In the course of our life, we are used
to the usual mindset: go to school, get good grades and land in a high-paying job. Most
students of our generation (and even the past generation) are doing that. They
study, learn, and graduate just to look for jobs. In short, they study and
graduate just to be mere employees, mostly brought by their desire to help
their respective families. The sad truth is that these graduates often migrate
to other parts of the country or even go abroad just to work and earn money.
They are not helping our own country in its development but instead they are
helping the other countries develop. Also, some help in the development of
cities in other parts of the country, and not their hometowns.
Some of us only want to go to
school just to get good grades and graduate. Well, I have this question: what
is the use of having good grades? There are many ways to get good grades and
the hardest part of it is to study and persevere. Most students nowadays cheat
their way to good grades, and because of it, they have not learned anything. I
believe that you need learnings, not good grades; because numbers do not equal
learnings, and what you have learned in school is very useful if you are to
survive in the real world. Getting good grades through cheating will only get
you nowhere, because you did not work hard for it and so did not deserve it. It’s just like our faith in God: without works,
our faith is dead. It simply means that we have to not only aim for it but also
we have to work for it.
Yet I still believe that good
grades are a necessity, although I know it does not guarantee if you have
learned anything or none at all, because mostly they are required. And those
students who got good grades through cheating are the ones who get accepted
because, obviously, they have good grades. In the long run, they are the ones
who will suffer.
But because we are the future technopreneurs,
we have learned that there is an alternative mindset: go to school, get good
grades and create a company. This is the mindset of technopreneurs. Unlike
employees, or people having the usual mindset, we technopreneurs are the ones
who initiate and create jobs for people. Unlike employees, who often go to
other parts of the country because of good job offers, we want to help our respective
hometowns in the development. We have a vision for our respective hometowns,
and through our creativity and ingenuity, we will be able to implement many
things that will be of help to our hometowns and lead it to prosperity. Not
only do we help ourselves, but also our families and the people around us. In
fact, many people have been recognized because of this mindset. Their
creativity and ingenuity combined with their passion and desire to help people
have made them what they are today: SUCCESSFUL.
These entrepreneurs and
technopreneurs are the ones who apply the concept of job creation. The concept
of job creation is always in conjunction with the SEED Curriculum which can
also be applied in our own lives.
S means SELF-MASTERY. We have to
know ourselves first. In this way, we would be able to know what we want and do
not want, what we need and what we do not need, our own perspective in life, our
own personality, and our strengths and weaknesses. In this manner, we would be
able to use our strengths fully and develop our greatest weakness. I learned
this quote from one of my favorite video games: “take your greatest weakness
and turn it into your greatest strength.”
The first E means Environment
Mastery. For entrepreneurs and technopreneurs, we have to be aware of the
latest trends in technology, and because of that we ought to have a keen eye on
what is going on around. We have to be able to also sense and grasp
opportunities whenever they come, because opportunities are limitless. The only
thing we need to do is take the chance and grasp it. By combining these skills altogether,
we will be able to generate excellent business ideas.
The second E means Enterprise
Mastery. Every technopreneur must know how to run a business, because through
business we earn our living. Because of this, we have to learn about the
different business principles and disciplines. Technopreneurs and entrepreneurs
are good in running businesses, and combined with their ingenuity and
creativity, they are able to expand their businesses to the outlying cities
across the country and even across the globe!
I would like to quote these wonderful
business principles by Neil Patel from the website quicksprout.com:
Principle #1: Take fewer risks as you get older
When you are young, you should be
doubling down because you don’t have much to lose. If you are in your early 20s
or 30s, you probably don’t have as many commitments compared to people in their
40s or 50s.
If you are in your late teens or
early 20s, you can probably live with your parents, avoid bills and focus on
going to school/building a business. During this period in your life you should
be placing as many bets as possible and doubling down when you see fit.
And when you get older, you have more
financial responsibilities, such as a family to support and a mortgage payment.
So, you shouldn’t make as many risky bets because if things go south, it will
affect more than just your life.
Principle #2: Never lose your investors money
Have you ever heard of Warren
Buffett’s two main rules? Well if you haven’t, here they are:
1.) Never lose money
2.) Never forget rule one
I can’t say that I have followed
Warren’s rules to the tee because I have lost money and the chances you will
too. So I modified his rule because I am a big believer in never losing other
people’s money.
