Saturday, August 02, 2008
So my other post has started some talk with various friends and MANY of them have told me that they like the "rah rah" spirit but they're not sure how to get started. I invited a friend of 14 years to the house and I had a few suggestions for him on how to get his thought process going.
1) Turn your TV to CNBC and listen to channel 127 on XM Radio. Part of adjusting the way you think is adjusting the information that is going into your brain. I know this sounds so simple but I guarantee you'll find valuable programming on CNBC and develop an appreciation for the content they have. It will also train you to think with a business mindset.
2) Read magazines and keep up online with various blogs/news threads. You don't necessarily need to fully understand EVERYTHING you read, just get a read of the general direction of society's interests. Successful entrepreneurs, consciously or unconsciously, do this. They have an innate ability to sense patterns in society's interests and act before the rest of society.
Look at Google's ability to harness web traffic by giving people a straight forward way of searching and then turning those eyeballs into interested clicks that are auctioned off to the highest bidding advertiser for just about ANY product/service you can imagine. They understood back in 1998 that the web would be big and the globe would need a reliable search engine that served up relevant content.
Look at Apple - there were dozens of MP3 players out on the market before their iPods were released but they knew that only people who were more tech savvy were the ones messing around with these MP3 players. Their goal? Make it easy for EVERYONE with iTunes/iPods.
These companies think differently and choose to be on the proactive side of society and help guide the rest of us while we busy ourselves with our own lives.
3) Expand your horizons. The business you start may not necessarily be entirely related to what you do now and that's a good thing. Stop and think about what you do at your job. What have you learned to do your job well? Is it knowledge that is ONLY applicable to your job or can you apply it elsewhere? Reflect enough and you'll realize that you DO possess newly acquired skills that can be applied to a business of your own. Not only do you have skills that can be applied to your own business but by expanding your horizons and looking into other industries for a business opportunity, you'll realize opportunities that may not be apparent to those already in the industry.
Example 1: Guy works at a Internet start up and toils away in the customer service department. By putting himself in the customer's shoes and understanding their frustrations he learns how important customer service is in a company. Guy vows to change things in the company and moves on to SEVEN other roles in the same company where he learns valuable lessons in managing people, data harvesting, search engine optimization, customer buying trends, etc... Guy finally oversees software development that rakes in $20M+ a year, happens to look into the automotive lighting industry where he notices customer service is lacking and starts up a company to fill that niche. Business booms and he resigns via text message to the VP of HR. Guy now runs a one-man-band business and sends light bulbs to thousands of customers a year and loves it.
Example 2: Guy works at an Internet start up in 1999, fresh out of Stanford with a Masters in computer science. Despite him being a software coding genius, the dot-com tanks but he goes on to work at a few more start ups where he witnesses the importance of intellectual property law. Enrolls into law school in 2003. Guy is now an intellectual property patent attorney where his experience as a software developer gives him the technical insight necessary to do his job exceptionally well. Guy doesn't necessarily own his own business yet but he's well on his way to making partner or starting his own firm/consulting company.
Example 3: Guy gets a masters in accounting and works in the head finance department for several high volume car dealerships. Guy learns how to manage a business and develops a quick eye to identify healthy/unhealthy business situations. Saves up cash and quits to revamp high end homes. Armed with capital and the financial acumen from his car dealership days, he identifies an opportunity acquire a night club and turns it into a hit. After selling the club he moves on to acquiring and ramping up a struggling flight school. It's a hit. Guy sells it and acquires a struggling auto body shop where he pushes all the financial statements from the red deep into the black. Guy sells and celebrates and just recently acquired a small restaurant in a historic district in Virginia Beach with massive potential for growth.
None of these businesses have a common thread and he went from INDUSTRY to INDUSTRY! His uncanny ability to identify businesses/industries where an opportunity exists is truly rare but it can be learned and if he can do it not once but five times in 15 years! You can do it once!
4) Put on your Sherlock Holmes hat on and explore the world. Subscribe to Inc, Fast Company, Business Week, etc and check out the resources Inc.com offers to people interested in starting up their own company. At any given moment I personally have these and other magazines strewn around my house and office so I can read up on what other companies are doing and how they're tackling problems that I may be dealing with or may have to deal with in the future.
Every week I also interface with good friends who happen to be fellow business owners around my town to get a feel for the retail market and what is cooling off and what may be warming up. Not only do I try to get a barometer reading of my immediate surroundings, I also read newspapers in other major markets including Asia, Europe, and Australia.
John Donne: No man is an island And likewise - no country is an island (well, in our metaphorical sense...)
