Being resourceful is tantamount to being useful.  If you’re resourceful, you have the ability to, here’s the key concept, work with what you have to find quick and clever ways to overcome obstacles.  Are you being resourceful in your personal and professional life?  In today’s free-wheeling, credit-wielding economy (circa pre-2008 of course) many individuals and organizations have lost the art of resourcefulness and frugality in their problem solving and decision-making.  Thanks to the worldwide recession, wallets are being cinched, VCs are pulling back, and businesses are running lean.  Resourcefulness is in again, it seems.

Can you imagine if you won the lottery?  And not just any lottery, but a jackpot of tens of millions of dollars?   You’re probably already fantasizing about how you would spend that kind of money.  I wouldn’t mind a Lambo or additional capital myself! It’s easy to fantasize about a life made easier with vast or unlimited resources.  The human mind certainly likes to paint a rosier picture on the other side of the fence.   Problem is, if you wait until the stars are perfectly aligned (like winning the lottery) to do something, you’ll mostly likely never end up doing it.  Ideas abound, execution is another story.  I’ve seen countless people dream a big dream, but never start, poorly execute, or quit early because of a lack of resources.  In my mind, it’s often not as much a matter of resources, but a matter of how resourceful you are.

Starting a business on a shoestring, landing a date with a supermodel, or providing value to your client base can be accomplished with a vision and diligence.  You can’t snap your fingers and make these goals realities, but you can take a hard look at what you have in your toolbox, where you want to go, and how you can take baby steps to get there.  If you’re starting a business, but think you need a million to make something happen, don’t sit idle while waiting for the cash monsoon.  Start a business plan, get your branding started, research your competition, network with investors, and start a blog to begin building your marketing channel.  A lot of success isn’t a result of luck, it’s a result of setting yourself up for luck.  After all, you’ll never win the hand if you’re not at the table to begin with.

Don’t end up on the treadmill of life, static in a moving environment or moving in a static environment, with inertia driving your path.  Sometimes, you need to pull up your sleeves and make do with what you have.  If you’re striving for usefulness, for yourself and others, then form a habit of using your existing assets wisely.  If you want to be a writer, but don’t have a publisher on board, maybe you should self-publish, blog, or build up a Twitter following to get your name out there.  If you want to meet people, but feel socially awkward, take a public speaking class coupled with a geography class and watch your fear and lack of conversation material will wane.   My point is this: Rome wasn’t built in a night, legacies weren’t built in a month, and lasting businesses (useful ones) take time to build. Riding the ebbs and flow of life will present hurdles and opportunities, but with resourcefulness you can make the best of both worlds.  -Written By @epsilonc

“Remember you will not always win. Some days, the most resourceful individual will taste defeat. But there is, in this case, always tomorrow – after you have done your best to achieve success today.” -Maxwell Maltz

It’s when you realize that everyone is suffering in some way inside, that each of us have burdens we carry and baggage we pull, that you gain perspective on your own demons.  Sometimes, we are the root of our problems, and sometimes we’re not.

Yet, encouragement perhaps can be found in the philosophy that humanity has one common element, across all borders: we all suffer.  We all hurt, we all get wounded.  In fact, many times we are the ones who wound each other.  The people you love the most can hurt you the most and the friends you hold close are that much closer to your beating heart.

So what to do?  Settle for subpar?  Give up on even trying anymore?  Take pleasure in the idea that everyone else feels pain too?

I’ve always believed that life is about striving for extraordinary.  As a shallow example, take a look at people you think are attractive; it’s not usually because they are the stereotypical image of attractiveness, it’s because they are unique, different, and maybe that feels more human, more alive.  They aren’t ordinary.  I think this is true even with movie stars and famous people in time; the more unique you are, all the more beautiful you appear and the more memorable your face can be.  As humans, we’re drawn to differences.  It’s one reason across the centuries that the issue of race has had such a devastating effect on humanity. The ordinary in life is mundane, it’s boring, and it can be a slow death to the essence of what life is supposed to be about.  It’s so easy to get caught up living someone else’s life or following a path you never chose, content to become complacent with mediocrity and an unhappy existence.  Basically, either trying to be perfect or giving up altogether.  Either way, it sucks.

You don’t know everything.  You can’t.  Because we’re not perfect.  And with that thought, with being broken to the point of relinquishing control of your perfection, you can finally begin to experience happiness, joy, and peace.  Without pressure, without presumptions, only with the passionate and patient pursuit of a personal place of peace and contentedness, without the rolling over and giving up part.  Life goes on, you can be extraordinary.  Because extraordinary isn’t perfect.  It’s simply extraordinary.

In an age of spam, advertising inundation, and fast food, our senses are being vied for seemingly every minute of everyday. In order to get through the junk, businesses oftentimes resort to the quick and easy way of dealing with the problem by simply making it bigger with more clutter and more junk! Instead of the hard approach of doing something remarkable, most do something adequate and simply make it appear to be remarkable. The bad news is, this rarely works and when it does it works for only so long. It’s true: lies often have a way of getting found out!

If you want to build a remarkable company, sell an awesome service, create an amazing product, or simply get the word out about your offering, you need to “get real.” Stop looking for shortcuts or incorporating misleading ad copy or trying to reach your audience by simply using a bigger megaphone. Stop marketing your products or services as better than they actually are and stop backing policies only designed to “look good” and not designed to actually help your customers.

Get real by fully standing behind what you provide. Get real by doing the legwork it takes to actually provide more real value to your customers. Get real by not thinking “how can I increase revenue” or “how can I make customer service cheaper” and thinking instead “how can I be the absolute best in my niche” and “how can I improve the lives of my customers.” Instead of resorting to typical advertising or spamming your audience, why not try and start a two-way conversation with your audience? Why not do work that is so good that people simply have no choice but to talk about it?

I’m not going to say it’s easy, because usually it’s not. Being authentic and building an authentic business that adds value and communicates that value in a real way is no easy chore. But the payoff? The payoff is worth it and I’m not simply talking in terms of revenue or profit or an IPO. I’m talking about going to sleep every night knowing that you and your business is making an impact on people’s lives. Chances are, the money will come if it’s not first and foremost what you’re after.

If you’re still lacking in motivation, check out Seth Godin‘s books The Purple Cow and All Marketers Are Liars for a nice shot of adrenaline.

-RB