Wednesday 2 December 2015

Dion's Favorite Quotes

Dion's Favorite Quotes

1) I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with better care than they plan their lives. Perhaps that is because escape is easier than change - Jim Rohn

2) There are two rules for living in harmony, number 1, don't sweat the small stuff, number 2, it's all small stuff - Richard Carlson

3) What I lack in intelligence I make up for in persistence - Grant Cardone 


Dion Siluch

DS - Choose to win! 

Thursday 29 October 2015

The "Work Hard" Mentality - By Dion Siluch



The “Work Hard” Mentality

During my early teenage years I often had to do a lot of chores around the house as in any typical family. There would be rewards for doing each task and a dollar figure attached to the amount that would be paid when each task was completed.  In hopes to build a strong work ethic spent endless hours completing task around the house as any teenage boy would do.

The problem was my parents didn’t see the underlining lesson they were teaching me about money: work hard for money!

The reason I write this blog today is because an entrepreneur should NEVER work hard for money. Let me explain.

An entrepreneur should leverage his or her ability to think and use other people’s time and money. A common abbreviation is OPT or Other Peoples Time. The first experience I had using OPT was at the early age of 13. The story goes like this…



I clearly remember one day at school in grade nine when my friend Cody needed some extra cash for a video game he wanted to purchase. At the time my mother was paying $20 to mow the lawn. The issue was that I hated mowing the lawn. It was hot outside and I had better things to be doing.

During a conversation on the school bus with my Friend Cody I offered him to mow my lawn for $10. I could make a quick $10 and he could earn $10 towards his video game. This seemed brilliant in my mind and he had no problem coming over for the evening.

We headed up the street to my house which sat the peak of a mountain overlooking the beautiful valley. I clearly remember telling myself I didn’t want to be involved with mowing the lawn; instead I wanted to teach Cody how to do the chore from start to finish. I showed him where the mower was, how to fuel it, how he should cut it, where to put the grass, and so on.

Everything was going as planned until my mother stepped out of the front door and saw my friend mowing the lawn while I was watching and drinking an iced tea. She was furious! She started raising her voice and telling me that was my job to mow the lawn.

She couldn’t believe I would give someone else my chores and take a cut of the money. She even told me that it was stealing. I was confused, I didn’t think she would be so upset… the lawn was getting mowed correctly and on time.

She walked over the Cody, turned off the lawn mower and demanded I finish the job. I tried explaining to her I didn’t want to do it and Cody needed the money. But my efforts were useless. I was punished and had to mow the lawn every week for the following 2 summers.




This incident stuck with me for a long time. I believe it had a true impact on my ability to properly outsource work I didn’t like doing. When I finally started my first business at 21 I often did all the work myself. I wore multiple hats in the company, including the ones I was not good at.

Then I heard a quote I’ll never forget “Do what you do best and write a cheque for the rest”.

My mother had been an employee her entire life and was programmed to work hard for money. This is a concept that does not work well for entrepreneurs. I would highly recommend visiting cheap outsourcing sites like Fiverr.com and MyTasker.com to get help get those undesirable tasks done.


As my business coach always says... Using other people time is a key to starting and running a successful business.

Dion Siluch
Choose To Win


“Do what you do best and write a cheque for the rest!”

Tuesday 29 September 2015

Sunk Cost Fallacy - By Dion Siluch



Sunk Cost Fallacy - by Dion Siluch


If you are unfamiliar with this term then you are about to learn a powerful tool. This first was explained to me by my friend James Konduc while I was working on my first successful business. I was developing the systems to my ambulance rental business and was exploring different solutions for doing online reservations similar to what current car rental companies were doing. I found a developer in India to start the project from scratch and quoted me $6,000. They wanted a third of the price upfront, a third in the middle and the last third upon delivery of the project. This is very typical of programmers especially overseas.

The problem I ran into was the quality of their project. To be frank it absolutely sucked. It was like they were using an excel spreadsheet online to create the entry points and had no idea how the system was supposed to work. We were 4 months into the development and I had paid these guys $4,000 of my hard earned money for their product that was maybe half of what I was looking for. My only thought process was “wow this is harder than I expected”. Working with developers to program something that I envisioned in my head was very difficult to communicate. It doesn’t look or feel the way I want it to and I had already invested $4,000 into the development. No wonder companies like Enterprise spent millions of dollars on their online programming and systems, how am I supposed to compete?

Then I found this useful website capterra.com. I decided to search for a program that might have already been built for what I was looking for. And it turns out there were dozens of them. All different types of rental software programs for every industry you could think of. Equipment rentals, car rentals, airplane rentals, limo rentals, boat rentals, even camera rentals. I found multiple price points and different fleet sizes that each program could handle.

I tried a demo with a promising fleet program and it turned out to be $800 all in. Well I could have used this info 4 months ago I thought. The next big hurtle was dropping the current project and buying into this one. But I had already invested $4,000 into this project and I didn’t want to lose my money…

The sunk cost fallacy theory goes like this, a sunk cost is any past cost that has already been paid and cannot be recovered. Therefore, any invested time, money or energy into a current project or person will create an emotional attachment to continue down the path until completion of that particular investment; even if the solution is less desirable.  

Here are some examples
I might as well keep eating because I already bought the food
I might as well keep watching this terrible movie because I’ve watched an hour of it already 
I might as well keep going to a bad/useless class that I paid for
I might as well continue dating someone bad for me because I’ve already invested so much in them

It’s easy to understand in hindsight that the decision was clear but the truth is we all get caught up in this phenomenon. I had to bite the bullet and cancel the India project short. It never feels good spending money on something that brings absolutely no value to your company. But the lesson was clear: STOP INVESTING MONEY IN SUNK COSTS

Friday 1 May 2015

Mobile Treatment Center - Industrial Ambulance Rentals

MTC Rentals - Mobile Treatment Center Rentals

Welcome To MTC Rentals Blog. The place for companies requiring short notice and long term leasing of Medical Vehicles to share their information. MTC Rentals is a dedicated Mobile Treatment Center and Industrial Ambulance Rentals company servicing clients in Western Canada founded in 2013. Please write your feedback on this forum.

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