Business plans always burn in my mind. I don't know why or who I got this from. I have certainly never thought to be risk prone. If anything, most my investment decisions have been towards more secure credit products (except in todays' world maybe, where the question is perhaps how do i convert the cash into little gold bits and will gold really reach $2k). No credit products for me today, unless perhaps I am short. It is funny. It took some years for me to understand the concept of the word short (other than referring to a person's height) and today I am actually able to use it in some mumbling by my brain. But off course I can use the word but with pure straightforward products that have some underlying clear thing that I can see. So I would be short credit because I think credit is bound to get worse because of liquidity problems - most people have not accumulated cash, they have accumulated debt, and they must hit a new bottom before they surface again. But that would be off course if I was not risk averse. But I am - so i don't invest in either cash or equities. I did open a trading account last couple of weeks, hoping for the day that i will decide to put my first order and go loooong MS. Don't get me wrong, I do not have doubts about betting for MS, but there is always something something stopping me from pushing the button. I guess I am risk averse.
But then business plans about start-ups burn in my mind, despite the conscious that like 1 in 10'000 businesses launched are successful. What goes through my mind then? It can not be that I think I am better than anyone else and I won't fail, because that is not the case. In the end i like thinking, organizing, planning, executing and that is what you need when you start a new venture. And there I am, laying by the ocean, eyes closed and I can see it all. Once i was in Mozambique and in under an hour and no piece of paper I could visualize my own "volunturism" resort, by the beach, with high quality but modest accomodation, good food and a focus on short term volunteer opportunities. I had the design, the cook, the manager, the services offered, the decor, the sales model and a swot analysis. I even had how I would partner it and launch it. I like to think this idea is one of the key reasons I went to Harvard. At least I repeat it a lot. Even though these days I have no intention to go ahead with it (despite the fact that I still think it is a great business opportunity) I like to think that was part of the reason of going to business school - so I would have time to draft a proper business plan and so I would learn how to do one.
I had a bit of the second not that much of the first. Some businesses require you to launch it and execute it until it goes smoothly, more than others, and that was not going go happen from another continent. And personally it became evident I was not going to move there. But at least it gives me a rational reason to have chosen business school, as if I needed one some times. And in a way I did achieve it - I achieved the ability to see critical requirements for something to work and critical issues that one has to counteract to achieve success. And even if admittedly i may not be able to see all of them, truth is the issues I saw were enough to tell me that unless I was willing to live by the beach in Mozambique (not a bad thought) miles away from family and friends (quite a bad thought) then there was no point pursuing it. And it will always be my baby one, the first idea I pursued and put to bed. But then again others come and make its way because now I am meant to think like an entrepreneur.
I must say I was a bit schocked in my first entrepreneurship class. The professor started the class saying we were going to talk about people that had done it, and gave examples from the students in the class. I was one of the examples and my reaction was - Why? I think until that moment I had not realized that I was indeed an entrepreneur. I had not realized that Um Pequeno Gesto was indeed an enterprise. I did not see myself as willing to risk and use the resources available to get there. I may not have felt that for a long time. Today, as we struggle to get enough money to get us through the next 2 months, i see the risk that I took - I did not take personal financial risk, but I took on the psychological pressure of feeding 800 children this year without having all the money in my hand. Does that make me an entrepreneur?
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