Posts Tagged ‘networks’

For the 4^th time in my life I am resigning and taking a step into the unknown world of no job. This time I am doing it on a small scale, I am only moving my family across 8 states and not between continents. I don’t know what it is – maybe we just have a strong nomadic gene!

I have been working at Maconomy for a little over 3 ¼ years and am closing the door on the most exciting, hectic, challenging and learning chapter in my career. I would like to say a big Thank You to all at Maconomy who have pushed, supported, helped and laughed with me. If  you think you have the heart and attitude to be a business consultant, there are few finer places to refine your skills than at Maconomy

Before I lose you  – this is not about my career, but rather the reflections about making the decision to move and how vital networks and tribes are to being able to perform such drastic moves. For a long while I have had the ambition to branch out and become an entrepreneur but the opportunity has just never seemed to be there (bad luck?). But suddenly this opportunity has presented itself (luck?) and it makes sense to the point that I am willing to trade one tribe for another and turn the world I know upside down.

I hear people saying “you are lucky” and my response has often been “you make your own luck” and I speculate that there is a close resemblance between luck and the company we keep. There is  a lot of talk around tribes in the social networking space which may be a key to how an opportunity appears as suddenly available. I have had the ambition to start a business venture for the longest while, but what has lacked is another tribe in which I have been able to create an identity in which the opportunity can be exposed. Once this opportunity was exposed and I assessed I could coexist within the new tribe the natural movement is to make the transition. Rajesh Setty posted a great article on why nice people will win – the realization of this opportunity for me is just a positive consequence of making those connections and maintaining an existence to another networked tribe.

We have to have an identity and a presence with which people can make a connection and assessments across our networks. If we do not have this people will not think of us and we will just blend into the crowd and the opportunity will pass us by …and be snatched up by the colorful and loud person nearby! This is why it is so important to ensure we maintain a presence in the social networks we choose, and to leave an impression with those we meet and interact with.

Another similar example was our saleslady, who wished to make contact with a company. After a search on LinkedIn she found out that I was connected to someone who had worked at the company. This person had just sent me a LinkedIn invite after a ½ day meeting we had had some 8 months earlier. I really was not sure he would remember me, but I reached out to him to see if he could make an introduction. Surprisingly, he did remember me and was willing to help make an introduction. That is seizing the opportunity …not Luck!

So go make some noise, post a status update, tweet, call someone – get out there and pick your opportunity – Dance for your tribe!

Tagged as: active garage, Branding, business, Communication, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Guy Ralfe, networks, presence, Rajesh Setty, Social Media, social networks, tribe

There are a lot of definitions for business. But I am interested in just the simple and fundamental way that we can define a business.

So, what is a business?. Fundamentally, business is ‘providing good help’.

Think about it. Every human being needs help. Otherwise he or she cannot survive.

Some of you may disagree.

Before you say anything, let us look around in our life. Notice the help we are receiving almost everyday. The jobs we have, the house we live in, the mail we get are all provided by someone else. As human beings, we need help.

The best way to get help is to give help. We work for someone to provide our services and they help us back by giving us money.  When we need help, we typically look for the best help that we can possibly afford.

Over time the market in which we provide “help” keeps getting bigger and bigger with each new radical innovation. When cars became mass produced, people could travel long distances to get the help they needed. This changed the way people used the marketplace. If they wanted a job in another part of town, they could take it, since they had a car to drive to that part of town. If they wanted to buy something which was available in another town, they could drive and get it. When Airplanes were introduced, people could travel around the world to provide their “help” or get the “help” they needed.

In the very old days, a person with a skill could provide help to others living in the same village, for example a blacksmith could provide his service to people in his village. As the tools of transportation and communication evolved, many more people were able to use his services like those in the neighboring villages. Today, with the advent of the internet and the economy changing from an industrial to information age, a guitar maker ( in crude terms, a modern day blacksmith ) in any part of the world can sell his handmade guitars to anyone in the world. Rick Toone does this. I am sure without the Internet, he would not have a large enough audience for his “help”.

Even when we play online games or want to watch a movie, we are looking for the best game or best movie, Since we cannot personally make a game or movie, we are looking for help to be highly entertained. There are free games and free movies but ultimately they exist because both the provider and the consumer get benefited in some way. When you visit Disneyland , you want the best entertainment (help) and Disney can provide that in return for the money (help) you pay to enter.

So, as entrepreneurs, what can we do?

The bottom line is this: As long as we can provide good help, we have a high chance of succeeding as people are always looking for better help.  With the world as our market, there is a high probability that we can find a large enough market that needs our help.

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Vijay Peduru is an entrepreneur in the bay area and is the co-founder of a bootstrapped startup. His interests are bootstrapping, leadership and spirituality.

Tagged as: active garage, business, economic shift, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, good help, help, helping others, marketplace, networks, radical change