Why the Smart Business Cat is so Smart ?


The Smart Business Cat is an ideal of the ultimate businessman. But what exactly makes him so succesful ?

Welcome to a new era


This is my mini-manifesto and introduction to my blog.

Quality and Quantity

Posted on by Baptiste Laurenge in creativity | 1 Comment

Creativity This Article is in the Creativity category.

Quality versus Quantity ?

Recently I’ve been struggling to manage my time, between studies, socializing on Google+, writing and having fun.

As I had to pass some exams, I didn’t get much time and willpower to write anything this month, but still I wondered : Is it possible to achieve both Quality and Quantity in your work ?

I usually tend to take my time to craft a good piece of work, starting with thinking about what I want to write about, then writing several drafts with pen and paper, then editing on computer, and finally spending some time formating the whole thing to be publish ready.

One could say I compromise quantity for the sake of quality.
This is the usual concept : You can’t have both so you have to sacrifice one for the sake of the other.

That might be true and yet, I see a number of blogger, businesses, artists that manage to work both in quality and quantity. How do they manage to do that ?

That’s how I realized that balancing quality and quantity is not just a 2 way street, there are other factors that will influence both, and it is therefore possible to achieve both Quality and Quantity in your work.

Continue reading “Quality and Quantity” »

The Thank You Economy

Posted on by Baptiste Laurenge in book reviews, strategy | Leave a comment

The Thank You Economy

A book by Gary Vaynerchuk

This is a Strategy article, a Smart Business Cat knows that defining the best plan of action is essential to achieve his goals.

 

Last week, as folks in the United States celebrated Thanks Giving, I took this opportunity to read something related to thankfulness : Gary Vaynerchuk’s last book, The Thank You Economy.

In my introduction post, I wrote about how the rules of business are changing in the Digital Era.
One important cultural shift in business we are experiencing right now is the shift from a Mass economy, where everything is optimized for mass market, to the Thank You Economy, a concept brought by Gary in this book. The Thank You Economy is an economy where businesses are humanized, have good manners, and CARE about their customers.
As the business world is evolving, entrepreneurs and companies need to rethink their strategy, to bring the relationship with the customer back to the top of their priorities.

Let’s see what this is about.

Read the complete review !

How to adopt a fluid identity

Posted on by Baptiste Laurenge in blog, mindset | 1 Comment

Be fluid

Morphling, from the game Dota2,

Community
This is a Mindset related article. Developing a healthy mindset is an essential skill for the Smart Business Cat.

Here’s a fact : As they age, human beings tend to grow less and less, and not just physically mind you, it also concerns your mind.
The Smart Business cat though, doesn’t want to stop growing. You can always keep growing physically by regular exercise it seems, but what about the mind then ? Let’s find out !

From solid identity..

Through my own experience and observing others, I noticed that as you age; your own identity becomes firmer, stronger. You actually have a more and more precise way to define what you are, and what you are not, over time. This stems from your abilities,  jobs, training, achievements, etc. in a nutshell, we tend to form your own identity based on the sum of your own experiences.

So as he advances through life, an average cat reinforces his identity by repeating the same kind of experience over and over, shaping his identity into a rock-solid block of beliefs about himself.

For instance, let’s say a cat writes stuff every day for many years, then his identity as a writer will grow stronger and stronger, and as a result he may very well identifies himself as a Writer Cat after a while. And the more he writes, the more his belief that he is a Writing cat solidifies itself.

It’s not bad per se, and seems like a pretty legit way to build an identity, so what exactly is wrong with this solid identity we build for ourselves ?

Continue reading “How to adopt a fluid identity” »

Humanizing Social Business

Posted on by Baptiste Laurenge in blog, community | Leave a comment

Google+

Community

This is a Community related article. The art of interacting with your community is becoming more and more important in the Digital Era, a smart business cat shouldn’t overlook it !

