You have read this story countless times.

There is the martyr wife. She sacrifices everything for the family.  After marriage, she spends her whole time taking care of the house, cooking, washing, and cleaning.  She takes care of the family.  She has no time for herself.  In return for her ’sacrifice’, she makes the husband feel obliged and expect therefore that he returns the favor by being ‘loyal’.

Unfortunately many times it does not work.

The husband feels guilty and stays with the family, but Later on he finds a mistress.

The mistress does not make him feel guilty.  She does not impose. She listens and makes him feel good.

The husband feels the need to feel good because he feels the yoke of guilt for so long.  Hey, we all want to feel good.

This is not a moral story, but a story to be learned in business.  How much ‘influence’ can be had by making people feel obliged and guilty?  Do you know people who work long hours and expect rewards even in the absence of good results?  They supposedly sacrifice this and that ( and you don’t know what for?), and because of it, you were supposed to give them a little bit more out of a sense of guilt.

Yes, it does work, but only for a time.  Nobody wants to feel guilty, and if people are doing things for you because you made them so, you will for sure not enjoy success for long.   Because at the end people want to feel good.

If you want success, you should make people successful and feel good about working with you.  That’s the thing that will endure….

One of the ironies of our times is the saying, ” the more you specialize, the more you generalize.” It used to be said that specialization means you have to know more and more about less and less, while generalizing means you have to know less about more and more. What the intense globalization and technology has shown us that what you really need to do is that both are viable strategies, and its up to you to choose where to make your stand.

The concept of whether to generalize or to specialize is a persistent question that a businessman has to answer everyday. It is also a question an employee has to answer everyday.

There are companies that are enormously successful by focusing, and there are companies that are successful by diversifying. If you look at Walmart, or Amazon.com, these are companies that have made it huge by offering everything under one roof, or one website. For every business book that says you should focus on core competence, there is also another book that tries

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Entrepreviews #8   ( for SME Insight Magazine) –

If you are a regular internet user, you probably have heard of MySpace.com, and lately Facebook.com, two of the most popular social networking sites.  MySpace was bought by Fox Media for over half a billion dollars in 2005, and have since grown to over 100 million members.  Facebook is the new kid in the block.  Although its membership is currently at around 50 million, it is signing up new members fast, and just not so long ago, about 1.5% of its stake was bought by Microsoft for over 250 million dollars, effectively valuing the company at over $15 billlion dollars.

All these craze about social networking makes us think back that once in 2003, the original social networking site was Friendster.   Although Friendster continues to be apparently leading in the Philippines , it was about 13^th place worldwide in this analysis from Inc Magazine, which can be accessed here (http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070601/features-how-to-kill-a-great-idea.html).

Friendster was once called the hottest invention in 2003 by Time Magazine, and at that time, Jonathan Abrams, its founder was called by Entertainment Weekly was called by Entertainment Weekly as the “Friendliest man of the Year”. 

Friendster opened in March 2003, and by June, it had already 835,000 members, and scarecely four months later, it had over 2 million members, generating over 10 million page views per day.  For a while, Friendster was touted to be the harbinger of the dot com renaissance after it crashed in 2001.

From hottest startup to probably biggest disappointment in Internet history, its story can be a good lesson to read on what could potentially go wrong on a startup despite it having the best in publicity, management, technology, and venture capital.

This is something a start-up entrepreneur needs to know as having been to various entrepreneurship forums, the number 1 lament of an entrepreneur (unless in Silicon Valley or some other place) you most often hear is the lack of venture capitalists – those people who focus on investing in other people’s businesses instead of their own.

There are a number of venture capitalists I know, and they themselves lament that there is a lack of new or original ventures — ideas that can potentially become a leader in its industry segment, and therefore turn for its investors a big return.

For sure, the reason why both sides seldom connect is that there is a differing idea on what a business is, and it is important that such understanding should be understood at the start.  For an entrepreneur, using his own hard earned money, and potentially starting what would be his only business endeavor in his whole life, wants also to invest in something that is probably conservative, and have good chances of success.   After all, business failure is still something of a stigma iin many countries, and few entrepreneurs can still afford the financial, and social costs of a business failure.  A venture capitalist on the other hand, is paid to take risks – and they are normally looking for 10 or 20 businesses to invest in, or probably more.  They don’t’ expect more than 2 or 3 businesses to succeed, but they do expect that the successful ones will earn enough to make for the others failure.

In short, a businessman wants to grow his business slowly, and have close 100% chance of it being able to be a 10 million  business.  A venture capital may want higher stakes, and would rather go for a business which has a 10-20% chance of hitting a 100 million business in 2 years.

In its analysis, that was probably what happened to Friendster. Instead of making it grow slowly, the people backing the project started to hire the best technical and management teams ( again, these professional managers are paid well to take risks which will give astronomical returns). 

