Growth – Breakaway Consciousness

13 Great Reasons To Study Logic

“Raising the level of logic and understanding is an extremely worthwhile activity, and it benefits those who can grasp the essentials.”
– Jon Rappoport, The Fallacy Of Circular Reasoning: A Vast Infection In Public Discourse

“Logic and analysis keeps you from being sent down wrong roads, keeps you from buying official reality. Logic also reminds you that you have a mind. Logic is a road that can take you deeper and deeper into more fallacies that underpin organized society and its branches of knowledge. Logic tells you there are always more fundamental questions to ask and answer. There are levels of lies. The deeper you go, the more confident you become. The more powerful. Logic also lets you know when you’re projecting basic pre-judgments over a whole landscape and neglecting to look at the details.”
– Jon Rappoport

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BreakawayIndividual.com
Zy Marquiez
February 16, 2020

In an age where the public dumbing down of the population is reaching new lows, a mindful, thorough and proactive approach to an individual’s self-directed education is vitally needed. A great tool to help that helps accomplish this type of self-directed learning, or learning in general, is Logic.

Throughout most of History, Logic has been a component of the Trivium, which entails Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric. Public schooling used to teach the Trivium in the past as part of a much more robust academic curriculum, but such is not the case anymore. This outright stripping of core components of classical education is one of the incisive reasons why public education has become so dismal.

In A Different Kind Of Teacher, the late John Taylor Gatto, who was an award winning lifelong teacher of exemplary virtue and respect, bluntly states that the school system keeps failing us because:

“Schools were designed by Horace Mann, E.L. Thorndike, and others to be instruments of scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled. To a very great extent, schools succeed in doing this.”[1][Bold Emphasis Added]

In other words, school system is about social engineering the masses towards robotic-like predictable behaviour, and not producing critically thinking well-rounded educated individuals.

In the same vein, outspoken critic of our dwindling education system, Professor Patrick Deneen, shared in his landmark piece, How A Generation Lost Its Common Culture:

“Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings.”[2][Emphasis Added]

As clear as one can see the sun setting, one can also see that it isn’t by accident that the school system has reached the state of decline it has.

Coming to terms with this, what’s an individual to do? Individuals need to return to the core concepts that were integral components of education over a century ago, and there is no better place to begin but in the realm of Logic.

But you might be asking: why is Logic so vital?

To answer this, let’s delve into the words of Jon Rappoport [NoMoreFakeNews.com], that home in on the matter:

“Logic and analysis keeps you from being sent down wrong roads, keeps you from buying official reality. Logic also reminds you that you have a mind. Logic is a road that can take you deeper and deeper into more basic fallacies that underpin organized society and its branches of knowledge. Logic tells you there are always more fundamental questions to ask and answer. There are levels of lies. The deeper you go, the more confident you become. The more powerful. Logic also lets you know when you’re projecting basic pre-judgments over a whole landscape and neglecting to look at the details.”[Jon Rappoport][Bold & Italic Emphasis Added]

To further buttress our foray into why Logic is so crucial, let’s take a look at the work of Philosopher Peter Kreeft Ph.D. Kreeft, in his extraordinary book called Socratic Logic outlines the many reasons why Logic is crucial to an individual’s growth.

Kreeft minces no words in stating that in the past, most students were privy to was called “the old logic”. Due to this, those individuals were much better prepared to “think, read, write, organize, and argue much better than they can today”.[3]

Getting back to classical education, which employed The Trivium – with Logic as one of its anchoring components – is what will ultimately help individuals breakaway from the downward avalanche public schooling is undertaking.

Below follow salient reasons why to study Logic:

“13 Good Reason Why You Should Study Logic

Logic brings order.

Logic builds the mental habit of thinking in an orderly way.

No course is more practical than logic, for no matter what you are thinking about, you are thinking, and logic orders and clarifies your thinking. No matter what your thought’s content, it will be clearer when it has a more logical form. The principles of thinking logically can be applied to all thinking and to every field.

Logic brings power. Logic brings the power of proof and persuasion.

The power of logic comes from the fact that it is the science and art of argument. Any power can be either rightly used or abused. This power of logic is rightly used to win the truth and defeat error; it is wrongly used to win the argument and defeat your opponent.

Logic helps reading. Logic will help you in education and learning, for “logic will help you to read any book more clearly and effectively. And you are always going to be reading books; books are the single most effective technological invention in the history of education.

On the basis of over 40 years of full time college teaching of almost 20,000 students at 20 different schools, I am convinced that one of the reasons for the steep decline in students’ reading ability is the decline in the teaching of traditional logic.

Logic helps writing. Logic will also help you to write more clearly and effectively, for clear writing and clear thinking are a “package deal”: the presence or absence of either one brings the presence or absence of the other. Muddled writing fosters muddled thinking, and muddled thinking fosters muddled writing. Clear writing fosters clear thinking, and clear thinking fosters clear writing. Common sense expects this, and scientific studies confirm it. Writing skills have declined dramatically in the 40 years or so since symbolic logic has replaced Aristotelian logic, and I am convinced this is no coincidence.

It is simply impossible to communicate clearly and effectively without thinking clearly and effectively. And that means logic.”

