Dr. Petri I. Salonen Views on Life, Entrepreneurship, and Software Business

Living a Life of International Business

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Are you vertical or horizontal in you career?

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Looking back at our careers, most of us have had to make a decision to either focus on a specific skill-set or become part of a management role where there is a real threat that one becomes a “paper pusher”. I remember vividly when I had discussions with my bosses in the past when I was asked whether I want to focus (vertical) or become a generalist (horizontal) in my career. We make these choices and sometimes we are being hurt by them specifically when we age and there is a threat that we are being laid off. My suggestion to all young people that are in their early careers is to ensure that they have a skill-set that is marketable regardless of age. That will keep them employed no matter what. This might seem a simple conclusion, but unfortunately I have seen too many to loose their jobs and struggling to get rehired.

9 Secrets of Truly Happy People: How many of these do you break or think of when living your life?

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I run into this blog entry and felt that it has a bunch of very good advice for people wondering what they should be focusing on their lives. This is what the 9 secrets are based on the blog entry:

  1. They know what really matters in life
  2. Choose just 2-3 important projects for each year
  3. They put time aside for them each day
  4. They surround themselves with people who motivate, inspire or build them up
  5. Happy people eat well
  6. They take time to play or to just “be”
  7. They learn not to make excuses, justify, or cop out
  8. Happy people take time to be grateful – for themselves and for others
  9. They get something done

How many of these rules do you exercise and feel that are important. I personally have broken many of these rules even this year and need to be thinking about it.

9 Secrets of Truly Happy People – Dumb Little Man

Selection of destination when emigrating needs to be based on real facts

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We might have dreams of our new home country and some of these dreams might be based on wrong premises. Cost of living, political stability, educational system and a bunch of other reasons might come to play in your decision. I have run into lots of people from Scandinavia that assume the cost of living to be cheap in the US, but unfortunately most of us do not know that the country, state and city will get you one way or the other in taxes or other payments that you did not know about. In Scandinavia taxes are high but health care and education free, so that is one example of huge difference. There is an old saying: nothing comes for free and this also applies when comparing costs between countries and places to live.

Expat or immigrant: Is your employer bullying you in the recession?

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Living in Dallas with lots of Finns has been a good thing, as some of the traditions that we carry in our lives can still be practiced with your native friends. We have a Finnish motorcycle club; we have a golf club, Finnish language school, Finnish American Business Guild and many other things.

Business cycles are what they are; we cannot do anything about them. However, this last cycle has been very gruel for many Finns living here in Dallas. Layoffs without mercy for people that have spent the last 20 years with the company is the name of the game today. Some of these people have their lives here in Dallas, their kids have grown up in this environment and the employer gives to options: move back to Oulu, Tampere or Helsinki, Finland after 20 years or get laid off. Which one will you choose? Easy choice, let’s take our kids from school, lets sell all we have built during the last 20 years, lets ignore that we have not accrued any pension benefits the last 20 years..  I am sure you get my point…

It has been hard to see this happening to many good friends and as business-owner, it has reminded me that even if business-owners have hard times every once and a while, we at least have the chance to control our lives. These people that have spent almost all of their lives for a company are now suddenly too old to learn new tricks and they are of no use for the organization. Yes, I know that management needs to look for shareholders, but I still think that these organizations are driven by the evil cycle of quarters. I used to have to do that, but life has been so simple the past five years. The only question I have to ask myself is whether we have money in the bank account and possibly review the financial statements in the end of the year to see how we did. That is what I call for luxury!

Have you been part of a recent layoff and does this sound familiar to you?

Do you know when to give up even if you do not know if it is the right time?

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I am sure that many of you work on things that you believe in, and at some point in time you have to decide that the right thing is to “let it go”. A good friend of mine gave me advice and told me that “Petri, a friend of mine told me that sometimes you need to give up only because it is the right thing to you as person”. I am sure you have run into similar situation in your life, and I question you whether you think you can handle it or whether you just hang to it as you think that things will become something else?  

