June 2008

We are in a lightning fast world of business. People communicate on as needed basis.

Saying hello is rarely done, and if it was done, it’s just plain courtesy with no life in the words.

Schmoozing is for business contacts, and healthy laugh is for business purpose.

Slowly, businessmen and entrepreneurs are becoming bizbot - business robot that act and do lifelessly.

What I mean by lifelessly is that people tend to say something nice without really meaning in it.

I suggest you to stop.

Start thinking about good times with friends and families where no business intention lurking behind your mind.

Start calling your friends and families, and even your business contacts and say a genuine, “Hi… long time no see. How do You do?”

Suddenly, all binds break loose and you are free of your routine, robot-like, life - at least for a while.

Just try it!

Ivan Widjaya
How are you doing?

Maybe it’s a bit late, but I would like to highlight one of the most provocative and innovative way to market a product.

Tung Desem Waringin, titled ‘The Number One Motivator in Indonesia’, pre-launched his second soon-to-be-the-best-seller book, Marketing Revolution, in a ‘rather’ unusual way.

How he pre-launched his book

He charter an aeroplane, flew it to a field in Banten area, West Java, Indonesia, and throw money down as well as his seminars admission tickets - all valued at approximately $660,000 (with almost $11,000 in cash). Thousands of people were rushing to the area and were grabbing whatever they can.

This campaign is to create buzz for his book that will be launched on 1st of July, 2008.

Watch the coveted video… Mind the location - it’s not in Jakarta, Indonesia, but in Banten, West Java, Indonesia ;)

The impact of this campaign

Mr. Tung Desem Waringin explained that this is ‘Marketing Protest’ - Companies spend tens to hudreds of thousands of dollars on marketing campaign, that is so ineffective that, he explained, it’s like throwing money to the crater of a volcano.

In my opinion, his Marketing Protest has, by far, out-performed most marketing campaign that cost more than his money throwing stunt.

The impact? The big media guys, such as Reuters, The Washington Post, etc - as well as, of course, local media - cover the Marketing Protest and buzz up his Marketing Revolution book.

Well, it’s simply effective in creating buzz on product launch… and his seminars. I almost certain that his book will be sold way much more than his previous record-breaking 1,000,000 book sales on launching day, not to mention the reputation Mr. Tung gain by his ‘insane’ marketing campaign.

Congratulations for Mr. Tung Desem Waringin - You make Indonesia and the citizens proud! At least we have something to celebrate in the midst of one of the recession’s hardest-hit region in Asia.

Ivan Widjaya
Mr. Tung fan

What is ecopreneur?

Ecopreneur is entrepreneur that evolves his/her business around ecological issues for pursuing both profit and sustainability living for the society.

Today’s hip and hot green movement has born a new breed of entrepreneur - Ecopreneur.

What does it mean to be an Ecopreneur?

Being an Ecopreneur means you can be financially free and have the sense of acievement of creating a business that practically help preserving mother nature’s resource as well as the people living in it.

Ecopreneur reaps both financial and social rewards.

Financially speaking, being an entrepreneur in such lucrative, niche, growing market means more sales and profit potential. Moreover, VCs and investors are laying their sight on budding entrepreneurs that go green - better funding opportunities = better business growth = more sales and profit.

Socially speaking, being an ecopreneur puts you on the spotlight and in an important position where any positive impacts on environmental issues from your business, whatever small they are, will garner a lot of attention from the people and the media. Your reputation is easily buzzed within your community. Good reputation = more opportunities to ‘change the world.’

Ecopreneur is the wave of the future, and the future is now - I’m finding my way to be one. Are you?

Ivan Widjaya
Next milestone: being an ecopreneur

What is the meaning of your business success?

Many possible answers to this question - more money, achieving a certain amount of net worth, the sense of achievement, the gate to more opportunities, etc.

My answer to the question - the sense of achievement.

The sense of achievement is not for bragging or being narcissistic - although some do treat achievement as such.

To me, the sense of achievement boosts my confidence and pushes me to achieve more through my next milestones.

The sense of achievement is what revved me up when I woke up in the morning. The more I success, the more I can achieve.

What about money? Business success is almost always related to money - yes, the money from successful business is nice, but to be honest with you, it’s residual.

Sense of achievement can carry you beyond money.

It can alter the quality of your life, simply because achieving something bring the positives to and out from you, and it’s viral. If you were successful, the people around you reap the benefit physically and psychologically.

So, what’s business success to you? Your answer determine where your ‘money’ is ;)

Ivan Widjaya
Achieving matters

Lots of entrepreneurs run their life and business on the fast lane - 18-hour work days, traveling a lot, and no weekends.