Logic brings happiness. In a small but significant way, logic can even help you attain happiness. We all seek happiness all the time because no matter what else we seek, we seek it because we think it will be a means to happiness, or a part of happiness, either for ourselves or for those we love. And no one seeks happiness for any other end; no one says he wants to be happy in order to be rich, or wise, or healthy. But we seek riches, or wisdom, or health, in order to be happier.

How can logic help us attain happiness? Here is a very logical answer to that question:

(1) When we attain what we desire, we are happy
(2) And whatever we desire, whether Heaven or a hamburger, it is more likely that we will attain if it we think more clearly.
(3) And logic helps us to think more clearly.
(4) Therefore logic helps us to be happy.

Even fantasy is not illogical. In fact, according to the greatest master of this art, J.R.R. Tolkien, “Fantasy is a rational, not an irrational, activity…creative fantasy is founded upon a hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy stories about frog-kings would not have arisen.”

Logic helps with religious faith. Even religion, though it goes beyond logic, cannot go against it; if it did, it would literally be unbelievable. Some wit defined “faith” as “believing what you know isn’t true.” But we simply cannot believe an idea to be true that we know that has been proven to be false by a valid logical proof.

It is true that faith goes beyond what can be proved by logical reasoning alone. That is why believing in any religion is a free personal choice, and some make that choice while others do not, while logical reasoning is equally compelling for all. However, logic can add faith in at least three ways.

First, logic can often clarify what is believed, and define it.

Second, logic can deduce the necessary consequences of the belief and apply it to difficult situations.

Third, even if logical arguments cannot prove all that faith believes, they can give firmer reasons for faith than feeling, desire, mood, fashion, family or social pressure, conformity, or inertia.

Logic helps attain wisdom. “Philosophy” means “the love of wisdom.” Although logic alone cannot make you wise, it can help. For logic is one of philosophy’s main instruments. Logic is to philosophy what telescopes are to astronomy or microscopes to biology or math to physics.
Democracy. There are even crucial social and political reasons for studying logic. As a best-selling modern logic text says, “the success of democracy depends, in the end, on the reliability of the judgments we citizens make, and hence upon our capacity and determination to weigh arguments and evidence rationally.” As Thomas Jefferson said, “In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be lead by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reason becomes of the first importance.”[Copi & Cohen, Logic, 10^th edition, Prentice-Hall, 1998.).
Defining logic’s limits. Does logic have limits? Yes, but we need logic to recognize and definite logic’s limits. Logic has severe limits. We need much more than logic even in our thinking. For instance, we need intuition, too. But logic helps us recognize this distinction.
Logic helps in testing authority. We need authorities because no individual can discover everything autonomously We do in fact rely on the human community, and therefore on the authority of others – parents, teachers, textbooks, “experts,” friends, history, and tradition – for a surprising large portion of what we know – perhaps up to 99%, if it can be quantified. And that is another reason we need logic: we need to have good reasons for believing our authorities, for in the end it is you the individual who must decide which authorities to trust.
Logic helps recognizing contradictions. Logic teaches us which ideas contradict each other. If we are confused about that, we will either be too exclusive (that is, we will think beliefs logically exclude each other when they do not) or too inclusive (that is, we will believe two things that cannot both be true).
Logic brings certainty. Logic has “outer limits”; there are many things it can’t give you. But logic has no “inner limits”: like math, it never breaks down. Just as 2 plus 2 are unfailingly 4, so if A is B and B is C, then A is unfailingly C, Logic is timeless and unchangeable. It is certain.

And logic never becomes obsolete. The principles of logic are timelessly true.

Logic helps one attain truth. Logic helps us to find truth, and truth is its own end: it is worth knowing for its own sake.

Logic helps us to find truth, though it is not sufficient of itself to find truth. It helps us especially (1) by demanding that we define our terms so that we understand what we mean, and (2) by demanding that we give good reasons, arguments, proofs.”[4]

In the age of information, ignorance is no excuse.

And Logic, more than anything else, helps eviscerate that ignorance in a way that nothing else can.

That’s exactly why it’s been removed from the public school system, and exactly why all individuals need to relearn it so they can integrate into their repertoire once and for all.

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Sources & References:

[1] John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind Of Teacher, p. 16.
[2] Professor Patrick Deneen, How A Generation Lost Its Culture
[3] Peter Kreeft Ph.D., Socratic Logic, p. 1.
[4] Ibid., pp. 1-7.
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Suggested Reading & Viewing:

