The E-Entrepreneur

Have you ever felt a lack of satisfaction or a lack of accomplishment even after the completion of a big project/task? Often times, we are just so focused on getting the work done that we never really pause and ask ourselves why are we doing what we are doing?  Do those reasons align with your beliefs and values?  Because if they don’t, then you are going to have a hard time doing those tasks in the long term and you are better off spending your time on doing something else.

I was inspired by this great book recommended to me by @SThomps: “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek.  He emphasizes that we should always have a clear understanding of the purpose.  Here’s the author’s TED talk:

I look at marathon runners and Iron men/women.  Why do they keep running despite feeling pain, discomfort and exhaustion? Life is like running a marathon.  You could give up at the three-quarters mark or you could keep running.  Those who continue on are those who have not lost sight on the purpose of the race.

I decided to take a pause to reflect on what I am doing.  The life of an entrepreneur is not easy.  After a long day, I do ask myself why I’m putting up with this sh!t: getting hung up on the phone, being turned away from annoyed receptionists, living on paycheck to paycheck, working long hours, stressing out, losing out on time with friends and family.  But then I would remind myself of the underlying reasons for choosing this path.

Here are my reasons for becoming an entrepreneur and they keep my engine running in all conditions:

1. Not Gold Rich, but New Rich.  Many people have this misconception that entrepreneurs are going to be ultra-rich, well you might want to think about that again: 90% of new businesses are going to fail within the first 3 years.  If it’s not about money, then what is it? As Tim Ferriss would say, it’s all about the New Rich.  New Rich is the currency of time and mobility.  I cannot stand the 9 to 5, or the cubicle, or the rules, or the micromanagement that comes with any big corporation.

Freedom + Independence + Fun = Booyah!

2. Personal Development.  It’s a definite fact that I won’t grow anymore when it comes to height, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t grow personally.  I’m constantly learning, picking up new skills and challenging myself to explore the unknown territory.  Not only that, but I feel that I get to be myself and do things that truly reflects my character and personality.

3. Community.  I feel so privileged to be surrounded /+ to be meeting /+ to be working along with some of the most enthusiastic and intelligent individuals.   I’m always constantly learning from them and I enjoy being part of a community that shares and exchanges thoughts and knowledge.

4. Live a meaningful and fulfilling life.  At the end of my life, I want to be remembered as someone who has contributed to the community and has made a difference in people’s lives.  This may be through Clinicbook or through other means.  To me, being able to do that is what makes life meaningful and fulfilling.

this is an article that I wrote for the UBC nEUSpaper (Sept 7, 2010)

In the January 2010 edition of the nEUSpaper, I wrote an article titled “What Job?”, in which I talked about how students should stop whining about their boring co-op jobs and rather should go start something new and interesting. Since then, several things have happened to me:

1. I received the sheet of paper saying that I graduated from Eng Phys and unfortunately that also means I no longer have access to student perks
2. I officially started to work on my startup Clinicbook.ca full-time
3. I raised a round of seed investment from a group of angel investors
4. I hired a co-op student

This is only a small sample of my life as an entrepreneur. Needless to say, I am happy with my career decision and I feel satisfied to have created something out of nothing. It is even more rewarding to see that there are people using the something that I have created. I co-founded Clinicbook (www.clinicbook.ca), a health website that helps Canadians find local health care. We have over 55 000 unique visitors a month from across Canada and our site traffic is growing at a rate of 70%. Later in October, we will be launching a web application that allows people to book their dental appointments online, so stay tuned!

As an entrepreneur, I am always learning new things and developing different skills. In fact, I am a believer that learning is arguably the most important process in any activity and learning can happen outside the classroom as well. As a student, you should take advantage of every single opportunity and get involved with extra-curricular activities. I spent a couple of years running and managing the Vancouver Student Entrepreneurship Association (www.vsea.ca). I have to say I gained many valuable experience from running the club that I can now apply to my own startup:

1. Take the opportunity to build relationships and expand your network.
Trust me, it is a lot easier to do so while you’re a student. People generally tend to respond better to help requests from students than from people who are working. Building relationships takes time and the sooner you start, the better off you are. I met most of the Clinicbook advisors while I was still in school. And don’t be afraid to meet new people. You will find that there are many people out there who are willing to help and give advice.

2. Make the right hire and build a strong team culture
It only takes one individual to drag down the team’s atmosphere. As I learned from student organizations, it is crucial to bring on the right people onto the team. You want to find people who are doing this because they are passionate about it and share the same vision. With the right people and a strong culture, the team can overcome any challenge and adversity.

3. Focus and have clear objectives
It is tough to do well when you are going after multiple things. As I have learned from growing VSEA to a cross-faculty club, trying to “sell” to multiple groups becomes tougher because you need to cater the message to each group. Just because the market, or the target audience group, is larger it does not mean that it becomes easier to attract users. In fact it becomes very difficult to figure out exactly what to offer in order to satisfy everyone. By trying to address the needs of two different customers (despite the fact that there are some common needs), you end up compromising one or the other.

The experience that I acquired through managing a student organization can be applied not just to an entrepreneur, but to other professions as well and even life in general. I strongly encourage you to step out of your comfort zone and try something new and take advantage of every opportunity.

Like with most other companies that are starting out, our company revenue hasn’t reached the millions and the founders aren’t getting paid much. As a result, founders need to find a way to sustain themselves and often times it is through bootstrapping.