China:
SINA
China Daily
Hong Kong:
The Standard
Australia:
The Age
Interested in another country? Check out this site.
1) Turn your TV to CNBC and listen to channel 127 on XM Radio. Part of adjusting the way you think is adjusting the information that is going into your brain. I know this sounds so simple but I guarantee you'll find valuable programming on CNBC and develop an appreciation for the content they have. It will also train you to think with a business mindset.
2) Read magazines and keep up online with various blogs/news threads. You don't necessarily need to fully understand EVERYTHING you read, just get a read of the general direction of society's interests. Successful entrepreneurs, consciously or unconsciously, do this. They have an innate ability to sense patterns in society's interests and act before the rest of society.
Look at Google's ability to harness web traffic by giving people a straight forward way of searching and then turning those eyeballs into interested clicks that are auctioned off to the highest bidding advertiser for just about ANY product/service you can imagine. They understood back in 1998 that the web would be big and the globe would need a reliable search engine that served up relevant content.
Look at Apple - there were dozens of MP3 players out on the market before their iPods were released but they knew that only people who were more tech savvy were the ones messing around with these MP3 players. Their goal? Make it easy for EVERYONE with iTunes/iPods.
These companies think differently and choose to be on the proactive side of society and help guide the rest of us while we busy ourselves with our own lives.
3) Expand your horizons. The business you start may not necessarily be entirely related to what you do now and that's a good thing. Stop and think about what you do at your job. What have you learned to do your job well? Is it knowledge that is ONLY applicable to your job or can you apply it elsewhere? Reflect enough and you'll realize that you DO possess newly acquired skills that can be applied to a business of your own. Not only do you have skills that can be applied to your own business but by expanding your horizons and looking into other industries for a business opportunity, you'll realize opportunities that may not be apparent to those already in the industry.
Example 1: Guy works at a Internet start up and toils away in the customer service department. By putting himself in the customer's shoes and understanding their frustrations he learns how important customer service is in a company. Guy vows to change things in the company and moves on to SEVEN other roles in the same company where he learns valuable lessons in managing people, data harvesting, search engine optimization, customer buying trends, etc... Guy finally oversees software development that rakes in $20M+ a year, happens to look into the automotive lighting industry where he notices customer service is lacking and starts up a company to fill that niche. Business booms and he resigns via text message to the VP of HR. Guy now runs a one-man-band business and sends light bulbs to thousands of customers a year and loves it.
Example 2: Guy works at an Internet start up in 1999, fresh out of Stanford with a Masters in computer science. Despite him being a software coding genius, the dot-com tanks but he goes on to work at a few more start ups where he witnesses the importance of intellectual property law. Enrolls into law school in 2003. Guy is now an intellectual property patent attorney where his experience as a software developer gives him the technical insight necessary to do his job exceptionally well. Guy doesn't necessarily own his own business yet but he's well on his way to making partner or starting his own firm/consulting company.
Example 3: Guy gets a masters in accounting and works in the head finance department for several high volume car dealerships. Guy learns how to manage a business and develops a quick eye to identify healthy/unhealthy business situations. Saves up cash and quits to revamp high end homes. Armed with capital and the financial acumen from his car dealership days, he identifies an opportunity acquire a night club and turns it into a hit. After selling the club he moves on to acquiring and ramping up a struggling flight school. It's a hit. Guy sells it and acquires a struggling auto body shop where he pushes all the financial statements from the red deep into the black. Guy sells and celebrates and just recently acquired a small restaurant in a historic district in Virginia Beach with massive potential for growth.
None of these businesses have a common thread and he went from INDUSTRY to INDUSTRY! His uncanny ability to identify businesses/industries where an opportunity exists is truly rare but it can be learned and if he can do it not once but five times in 15 years! You can do it once!
4) Put on your Sherlock Holmes hat on and explore the world. Subscribe to Inc, Fast Company, Business Week, etc and check out the resources Inc.com offers to people interested in starting up their own company. At any given moment I personally have these and other magazines strewn around my house and office so I can read up on what other companies are doing and how they're tackling problems that I may be dealing with or may have to deal with in the future.
Every week I also interface with good friends who happen to be fellow business owners around my town to get a feel for the retail market and what is cooling off and what may be warming up. Not only do I try to get a barometer reading of my immediate surroundings, I also read newspapers in other major markets including Asia, Europe, and Australia.
John Donne: No man is an island And likewise - no country is an island (well, in our metaphorical sense...)
China:
SINA
China Daily
Hong Kong:
The Standard
Australia:
The Age
Interested in another country? Check out this site.