Evidently, the too aggressive stance taken the company resulted in a lot of conflicts, and tension.  After all, even if you can afford it, it may not be the best course to hire the best players to a team unless they know how to work and team together.  Otherwise, it would only be each trying to outdo the other, with super egos having to be managed and massaged.

Apparently, all these spectacular success you see in Silicon Valley  mostly in the ICT industry is creating greater expectations to grow a company ever so faster.  But lest we be tempted always, we need to remind ourselves that there is still value in entrepreneurship of being able to focus on building the right service for the customers, maintaining the right relationship with its suppliers, maintaining good life and work balance for its workers, plus finding great ways to contribute to the community not only through better products and services, but through corporate social programs.

You have decided to take the plunge, raise the money from  your savings as well as from your family, and have now ‘inaugurated’ your small business.  What are the things to keep in mind?  

Don’t take risks you cannot afford.  

As you venture on your entrepreneur venture, there will be many mistakes you will commit.  Even the most successful enterprises commit mistakes in which they lose people and money.  The reason

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When I heard about the government’s plan on creating millions of jobs through entrepreneurship, I came out a little bit unconvinced.  Going into your own business is not a walk in the park, and pushing people into something that they are not trained or prepared for can be damaging – failure in business will not only impact your self confidence, but can hit your life savings as well as your marriage as well.  But I do agree that as a nation, we could benefit from cultivating a culture of entrepreneurship.

We think our national culture, which basically encourages citizens to go to school, graduate and then get a job is too ‘constricting’.  In many families I met, being entrepreneurial is still not being encouraged or frowned upon.  For sure, many parents see their obligation as getting the children through college, and then helping them find a job.  I  remember then the  looks of my teachers who look at disdain at some of our classmates attempting to sell candies or other wares while I was still in high school.

Maybe indeed for many a developing country or actually everywhere in the world now, where take home pay will constantly be wanting and not enough, creating a merchant class who is resourceful and business savvy and enabling them to earn on the side, as well as providing micro finance capital might be a good way to grow the per capita income of an economy.

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There are generally three ways you can position your company – either provide products or services that are better, faster or cheaper.  Normally, you cannot be all three – and you have to choose which is your competitive advantage.  Faster is defined by UPS or Fedex where you can generally get your parcels delivered in a day, or McDonalds where you can go in and be eating your meal in a few minutes.  But for the moment, let us forget about faster, and concentrate on the other two aspects – either you can be better or you have to be cheaper.
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Many entrepreneurs I know, are proud about their gut feel.  Many of them have become successful in their chosen industry even as they continue to spurn formal business management practices, like having a proper budget. Many even proudly wear their  illiteracy like a badge of honor.  ‘We’ll solve it when it happens’ is a normal strategy, and they think that a business plan or budget are too restricting.

In the face of such role models, many business administration students are noticeably unappreciative of the various management science courses that they learn in school.

Yet while admittedly it was easier to succeed in business 30 years ago, it is now getting more and more competitive,

According to a report by ZDNet, total mergers and acquisitions by the technology industry has already totaled $186.3 billion on the first three quarters of 2006, which already surpassed the 2005 total of $164.6 billion.  It is projected that it will reach almost $250 billion by the end of the year, with close to 4,000 deals.

There are many reasons given for such activities.  Some often cited reasons would be:

a.)     Economies of Scale. Merging companies would allow increased market share, while probably reducing redundancy and duplicate departments, thus insuring lower costs overall, and therefore increasing profit.

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If you are a manager, or an entrepreneur, you know that you win or lose competitiveness in the effectiveness and efficiency of your people’s productivity and operations.  How well you execute an order, how well you respond to a routine issue of customer complaint, how well you manage your inventory, cash and receivables  -  all will define your position in the marketplace.

It is for this reason, that mastery of production management, or in the newer lingo, operations management is a skill that many companies covet  ( production management was the old terminology when many companies were predominantly industrial and manufacturing.  Operations Management was termed with the recent shift of many enterprises into service operations) .  If you look at the way Wal Mart squeezes every cent cost off to give their lower prices everyday, or the way McDonald’s have grown to over 30,000 stores worldwide, it is operations management at work.  McDonald’s is hardly known for having the best tasting food, but the efficiency at which it serves its customers highlights the importance of proper operations and process.

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“So you want to be an entrepreneur?” I asked one of my nephews as I was discussing with him his plans.  “ But why are you taking Biology for your college?”

“ Well, “ he said, “ My dad wants me to be a doctor, and besides, if I can’t make it to medical school, then I can always be an entrepreneur.  Dad never did go to business school, but he is doing ok.”

Do you have friends who are doctors, or lawyers who are also in business?  Are you just amused what they believed in?  Of course, they think they cannot be doctors if they don’t go to medical school,  or accountants if they don’t get an accounting course,  but they can always be businessmen!”

Managing a business is just common sense is as common a thinking even among my business friends.  Is management so easy?  Yet , it can’t be.  It is like basketball or golf – the game is easy to learn, yet difficult to master.

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