Whether it is your family’s money, or
investors, you just don’t want to lose other people’s money. And if you do,
figure out a way to repay them because if you take care of your investors they
will always take care of you.
Principle #3: Spend 10% of your day thinking about new ways to make money
You don’t have to do this during
working hours, but you should focus a portion of your day thinking about ways
to make more money. Doing this everyday will help you come up with creative
money generating ideas.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you
should look to start a new business, but instead look for new ways to grow your
company’s revenue. Think outside the box, look for new marketing trends or
waves you can ride.
And once you find these waves to
ride, be the first to leverage them. Once a channel gets saturated, it becomes
very difficult to leverage.
Principle #4: Over communicate
The one thing that I love doing is
over communicating. Whether it is with investors, customers, co-workers, or
business partners, you have to over communicate.
I have co-founded a handful of
companies and every time my revenues decline it’s usually because of
communication issues. You can avoid this mistake if you:
Listen carefully – before you
communicate you need to understand what the other party is asking for.
Communicate regularly – come up with
a regular schedule that way people know you care about them.
Be clear and concise – what makes
sense to you may not make sense to others. Make sure you are descriptive.
Stop whining – use facts when
communicating. Complaining or putting blame on other parties never helps.
It will take a while for you to
sharpen up your communication skills, so if you are interested in speeding up
the process you may want to read some of these articles.
Principle #5: Never burn bridges
It’s just a matter of time before
someone screws you over. It happens to all of us and the shitty thing about it
is that the other party usually doesn’t think that they are screwing you over.
But instead of getting upset, talking
trash, and burning your relationship, you should just let things go. You never
know when that person can come in handy and who knows they may realize what
they did is wrong.
I’ve been burned a ton of times and
once it even cost me a million dollars. But there were other times in which the
people who burned me apologized, and made me a decent amount of money later on
in life.
Principle #6: Spend 10% of your day networking
I’m a big believer that you don’t
have to be great at what you do to make money. You just have to be well
connected. Going to local networking events, blogging, and even participating
on social web are good ways to network.
If you don’t think networking is
important, just look iCrossing. iCrossing is a marketing agency that sucks at
marketing, so much that they don’t have the best reputation in the Internet
marketing world. But the people within the firm are so well networked that they
were able to bring in millions of dollars in revenue and ended up selling the
company to Hearst for $325 million.
Principle #7: Never bail on business partners or investors
For some reason it is considered “ok”
to leave a company you founded. And to make it worse, many of these
entrepreneurs who are leaving took on millions of dollars of investment from
venture capitalists.
I don’t give a shit if you hate what
you are doing, but you never leave a team member or investor stranded. If your
company is making millions of dollars in profit and your co-founder/investors
feel that you are not needed to keep on growing the business, then that’s fine,
you can leave.
But if that’s not the case, you
better stick it out with your investors and co-founders.
Wonderful, aren’t they? Very
practical. I just hope technopreneurs like us have to live by these business principles.
I know because as the author has experienced, he has been living up to these
very principles that he has mentioned in his blog article, and because of that
he is successful. His key to having successful business ventures is
COMMUNICATION. We technopreneurs and entrepreneurs are also good communicators,
and we used it to our advantage when dealing with investors, potential business
partners and even our own employees.
The last one is the Development of
the business plan itself. Developing our business plans may be a daunting
challenge to most people but to us technopreneurs, it is life-changing. Why?
Most business plans come from original ideas of most entrepreneurs and
technopreneurs. What they did is they developed their ideas more, coming up
with lots of really good business plans. Because of those wonderful business
plans, they have reached the top and are recognized not only in our country but
also around the world. All we technopreneurs need is an idea and a vision. Some
of us may follow in the footsteps of well-known technopreneurs like Steve Jobs
or Bill Gates, who are great technopreneurs that have great ideas and visions.
Some may have their own ways and become successful in their own right.
Each business plan has three main
components: (1) the goals; (2) the reasons why they are attainable; and (3) the
plans for reaching those goals. There is no fixed content for a business plan,
as long as it contains these three important components.
With this SEED curriculum, future
technopreneurs will be able to start their own businesses. They would be able
to know the trends of today and be able to generate business plans based on
those trends.
The only thing that these
technopreneurs and entrepreneurs need is an idea. All they need to do is to
develop it more. The result: SUCCESS.
Source: 7 Business Principles You Have To Follow, by Neil Patel (http://www.quicksprout.com/2010/08/05/7-business-principles-that-you-have-to-follow)
