I am following this year's GES
with a keen eye and interest. I was in an Integrated ICT Business school AND currently
working on a start- up JoinTheDots
Stationers & Printers. Our primary focus is creating quality schools’
revision materials and text for Kenyan students.
We are the Publishers and printers of the
authoritative JoinTheDots Revision
series for Primary and Secondary students. We design and print
institutional calendars, certificates, posters, brochures, organizational
newsletters and invitational cards. We also do Branding of pens, T-shirts, note
books, personal and office computers, telephones and office rooms.
Having your own start up is a
lone journey. It is a great risk you’ve to take. You become a stranger among
your friends. But thank God am having people whom I can lean on. They provide
comfort when I need them most.
Far from the stories of the entrepreneurs
at the summit this is my own story. I want to draw at least three major lessons
I have learn t from my own journey and in my academic studies.
Join a network
You can’t do it all by yourself.
Join a network. By joining collaborative networks, you can get help.
Collaboration is co- creation. It requires giving up some control of assets so
that collaborators may remix, add to, and distribute content. For me as a
publisher and printer Entrepreneur, that may mean soliciting the public’s
assistance in finishing books. It may mean recruiting and mobilizing the public
to review and edit draft contents of books. It may mean setting them up in
business. It certainly means welcoming their contributions and corrections.
It’s in a network where someone will say something good about you online/offline because
of your product, service, reputation, honesty, openness, or helpfulness. This
should make you knock another hundred shilling off your advertising budget.
This will get to zero if you are lucky. In a network you will have people-
peers who you will work with, compete with or orbit around. They are your first
customers, mentors, and employees, source of funding, competitors or helpers on
your journey.
Be a platform
If you want to be successful in
business and life, be a platform. Let your business be a place to help others build value on their
own. Questions that I’ve had to ask myself are: How can I act as a platform?
What can others build on top of it? How can I add value? How little value can
I extract? How big can the network atop my platform grow? How can the platform
get better learning from users? How can I create open standards so even
competitors will use and contribute to the network and I get a share of their
value? The point in being an entrepreneur is creating wealth and money while
making a positive impact to societies’. Be a place where people can utilize
your model to come up with other awesome business ideas. Set the standards in
your field and help other people come up with ideas they can integrate to your
own idea. Do not think only on enriching yourself but also the welfare of
others. The value you can add to others.
Use
of the internet in Business
The internet and web applications
are changing how marketing or rather interacting with customers is done. Designers
put their ideas on the web. Customers then make suggestions and discuss them.
Designers take the best ideas and adapt them, giving credit where it is due. The
question is: Will you have to answers generated in the media space from
conversations that occur daily? That’s how you should think of your site for
your business: answers for every question you can imagine, each on a page that
is clearly and simply laid out so both Google and busy readers can find it and
figure it out in an instant. If you’re a manufacturer, customers should be able
to find product details and support in an instant. If you’re a politician,
voters want to know your stands and record. If you’re a food company, buyers
want nutritional information. If you’re a clothing company, shoppers want you
to give the information a good sales clerk would—does this run large? Where can
I buy your product? How do I contact you?
Those three may not be all that I
have learn t but that is the beginning. They are vital lessons in life as an entrepreneur.
Have a reflective life. Remember
to stay in touch with me at jeremiahwakamu@gmail.com or join this conversation on
Facebook Jeremiaho Wakamu
to keep it going. And again referrals though you social media
network/connection and word of mouth is the best you can do for this blog