Maybe you should thinking about slowing down - relaxing a bit. Being a bit laid-back is not a bad thing.

You see, when you life your life on high speed, you always lose focus on one thing: to think.

You can’t think well if you life on the fast lane. That’s humane and natural. People need to slow down and give time for the mind to settle and think creatively about something. To see the big picture, you have to stop doing what you are doing, and start viewing your life and your business from bird eyes view.

The benefit of slowing down

There are some apparent benefits of slowing down your life’s pace:

• Slowing down allows you to see things better - more details, more accurate - allowing you to make more ‘correct’ decision.
• Slowing down allows you to absorb the experience you have, so in the future you can live your life more efficiently and effectively.
• Slowing down enables you to set better depth of your business strategy (Sorry Seth Godin, your Blink! is cool - I practice it a lot - but sometimes deep thinking are needed in business decision making :D)
• Slowing down takes pressure off you - Although most entrepreneurs tend to perform well under pressure, taking an occasional off is rewarding - and is proven to actually give boost to entrepreneurs’ productivity.
• Slowing down

Share your experience of slowing down by leaving a comment at this post :)

Ivan Widjaya
Slowing down and taking a deep breath

If you followed my Noobpreneur.com regularly, you might notice that I haven’t post anything for three days.

What gives? You might guess I’m being lazy, but I’m not.

I was sick - influenza plus fever plus vertigo, and oh, plus I’m moving house, along with my wife and one and a half y.o. boy. There you go.

Luckily, most of my business run on autopilot. They require minimal direct involvement from me. Whew.

The problem with my blog, I’m the only writer. The problem with my few other business, if I were sick, my business is sick also.

I don’t know how about you, but I think entrepreneurs should pursue automated business. That is, business that run automatically without direct involvement from the owners.

One example is auto car wash. Another example is candy dispenser business. Many more example - virtually almost any type of business can be made automatic.

The question is, do you really want your business made automatic?

However, not all entrepreneurs want to own an automated business, due to the negative side it may have.

To consider the plus-minus whether automated business is for you, here’s some points to ponder.

The plus side

1. Well, of course - it’s automatic - it’s passive income. You can be anywhere else or do anything else without hurting your business.
2. Your physical presence is not needed to keep the business run.
3. You can construct more focused business strategy, because you are not involving with day-to-day business activities.
4. You can have dozens of business if you wanted to, because automated business don’t require your full-time presence.

The minus side

1. Automatic means a system must be present, and a system is resource intensive. What’s in a system? the employees and information systems (management, accounting, etc)
2. If the system failed - employees on strike, for example, your business failed, too.
3. Not all entrepreneurs want the headaches of managing employees.
4. Some industries are less effective when the businesses in them are automated - usually if the owners’ name or title is significant. For example, a well-known dentist will be having difficulty in automated the business, because it involves his/her name as a brand.

So, the choice is yours. I’d personally go to automated business, given the perk to have more business and have more free time at the same time - I’m a bit lazy, anyway :D

Ivan Widjaya
Automatic business

Googol, representing a numeric one with 100 number of zeros after it, rules in today’s Internet.

Googol? What’s Googol? Why is it significant?

The ‘ruler’ of Internet world - Google. Google’s name derives from Googol.

Why Google rules - The Noobpreneur Point of View

The answer is quite simple - it rules because it answers the necessity of the people surfing the Internet - to search the abundant data and information available.

While there are dozens of search engine companies, Google (and Yahoo!) stands out of the crowd. Google does search the web better in some ways - thanks to the gang of smart PhDs employed - but it is not really dominant in term of search capability.

Why Google stands out? It has resources. Where does Google get the resources from? From the surfer, for the surfer.

The AdWords and AdSense. The alfa and omega, the first and the last. THAT’s where the humongous amount of resources are from.

Resources are paramount

No matter how good or cutting-edge your project is, VC (Venture Capitalist) and investor money boost a business through the roof.

Google is big because of the VCs role. VCs money enable Facebook to hire more high salaried smart people to create better applications and systems. All applied to Yahoo!, Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Craiglist, etc.

No matter how good you and your business are, it’s the investor who make or break your business. Have a look at Agloco - the paid to surf the Net company - lack of funding halt the development, hence ruining its potential.

As soon as your business getting through the roof, you can soon find the resources yourself - thanks to the established market and network.

How to rule like Google

No secret - Google’s formula is simple, yet nearly impossible to copy! Here’s how:

• Seek the right ‘geek’ - Not all geek can make money, but the right type of geek can be one of the most richest people on earth.
• Seek the right window of opportunity - Google was founded at the right time - the Internet is at its early stage of booming, and Google is right on it since day one.
• Seek the right funding - Google’s initial funding term is crucial in determining the early success. It’s not the amount of funding that counts - it’s how ownership is shared among shareholders and the terms underlying it that count.

