1. Know Your Blood Group
Don’t get confused with your real blood group, you should
know your appetite, whether it is for money or to be own boss.
a) To
earn money: Money should be the destiny
of your business.
b) To
be own Boss: One can have one or two bosses where you are working, but where as
in business organization, all customers are your bosses and you need to satisfy
them and to focus on retaining then which is not a easy task in the current
highly competitive world.
One should have “Noble” objective
like to build world class organization with values and enabling employees to
grow with it. For example, during the initial years of establishment of
Infosys, Narayanamurthy has to take the delivery of computers, for that he has
to pay Rs.25000 as a bribe, or has to pay Rs.100000 officially to take delivery
otherwise. But Narayanamurthy has chosen to pay one lakh and took the delivery
of the computers. This is an example of an organization with core values, and
such organizations stands to be successful in the long run and poised t face
any kind of challenges and deliver great value to its stakeholders.
2. When to Start
Definitely, there is no good time to start
a business. Some experiment while studying, some start it after completion of
their graduation and some will start after gaining work/job experience. Here
one can learn from animal “Tiger”. It goes back one step backward, before going
forward. Here, you must think about pros and cons before taking any decision.
And some says, it is always better to start the business as early as possible,
so that one commits mistakes and learn from it.
3. Idea Bank
Any business must be emanated from an idea.
For example, the famous VadaPav of Bombay, or jumbo king, or calorie care, or
cash your drive, all businesses were started with the birth of new idea. An
idea may be good or bad or poor, should not ignore, because it may lead to give
some other new ideas. Here, you should not only consider the idea, but you
should make some value addition to it. So that it must be new to the market and
innovative, otherwise you can not attract customers to your product. You can
attract customers to your product with right quality and price. According to Steve Jobs, “Business
offers what the customer wants and also offer what customer does not expect” in
order to delight the customers. It is certainly true in current business scenario.
Most of the companies try to satisfy the customers, but you should try to
delight the customers always.
You should
protect your business ideas with copyright or patents as there are so many
companies try to imitate and launch similar products in to the market. We have
been witnessing this from a longtime.
For new ideas or business startups, one can contact National
Innovation Foundation.
4. Don’t Fear
Characteristics of
Entrepreneur:
- Creativity
- Dedication
- Mental
stability
- Ability
to understand change
- Commitment
- Self
confidence
- Knowledge
As a budding
entrepreneur, one has to take care of everything and can not escape that you
don’t know. One has to know the limits, try to overcome it, as it is related to
individual life ambitions.
5. Goal Planning
Plan your business first. Once
you have business idea, next step is to focus on getting investments. Now,
there are many banks ready offer loans for your business once they satisfy with
your business project. Next is to getting customers to your product which is
the most complex and difficult part. After that you need to focus on break even
sales, once crossed that you will be in profits.
6. New Organisation
New organization is like a new baby.
Imagine, how much care you would take for a new born baby. Whenever baby cries,
you need to take care, whether it is for milk or some other problem. You need
to find out it, so that baby sleeps happily. Likewise, you need to take care of
your new business or organization. Always take care about the problems faced by
the business in order to have cash cow like organization. Always maintain
income/expense data, go through it carefully. Next is plan to source money or
investment which is very important for running the business. Try to have angel investor who share similar
opinion like you, and always be careful while selecting partners.
7. Business as Water Flow
Business is
compared to flow of water. Though the company offers very quality product,
after some time customers are dissatisfied due to lack of innovation. So, it
becomes the responsibility of any organization to offer better product with
better services and try delight the customers with innovative features.
Eg: Apples iPhone
For any business organization, “Understanding Customer is Very
Important”. “Grilling Guru”, a restaurant in Bombay offers mineral water for free. There
is a strong reason behind this. The moment you enter into the restaurant,
waiter asks customer, ordinary/mineral water, thereby making the customer to
think about the price at the very beginning. Hence, the owner start offering
free mineral water to his customers. Today, the restaurant turnover is around
130 crores.
8. Technology
Undoubtedly,
we are living in a technology driven world. Nothing goes smooth without the use
of the technology right from cell phone to software. So understand the benefits
of the technology to the business and leverage it.
To mention, there are many firms who made use of technology
and reaped benefits. For example, aryanflorist.com, the site owner earns 46000
per day. Way2sms, a website for sending free sms, was sold for millions to
other firm. Even sabir Bhatia’s hotmail.
9.Personality
Personality of organization was established due
to effective execution of business practices. For example, Tata’s has established
trust among its customers. It took over a decade to establish that personality.
Similarly, your organization can also have personality. For that as a promoter
or leader to a group, your behaviour
& habits influence the existence /survival of an orgnisation. After venturing
in to the business, most individuals have second thought of going back to job
if situation not favourable/or into losses.Never think of going back to job,
you feel it as life and death situation, then only you can lead the business
successfully.
As a leader
make your employees goal oriented and motivate/influence them. Prepare them
like You.
10. Social responsibility
After all
business is getting all its resources from the society, whether it money, men,
materials etc. So it becomes your responsibility to do something good to the
society. That means giving back to the society. And you could it any form, by
providing employment training, by imparting education, by providing medical
facilities, and etc. Now a days, there are social entrepreneurs, who
transformed lives of societal members. Even students from IIT’s are taking this
as their profession.
