Atala revealed he became a chef almost by accident. After an errant past as a punk rocker, DJ and party animal, he moved to Europe. While working in construction in Belgium, Atala engaged in a cooking course to get a visa and extend his stay in the old continent. Atala is very active, he is the President of the Association of Professional Cookery Brazil (APC – Brazil) and also responsible for the brand  Portraits of Taste (Retratos do Gosto), which promotes regional ingredients grown by smallholders farmers. The day after this speech in Mogi Mirim, he also talked at NewCitiesSummit in Sao Paulo. Recently, Atala made international headlines because of a mistake in the drawing ceremony of FIFA’s Confederations Cup, which starts this weekend in Brazil.

Below is a compilation of the words of wisdom from South America’s most famous chef Alex Atala:

Recognize the power of routine

“My mom loved her dog and thought it was intelligent. However, the dog was only conditioned. Human beings are intelligent, but we are also conditioned! We do way too many things on the automatic mode. Develop the best routines and stick to it.”

“You don’t need to be smart to make money. You need to have plenty of ideas to be smart but you can be stupid and still make a lot of money. The only way to achieve greatness is to do the exact same thing everyday. To achieve perfection you must have the right routine.”

Costs are like nails, cut them every week

“We have to be obsessive about costs. Costs are like nails, they always grow. We need to cut our nails weekly. Similarly, we should also dedicate time to cut costs periodically. Be on the top of every small costs at your business but be careful with stupid saving.”

Training is key to success

“One of my most famous dishes is Aligot. The recipe is so simple that it could easily be done by a child. [Watch a video of Atala preparing it here]. But the service is perfect. We turned a simple recipe into an unforgettable experience. One may wonder, “Oh, so the waiter is great!” No he is not. He just has a chef that orders him to practice tirelessly until he masters that skill. Training is the key to success.”

 Creativity is Essential

“Creativity is not to do what nobody does. It’s to do something everyone does but nobody expects.”

“The first time I eat foie grass, I did not like. In fact, I did not enjoy neither whisky nor caviar the first time I tried them. I needed to first develop my taste before being able to appreciate those things. Work diligently, do your homework and develop your tastes before expecting to become creative.”

Have clear rules for EVERYONE

“The three golden rules at D.O.M. restaurant are: Do not run, do not stop, and do not talk. To build teams with clear rules is fundamental.”

Be Attentive to Details

“D.O.M. opened its doors 14 years ago. I still have some of the same frying pans of its first day. I teach my team to never slam the door of the fridge. Why? To do that once is not a problem but 300 times could break that down. Don’t forget to be careful and attentive to details, it will only save you unnecessary costs.”

Be True to yourself

“In my restaurants, I have never placed an item in the menu only because I believed people would like it. Do not try to do something only because it sells. If your product or service is excellent, it will attract its public. Don’t go after the public, do your best and the public will surely come after you.”

Atala’s words remind me of Steve Jobs, “Customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them” as well as Henry Ford, “’If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, “A faster horse!”‘

Perfectionism sells

“I don’t bother paying an expensive price for any raw material. But I want a perfect product. It is not hard to do what nobody does. It is hard to do what everyone does but better. Once you deliver a perfect product/service, money will come to you.”

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Tiger Woods VS. Jack Nicklaus

Tiger Woods is the number one ranked golfer in the world. He is also the highest-paid athlete in the world, at $65 million a year. And yet, neither of those two things really matter to him.

Tiger Woods

Jack Nicklaus

As a boy, Woods famously had a poster of Jack Nicklaus in his room. It served as a reminder of his goal in his golf career: To top Nicklaus’s record of 18 major championship wins. Much is made of the media attention given to Woods at the majors. Many fans think it is overkill. But his pursuit of Nicklaus’s mark is one of the most intriguing storylines in sports, and will remain so until he either breaks the record or retires from competitive golf having fallen short.

Jack Nicklaus

Woods finished the U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club in a tie for 32nd, 12 strokes back of the winner Justin Rose. That means Woods has now gone 20 straight majors without a win.