Ivan WIdjaya
No matter how you hate it, Google rules :)

A classic question - Where to find killer business idea?

The answer is different from one person to another.

In my case, unless the eureka moment strikes me - that could be anywhere, I usually seek for inspiration and business ideas from the places where I often visits. That would includes:

1. The comfort of my home, browsing the Net.
   I usually look into:
   • TrendWatching.com and SpringWise.com to follow the current hip biz ideas.
   • Sitepoint.com Marketplace to see what trend of sites that attract most people to bid and buy, and at what price tag.
   • Forums to learn what people is talking about lately.
2. At coffee shops.
   Watching people come and go, looking at people having conversations, and seeing the barristas work often inspire me of something smart :)
3. Attending trade shows.
   Sounds classic, but we can learn a lot from other businesses. Moreover, we can think of ways that can better a business, thus giving us an idea or two about how to build a better business.
4. Looking at children play.
   Again, sounds classic. But I can’t explain why looking at children playing their games sparks creativity and light bulbs in my head.

Sometimes killer business idea doesn’t mean it has to be ‘killer’ or cutting edge. It could means doing something common slightlybetter.

How ’bout you - where do you find your ‘killer’ business idea?

Ivan Widjaya
Killer business idea

Franchising is about getting the right business at the right location, right?

Wrong! It’s about the franchisee agreement and the ability to stick to it. Therefore, franchising is not for everybody.

Franchising is for those who can follow set rules and comply to what outlined in the franchise agreement. If you can live with it, you can succeed. If not, you’d better be opening your own business.

Franchising involves two totally different entities united in a common ground called franchise agreement

It would be unfair and bias to talk about franchising from one side only, whereas there are actually two sides involve in it - the Franchisor (the brand owner) and the Franchisee (the brand licensee).

They are united by a franchise agreement. I’m not going to talk deep into franchise agreement, yet (maybe in my future posts?)

What I am going to talk about is that the agreement filled and ’spiced’ with the rights and responsibilities of franchisor AND franchisee - therefore, it’s uber important.

When an agreement is done between two entities, that’s usually needed due to the ‘contradictive’ nature of the two entities.

An agreement is sealed to unite the differences.

Franchise agreement is NOT partnership agreement.

Alas, many people mistakenly believe that franchise agreement is partnership agreement.

This misconception causes wrong expectations of the franchisees - they expect the franchisor to be equal partner with shared responsibility. Well, it’s totally wrong!

There are several basic differences between a franchise and a partnership:

• A franchise doesn’t share profit - it charge a form of royalty and marketing fee in return for support and branding.
  A partnership (licensing, business opportunities, multi level marketings, etc) - either equal or not - share profit.
• A franchise doesn’t share risk - franchisee holds the whole responsibility of the success of its unit, whereas the franchisor guarantee that the support and brand image are well taken care off.
  A partnership shares risk among partnership members.
• A franchise implements top-down approach - franchisees must comply and follow the franchisor’s guidelines.
  A partnership, as you might guess, determines who’s in charge by the amount of share owned in the partnership.
• In a franchise, relationship are enacted on set rules - again, in my noobpreneur term, generic relationship.
  In a partnership, relationship are negotiated - in my noobpreneur term, organic relationship.

Why franchisee agreement is very important

Just like any other agreements, franchisee agreement is purposed to lay all rights and responsibilities on the table - to see whether they are the best fit for the franchisee and the franchisor. If you liked it, carry on. If you didn’t, bail out.

This is important, because the latter disputes in franchising are mostly caused by the misinterpretation of franchise agreement by the FRANCHISEE - not the franchisor.

In many publications, franchisors are often blamed for the franchisees’ failure. Believe me, more often than not, it’s the franchisee who s–ks, not the franchisor. I’m a franchisee, I know what I’m talking about :)

Yes - franchisors have their own bad, but the call to agreeing or not-agreeing on the agreement is on the franchisees. You sign it, meaning you understand it. Period.

Last words

Franchise agreement is not easy to understand - it’s often lengthy and boring :)

However lengthy and boring it is - the franchise agreement is crucial.

About the length and complexity, the franchise agreements are set to regulate every single detail - to let potential franchisee fully understand what it takes to run the franchise unit.

If the agreement was too simple, potential franchisees might see the franchisor is not serious enough to tackle potential problems.

One word of advice - if you were not a good agreement reader, consider hiring a lawyer to translate the agreement into more casual language and warn you if potential problems presented.

Ivan Widjaya
Franchise agreement reader