Google+

When Google+ launched and I started to interact with all the cool people in there, I found a level of interaction, sharing and engagement I never seen before on the web. That might be because the service is brand new and people are hyped about it, but I believe there is something deeper going on.
Continue reading “Humanizing Social Business” »

How do I manage my focus

Posted on by Baptiste Laurenge in blog, willpower | Leave a comment

Focus

WillpowerThis is the first article in the Willpower category. Willpower is the capacity to decide and initiate action and is a critical skill in the Digital Era.

Losing Focus.

During the last few weeks I had not been doing any work on The Smart Business Cat.
Why ? Because I lost my Focus.

Focus is the capacity to concentrate your energy on a single activity at any given time.
In the Digital Era, Focus has became a rare commodity : As we are solicited by thousands of different activities each day, it becomes harder and harder for us to do what truly matters to us. That’s a shame, because eventually we have to focus if we want to produce great work.

Continue reading “How do I manage my focus” »

How to improve your reading experience

Posted on by Baptiste Laurenge in blog, knowledge | 5 Comments

This is the first article in the Knowledge category, Knowledge is an important skill and I want to acquire as much as possible. Never. Stop. Learning.

Why Should I read ?

There are 2 main ways to acquire knowledge, the first one is through your own experience, and the other one is through the experience of others.
The best way to learn through the experience of others is to read books, because authors and writers took the time to organize, refine and tune their thoughts to deliver them in the most comprehensible way possible.

I like to consider books as the most primitive form of “mind uploading” as they are basically the thoughts of someone put into physical form, and words are the code you can use to access those thoughts.

As you can’t ever experience everything by yourself, books are a powerful way to increase your knowledge quickly and efficiently (sometimes it can saves you years of experiments, because someone else did it for you).

Although books’ sales are rising again with the emergence of eBooks, an average American human read 2 books a year, and that’s counting fiction books.

That is not enough for a Smart Business Cat, is it ?

A typical book can take only 1 week to read if you take 30 minutes to an hour a day to read. This means that in a year you can read 26 times as much books than the average guy, and that’s a slow pace. The knowledge you can acquire in just a year is huge, especially if most of these books are non-fiction, insightful ones.

Now, there’s still something we’re lacking, of course you can always increase your reading time and spead and read 100 books a year, but how do you process that much information ?
I’m sure you can’t possibly remember in details the last 50 books you read, right ? Me neither. When I read a book, there is a good chance that when I finish it and put it away, I wont process everything I learned and eventually forget a good chunk of it.

However I decided this had to change, so I have developped a reading routine that optimize the information i’m getting from books a geat deal.

Do you want to take your reading to the next level ? Here are 3 tactics you can start applying now :
Continue reading “How to improve your reading experience” »

Why the Smart Business Cat is so Smart ?

Posted on by Baptiste Laurenge in blog, featured | Leave a comment

Why is he so Smart ?

 

In my last post, I concluded that I created The Smart Business Cat as an ideal of the ultimate businessman. But what exactly makes him so succesful ?

As I read about and observed sucessful businessmen I extracted 8 main skills to define what made them successful.

It’s not about luck, it’s not because they were born at the right place, it’s not even about education.

Often those successful people won their position through sheer hard work. I want you and me to become the next Benjamin Franklin, the next Thomas Edison, the next Steve Jobs. They were human beings like us, and they set the bar quite high as role models, but there’s no harm at aiming high, right ?

As they saying goes, aim for the stars and you’ll at least reach the sky.

Those skills are not something you can learn at school, you have to work on yourself to get them.
They also are not finite, tangible things. At no point you can say “I’m done” :

This is a never ending process of learning and using them all the time.

So here is the list of the 8 main skills :

Continue reading “Why the Smart Business Cat is so Smart ?” »

Welcome to a new era

Posted on by Baptiste Laurenge in blog, featured | 6 Comments

Welcome to the new era

The industrial era is ending and we are advancing into the digital one. During this transition period, revolutions in society and business are happening , what does this mean for us ?

This post is a mini-manifesto, and an introduction to my blog.

Continue reading “Welcome to a new era” »