Rahsia untuk perubahan adalah dengan memberi sepenuh fokus untuk membina sesuatu yang baru berbanding bersaing dengan yang sudah lama.
Apakah yang ingin kita lakukan untuk berjaya dalam bisnes adalah dengan cara mengetahui:
1. Passion serta minat
2. Bakat dan kemahiran
3. Yang diperlukan orang ramai dan mereka sanggup membayar untuk mendapatkannya
===============
Wealth isn’t how much money you have. It’s what you’re left with if you lose all your money.
That’s when we realise freedom doesn’t come from being our own boss where we end up being our own problem, but serving others where we end up being our own hero.
“We turn not older with years but newer every day.” ~ Emily Dickinson
Are you an entrepreneur? If so, you are one of the rising billion – the fastest growing economic sector in history.
In the 1950’s, the rise of corporations and the middle class grew to several 100 million, when the world had a population of 2.5 billion.
Today, there’s 7 billion of us, and in the 1st 20 years of the new 21st Century entrepreneurs are growing from 4% to 12% of the population.
We’ve grown from less than 200 million in 2000, to over 400 million today, to 1 billion by 2020 – this sector is 10x the size of the 9-to-5 workforce created in the first 20 years of the industrial revolution.
This movement is already transforming the world in the most incredible ways, from how we share resources, advance technology and find solutions to impact the world.
You’ve already arrived.
We’re all so busy going somewhere, like ships in the night. Wherever you think you’re going, stop today and imagine that you have already arrived. This is it. You’re here. You’re you. That’s your destination. You have arrived, and there is nowhere else to go. You are no longer a ship. You are a house. A house with a little light inside: A lighthouse.
Going against the herd is difficult. Not because it’s the wrong thing to do, but because every one is telling you to turn around. When in doubt, follow your heart, not the herd. Be true to yourself. The nature of herds is they change direction often: Today, you may be moving against it. Tomorrow, it may be the herd following you.
“There are two kinds of retailers: There are those folks who work to figure out how to charge more, and there are companies that work to figure how to charge less, and we are going to be the second, full-stop.”
Jeff then ran a two-day off-site management meeting with the bestselling author of “Good to Great”, Jim Collins. That’s where the team came up with the “Amazon Flywheel” –
1. Lower prices led to more customer visits,
2. More customers increased volume of sales,
3. Volume of sales attracted more 3rd party sellers,
4. More 3rd party sellers led to better economies of scale
5. Better economies of scale led to lower prices…
One of the biggest barriers to success is that we spend too much time trying to do things well, and not enough time doing nothing well.
Filling days with busy-ness, without moments which are 100% yours, is like trying to swim without breathing. All the most successful people I know have a discipline of creating magic moments every day – those moments which are 100% ‘you’ time: Not to review to-do lists or to check your email or phone, or to step out for a coffee – but to do absolutely nothing.
“To say ‘I’m entrepreneurial, I’ll never work for anyone’ is a little naïve. Don’t see going to work for somebody that you really respect and admire as a job. It’s getting your Master’s and Ph.D. in doing what you really want to do in your life,” Tony Fadell, Nest Labs
Tony cut out the middle man – the slow moving building industry – and went straight for the consumer. This is the same strategy we are seeing for every company disrupting an industry – from media, to communications, travel, trading, retail, education and now home appliances.
Focus at your customer more than your product. Get fixed on your customer experience, and your product will keep changing to serve them best. But fix your product, and customers will find a path that fits them, with or without you.
If you’re waiting on the street corner, wondering where all your customers are, this post is for you.
We’ve moved from the industrial age where it was all about the product and productization to the technological age where it’s all about the customer and customization.
Instead of focusing at product development and production lines (which we learned about and were a part of at school), focus at customer experiences and customization lines.
Your business doesn’t start when you have a product. It starts when you have a customer. So who is your perfect customer? Start from there and ask yourself (and them):
Many of the greatest entrepreneurs unintentionally find themselves in this state by betting everything on their dream. Maybe you’re in this place right now. It is a place of pure power. When you have nothing to lose, you have infinite potential.
That is provided you don’t focus on what you’ve lost, but on everything you have to gain. That’s when everything turns around. As Walt Disney said “I don’t make movies to make money. I make money to make movies”.
“If things aren’t failing, you are not innovating enough.” ~ Elon Musk
Four things make up 79% of all business failures:
#1 – Building something nobody wants (36%)
#2 – Hiring poorly (18%)
#3 – Lack of focus (13%)
#4 – Failing to market & sell (12%)
How to best avoid these failures:
#1 – Always start with the customer, not the product. Get your beta group / user group of customers and work with them to deliver what they love. People will pay you to do what they love, not to just do what you love.
#2 – Outsource to experts who manage themselves, not workers who need to be managed. Hire people who let you do more of what you do best, not people who take you away from your talents because they need to be managed.
#3 – Once opportunities begin to grow, don’t get defocused. Anything that doesn’t add to your customer’s experience isn’t worth doing.
#4 – Don’t fail by having a great product that no one knows about. Don’t rely on someone else to sell your product until you have more sales than you can handle. Don’t make sales by closing customers. Create buyers by opening relationships.
#5 – More than all of the above, maximise failures that steer you (testing and measuring) and avoid failures that sink you (when you run out of money and time). Fail passionately and fail often, earning and learning with each failure, so it’s you that keeps failing (and learning) and not your company!
“The biggest risk is not taking any risk.. In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”
~ Mark Zuckerberg
My 8 favourite famous failures
Thomas Edison was told by his teachers that he was “too stupid to learn anything.”
Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job as a television reporter and told she was “unfit for tv.”
Walt Disney was fired from his first newspaper job because “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”
Henry Ford went broke 5 times before finally creating the Ford Model T when he was 45 years old.
While first writing Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling’s mother died, her marriage failed, she had no job, was on welfare, was diagnosed with clinical depression and described herself being as “poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.” She kept writing anyway.
One of Elvis Presley’s first singing gigs was at the Grand Ole Opry, but he was fired after just one performance with the manager telling him, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.” He kept singing anyway.
Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime, and that was to a friend. He kept painting anyway.
Famous philosopher Socrates’s original ideas at the time led him to be named “an immoral corrupter of youth” and he was sentenced to death. He kept talking anyway.
Each of these 8 famous examples show the difference between mindful vs mindless failure.
The paradox of entrepreneurship: “As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it”
It used to really annoy me when I started with my first boot-strapped start-up and people with money said “It’s not about the money”. I would think “It’s easy for you to say that, because you’ve already got the money.”
It was only later in life I understood what they really meant. It’s like a footballer saying “It’s not about the ball.” The footballer who is always chasing the ball isn’t welcome on the team – and rarely gets the ball because it moves too fast.
The footballer who thinks “It’s not about the ball”, and knows it’s about positioning himself to be of greatest value to the team, is the one who constantly gets the ball passed to him.
If you’re in business chasing the money, you will rarely get it. If you’re positioning yourself to be of value to your customers, they’ll happily pass you their money.
If you’re constantly needing help, you will rarely get it. If you’re positioning yourself to be of value to team members and partners, they’ll happily pass you their time and skills.
So whenever you want something, whether it is support, resources, connections, or money, don’t chase what you want but position yourself to be the natural choice for those who have these things to pass them to you.
Once you receive, pass it on.
“Only by giving are you able to receive more than you already have.” ~ Jim Rohn
“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves”
~ Edmund Hillary