Have You Ever Walked On The Moon?
Are You Living Your Dreams?
What Is The Difference Between Education & Public Schooling?
How TV Robs You Of Your Life
7 Phenomenal Books For Homeschooling, Self-Directed Learners & Autodidacts
How A Generation Lost Its Common Culture
Philosophy 101 by Socrates – An Introduction To Phylosophy Via Plato’s Apology By Peter Kreeft Ph.D.
How To Read A Book by Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren
A Different Kind Of Teacher by John Taylor Gatto
Logical Fallacies Employed In Every Day Life
The Imaginative Argument – A Practical Manifesto For Writers By Frank L. Cioffi
A Workbook For Arguments – A Complete Course In Critical Thinking by David Morrow
The Minds Of Men [Documentary] | Social Engineering & Mind Control
Manipulation Of Media Messages & Astroturf by Sharyl Attkisson
Mainstream Media Control
Socratic Logic V 3.1 by Peter Kreeft PhD
The Trivium – The Liberal Arts Of Logic, Grammar & Rhetoric by Sister Mary Joseph Ph.D.
Why Read The Classics?
Getting Things done by David Allen
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
The Catastrophic Decline of Public Schooling: 21 Facts Why School Performs Poorly
Mindset Musings#1: Venturing Outside Of Comfort Zones
Rotten To The Common Core by Dr. Joseph P. Farrell & Gary Lawrence
Lesson’s From Orwell’s 1984
Against Public Schooling – How Public Education Cripples Our Kids By John Taylor Gatto
Social Engineering 101
The Tavistock Institute – Social Engineering The Masses By Daniel Estulin
Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Emergence Of Orwellian Newspeak & The Death Of Free Speech
What Is An Elite Curriculum?
A Mind Of Your Own – The Truth About Depression by Dr. Kelly Brogan
Social Engineering 101
Drilling Through The Core by Sandra Stotski & Contributors
What Is An Elite Curriculum?
Invisible Influence by Kevin Hogan

#Quote Of The Day | Today | Now | The Moment | #Mindfulness #RalphWaldoEmerson

“He said, “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with it’s hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Mindset Musings #1 – Venturing Beyond Comfort Zones | #Mindset #Mindfulness #Growth

“A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.”
– Unknown

“A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.”
– Denis Waitley

[This write up is being reposted because it is being censored by WordPress and will not show under “Original Content” no matter what I do, and how many times I edit the post.]

BreakawayIndividual.com
Zy Marquiez
February 6, 2020

Comfort is a feeling that brings myriad moments that allow individuals a moment of respite, familiarity, and even peace. Likewise, comfort also brings about many other positive considerations. But not every aspect of comfort is to be lauded, as comfort is often the anchor that prevents us from moving forward and often achieving growth on many levels.

Arguably, the most amount of growth an individual will accrue will take place beyond a particular comfort zone. This type of growth can come about in myriad ways, sometimes being planned, and other times coming wholly unexpected.

In my life, there are four vanguard instances that have spawned endless growth, all of which stemmed from venturing beyond my comfort zones, but in the interest of time and simplicity, I will only touch upon three.

Some of the most resounding moments that I have undergone that spurred growth as an individual came about by pursuing my dreams of playing online Poker, starting small businesses, and also publishing books while pursuing dreams with writing. The growth that each of these has imparted upon me is vast and far reaching, but I am where I am due to those three avalanches of growth, coupled with the fourth instance as well.

These instances bring to mind the timeless quote by above by philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow”

The reason this quote resonates so deeply with me is because at the current moment in time, I’m seeing myself not only struggling in many areas, but also growing in many areas as well, and those areas of growth are areas in which I pushed myself outside of my comfort zones, well beyond what I thought possible at various junctures in my life.

Beyond those considerations, where I was struggling the most is where I had either developed a new bad habit, or fallen back on old patterns of behavior that do not serve me well. These all stem from my inability to get back to where I was before when I was proactive about moving forward as a self-directed learning individual, and my inability to grow beyond the normalcy that I have for all intents and purposes created in my ill-suited behavior patterns that I have undertaken.

Even so, I do realize that venturing beyond those areas of comfort is something that I not only want to do, but I need to do, because they are incredibly problematic. I must do this because if I do not, I will simply keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again, and continue wasting dozens of hours a weeks for example, without having anything tangible to show for it.

The point is, if I don’t put my best foot forward, first and foremost for myself, I cannot be the best me that I can be for me, yet alone for others. This is why it’s paramount to make sure that every action that I take is as incisive as it is thought out, while carrying those actions out with a foundation of mindfulness in order to have the best chance at succeeding in venturing beyond comfort zones.

Outside of that however, I do find myself in other comfort zones that I wish to venture beyond. Some of these include but aren’t limited to (1) falling into the bad habit of not reading as much as before (2) not going to the gym as much as I was before, which was almost every day, (3) not being mindful to the best of my ability, which translates to every other area in my life, (4) not putting myself first when it matters the most on certain specific personal considerations (particularly health), and (5) a whole host of other issues. Regardless of that though, I will not quit, and I also know where I want to go. And that’s the starting point to conquering those bad habits.

Now, once you realize that comfort zones hold you back, particularly those that are highly noxious to you as a person, then you come to terms with the fact that you’re one step closer in venturing beyond that comfort zone. But to begin venturing beyond your comfort zone, it takes effort, sometimes incredible effort, and significant focus on the task at hand. This isn’t a one-and-done situation by any means, for it is something that’s a lifelong path if you deem it so, and that’s how I see it. I don’t only want to venture out of comfort zones now, but I want to do so for the rest of my life. If I fail in doing so, or fail in even trying, then I realize that I will have only sold myself short, and not lived the life that I intended for myself.

Because of all those considerations and more, I will be more mindful of the choices that I make in order to make sure that every step I take is with purpose, but more importantly, precision. If every step that I take is mindful, deeply thought out, and with purpose, then I am sure to grow beyond the boundaries of my current comfort zones, moving the bar higher for myself, and growing as a person, thus increasing my repertoire in myriad directions. That is why I have chosen to start this mindset series, which I have admittedly had in mind for a very long time, far too long in fact, and I hadn’t followed suit due to overlooking what was best for me.