Woods—who won his 14th major at the 2008 U.S. Open—appeared to be on track to achieve his goal until 2009. That year will be the pivotal one when, 20 years from now, some biographer writes the definitive account of Woods’ life and golfing career. It was the day after Thanksgiving of that year when Woods had his infamous car wreck near his home, and his infidelity scandal broke open. Never before had a more popular and successful athlete been subjected to the ensuing tabloid scrutiny and public embarrassment. Subsequent leg injuries also took their toll.

But that year had another defining moment for Woods, one that may go down as something more significant in his golfing career. In the PGA Championship that August, Woods was the leader after 54 holes, by two strokes. He ended up losing to Y.E. Yang by three strokes, shooting a 3-over 75. It marked the first time that Woods—perhaps the best closer the sport has ever witnessed—failed to win a major after having the 54-hole lead.

Woods will turn 38 at the end of this year. He has, in many ways, bounced back from that troubling stretch in 2010 and 2011, when his world ranking plummeted to 58. After losing sponsors Gillette ,Gatorade , Accenture and AT&T in 2010, he has regrouped somewhat, adding NetJets and Rolex, and hanging on to Nike. He has won four PGA Tour events this year. As mentioned, he has regained the number one ranking in the world. But he has now gone five years since his last major win. Though he has been in contention in the early rounds in a handful of majors since then, he has faltered badly on the weekends and, at times, has been relegated to finishing his Sunday major rounds hours before the leaders—and eventual winners—even make the turn.

Woods is still ahead of Nicklaus’s major-winning pace. Nicklaus won his 15th major—the British Open—in 1978 when he was 38. That means Woods has two more chances to stay ahead of Nicklaus’s pace. Nicklaus won his 16th and 17th majors in 1980, at age 40, taking both the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship. Then he famously tacked on his 18th major victory at age 46 at the 1986 Masters.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Woods’s playing prime will go from now until he is 42 (which happens to be the age of Ernie Els when he won the British Open last year). Barring injury or other unforeseen circumstances, that leaves him with 22 more majors to play. Winning five of those would be a tall task. It would equal the career major wins of Byron Nelson and Seve Ballesteros. It would be one more major win than Phil Mickelson has had in his career.

The remaining two majors this year may not set up well for Woods. The British Open is at Muirfield, where he tied for 28th back in 2002. The PGA Championship is at Oak Hill, where he struggled to a tie for 39th in 2003. But, taking a look ahead at the future sites of the four major championships, the task for Woods still seems doable. He seems to play well on the courses where he has had previous success. Here’s the breakdown of future major sites:

The Masters

Woods seems due at Augusta National, where he has won four times. Since his last Masters win in 2005, he has only finished out of the top 6 only once.

The U.S. Open

Woods has won the U.S. Open three times.

2014—Pinehurst: Woods finished second there in 2005.

2015—Chambers Bay: A new course in the rotation.

2016—Oakmont: Woods finished second there in 2007.

2017—Erin Hills: A new course in the rotation.

2018—Shinnecock: Woods finished in a tie for 17th.

2019—Pebble Beach: Though Woods will be 43, he has won there before (200 U.S. Open).

Best shots at victories: Pinehurst, Oakmont and Pebble Beach.

The British Open

Woods has won the British Open three times.

2013—Muirfield: Woods tied for 28th in 2002.

2014—Royal Liverpool: Woods won there in 2006.

2015—St. Andrews: Woods won there in 2000 and 2005.

2016—Royal Troon: Woods finished tied for 9th in 2004.

Best shots at victories: Royal Liverpool and St. Andrews.

The PGA Championship

Woods has won the PGA Championship four times.

2013—Oak Hill: Woods finished tied for 39th in 2003.

2014—Valhalla: Woods won there in 2000.

2015—Whistling Straits: Woods finished tied for 28th in 2010.

2016—Baltusrol:  Woods finished tied for fourth in 2005.

2017—Quail Hollow: New to the PGA rotation, but Woods has won a PGA Tour event there.

2018—Bellrive—Woods missed the 2008 PGA Tour event there due to injury.

Best shots at victories: Valhalla, Baltusrol and Quail Hollow.

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