Archive for January, 2010

The event I went for today.

There’s only so much reading, dreaming and thinking you can do about entrepreneurship before you come to the realization that you will never really properly learn it without first immersing yourself completely into it.

Throwing yourself into the deep end is probably the single fastest way to learn the ropes, and I just know deep inside me that I have to do so really, really soon. Enough procrastination. Enough excuses. I won’t forgive myself if I never started.

Three things happened today that clearly reminded me that I really have to get started, or just fear getting left behind in the dust. My priorities really need to be set right.

The first event happened when I was surfing the web for information on startups, businesses and websites that have encountered issues relating to the Law of Information and since I had to look at an internet-related business, naturally, I decided to take a closer look at Nuffnang.

Scrutinizing the website, I realized that Nuffnang is owned by this company called, Netccentric, and upon clicking on that link, I just realized that Timothy and Ming, founders of Nuffnang didn’t just stop at starting one company – they started up 3 already (not including Netccentric!) – and they’re just not more than 5 years older than I am!

Something in me just flared up. I have always wanted great things for myself – I talk as though I am to have it all in the future – but the thing is that I keep failing to get started.

I know it’s not a race. There’s no hurry for me to make my first million. But the thing is that I cannot live with myself in regret, thinking about all the opportunities I’ve lost just because I was too lazy, or did not have enough discipline to invest the time and energy in improving myself.

I’m 21 now, and it’s time to grow up and really do what I have to do.

The second event is that I went to this forum where we had several entrepreneurs come and talk about their experiences. They were talking about all sorts of businesses – one of them, Dominic, started up an online cloud computing based storage solution, another founded a social networking site for upcoming bright stars – and I was just mesmerized.

I loved hearing about the strategy, about the marketing, about the ideas and turning them into reality. I soaked it all up.

Hearing about their experiences, their war stories, and the issues they faced really struck a chord inside me; an inner fire was kindled once again. I had to do this. This is my calling.

Then I remembered that the third event happened earlier in the afternoon.

One of the bloggers I read, Chris Guillebeau, who writes The Art of Nonconfomity just posted information about an online forum that he was organizing an $1oo Business Forum, a forum where new entrepreneurs can share ideas, thoughts and insights on entrepreneurship while working on starting up their own low cost businesses.

According, to Chris, you don’t need a lot of money to make a business work. And I wholeheartedly agree with that. In fact, isn’t starting without resources and turning that IDEA into a tangible fortune, the very essence of the entrepreneurial spirit?

If Chris, and another 150 or so of his forum participants can start a business for $100, so can I!

There’s no more room left for excuses left.

The deep end awaits. All that’s left to do is to take that plunge. Let’s see what I can do with that $100 I have in my pocket real soon.

I’m definitely someone with big dreams.

I want to go out there and achieve all there is to achieve. I can’t settle for mediocrity any more; I can’t just live my wasting my hours away unproductively – I will live my perfect life.

I have so many big dreams, so many things that I want to pursue, but the sad thing is that on the outside, everything seems to be in a mess.

I’m horribly inefficient, disorganized, undisciplined.

I need to be efficient, organized, disciplined instead.

I really need to focus on the few things that are going to make this life worthwhile and make them happen soon…

… lest I ever stop dreaming those big dreams.

I know it’s a little late for reflections on the past year, but 2009 just happened to be quite a significant year for me – and it taught me countless priceless lessons.

It was the year where so many things began, this blog included. It was the year where I began the journey to understand myself in proper. It was the year where boundaries were stretched, lines were drawn.

It was the year where I was bruised and battered, but grew stronger in the process.

I learnt so much more about myself, and did so many things that I have never done before. And just to sum it all up, these are the top 10 lessons that I have learnt over the past year.

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1. Questions are a good way to learn about yourself and set yourself in the right direction.

Very rarely do you find yourself stuck in a situation in which you cannot find an answer if you ask yourself good questions. Clear questions help us clarify what solutions we need, and when the question is clear enough, the solution is usually not far behind.
I’ve learnt that very often we do have the answers to our problems after asking ourselves rather detailed questions, but often lack the willpower to push through with solution. This happened quite a bit when I was trying to make a business plan work with Wing Chuan.
Additional bit of learning: Solutions are useless if they are not pursued.

2. Sometimes the best learning is through doing fun things that you enjoy.

Personally, I enjoy learning. I enjoy reading about the things that interest me, and I find it intellectually stimulating sharing my learning with the people around me. But only recently did I truly begin to understand how actually trying and doing all sorts of fun things results in one learning all sorts of useful skills.