In the end, this is only one step. But it is useless if it’s the only step that I take. It’s a starting point at least, and that’s all you need to begin stepping out of your comfort zones and pursing your goals.

The best part about venturing outside of comfort zones, is that you begin sauntering through goals at a steady pace, your mindset grows strong as your growth accrues, and that becomes a self-reinforcing process that allows for more challenges to overcome, and more goals to be created.

What’s not to Love about that?

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If you find value in this information, please share it. This article is free and open source. All individuals have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Zy Marquiez and BreakawayIndividual.com
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Suggested Reading & Viewing:

Logical Fallacies Employed In Every Day Life
The Minds Of Men [Documentary] | Social Engineering & Mind Control
Manipulation Of Media Messages & Astroturf by Sharyl Attkisson
Socratic Logic V 3.1 by Peter Kreeft PhD
Getting Things done by David Allen
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto
Lesson’s From Orwell’s 1984
Against Public Schooling – How Public Education Cripples Our Kids By John Taylor Gatto
Social Engineering 101
The Tavistock Institute – Social Engineering The Masses By Daniel Estulin
The Emergence Of Orwellian Newspeak & The Death Of Free Speech
What Is An Elite Curriculum?
A Mind Of Your Own – The Truth About Depression by Dr. Kelly Brogan
Social Engineering 101
What Is An Elite Curriculum?
Invisible Influence by Kevin Hogan

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About The Author:

Zy Marquiez is is an author, bibliophile, writer, poet, dreamer, star gazer, autodidact, logician, researcher, lover of life, Carmel Macchiatto addict, and more.

5 Lessons From Owning & Operating Businesses In The First Year [Part 2] | #Business | #Finance | #Investing | #Growth | #Mindset

“Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful men and women keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.”
– Conrad Hilton

“Who you are tomorrow begins with what you do today.”
– Tim Fargo

Zy Marquiez

The previous write up discussed 5 lessons from the first year of business of my close friend and business owner Hussein Jabai and me. The lessons bellow will continue along the same lines with 5 additional thoughts that could prove valuable for those starting their own business.

#6: Know Your Customer Base

Are your primary customers middle-class consumers? Are they individuals concerned with health? Are they parents searching for entertainment options for their kids? Are they females? Males? Moreover, what’s the age range of your customers? Those two examples (of many) dovetail incredibly closely, for they allow you to know how to tailor your business model for your customers.

Social media analytics and other tools help with this. Figure out how to ascertain the demographics of your customer base, and you’re one significant step closer to success towards knowing whether your products will appeal simply to parents, techies, gamers, intellectuals, or any other type of individuals.

#7: Don’t Be Afraid To Go Against The Grain

Though Jabai’s business model and myself each go against the grain in their own ways, we will focus on what he is undertaking because the scope is much larger and intriguing.

Jabai is an individual who is in the discipline of health and wellness. For business, he could have simply stuck within the run-of-the-mill health and wellness strata of society, and found incredible success. But he’s in the process of expanding way beyond that. His passions are filtering not only into helping individuals with personal training, which he thoroughly enjoys, but into his Fighter Training Systems (FTTS Project), which aids in Injury Prevention for First Responders. But there’s more, he is also undertaking a personal initiative to create a program that strives for a much larger scale regional (and perhaps global reach) that could help individuals not just locally, but in various global regions.

The above example is the type of mindset that doesn’t settle simply for success, but reaches into making a difference, which is what ultimately changes lives.

#8: Always Strive To Continue Learning

Whether in life, business, personal relationships, or anything else, learning can take place reactively, or proactively. Though lessons in each can provide incredible depth, reactive lessons (and insights) are simply lessons that come when the tide brings them, whenever time provides them, rather than you venturing into the ocean to seek your own veritable treasure. In other words, you can wait for treasure to arrive on the shore of a beach brought about by waves, with that treasure brought to you, or you can venture into uncharted waters like a treasure hunter, and seek treasure of endless types. Self-directed education is one of the ways that individuals can find treasure within the field of business.

A wiseman once said, learning from your mistakes leads to knowledge, while learning from those of others, leads to wisdom. Always seek to learn from the footsteps provided from those before you, and even if you can’t because you happen to be doing something that’s brand new, you can still learn laterally from other individuals and their businesses in this respect.

In conjunction with that, one of the books that provided great insights into learning proactively is the book Small Business Marketing Kit For Dummies. This is an excellent crash course into possible avenues for individuals seeking how to expand their awareness of marketing, all the while offering pragmatic examples of what can be undertaken.

#9: Find (and Construct) Mutual Support Mindset Networks

It’s my estimation that the vanguard reason that Jabai and myself bonded so quickly wasn’t simply because we were business owners, but more importantly, our talks, whether business or personal, were based around the same type of mindset. Each of us employs a mindset that doesn’t simply seeks success, but seeks to go beyond that into creating something unique and far reaching.

Where I myself seek to help individuals express their creative desires through the medium of LEGO in multifarious way which helps bring people of all ages joy in countless ways, Jabai is seeking to help people well beyond the scope of individually tailored health.

