Before going into the mainstream, I would like you to answer this question to yourself:
“What is the similarity between Sam Walton, Sir Richard Branson, Kishore Biyani, Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Mohammad Younis…?”
I hope you could guess it without much trouble. Indeed, all those mentioned above are Entrepreneurs. Now, if you don’t know the correct answer, reading further might be a sheer wastage of time.
None of the personnel listed above were born Entrepreneurs. All they had was a vision, a dream and above all, they had balls. Entrepreneurship is not always benison. Ironically, everyone can’t develop this skill over a period of time. Irony arises from the fact that everyone is not audacious. And, even those who are, might not possess very good analytical and manipulative skills. Most of us are aware of the fact that Sir Richard Branson was an archetypical Entrepreneur, despite of being a dyslexic! Even I was not able to digest this fact completely.
The first stage is that of idea generation. It’s going on around you. The Americans were long engaged in consuming hot-dogs, none but Ray Kroc saw a great opportunity in this business. Being engaged in selling milk shakes, he once saw McDonald, run by the McDonald brothers. He was highly impressed by the way McDonald worked. And there he stood aghast at the cleanliness, speed of service. He talked to the brothers and opened the first franchisee, and started selling burgers. Today McDonald has over 18000 franchisees all over the world and is one of the biggest real estate holder in the world.
Robert T Kiyosaki, in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad, mentions how he had a great urge of earning money, more and more of it, and that too, since childhood. And he further states that, to earn more a person needs to have this basic instinct. Recently while talking to one of my friends, there was a mention of the book and he projected the author as a great entrepreneur. Though, I was a little skeptical about that. Raison d’ etre of entrepreneurship is not money. You run for money and money runs from you. Instead, if you can make money work for you, it can perform wonders.
Entrepreneurship involves a lot of responsibilities… social, financial, political… If money is the sole motive behind a new venture, it’s not going to survive long. Every new enterprise is bonded with its customers. You serve them well and they pay you back, lest you are bound to be screwed at some point of time as it happened with Chrysler before Lee Iacocca joined it as President. Nonetheless, the enterprise will soon be in an abyss, from where it won’t be easy to recover soon, no matter how hard you try, no matter how truthful you become.
Geeks do not make very good businessmen, fanatics do!!!
Note: After reading this article, if you too find some potential in yourself, and even if you do not, please share your views!!!
