Life etc: Real world advice, ideas and tips on being a better entrepreneur

Force Majeure?

By Momekh on March 10, 2010

Force Majeure: It is the easiest escape route, you as an individual and as an entrepreneur can take. Blame it on ’superior’ forces. (Quickly, read the first paragraph on Wikipedia on Force Majeure – it’s alright to not know – now go, quickly, click here )

When I first started in agriculture, the land I had on lease had only 1 tubewell. Over the course of five years, I have been able to install three more. Why? So I can plant the rice crop with ease and take it ‘to the next level’. What happened? I had four tubewells ready to irrigate the crap out of the land, but I had no electricity.

All through the summer of 2009, the electricity situation was not bad because really, there was no electricity to actually have ‘any’ situation. Whatever you went through sitting in your residential homes in the big cities of Lahore, Karachi or Islamabad – the situation where I have leased the land was worse! 8 to 10 to 12 hours straight without electricity. The light would come one for one to two hours, and then gone for the next 8 to 10 to 12. So what use were the tubewells? It was an expensive lesson, but a lesson nonetheless.

That there is a reason this Force Majeure is used in contracts, because when shit hits the fan, no one remembers to turn the damn fan off. You can not plan for everything, just like you should not. It is a myth to think that you, as an entrepreneur, need to know the ‘nitty gritty’ to start work. Because as far as I am concerned, I am convinced, it is this ‘Superior’ Force that gets me to where I a trying to go anyways. It works both ways.

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Meeting Malik Hanif, the Unicorn breeder

By Momekh on March 9, 2010

Feeling big about travelling hundreds of mile in my not-so-comfortable car to just ‘meet’ with someone who has reached the epitome of success as I’d define it, I was already happy that I was in Hafizabad. The person I was to meet has been breeding Unicorns it seems.
I have a direct interest in the business of agriculture, and recently been involved in setting up dairy farms. I have visited a few, read about the different techniques, applied them to gauge results and talked to all sorts of people in the business of livestock. Here’s what I have gathered so far, related to the selection of cows vs buffalo:

Buffalo suck. Buy cows if you ever want to be profitable in this business

That’s pretty much all that I have heard and read about. From SMEDA to PITB to every ’serious’ businessperson in between, buffalo are the ones that had got to go. You can already see the effect of preferring the imported cows versus our own indigenous buffalo in brands like Prima, that proudly claim to give out 100 percent pure cow milk. The reasons they quote are not many, but are simple enough to understand i.e. the buffalo, on average gives 6 to 8 liters of milk over the 10 month lactation period and cows give anywhere between 20 to 30 liters. The difference in milk yields is more than significant to convince any would-be entrepreneur to write off buffalo completely.

But I have been in the milk business for the last three years or so and I know that selling cow milk is harder. People are more attuned to the high-fat, relatively sweetened taste of buffalo milk (for a more detailed comparison between cow and buffalo milk, check this out). I had a direct interest in keeping buffalo in my dairy farm, instead of cows. That is where Mr. Hanif comes in with his unicorns.

He breeds buffalo that give, on average, 15 to 18 liters. When I heard it, I was sure that this is the Unicorn i.e. a myth borne out of the sheer desire of people to have buffalo that can give high yields of milk. I found the unicorns to be not-so-mythical after all, when I met Mr. Hanif in his 100 Acre orchard. Nestled in this orchard is his small farm of animals, both cows and buffalo.

And you know what was the first thing he said when I asked him about his method of operation? “I don’t do it for the money, I do it because I love these animals.”

His herd size is hardly 20 animals, but the milk yield is more than what other people I know produce with 80 or 100 animals. He proudly told me that in the last 4 decades or so, his love for buffalo and his desire for excellence (his own words) has given him the finances to buy 100 acres of land, put his children through 16 years of education and have given him respect that only winning 5 Presidential awards in Cattle Breeding can bring. And after saying this, as an after though, he adds, “I did not do it for the money though”

The buffalo are highly priced, but they are proof of concept. Apart from proving the inefficiencies of our government and private enterprises for developing the indigenous buffalo breed of Nilli and Ravi, the buffalo at Malik Hanif’s farm are proof of concept that when it is from the heart, it is far better.