Jabai doesn’t simply strive to stay in a comfort zone and be only a personal trainer, he seeks to expand his health and wellness business well beyond the scope that most people within the health and wellness area do.

While individuals can truly do most (or possibly all) things in life alone, one need not go at it alone when there are people of the same type of mindset out there, you simply need to find them and grow those relationships, whether it is in life or business.

Mutual mindset support networks aid in significant ways, from learning how to streamline your approach, having open-minded brainstorming sessions, to proactive seeking to not only to learn lessons from one another, but from others as well.

Each of us is seeking incredible distinct dreams, but with the mindset of empowering others, whether it is creatively or through health, and to buttress that with relentless passion to grow not only as a business, but as individuals as well.

#10 – Do Not Throw Away Time By The Wayside

Mincing no words, the average person spends time inefficiently by the truckload, it is a problem we all have, and its unfortunately a growing trend.

According to an article from New York Daily News penned a while ago, the average person spends 5 hours watching TV daily with some watching even more than that. At 5 hours per day, that amounts to 1,825 hours per year. That is 18250 hours per decade, and 91,250 hours per 50 years. That’s a lot of time! Over the course of 50 years, the total amount of time spent watching TV daily amounts to 3802 consecutive 24-hour days over that span. Or “just” 5 hours a day, for 50 years.

For the sake of simplicity, let us assume most of us happen to get 8 hours a day sleeping. In an entire 168 hour work-week where the average person spends 56 hours a week sleeping, and 40 hours a week working, that leaves one with 72 hours free. If one were to spend 35 hours a week viewing television, then that would leave 37 hours of free time. That’s nearly half of all of one’s available time spent watching television. That doesn’t even count social media! That seems ludicrous, does it not? That also doesn’t even begin to cover other activities individuals may carry out that don’t yield growth, whether in life or business.

Those are just some statistics of how much time is wasted, and there’s a lot more. The main point is that time is wasted by everyone including myself to varying extents. With modern media, it’s easy to spend countless hours on various apps and websites.

The best way to get around to creating time templates is simply to watch how much time you spend on social media and websites. There are apps that help with this. Once you do this, you will be downright shocked at how much time you spend on certain apps per week.

As you realize where those time vortexes of yours are, you will be able to adjust accordingly, hopefully slotting something productive in those areas like self-directed learning, business analysis and forecasts, etc.[1]

Final Thoughts

In modern times, success in business is not as complex as it was in the past. With the rise of the internet, social media and online social network, there are literally countless resources at hand, and a lot of those are free. However, if you can learn (proactively rather than reactively) from the mistakes and footsteps others took in a way that it can prevent you from making the same mistakes yourself, thus helping you forgo unnecessary hardship and time waste, you will be quite a few steps ahead of the competition.

Seek to push your business beyond the boundaries of comfort zones, but first, seek to push yourself beyond what you think you are capable of. What you do personally within your life, the mindset you employ, will inevitably seep into that of your business and your employees and will become the template for success in your future.

In life, individuals often surprise themselves of what they are capable of doing once they employ a can-do mindset, rather than a can’t-do mindset, and in business it’s not different.

Don’t wait upon the shores of life for treasures to come to you, veritable life insights that could also be applied to business; that is simply wasting time you could be using to venture on into the unknown seeking the treasures that life and business provide. And you never know, when seeking those very treasures, you might just run into a life-lesson or insight that changes your life forever.

One can’t put a price tag to life-altering life-lessons and wisdom that come about which help you not only in life, but in business as well. Those can only usually be attained by venturing beyond comfort zones.

Life happens to everyone, but unbounded success happens only to those that keep persevering beyond their comfort zones and into uncharted waters, even if they face a storm. And just like those storms within the seas help provide the circumstances that create master navigators able to steer their vessels in any way, within any storm, the metaphorical storms life and business provide will make you capable of navigating through various circumstances be them economic downturns, personal plight, or anything else.

Such is the mindset of a proactive individual; such is the mindset that makes unbounded success inevitable.

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Author’s Note:

[1] Time efficiency and inefficiency will be something discussed in the future and extrapolated upon at length given the incredible ramifications it has for business and success. This is only covered in this article in a cursory manner to give an individual a morsel of how significant time loss is within our lives.

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About The Author:

Zy Marquiez is an an author, business owner, CEO, avid book reviewer, inquirer, open-minded skeptic, and writer who aims at empowering individuals while also studying and regularly mirroring subjects like Consciousness, Education, Creativity, The Individual, Ancient History & Ancient Civilizations, Forbidden Archaeology, Big Pharma, Alternative Health, Space, Geoengineering, Social Engineering, Propaganda, and much more.

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5 Lessons From Owning & Operating Businesses In The First Year [Part 1] | #Business | #Finance | #Investing | #Growth | #Mindset

“Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.”
– Farrah Gray

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
– Confucius

BreakawayIndividual.com
Zy Marquiez
June 23, 2019

The first year in any venture can be a rollercoaster ride, particularly in business.

Such ventures can include incredible highs and torrential lows, but it’s the full length of the journey, what you learn from it and what you ultimately implement that will really set you apart from the of the field.

Based on these ideas, key insights will be discussed in this blog post based on lessons learned from the initial year and change of operating small businesses. Future blogs covering additional insights will follow thereafter, so keep a look at for those in the near future.