I am a horrible bad cook and for convenience, I eat out a lot. As you can imagine, for someone who eats 70% of her meals out, food is one of the biggest expenses. But it is also where costs could be reduced. I have never been a fan of the ‘extra’ junk that come into the mail, but recently I have learned to appreciate them. The coupons books for pizza , McDonald’s and from other fast-food chains now have found a way on my dining table than in the recycling bin. I have come to appreciate the $1.50 Mama burger (although I prefer the Teen Burger with some bacon, but I’m going to be accepting for now).

However, the most memorable meals so far have been at Bon’s, which is a restaurant 5-minute drive from our office.

Yup that’s right: $2.95 all-day breakfast and that’s including tax too! It comes with eggs, sausage / bacon, fried potato slices and toast. Bottom line: it is tasty, filling and cheap. Obviously at this price you can’t expect a nice view out the windows or world-class service. In fact the restaurant is somewhat sketchy, with writings all over the walls and seats that are ripped up. Want water? Gotta grab it yourself at the front. Nonetheless, we enjoy going there because that place has such an unique character and these $2.95 meals will be missed after the move to our new office location.

About two weeks ago, I had the pleasure to Skype-meet with a fellow entrepreneur from Toronto Spencer Thompson (www.sokanu.com). During our insightful conversation, Spencer recommended a few books. One of them was Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh.

I recently finished reading this book written by the CEO of Zappos – an online shoe company that was acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion dollars worth of stocks. In the book, Tony shares his life story from starting a button business during his childhood to founding and selling his first company LinkExchange to Microsoft for $245 million when he was only 24 years old!

If you are an entrepreneur, you’ll find that he’s someone who you can relate to and you’ll learn the importance of maintaining a strong company culture.

If you are not an entrepreneur, it doesn’t matter, you’ll still find his book insightful and inspirational.

During the early years of Zappos, the business was not profitable and it was struggling to raise money from investors despite Tony’s good relationships with venture capitalists from his first venture LinkExchange. On the verge of company bankruptcy, he put the money from the sale of his properties and investments into Zappos to keep the company afloat.

It is no doubt that many people did not understand why he did that. But to him, it didn’t matter what others thought because he believed in the business. Tony showed that as entrepreneur, you do what you do because you are passionate about what you are working on and you find it meaningful. Your company might not be profitable at the moment, but you continue to work hard on growing the company because you believe that your product would deliver a positive impact on people’s lives. Today, many companies focus on maximizing profitability and completely neglect on delivering value and purpose to its customers.

The same can be applied to individuals. Are you delivering what you really want to be delivering? For me, I want to deliver WOW’s in life — to people around me and to myself.

I highly recommend this book to everyone, whether you are a business-owner or not, you will take away something valuable from it.

I owe this post to my friend Kelvin.  I promised I would compile a list of sites to read about 3 weeks ago, so this is (somewhat) overdue.  If there are sites that you follow and aren’t on the list below, feel free to add them to the list by posting a comment.  Here is the list that I got:

It’s been about a month and a half since I finished school and became a full-time entrepreneur.  All I can say is that it’s been AWESOME.  This is who I am, who I want to be and what I want to do.  I love the concept of being able to work whenever and wherever, and most importantly: the freedom to wear whatever I feel like.  Put away those dress pants and shirts!  I can wear my t-shirts, jeans with holes and sneakers. These things are all PRICELESS to me.

I haven’t written much about what’s happened with my startup for a while now and I have several stories that I want to share with other entrepreneurs out there.  Let’s start with Story #1

Story #1:  How to Sneak into Conference for Free

There was a multi-day conference in Vancouver two weeks ago on eHealth (the use of technology in healthcare), which is topic very relevant to what we are doing and attending a conference like that would be beneficial to our startup.  However conference passes were several thousands of dollars => something that 99% of startups cannot afford.  But there are always ways around that

I have been working closely with IRAP, a government program that provides assistance to small & medium enterprises, and I know one guy from IRAP whose focus is on healthcare.  I decided to drop by his office a few days before the conference and I guessed he would be attending the conference, so I casually mentioned it.  He knew that I am a poor entrepreneur fresh out of school with no money and that there would be no way I could afford a conference pass.  As a conference pass holder, he kindly offered me his pass for Sunday.  Since Sunday was the first day of the conference, I had to check-in on his behalf.  Now….this is a man of Indian decent and I am an Asian girl => interesting eh?

This is how things played out on Sunday morning: I lined up at the registration desk and I noticed the people signing in ahead of me were showing their ID’s for confirmation.  I thought to myself: “Oh this is great, why did I wake up at 7:00am on a Sunday morning to get embarrassed in front of a crowd?!”  Soon, it was my turn and I went up to the registration desk with my straight face and I said:

“My last name is _____(an Indian last name)”

Lady looked at the computer screen and asked: “Are you with IRAP?”

“Yes”

“Here’s your pass, enjoy the conference”

“Thank you”

And BAM THAT WAS IT!!!! I WAS IN! No other questions asked whatsover.

Conference Day #2 was the tradeshow, and unfortunately I had to return the pass to the guy from IRAP so he could use it.  I knew there were several important people at the tradeshow who I needed to speak to for my startup, so I had to somehow get in for free.  I decided to go an hour before the tradeshow actually started, when people were setting up their booths. At that time, there was no one checking tickets at the door.  Once I was in, I just stuck around until the start of the tradeshow.  Whoop, and just like that I WAS IN AGAIN!

Yup, I got access to an expensive conference without having to pay a dime.  Yes I know it was not the most ethical thing to do, but hey when you are with a startup and are strapped for cash, you have to try to get as many freebies as possible!