I rarely feel the entrepreneurial fire
in myself. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t support entrepreneurship. I’m a fan
of this concept and deeply appreciate the contribution of the entrepreneurs in
shaping our society over the centuries. One day, if I come across the Gini of Aladin’s lamp and he gives me 3 wishes, then my 1st one would be
to become an entrepreneur. So, why am I not pursuing this now?
Okay, it didn’t rightly click with me
yet. You can understand the importance of right click when your friend had
taken a snap of you in your favorite place and on the way home you found out
that your friend had a shaky hand and
the picture is blur. Many ideas have knocked my door but none of them
have been strong enough to let me leave my couch and open the door. I believe the inspiration would come like the
feeling of love at first sight; you saw a boy or girl and decided you want him
or her no matter what. I’m waiting for such call to fall in love with. But, in
the mean time, I’m making myself a fertile ground by thinking about various
aspects of entrepreneurship. These are some of my thoughts regarding
entrepreneurship.
1. It may not be your piece of cake: Everyone
is preaching - entrepreneurship is good that doesn’t mean you should be an
entrepreneur too. Milk is good for health but if you have problem with
digesting lactose you better stay away from milk. I’m not discouraging you
rather highlighting on the fact of self-awareness. You may prefer secured pay
check at the end of the month, 40 working hours a week, and spending time with
family and friends, in that case entrepreneurship may turn out to be a bad fit
for you.
2. Keep your stakes low: If
you have a good business idea, don’t leave your job today to start the business
tomorrow. You may have heard the story of the king who burnt all of his ships
after reaching the land of enemy and said to the troop if we went back to our
land it would be by the ships of enemy. By this you are burning the bridge
behind and creating an emergency situation for yourself to put your best effort
in work. I don’t say this technique doesn’t work. But, the successful one is
more of an exception. We don’t have any statistics about how many people have
broken down completely by such action. How can you think clearly when you know that
your family would come in the street if you fail to make the next business
deal? Always start small and keep your feet on solid ground. Keep your regular
job and build your side business and when you feel like your business is good
enough to support you and your family then leave your job. Another part of the low
stake is to play with your pocket first. Don’t go for external funding at the
beginning. If you have $10,000 start your business with that $10,000 in small
scale. When you find your customer loving your product or services and you’ve
developed a strong track record of performance then go for money from other
party.
3. You need not to be original: An
entrepreneur needs not to come up with an original idea to start a venture.
There were GeoCities, Friendster, MySpace, Second Life and many others social
media networks before Facebook. But, why did Facebook top every one of them?
It’s because Facebook just added a
little twist in previous idea by giving a real identity of the users. Look at
the successful businesses around you, how many of those are totally
original? So, you need not to rush for
an original idea rather look around and think how you can provide a better
service to the customer of an existing business? What is the gap you can fill
up?
4. Good Idea is not a good business: An
idea may hit you on the way and you may think this is the greatest idea of all
time. You put your everything to launch the business and later, it turns out to
be a total failure. What was the problem? Firstly, you should understand every
entrepreneur thinks their idea is the single most important idea of this
century. So, there is no doubt your idea is good. But, the success of a
business is up to how much value you are giving to your customer. Until your
customer likes your products or services, there is no business for you. Read
the history of start-up failure like Take Eat Easy, Dinner Lab, SharpScholar, Healthspot
and others like these which will help to understand the distinction of good
idea and good business. One way to test the potential of your idea is to create
an online presence and promote your product even before you spend a dollar for
the idea and see how many response you get. If there is good hit for the
product, then you may go for the idea.
5. 10% v/s 90%:
Getting the opportunity to run your dream business doesn’t mean you will enjoy
every part of it. You may enjoy 10% of the works you have to do and hate the
other 90%. A business is not only about producing and selling a product.
Multiple layers of works are associated with reaching a product to the door of
a customer. There are meetings with potential investors, hiring employees,
designing products, contracting with suppliers, public relation programs and
there is the possibility that you hate doing all of these. You may love
marketing stuff but hate accounting. But, you need to make yourself comfortable
with the facts and figures of accounting to run the business successfully. You
have to do the 90% boring tasks for doing the 10% you love and still at the end
of the day you need to be happy with what you are doing. If you find that 10%
which has the power to let you do the 90% mundane things than pursue that.
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