As a preamble offering background to the following insights, the following considerations will be based on the experienced gained from two small business owners, one of them being my close friend Jabai and that of myself.

Hussien Jabbai, who conceptualized this post nigh a week ago in one of our business brainstorming discussions, is CEO and Owner of Jabai Performance, wherein he also focuses on Personal Training, and is also the Founder of the Fire Fighter Training Systems (FTTS Project), which aids in Injury Prevention for First Responders. Conversely, I myself am CEO and Owner of both a LEGO-parts store on Bricklink named Blocked up, and also the Square One Productions Ebay store. Both of us have known each other for about six months and have learned a great deal from our business platforms and numerous business conversations.

The advice that follows is a conceptual collation of significant lessons we have learned in our respective businesses in hopes that other business owners may have a foundation to venture from and some idea of what to do, and what not to do. Examples will follow from either one, or each of our respective fields where applicable.

#1: Know What You, Your Products & Services Are Worth

A business transaction, is not unlike any other transaction. Agreements, whether contractual or not, are purely two parties agreeing upon a set of parameters and/or a certain price point. Not all price points are created equal, however.

To give you an idea, while business A might offer to sell their services to customer B, at say $500 per transaction, that doesn’t mean that this is the ideal price-point for the product or service. An exact or very similar transaction could take place at the $750-1000 price range between business C and customer D, and if that is true, then selling your services lower than what the regional, national or global average is, is highly detrimental, and could even set your business back when compared to the competition.

Within personal fitness, how much each trainer charges is obviously a personal choice that is coupled with experience, not unlike any other business. The model that Jabai chooses to employ is one where the services he offers aren’t the highest priced, but certainly aren’t the lowest either. If he prices his services too low, he’ll just get swamped with customers, his time won’t be as efficient given the value he puts on his time and the experience he has garnered in the field, and he would ultimately undercut himself. Likewise, if the prices he sets are too high, it will not only narrow down the range of potential customers who can afford his services, but it will also limit the likelihood of garnering repeat customers as well.

Now, in my own personal aside, when launching the LEGO-parts selling business platform I have pursued on Bricklink, I employ a software used Brickstock. Narrowing down a lot of information into a bite-sized piece, each particular LEGO set has parts lists that can be viewed as the inventory sheet, and each of these parts is sold for a certain price.

Now, the key part here is that each LEGO part is priced at a global average within the Brickstock software, not a regional or national one. This means that, if you don’t know, and I certainly didn’t know this at the nascent stages of starting the Blocked Up Bricklink store, the your regional (or national) price of most individual parts could be much, much higher than the global average, then you would be leaving significant profits at the table. Some of the reasons for this price discrepancy are that in Bricklink (1) some buyers do not like purchasing from sellers over-seas because of the additional shipping charges they incur, (2) many Bricklink stores outside of the United States have (surreptitious) hidden fees, and (3) the issue of waiting much longer for parts is highly problematic when many of the LEGO MOCs (My Own Creations) that are designed by independent LEGO creators are on a time table.

These reasons are why many LEGO creators don’t mind paying a higher premium or a much higher price in certain instances for individual parts within their actual region. However, this isn’t something that’s written about anywhere within the LEGO community that I have noted. It is definitely something to take note of because if you happen to have a store with tens of thousands of parts, hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of parts, then adding even $0.05 cents per part is netting significant profits over the span of a hundreds of orders, entailing tens of thousands of parts, or more.

I have seen Bricklink Businesses who I wholeheartedly support, and whom I appreciate greatly that have been around for over 10 years and whom I have also learned a LOT from that have done this mistake and still do so, and whose business model stays stagnant or grows only slowly, and definitely not at the rate that it could. To be fair, I am only talking about stores where people are doing this for a living, and not selling parts as a hobby.

Also of note, I am also not stating that people need to have the highest prices for their parts, nay. What I am saying is that, if a product is selling for a given price within your region, pricing a hair under that price is something to at least be considered at minimum, since many times these parts would be cheaper than any other store out there anyhow. Pricing parts any lower than that is financial suicide given that you’re only going to grow slower and not take advantage of the supply and demand price mechanisms that rule economics. Just as important, carrying out such glaring oversights in my honest opinion are also a colossal time waste given that this time could be allocated to further grow the business or even free up personal time if that is what you seek.

#2: Always Pay Attention To Your Competitors

Learning is growth, and growth should entail learning. A significant way individuals can learn in life is by learning from others, and in business this is no different. And thankfully, one of the best ways to learn is from those that came before you, or those that partake in your business field.

As touched upon lightly in the aforementioned point, some business products/services have established price ranges, while others do not, in which case you would have to figure out what the price range and market is for that given product/service. In most businesses however, if you look hard enough you can ascertain what prices are optimal for your business, and one of the best and simplest ways to do this is by keeping an eye on similar businesses.

This advice might seem ‘obvious’ at first blush, but it’s something I often see overlooked on Ebay every single day, and that’s not an overstatement.

In addition, other notable things other businesses could do is (1) move prince ranges up or down, which affects your product and profits, (2) have complete control of most of the market, which (a) gives then incredible flexibility in the control of setting the market price, (b) often aiding them in pricing products/services at a much lower price point given that they are in it to flip-products quickly, not unlike a convenience store or even Wal-Mart, which follows a different model than simply pricing products at a specific price point. And (c) this affects the speed at which your products sell.

