With all the recent interest in global citizenry, expanding overseas and developing an entrepreneurial mindset, it's good to reexamine what being a successful business owner means to different people.
Last night, we were at dinner with hubby's good friend and his family. The Manzhu Restaurant @ Chinese Swimming Club serves decent local and Western favourites like beef kway teow (tender beef slices with dry flat noodles and a healthy serving of stirfried veg), fish soup, grilled sirloin steak and sausage spaghetti (Beth finished 90% of her meal - a first in a long time!). Best of all, it overlooks the 2 swimming pools.
Hubby's pal KP is with an e-learning company that supplies resources to schools. In his spare time, he writes software (right down to his own payment gateway!), makes it downloadable for free on the Internet, sources for markets for his software (with customised enhancements as required by third parties), and researches Internet businesses to find out what works and what doesn't in the e-market.
His conclusion: in the physical world, the key to a successful real estate or business investment is LOCATION x 3. In the e-world, it is TRAFFIC x 3. He reckons the best way to pull eyeballs to your site is to buy up competing sites that are top of the charts at the number of hits they attract. Also, instead of trading in products (which requires complicated back-up systems and attracts fraud), one could provide a value-added service e.g. info, that makes customers want to keep coming back. He also talked about affiliate marketing, an option for those who have nothing to sell. He suggested that since hubby was going to take time to jobhunt in Melb, perhaps he could start off with an Internet home-based business first. (I was mentally rolling my eyes because I've been trying for the longest time to persuade hubby that the way to go is to set up an Internet business, and he, the IT professional, has been adamantly pooh-poohing the notion.)
What was really interesting was watching hubby's reaction as KP expounded on all these topics, which he was clearly passionate about. Hubby was really impressed by KP's vision and alternative thinking, but he also had the usual reservations of the risk-averse. However, this time I think he might just do something, since he will be jobless for a while in Melb and he has nothing to lose by trying. And I think he is sufficiently impressed by his pal's achievements to give it a go.
Of course, being an entrepreneur has its downside. KP's wife, who years ago gave up a steady job in the Civil Service to stay home with their twins, cannot understand her husband's passion for working 2 jobs - the day job which pays the bills, and the night shift in front of the PC, which takes up just as much time but doesn't necessarily pay (not in $ anyway). She is miffed that he has hardly got time for the family, and wonders why he cannot simply be happy with a job. ("Just get a job, do it, go home and be done with it.")
The difference in mindset is understandable. His is the visionary's mindset, charting new frontiers, looking to make connections all over the world, exploring business opportunities in unlikely places. Hers is the average pragmatic Singaporean mindset - a job is something stable and reliable that pays the bills. Whether it addresses your real career interests or passions is irrelevant.
The problem is the marketplace is inexorably moving away from this mindset: if the gurus are to be believed, we are to stop thinking of our jobs as our main/only source of income, but to develop multiple streams of income through investments, intellectual property, multilevel marketing, Internet businesses and e-learning. The reality continues to be sobering: even though unemployment is down and the number of jobs is up, there are still people who can't find gainful employment. Some of the solutions proposed have been retraining, management of employer-worker expectations, encouraging employers to hire older workers, job sharing etc.
The problem with these proposals is that they're still job-focussed. If you've no job, then what do you do? So the gurus may have something there...
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