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Why it isn’t easy

By Momekh on March 9, 2010

Because we have different definitions of easy, firstly, and we really do not know our own selves.

To find that something is easy or not, is relative a lot of variables. Picking up a glass of water is considered easy, but if you are tied down or that glass of water is 1000’s of miles away, it is not. A lot of things are ‘assumed’ to be in their respective places for a ‘thing’ to be easy. That is where the confusion in definitions come in.

We think that starting a blog is easy. Well, it is. But we have already confused ourselves by saying that our objective is to start a blog. That is not the objective, now is it? The objective probably is to ’start a community of like-minded individuals’ or something more concrete. Starting a blog is easy because you know how to start a blog. Starting a community of like-minded individuals is also easy, but only if you have either done it before or have read the right material on how to start such a community. Defining the objective clearly, simply and accurately is where most of us make the mistake. Had you known the real objective of you doing something, you would not only do it better, but might end up changing your game plan accordingly.

The reason anything is not easy is:

either you do not know what you really want to do,
or you really do not know how to do it.

The first problem is solved by smart work, the second problem is solved by hard work.

Make sure you know what you are doing (haven’t you heard that one before, heh.)

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From the heart

By Momekh on March 9, 2010

The first job I got, in JaanPakistan.com as a webmaster, was a case of ‘being hired before the interview’. My friend had his family friends over for a social visit and during the conversation, his family friend mentioned that he was starting an online portal, and was looking for a writer cum webmaster, to do up the content of the website (the portal being a content-based website). My friend asked him ‘what about hiring the guy who wrote that?’ pointing towards the cover of that month’s Spider Magazine. Lo and behold, yours truly had one of his articles as the cover story for that month’s Spider magazine, the number one IT magazine in Pakistan. The guy told my friend to ask me if I’d be interested. I was interested, not because I was getting five thousand rupees a month for showing up for two hours, five days a week, but because the job was what I loved doing anyways.

I have a direct interest in marketing and of the two jobs that I have taken, the other one was as a copywriter. This is at least 8 to 9 years back, sometime in 2001. The owner of the then up and coming ad agency Blaze called me up, introduced himself and told me that he is looking for a copywriter. I was in college at the time, and the idea of an employer ‘cold-calling’ me for a job was exciting in itself – and the field of advertising was something I had always liked. I went there for the interview – I remember making the interview on time although I was on a motorbike and Lahore was going through the stormy season. The soon-to-be boss was visibly impressed by my drenched clothes as I walked into his office. He told me that he has already hired me, as I come strongly recommended by his friend. This ‘his friend’ knew me from my previous job that I had taken, as a webmaster for JaanPakistan.com, a startup Pakistani portal. His friend had told him that I was good (nice!) and warned him that I am not a ‘normal’ employee (nicer!). I was hired before I walked in the room, and stayed with the ad agency for the first six months of its inception, learning a lot and enjoying the company. I left to ‘do my own thing’, with the boss telling me to come back any time.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between doing what you love or just looking for a job. If you are not doing what you love to do, then what the hell are you working towards? Is not your interests worth at least an effort to get involved in it in one way or the other? Go. Go. Go.

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Another year

By Momekh on January 1, 2010

It is 2009. It is time for some review.

I can start by actually not deciding on a topic for my personal blog, because, well, it is a personal blog. More on that later. But probably not.

I have to inshAllah streamline a few things, and then earn a set amount of money to travel to a few places within the year 2010. It sounds exciting. InshAllah, I will make it sound more exciting. Just give me a few days.

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Please, do not make this mistake

By Momekh on November 11, 2009

This happens to the best of us, and it has happened to the biggest amongst us. From solo freelancers to Small & Medium Enterprises and from Large companies to really, really large companies – everyone is known to make this mistake.

They forget to identify their space.

The price so many have paid of being unable to do that is, sadly, huge. Railroad companies of the 1800’s failed to realize that they were in the transport industry, and not the ‘railroad business’ – had they known their space, they would have been the first ones to invest in air travel.

