Entrepreneurship

Who is an Entrepreneur ?

Entrepreneur is someone who starts a business or other venture with a possible economic or monetary  gains but also entails risk

The Entrepreneur

Oct 9th 2011 - Focus on the Customer
The focus of any entrepreneur is on the customer for the "customer" is the most important element in the entire business process . It is the customer and customer alone that will dictate how big or large an organization can become . For any start-ups , it is alot easier if there is already a customer who is available and ready to support . So far I have been quite fortunate and this is the story ...

Story 1
My dad has been a taxi driver for ages but he has alot of friends . One day , a friend of his wanted to give up his 10 year old seafood distribution business for he wanted to go into setting up his own seafood restaurant . He wanted my dad to take over his seafood distribution business and was willing to help my dad since my dad knew nothing about seafood at all . Overnight my dad had ready customers (the seafood restaurants) and whatever rotten fish that he had purchased due to his lack of knowledge and experience , his friend who is now a seafood restaurant owner offered to buy them over , so that my dad does not end up with a loss . Over time , my dad picked up whatever is needed to run a seafood distribution business . So from a taxi driver he became a businessmen .

Story 2
After more than 20 years in  semiconductor manufacturing , we are quite familiar with the customers and the subcontracting environment  . Naturally , some of us wanted to set up a test subcontractor facility of our own . We can only take this risk provided the market can "absorb" ONE more subcontractor and we have  customers who are willing to help support us  . We had this opportunity and we formed a company in 2004 . The rest is history ..

Oct 7th 2011- The Golden Rules
An entrepreneur must possess leadership skills and just like all leaders , they do have their own rules .
There are 2 very basic , no nonsense , obvious , universal  golden rules
Golden Rule # 1 -  "Do unto others what we like others to do unto us"
Golden Rule # 2 - "Walking the Talk" , same as "doing what we say , saying what we do"

Story 1 
Take for example the recent issues we had on Profit Strategies night , a few weeks ago . To have an effective session , the committee members had to cap the attendance and have to turn away many others who wanted to participate . On the very day itself less  25% of those who signed up , turned up for the event .   Whoever "booked" and "reserve" and then did not show deprive others the opportunity .

Story 2
Tardiness . If its is habitually late , please put a stop to it because "action speaks louder than words" . Why would anyone want to do business with someone who has a tendency to be late ? From the actions , one can expect delays simply from the action itself . From a business perspective  , we "delight" our customers and clients , not short change them . It takes years to build integrity and credibility , but seconds to get them destroyed

Remember the golden rules ....

Creating Value

An entrepreneur must be able to create value and hopefully he/she gets paid or profit with the value proposition . If we start a business just because of profit without knowing what value we create , then very soon it will become unprofitable . We need to focus on the value , then profit ... and not profit , then value .

It is important to know what value do we deliver to the customer . What are our customer's problems that we are trying to solve ? It is the value proposition that the customer prefer a company over another . Each value proposition consists of certain specific customer requirements or segment .

Value proposition can be something new , such as a new handphone feature that improves productivity for example . It can also be improvement in product performance  such as the processor of a computer . It can also be customization to serve a certain  market or customer niche  .  Value proposition can also be price , cost reduction , risk reduction , convenience , assessibility and brand .

So whenever we start a business , understand the value we create to the customer