I filmed quite a few short videos over the past year, and started quite a number of projects which really made me learn all sorts of skills! Trust me, you learn a lot more from actually trying to create a home video all by yourself as compared to reading a book any day!

3. Be proactive when dealing with people.

Most people stay within their own zones of comfort and do not take the initiative to spend time with you but if you just take the time and effort to get to know people, you will find out that people really want people to go out and reach them. Most people are innately friendly and want more people in their lives.

So reach out and reconnect with the people that really matter to you.

Sometimes that’s all it takes to keep an old friendship going strong again. It never hurts to be the one with initiative. Just take the time and effort to call that one friend that you lost contact with for a party or dinner sometime. It’s really all it takes.

4. The mob is never cool, but they empower the few cool people in power.

Being yet another sheep in the herd will mean that you will never be in a position of power. Powerful people are always in one way or another innately different from the drone-like masses.

5. Many people go through their lives without making conscious decisions of their own.

I think I wrote about something like this before. I think most people are like sheep. What others say or do, they follow. I think that it’s highly important for individuals to be able to think and make decisions on their own. Not decisions that they consider just because they are options that other similar people are making as well, but conscious decisions that really benefit them.

You can only go with the flow and follow the crowd for so long before you become yet another soulless, dissatisfied drone. I don’t want to end up that way, definitely not, and I will find my own path to become the person whom I want to be.

6. In today’s day and age most fears that people have are purely imaginary.

We live in a fearful society – people are afraid of failure, their parents, the government, their wives, and the list just goes on and on. It seems that more people object to a novel idea because they are fearful of the unknown more so than because they truly do not believe that the idea can succeed.

It’s rather interesting to note that people today are still so fearful  - we no longer need to fight to kill our food and protect our women from rampaging barbarians.

In our safe modern society, it is quite possible to survive on nearly nothing. There’s always somewhere we can find to rest your head at the end of the day, if you really look. I managed to make it through a whole semester without a room of my own in NTU. It wasn’t easy, but the point that I want to make here is that what most people fear cannot really hurt them. It’s all in the head.

If there’s a time to be fearless, it’s definitely now.

7. Don’t ask yourself how you can make the most money with the least amount of work, but rather how you can best utilize your God-given talents to benefit society.

Society rewards individuals who step up and provide value. In our society, that reward comes primarily in the form of money. So in essence, money is merely a medium of exchange of value. Provide value and you get value back.

That’s exactly why get-rich-schemes and Ponzi schemes fail – they don’t really provide value to the world at large. When you don’t play by money’s rules, the money just doesn’t come.

The super rich are an often misunderstood bunch. They are vilified, envied and very rarely praised. The fact is that these are the people who have managed to utilize their talents to provide the most amount of value to society, in some of the most efficient ways ever. No wonder society rewards them so much.

I’ve still yet to have discovered my own special way to make the world a better place, and that is why I am dedicating 2010 solely to that purpose.

Hopefully, when this year is through, it will all be clearer.

8. Friends and family are the most important things in the world.

What is money, prestige and power without the love of your family and friends?

I truly am blessed to have so many really dear friends who just amaze me day after day with just how awesome they are.

Friends define your life and make it worth living. It’s a pity that some people just get so caught up with the material that they forget what’s really important.

9. Knowing where you’re heading is super, super important.

Can’t stress how important this is. How can you know what you should do, what skills you should learn, if you have no idea what you want to end up as?

Well although it is true that it isn’t easy to have a crystal clear picture of where you want to end up, I think it’s important to at least have a rough idea of where you’re going. Or at the very least have some working idea of what you want to achieve that you constantly revise and work with on that way to becoming a better person.

10. You can learn from everyone, if you can just be humble and speak to people with an open mind.

I think a story that Timothy Tiah told me best illustrates this. When I talked to him last December, he told me that one of his best learning experiences came from his first clients.

According to him, when he first started Nuffnang, he and his team really didn’t know that much about advertising. He told me that he felt really embarrassed that he didn’t really understand the advertising jargon that the big clients that he was talking to used, but he knew that he had to learn it quick.

So at that point in time, when all was still new to him, he said that by being humble and sincere about doing a good job for his clients, his clients actually taught him and his team how to carry out his first few jobs. According to him it was like having a tuition teacher paying you to learn the ropes!

There’s a lesson to be learnt from everywhere, and if we can really extract these lessons from all around us, and keep trying to improve yourself along the way, nothing can stand in our way.

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Guess that’s 2009 for you. Lets see what 2010 has to offer.

Only time would tell.