#3: Know What Your Lowest Price-Point Is & Don’t Go Below It

From what I have gathered, in many online businesses, sellers will undercut each other relentlessly to the point that they are barely profiting from their products. In my personal view, this is like willingly choosing minimum-wage when you could make a higher per-hour rate, or per-transaction rate, than that.

As a business owner, this used to bother me because I always felt the need to have the lowest prices with certain products, but that’s not always feasible (or reasonable), and many times it’s downright detrimental to your business model. In Ebay stores, as well as in Bricklink, there will always be stores with lower prices, but that doesn’t bother me now because prices aren’t the only thing that people rely on, which brings me to the next point.

#4: Know Your Business Model

In business, like in life, it is incredibly important to know your business model in its totality.

Now, in the case of my friend Jabai, he has set his business model with a price point at a happy medium where not only he is satisfied with, but at a point where his customers are as well, which encourages customer loyalty. I follow a similar mindset with most of the products sold, although not in the exact manner because where Jabai sells a service, I sell thousands of different products/parts between both stores.

Along the same line of thought, could each of us set the price of our products/services much higher than we do so now? Yes, we certainly could. Why don’t we? There are a lot of reasons for these, but we will focus on two of these.

The vanguard reason for this is to have happy customers, which encourages repeated business and customer loyalty. Secondly, there is a moral point of view in that although we do want to profit from business, we don’t want to fleece people, which is a delicate balance at times in business. That said, what people considering ‘fleecing’ is entirely subjective, but the majority of people usually agree upon certain price-ranges before something just gets downright expensive.

Due to those reasons, we have each settled on our respective values for our business practices and what we are ultimately satisfied with. This is ONLY a cursory glance of this notion, and can be gone into further detail later on, but it is mentioned simply to give a bird’s-eye view of the concept.

#5: Make Sure You Consider A High-Value Or Rare Product/Service – A ‘Strong IP’ (Intellectual Product)

Let’s now consider the notion of having a high-value or rare product/service.

Having a high-value or rare product/service is something to take note of given that not all products and services, although sometimes exact in nature, are similar in the way their execution is carried out when infused into a business model. As the first example showcased, two businesses can have the exact product, but the initial business values it much lower, thus nets less profit than the latter business. Adding incredible value and/or rarity to the product/service only increases the profit, or the magnitude of the mistake made within such an example.

Expanding upon the notion of having a high-value or rare product, let us now contemplate what I jokingly call having ‘Strong IPs’ within your business. The reason I have chosen this jargon specifically is because one of the greatest lessons I have learned from watching Nintendo as a company.

The lesson that I have learned from Nintendo is that they do not devalue their intellectual property (IP), which is the reason why (1) their products net so much profit, and (2) why their products maintain their value over time.

In the last few years, what I have learned is that even if you go back a decade or more, the products created by Nintendo, not only retain their value quite well, but in some instances increase in value with time. This is one vanguard reason why having a strong IP and knowing what it’s worth is paramount.

Besides, since Nintendo creates the games themselves, they set the global market; the prices that individuals pay for Nintendo video games is nigh always the same across the board, and given how much Nintendo values their IPs, those video games rarely go on sale, thus securing greater profits in the long run. To be fair, Nintendo also has high standards when publishing video games, whereas some other companies do not, which is why they can’t keep their IPs at such a high price point. This is why it’s noteworthy to see Nintendo take their craft seriously, because not only do they carefully craft their IPs with careful consideration, but they deliver on the vision of having a high-quality product through and through.

Now, in my personal case, neither do the Bricklink nor Ebay stores have items that are created by me. What I do offer instead as a smaller subset of the Square One Productions Ebay store are items that are incredibly rare.

Case in point, something I invest heavily in are rare video games and collector’s editions, Playstation 4 Collector’s Editions to be precise. From time to time, a particular game will get a physical Collector’s Edition for a video game that was never produced physically and only produced digitally; given that, the mintage of that item will be somewhere along the lines of 2000-3000 copies. While that might sound like a lot of copies to some, when one realizes that there are nearly 100 Million potential buyers as PS4 owners, you realize that you have a very rare item. It gets even more interesting from there though.

Most of those 2000-3000 copies will be purchased by collectors. For example, let’s say that 50% of those collector’s editions are purchased by collectors, and I could make an argument that the number is much higher, but let’s roll with that number for simplicity’s sake. If such is the case, then you now have only 1000-1500 copies available for purchase, if not much less than that. (In my daily pricing research on EBay, I would say that the numbers is closer to 5-10% of that, but either way, you have an incredibly rare item, which only makes it that much more valuable.)

An unwritten rule that most resellers take is selling the item for double what you paid for it. So if you paid $50 for a collector’s edition, selling it for $100 is not uncommon. Even so, in my opinion, a mistake that some individuals do is pricing these items incredibly low; say at $75 or so. While that might seem like a 50% profit if you were to take Ebay as an example, such is not the case for EBay keeps 10% of that, so the profit is only $67.50, or is it? PayPal takes another 3%, which would is $2.25. Now that ‘profit’ went from $67.50 to $65.25.