I had this happen to me today where a decision that I really did not want to make, I had to do as the results of “hanging on” would not have been the right thing for me or what I was hanging to. Once the decision is made, you feel relieved that you had the guts and courage to do it. If you have things in your life that you are hanging to without knowing why I suggest you do yourself a favor: continue with your life and do other things that will take you to the next level.

Are you ever off your business or is the business running you?

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Running a business is not always fun, if somebody, I would admit that immediately. When you grow your business, you have issues of employing enough people, issues with cash-flow, issues of spending time with your loved ones.When I started my own business almost five years ago, I could not separate my company time and free time from each other and what made things worse, I worked from my home office where I was “on call” all the time. This dilemma does not only concern entrepreneurs, but it concerns also people that work for large organizations. Large organizations are effective in utilizing their employees and we are too afraid to say no, even if we should. Are you one of them? If you are, please do keep in mind that when the company decides to downsize, all of your late nights and hard work will not be of any importance. I have seen this, and I see if almost every week by getting resumes that people send me to join my company. These times are difficult and companies are reacting, sometimes overreacting to things as well. Remember, this is about your own well-being, not about the companies and/or their owners.

Focus, focus, focus is the key to success

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One of the most difficult tasks that we business-owners have is to pick our battles. We see money everywhere and this leads to unfocused business and we do not get anything done. I have been guilty of this but work hard to remember it when I stretch myself too thin. Ask yourself the question how many times you have said to yourself: why I am spreading myself too thin? Focus and the results will come!

Do you know what is said about happiness?

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In researching for my upcoming book, I found an interesting book at a local Southlake, Texas Barnes&Noble bookshop. This book explains how research has been able to explain happiness and why for example rich people are not as happy as one would think. I highly recommend this book as introduction to investigating what happiness is all about.

[amazon-product image=”51MAjpSpBgL._SL160_.jpg” type=”image”]B002HREKC8[/amazon-product]

Dr. Petri I. Salonen blog is open for business

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Petri_Salonen_Closeup_SmI have been contemplating on starting a blog that evolves my daily life as business-owner, entrepreneur, father, technologies and vivid believer in social media and what it can bring to our lives. I spend far too much on the road and I have been maintaining a blog for that for quite some time. Another blog is to track software business and the markets and ecosystems that are impacted of the new powers. In this blog, I will discuss more personal stuff that relates to my daily life as well as my book writing that I have been doing for some time. My first book came out in Finland in December 2007 (books delivered to shops in January 2008) and my first book was really about how to create a business internationally. My second book that is due out in Q1-2010 is more personal and has to do with international business life, its pros and cons. I am very happy of that initiative and hope to share some of the thoughts in this blog.

Stay tuned and I hope you like my authoring.

Book review of books within social media domain, January 04, 2009:

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I maintain three blogs, and this blog has not got much attention as I have been focusing on getting the content right in all three blogs. They are

Global Software Business, which focuses on topics around software business including software business models and such.

Dr. Petri I. Salonen’s Publications and Book Reviews is going to be more of books that I review and buy on regular basis. Most of my reviews and tips will be in video format.

Onnistu suuressa maailmassa blog is in Finnish and was created for my business book that I published in Finland with Talentum publisher. This will also include video snippets of book reviews.

The review below is a collection of a few interesting books in social media. They are as follows:

Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online by Warren Whitlock and Deborah Micek

Marketing for Rainmakers – 52 Rules of Engagement to Attract and Retain Customers for Life by Phil Fragasso

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Advertising 2.0 – Social Meida Marketing in a Web 2.0 World by Tracy L. Tuten

Always on – Advertising, Marketing, and Media in an Era of Consumer Control by Christopher Vollmer with Geoffrey Precourt

The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott

Grown up digital – how net generation is changing your world by Don Tapscott

I am using a beautiful service (software-as-a-service) called libratything.com that enables me to tag my books and collect them and review just having an internet browser. My profile can be reviewed by anybody.