A Technopreneur's Mindset

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)