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I’m thankful my friend Josh Wilson recently referred me the highly regarded book: How Will You Measure Your Life?. If you’re looking for the short version, it’s based off a speech at the commencement of Harvard Business School Class of 2010.

But you might not even need to skip over to each of those links just yet. Instead, just think of the question right now:

How will you measure your life?

It’s simple yet profound. Will it be…

• dollars earned?
• lifelong friends?
• lives touched?
• college degrees?
• fancy cars owned?
• gold medals?
• mountains conquered?
• countries visited?
• children raised?
• languages learned?
• words written?
• grade-point-average?
• products built?
• jobs created?
• houses owned?
• dreams chased?
• celebrities met?
• twitter followers?
• facebook photos?
• YOLO moments?

This list could go on and on. My point is that it’s helpful to think about the questions author Clayton Christensen suggests:

• How can you be sure you will be happy in your career?
• How can you be sure your relationship with your family will be an enduring source of happiness?
• How can you be sure you will stay out of jail?

Only you can answer these questions, and there isn’t a right or wrong answer. My answer resonates closely with Christensen, “focused on family and others”. This blog is an example of my effort to positively touch as many people as possible. Read more…

As an American entrepreneur it’s really easy to develop tunnel vision and ignore economies around the globe. This insular thinking can potentially place a bottle neck on your growth, especially since the fastest growing economies are far from the U.S. border. But thankfully if you’re developing products on the web, it is now easier than ever to take advantage of the fastest growing economies.

A Goldman Sach’s economist, Jim O’Neil, coined the term BRIC in a 2001 research paper, claiming that the combined economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China will eclipse the G7 economies by 2027.

In a more recent 2005 report by O’Neil and Goldman Sach’s, they noted a new group of countries, Next 11, that have high-potential for becoming world economic powers in the 21st century:

Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey, S. Korea, and Vietnam.

There are three main reasons to look at these countries for growth:

People – Young and expanding populations. They will raise the level of wealth (rise of the middle class) and drive demand for discretionary spending.

Potential – The BRIC countries will eclipse the G7 growth within 15 years and the N-11 may rival the G7 by 2050.

Possibility – The BRIC and N-11 countries will likely outperform the traditionally strong economies of the 20th century.

If you’re thinking about ways to expand growth then I would recommend you focus on the untapped markets that include BRIC and Next 11 countries. Learn more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Eleven

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIKT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_markets

http://www.goldmansachs.com/gsam/individuals/products/growth_markets/n11/beyond-bric/index.html