Last year I decided that I could no longer work for anyone. I keep realizing that I don't like to answer to anyone especially my superiors, and I don't like the work I am doing at any company that I work for. Therefore after my contract ended with my last company, I left without any hesitation.
I have always wanted to start my own company. Back in 2003 I quit my job at Oracle in the USA and came to Hong Kong to start my first company. It was a SaaS (Software As A Service) company also known as an application service provider (ASP) at that time. I spent one year building the technology by myself. Towards the end of the first 12 months, I had an epiphany which was the fact that I was lacking the fundamental skills in marketing that prevented me from finding paying and non-paying customers. So I went back to school and spent two years to get my Master degree in Marketing. Here I am again, thinking that marketing can provide part of the solution to my business problems. I am ready to take the leap of faith and try the entrepreneur thing again.
A Master degree in Marketing only changes the way I think. Our professors often like to say: these marketing concepts are going to be difficult for you to understand and you may never understand them. While I may not be smart enough to understand everything there is to understand, but now I understand that at the startup stage, my company has to offer value to a very small group of people. Marketing needs to target these evangelists: find them, partner with them, pay them to use my services etc. Do whatever necessary to turn them into paying or non-paying customers.
For the last few months, when I tried to turn my friends into these very small groups of customers, I keep getting the same reaction. Whenever I tell them about my advertising business and ask them for help, they will say yes but there is no action. Sometimes I even offer money and hope that in return I get some help from them. None whatsoever. Perhaps the money is not enough to motivate people. On one occasion when I offered money to a friend in exchange for some nice-looking food photos, she kept saying that the money wasn't enough. Eventually she just told me to get the pictures from her facebook photo albums and pay her. Sometimes I think that I just ain't a good enough friend to them that they are willing to give up their time and energy just to help me out. Sometimes I think it's a cultural thing for the Chinese: don't do this unless it gives you something in return that is worthy.
We entrepreneurs keep hearing the myth that an entrepreneur who is a loner is destined to fail. I think it is wrong. If anyone can survive in business as a loner, he or she will excel as an entrepreneur. Think about it. Most companies are founded by a few friends, but in the end it is always left with one single founder. Great musical groups or bands break up because the founding members always have different agendas or goals at some point in time. When we entrepreneurs go for outside help, nobody is going to help unless you are ready to offer lots of money with no guaranteed return, just like gambling. If you ask your friends for help, they will make you wait forever, because they just say they are happy to help but not really act to help. When we small companies want to work with larger companies, they never respond to our proposals or inquiries. Mr. Li Ka-Shing, one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, remembers what his father taught him: it is always better to ask yourself for help than to ask somebody else for help (求人不如求己).
This greatest myth of entrepreneurship must be debunked right here right now: be a loner and you are better off doing the entrepreneur thing all by yourself. You may ask: those Venture Capitalists look at the team behind a startup, not at an individual. Then I say to you: don't even bother with Venture Capitalists. Some of the greatest startups survived and grew exponentially after all of the Venture Capitalists told them NO. You may ask: I don't know everything and I must get help from someone. Sorry to break the news to you: you need to do everything by yourself. I am not a web designer or any designer for that matter, but I have to do it for my website. I don't want to do the programming but I get more scared if I pay someone else to do it because there are so many cheating freelancers and outsourcing firms out there. I am not a photographer but I need great looking food photos for my advertising business. A professional photographer offered me the pictures for an amount I couldn't afford. I have no choice but to learn how to take professional looking food photos because this is the most cost-effective. Over the years I keep doing the "impossible" and find that it can progressively become easier to overcome the next "impossible" task. I have learned how to systematically acquire the knowledge necessary to complete each task.
I am not trying to discourage anyone from being an entrepreneur. However, if you are ready to become one or are already one, try not to have any partners or ask your friends to help out (as a favor). Learn to do everything by yourself. When your business takes off, pay your non-friends (or sometimes friends) as regular employees/contractors to do the work that you don't have time for. Remember that you are the only person who is willing to run your company for free. Nobody else (including your friends) is willing to work for free or for very little money. Before you can afford to pay someone, do it by yourself. It is going to be difficult, but the "training" will make you prepare for the even more difficult problems (which very likely you have to face by yourself) in the future.
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