Had Britannica Encyclopedia realized they were in the ‘information organization’ business, they probably would have either come up with or invested in Google in a big way.

In Pakistan, had PTCL (the behemoth telecom company) known that they were not in ‘phones’ but in the communications landscape, they would have been the first ones to introduce cell phone technology, been the first to introduce ISP’s for access to the Net and would have been the first to figure out ways to battle the VoIP battles of today. Surely, all telecommunication companies around the world are waking up to this practically free way of making a phone call. Had it not been for bad governance, there would have been no ‘law’ that prohibits usage of VoIP to make international phone calls, for example. The industry has already changed, and now the companies are trying, with hook or crook, to stay afloat. They won’t stay afloat for long.

Same is for newspapers. The Internet has changed the game completely. Intelligent companies adjust and adapt and change, therefore they survive.

As an entrepreneur, it may or may not be your space to look into new ideas and start new businesses based on them. If you are not doing that and letting ideas (read: opportunities) go for the sake of ‘managing’ what you have started, you are not being honest with your title. It is your job to find the people, find the businessmen and employees, who would manage and run the business.

When trying to figure out and tweak your definition of the industry you operate in, it is important to realize that in the ever-changing world, it is highly likely that your service or product is constantly getting old. Adjusting your product to the market demands is one thing, coming up with a new product or service to maintain or improve your position in your own industry can immediately throw you on the top of the food chain.

Spending some time on identifying your space can be a good start but I’d suggest that you always be on the lookout to upgrade and update your definition of the space you operate in. Who are you? And why are you doing whatever you are doing? These questions must be asked, especially when there is change in the air. Do read this relevant post by Seth Godin on how to go about adapting to change in one’s industry/space. The ‘why test’ is not excellent to find motivation and focus on one’s life, but also in one’s enterprising activities.

Good luck and God bless,

M.
Space Operator.

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Let the 80/20 rule save you money & give you more time

By Momekh on November 11, 2009

productivity-is-action Do you know of the 80/20 rule?

There was this Italian scientist (somewhere in the 1800’s)’, Pareto, who noticed that 20 percent of the population of Italy owned 80 percent of the land. Well, nothing scientific about that, surely, but more importantly, the Pareto law states that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes i.e. only 20 percent or so of a given system producing 80 percent of the output. (For more detailed info on Pareto and his efficiency and laws, check out this Wikiepedia entry)

Well, how is this 80/20 law connected to you and your business? Quite directly in fact.

Let us consdier two extreme examples, both true. First, consider Microsoft. They applied this 80/20 law to figure out that by removing 20 percent of the bugs in any system, they were able to reduce the system crashes by 80 percent. (Well, OK, this is coming off as a bad example … scratch that, let’s just jump to the second example.

I noticed, a few months back, that I spent a large amount of time on enterprises that were giving the least amount of returns. Which of course meant, that I was spending very little time focusing on my most profitable enterprises. 20 percent of my efforts were producing 80 percent of my income. By stopping to work on those enterprises, ideas and developments – I immediately had more time than I’ve ever had to do anything I ever wanted which of course was to work on enterprises, ideas and developments – so it was more of a not-so-vicious cycle for me. I was already doing what I really enjoyed (Alhumdulillah ), so the application of the 80/20 principle did not have that dramatic an effect on my lifestyle. But it always helps me get some perspective on my business operations as well. A lot of ‘operations’ that my employees carry out may not be as productive as they first appear (like distributing brochures in areas where we already have reached a certain saturation point or maintaining record of things that really do not need a record)

But the thing is, have you yourself tried it out? On a personal as well as business level? If you already are not attuned to thinking like this, perhaps you can have a bigger difference to report?

Life etc

Real world advice, ideas and tips on being a better entrepreneur

Force Majeure?

Meeting Malik Hanif, the Unicorn breeder

Why it isn’t easy

From the heart

Another year

Please, do not make this mistake

Let the 80/20 rule save you money & give you more time

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