If the reseller had sold the item at $100, the Ebay 10% fee would drop the profit to $90, with PayPal taking its 3%, leaving the profit for the item at $87. Although how each seller sells their item is obviously their choice, there’s an enormous difference between selling a product between $65.25 and $87 after fees. While an item sold at $75 will net you a % 30.5 profit, an item that sells at $100 will net you 87% profit. Those kinds of returns will snowball significantly, or at a snail’s pace, depending on which price point you pick and business model you choose to employ.

In the Square One Productions business, 80% of the products or so, perhaps a bit higher, all are priced ‘to-go’ at near the lowest price-point, with the rest of the items having much higher price points, the highest around in fact. This is because when your item is limited, and cannot be created ever again unless by some unknown circumstance or ‘miracle’ later on, the value of that item is incredibly high [1]. This is why it’s not uncommon for some of the rare video games and collector’s editions that are sold to have a 3x-5x return, and in rare cases higher than that even.

Given all of that, knowing exactly where your product falls on the spectrum of rarity and value will net you significant profits in the long run and only make it easier for your business to succeed, or continue its success.

Final Thoughts

Please keep in mind, none of the above thoughts are shared as end-all-be-all ideas. These thoughts are shared to offer individuals perspective for those seeking insight when perhaps considering starting their own business, or who know others that have done so or are planning too.

There are a lot of additional ideas that can be discussed, but these initial five were chosen given that they set a sound baseline for the next part of this series.

In business, like in life, there are unlimited options that individuals and business owners can undertake. What options are chosen and what follows there in isn’t only directly related to the quality of research carried out within your business, but the perseverance and focus applied to each particular idea and/or venture.

The more focused and precise the actions undertaken, the greater the net benefits and profits that will accrue over time, and the more rapidly those benefits will manifest. And in business, like in life, these benefits are what increase the quality of life, or business, which is why careful consideration should be given to it.

As such, each step that you take should not only be taken with incredible thought and mindfulness, but it should not be taken lightly, either.

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[1] The notion of rare video games, or games minted in limited runs, is not something new, although has garnered a lot of attention the last few years. In fact, ‘Limited Run’, is the name of the company that I invest the most heavily in and support not only in my business practices, but for my personal endeavors as well. As a small company that is doing what to keep physical media for game cartridges of video games in an age where most companies are seeking to make everything digital, I appreciate what they do heavily and will continue to support them for the rest of my life.
[2] Some of these examples were only delved into in a cursory manner, and could be expanded upon at length in the future.

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About The Author:

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“The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core strength within you that survives all hurt.”
– Max Lerner

Emotional Bank Accounts: Trust | #Life | #Growth | #Change | #Friendship

“My love is unconditional. My trust and my respect are not.”
– Anonymous

BreakawayIndividual.com
Zy Marquiez
May 31, 2019

After getting home today, I ended up thinking what an interesting concept trust is for many reasons. The reason I even pondered such a thought was due to something that took place online.

Yesterday I ran into a thought someone shared that had to deal with trust. Thence, while getting some work done it occurred to me that trust is one of the very pillars of emotional bank accounts.

Trust allows for relationships of all types to grow; trust fosters comfort; trust fosters a certain level of understanding, deeper understanding; trust allows for individuals to not get stressed out for whatever reason; trust, ultimately, is a significant deposit into emotional bank accounts.

The statement I read could be the equivalent, at least to me, of, “I-got-your-back-no-matter-what.” That’s a level of trust that’s not easy to arrive too. Was what I read intended like that? I have no idea, though it seemed like it. What I do know is that the statement was based on trust, which is the Rosetta stone of this blog post.

In all honesty, the statement made me think about a lot of things revolving around trust. That’s the thing, trust filters in everything in life, so much so that it’s actually taken for granted at a deeper level. This is because usually, we all give and take various levels of trust like candy on Halloween, and since this type of circumstance happens nigh on auto-pilot, not a lot of thought is given to it [1]. But trust has many ramifications that seep in countless directions.

Trust is what makes friendships grow; trust is what makes communities grow; trust is what allows nations to be established; trust is what ultimately allows progress to take place to the utmost extent.

Without trust, without one of the pillars of individuals and society, growth cannot be had; without trust, society cannot stand firmly upon its foundation.

And nothing great can stand too long without a proper foundation; for cracks will irrevocably take place within the foundation, and then those will affect the rest of the structure.

But don’t trust me on any of this, nay. Trust yourself and find out if the above makes sense, and what other ramifications can be had from such a concept.

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[1] The fact that trust is handed out ‘easily’ might seem wrong at first blush, but let’s ponder a bit. Don’t you trust a teacher, even without knowing them, with your child? Don’t you trust a pharmacist to know everything about drugs, without ever questioning them? Don’t you trust a police officer when they arrive on a scene? Don’t you trust a politician to do the right thing? Okay, am being facetious about the last one, since most politicians aren’t deserving of the level of trust that’s imparted at them, but the prior individuals are to some extent.

People don’t actively wonder if they’re going to trust a doctor, teacher, lawyer, pharmacist, etc. they just do it. That kind of blind trust can backfire more often than you realize, except it’s never seen from the lens of trust, which is why it’s never talked about, yet alone pondered at length.

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