Read a book, put it into practice
View(s):Knowledge is something that is not limited to one sphere, or one particular science or thought. Hence the books we will feature every week in this new series will be from different genre ranging from entrepreneurship, art, science, technology, innovation, history, sociology, mass communication, journalism, anthropology, philosophy (philosophy of the Eastern world, philosophy of countries such as Africa and also the West) environment conservation, biodiversity/agro forestry, climate change, medical science (Hela wedakama, Ayurveda, Sidha, Unani, Homeopathy, Naturopathy, Acupressure and Allopathy), comparative spirituality, global cookery, self-help, global literature, psychology, peace studies, international relations and law, to name a few.
We will be featuring books written in Sinhala, Tamil and English because knowledge does not come only in one language. Where needed we will serialize details about a particular book, so that you could get maximum benefit from it.
READ A BOOK, PUT IT INTO PRACTICE is facilitated from the personal library of the author and initiator of this series, Suryamithra Vishwa.
This week we bring you the 3rd section of understanding the book The $100 startup by Chris Guillebeau.Hopefully you will be inspired and motivated to be an entrepreneur yourself, after reading what we have summed of this book.
We have chosen this book at this time because of the significance it has during this economic down turn created by the COVID19 epidemic. With companies closing down or staff being reduced, it is easy to get depressed or panic. However under even the most difficult circumstances, human creativity, intelligence, ingenuity, will power, confidence and the urge to be free and happy can go a long way.
This book is therefore about how you can: Fire your boss, Do what you love, Work better To Live More.The above words in italics, is what it says on the cover of the book which is a New York Times bestseller. In the last two weeks we have highlighted that this book could be described as a toolkit to take a simple hobby or a passion of an individual and transform it into a money reaping business.
The $ 100 Startup is realisticbecause it is a research of people around the world who have successfullytransformed ideas into a money making venture that is different to a traditional business model. In this model you do not need huge capital, bank loans, complex project proposals or many co-workers.
Instead, this entrepreneur blueprint is often solo-style and woven around an alternative way to life and earning.Here the business created by the individual is not complicated and does not need much staff and is directly molded on the hobbies, skills, or interest of the person starting the enterprise.
The last two weeks we looked at some of the examples of people who tread this entrepreneurial path and made it work. Let’s look at some more.
4 Brett Kelly had worked as a software developer and the tech geek that he was he soon started something which changed his future. He started creating a detailed user manual on Evernote, the free note keeping software, documenting every trick and tip he could find as someone who had used the software thoroughly. This soon became a huge PDF file which he called the Evernote Essentials, and it was over 90 pages of explanations, screenshots and tutorials. The book The $100 Startup tells us in this example that this product was a hit within days and that by the 11th day after it had gone public that it brought in sales running into five figures. This saga finally culminated with the executives who designed Evernote wanting to hire him full time for him to keep doing what he started with Evernote Essentials and work from home while continuing to sell the Evernote Essential guide and keep all the profits! Here we can see that the almost unbelievable results were reaped because of dedication and keenness to detail based on professional ability which ran on the steam of enthusiasm that comes with loving what you are doing.
In detailing out another example this book points out that many entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking too much about the capital to start their business and thinking too little of where the business income would come from. The path to avoid the above is paved with the advice to spend very little money as possible to start the business and instead to focus on making as much money as possible. And without the complications of setting up a traditional companythis indeed seems like a simple solution that we can adopt, if only we think out well and combine passion with strategy and commitment.
Let us look at the example the author of this book, Chris Guillebeau uses to give the above advice. The example is of a high school drop out and a teenaged mother who lived in a homeless shelter.
4At age seventeen, Naomi’s adult life started without much hope; having left her education, doing odd jobs while living in a homeless shelter and being a mother. However she took a leap into the future based on the expertise she knew; marketing – because her mother was a marketer, her father had created several businesses from nothing and her grandfather had been in advertising. Therefore capitalizing on some obvious inherited talent, she opened a consulting company called IttyBiz with the tagline ‘Marketing for businesses without the marketing department.’ From the word go, within the first hour that is, she started getting inquiries and began evaluating marketing ideas and providing feedback on ways of improving them. She earned250$ from the first hour. One year later she had earned around $ 200,000 and published a video on how she did it. The book explains that her success as an advisor for businesses is because she continually reminds her clients on the need for actually making money. Chris Guillebeau (who had used her advice himself for his enterprises) explains how keenly she analyses a business issue, stating that busy entrepreneurs can easily become fatigued and pre-occupied with projects and tasks that have nothing to do with money. But this one time homeless teenaged mother who has made her millions using her sharpness of intellect and her inherited expertise in marketing and entrepreneurship,diligently explainsto each of her clients that if they call what they are doing a business, that they have to make money out of it.
It seems wise to end on this note of rationality because the past two weeks we have focused on how passion and giving value to your customers through your innovation or service is vital for success. In our conclusion of this series on this book and the real life case studies it brings, we can say that there should be a healthy mix of planning, thinking, professionalism and studying competition (how your business will be different), and injecting passion into what you are doing.It is then thatconverting some skill or hobby close to your heart into a business, works, almost magically.
We hope you enjoyed reading this series. We will next week feature the book The Obstacle is the way; The ancient art of turning adversity to advantage by Ryan Holiday which has interesting examples of now famous companies that were actually started during economic recession.