“In the past couple of years, I’ve asked about a hundred 80-90 years old what they would do different in life if they’d have a chance to do it again. Most of them said they’d spend more time with their family, and less time <<in the factory>>. None of them said they’d focus on making more money.”

I’m gonna look for a 90 year old on my flight back to London .

A couple of years ago I got a contract with a very, very big and demanding customer for one very simple reason: I showed up more times than my competitors did. You’ve heard it before, but I can’t stress enough how true this rule is: 80% of a sales pitch is showing up.

Ever went into a store, asked for a blue shirt and heard the sales person go: “I’m sorry, we’re out of blue shirts, but would you like a pink t-shirt?”. You have, haven’t you? Everybody has, and  we all hate it. So, next time you sell something to someone, put yourself in his or her shoes. If he’s looking for a blue shirt, would he or she buy a pink t-shirt or not?

Last but definitely not least: Repeat. Repeat it until you can sell anything to anyone. Sell yourself. Sell your ideas. Your arguments. Your beliefs. Just sell. And keep in mind that becoming a great sales person, just as anything else, takes at least 10,000 hours.

There – you read it all, so it means I just sold you my post .

Until very recently I had, like most of you, about 150 feeds in Google Reader. I zapped through them throughout the day, which gave me a (fake) sense of being up-to-date with everything.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to delete 90% of my feeds, and only keep those of friends & people I’m really interested in. I ended up with exactly 20 feeds.

Without further blabbering, RescueTime says I’ve “won” back about 6 hours / week. Six hours. I finally have time to finish Crime and Punishment, and that makes me a very happy chap.

Try it out, it works. And no, you won’t miss anything. If something’s really important, it will get to you one way or another.

I’ve been a vegetarian for almost a year now, I try to go to church regularly and I read the Bible daily, so according to Dan Buettner, a writer and explorer at National Geographic, chances are I’m on the right path to be able to hold my grand, grand, grand children in my arms, one day.

Together with a few smart scientists, Buettner identified the so-called “blue zones”, areas where people live, on average, around 100 years. After analyzing all kinds of data, he discovered the four things we could do to live a better, healthier, longer life: more naturally, have faith and direction, be vegetarians and make lots of friends. Apparently, it’s that simple.

I highly recommend you watch the 20 minute video below. I don’t think it’ll make you live 100 years, but it will sure raise some questions .

While contemplating on why I’m usually this productive on airplanes, the obvious suddenly occured to me: I’m completely offline. Not just because I don’t have Skype, internet, phone, sms, but because my brain knows I don’t have them.

I believe there’s something magic about knowing that no-one, absolutely no-one can bother you. So I’ve decided to do a test, for the next two months. Every week, I’ll pick a day, and for at least 5 hours I will disconnect from any pottential interruptors: mobile, skype, email, IM, etc. I’m going to keep the internet on, though, as I find it rather difficult to work with no internet when you run an internet startup .

I’ll track and measure everything, and in March I’ll get back to you with some metrics, thoughts and conclusions.

PS: If you try to get the hang of me and I’m nowhere to be found, it means I’m in the middle of my little experiment . Wish me luck.

Nevertheless, I believe Twitter is a great tool for staying up-to-date with what my contacts are saying, but I want to have it contextualized. For example, if I email Andrei, my CTO, it’d be helpful to see his latest tweet in Gmail, when sending the email. Or, if I want to meet up with Dragos from UberVU, I want to see his latest few tweets in my BlackBerry Address Book, ’cause maybe he’s back in Romania for a few days.

You get the drill. It’s all about real-time, contextual, information flow. IMHO.

But after close to 5 years of entrepreneurship, I’ve learned that you should only hire people that you feel you can be friends with. You have to feel that you can go out for beers and spend your holidays together. If you don’t, you’ll probably find it difficult to communicate with that person and, ultimately, you’ll lose time and money.

Even more than that, I believe that a company’s team is its DNA, therefore every member of the team should feel like he can be friends with any other member of the team. That’s difficult and requires a lot of trial & error during the recruiting process, but it pays off.

And I have the best example to prove that it’s f**ing worth it. For the past couple of months, my brilliant friends in the Brainient team have been building our products all by themselves back in Romania. And they’ve been doing a fantastic job although I’m in London, focusing on biz-dev and other “boring stuff”, to quote a friend. Actually, I’m starting to think they’re better off without me .

Here’s a glimpse of what they’re trying to achieve:

For more videos, check out The Fun Theory.

A couple of years ago, I started one of Romania’s first online TV channels: BrainTV – TV for smart people. I made two fundamental mistakes with that project:

Firstly, I thought I know the market. Which I didn’t, because as it turned out later – there aren’t that many smart people in world.

Secondly, I didn’t ask my target audience if they want my product. I assumed smart people are going to watch “intelligent” video productions (which weren’t that intelligent now that I think about it). Assuming is bad, I tell you, as I discovered later on that most of them don’t have time to watch videos online.

Rookie mistakes, I know, but I was just a young chap with some money in the bank. It was the worst investment I ever made, now that I think about it.

Now, compare that with how we’ve done things at Brainient in the past 18 months: started with a video management platform, after a few companies told us they need it. Built an alpha and started signing contracts. The contracts showed us they’re really serious and they actually want the product. We continued building the product and asked for feedback very early in the product development roadmap. We iterated. Asked for feedback again. Discovered their main problem is video monetization, not video management. Iterated. Asked for feedback again.

You get the drill. As for feedback. Now.

Even better, whenever I need to work on something that needs concentration and focus, I go on our office’s terrace (with a beautiful view to Ceausescu’s Pallace) and I do my work, standing.

Here’s the top 3 reasons why I believe that standing meetings & work can boost your productivity:

1. You don’t procrastinate. You’re standing, so you don’t really feel like procrastinating or your feet will hurt .

2. Better blood circulation. When standing / walking / running, your blood flow improves, your heart gets more blood, your brain gets more oxigen, therefore chances are you’ll be smarter & brighter .

3. You become smarter . Not sure why, but whenever I work on something and I’m standing, I instantly get better and brighter ideas.

Try it out and let me know what you think!