DO YOU NEED TO INNOVATE TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR?
There are different angles to this question, but you will be surprise how I do it…
The frustrations of living paycheck to paycheck took its toll on me. It was one night, as I was looking at my bank account,it was barren.
I checked what bills I haven’t paid yet. As I run some mental accounting of the money involved, I came to the realization that I can only pay half the balance in my credit card account.
It was like this for the past few years — $5 k balance, and I can pay $2 k. And I got tired of it.
My savings account was barren, and I came to the realization that my income wasn’t enough to live a better life.
For the past 2 years, I been scaling-up a business. This was my passive income, the side hustle. I’m not going to lie, I have a lot of failures along the way. I lost money in Amazon PL, maybe break even in stocks, but definitely lost money in options.
It hurts when money is lost. I always thought, the money could have been used for my wife or my son who is entering middle school.
In hindsight, I think of failures now as the guide post.
Today, I am working on selling information products. Since I am a chemist, I sell information products related to chemistry, science in general and math. I love teaching people the beauty of science. But I am not limited to selling information related to chemistry. I do have other businesses too.
Last week, I was talking to a guy in the laboratory where I worked. The guy’s name is “Grasshopper”. Let me start by how he got his name.
My friend’s name is not really “Grasshopper”, but he was baptized Grasshopper by his graduate school adviser. He told me that his first chemical synthesis or reaction didn’t work (he’s a chemist too like me), so his adviser nickname him Grasshopper, from the old TV series Kung Fu.
In the series, a young Shaolin Monk was trained by his master and the dialogue was this:
Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?
Young Caine: I hear the water, I hear the birds.
Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?
Caine: No.
Po: Do you hear the grasshopper which is at your feet?
Caine: Old man, how is it that you hear these things?
Po: Young man, how is it that you do not?
Anyway, Grasshopper was discussing his business to me. It’s an exotic idea, very futuristic.
As he explained it to me, he said he was a patent to make DNA (yap, DNA), as a storage device. So he is looking for venture capitalists to fund his business. He told me in passing that one application of the technology is in bit coin.
I am not against his way of doing business. He looks for funding from different places, like how Facebook or Google started. When Google started, the founders were given $100,000 for start-up. Then, the rest is history.
It was the same with Facebook.
The mass media put the a spotlight to businesses that started from 0 to million dollars (even billion) with an idea. I don’t blame them, a business from 0 to million dollars is sexy to the masses. As I was studying business in my spare time (I’m a chemist by profession), the theme in main stream media is that entrepreneurs risk it all and then survive to build an empire.
I can think of Nike, Facebook, twitter, etc.
The problem is that if we only know of what the main stream media is writing, we may never know the other types of businesses, businesses that don’t need the backing of venture capitalists.
Now for my friend Grasshopper, he hustles writing grants and doing some fundraising in the side to move his business ideas to fruition.
On the other hand, I was explaining to grasshopper what I was doing in my business. When I started, I didn’t approach a venture capitalist to fund my start-up. I am using my own money to test my ideas, around $10 per day in advertising to check the reaction of the market.
I told Grasshopper, I came from the direct response marketing bloodline. I measure the response of the market, if they buy, I’ll scale up my business. As the saying goes, “if you nail it, scale it.”
In the business model that I follow, I don’t innovate. There are multimillionaires who sold nutritional supplements as a marketer but not a nutritionist. In this kind of business, you don’t need to be a nutritionist to sell the best supplement.
The only goal of direct response internet marketer is to market. Only to market.
So here’s my point, you can start a business both ways. Innovators made this country great, but on the other hand, there are millionaires who got rich starting their own company selling what other people are selling. These could products could be supplements, investment products, diet plans and other things.
I embrace the direct marketing kind of starting a business, by starting small and slowly scaling it up.
