Corridor Conversations

I recently had the privilege to interview a young budding entrepreneur on behalf of City News, an exciting local news portal where I volunteer whenever I am given the opportunity to. The young entrepreneur was none other than Mr. Suhas Gopinath who has earned the unique distinction of being the world's youngest CEO; he started his software company at age 14 and has since then become one of the most remarkable success stories of teenage entrepreneurship. He was invited here to Singapore as a guest at the recently concluded ‘Global Social innovators Forum ’09’.

Suhas Gopinath is now 23 and runs a world-class business with over 600+ employees. His company Globals Inc had a modest beginning when he founded it from an Internet café in that he frequented in his neighborhood in the IT city of Bangalore, India. As Indian laws did not permit him to start a company, he was forced to register the company at San Jose, California in 2000. At age of 16 when most other teenagers are busy with things like studies, movies, music, friends and games, Suhas was already recognized as the world's youngest CEO by the world media including BBC, Washington Times and the Limca Book of Records. Today, Globals Inc operations are global with representation in at least 11 countries and offering services to more than 200 clients world-wide. With the average employee age being 25 years this young software company seems positioned to pull off the next big corporate success story.

You can read the interview on the City News portal here.

I was very keen to meet Suhas because it would a unique opportunity to understand the thought process of a young entrepreneur who has the potential to be the next Bill Gates. It was indeed an inspirational 30 minutes.

Below are some of the thoughts that I walked out of the interview with.

The DNA of a successful entrepreneur

They just Know: Most entrepreneurs deep within their being just know that they born to set up their own Business. It’s a calling that’s planted within and it’s just a matter of time and opportunity when they act on it. In Suhas’s case he acted on it at the age of 14 when we saw a huge business opportunity in the Internet in his frequent visits to the Internet Café.

They are convicted to get there: They have the single minded pursuit to achieve their goals. No matter how hard they need to work and or sacrifices they need to be make they know & they know that the fruits of their labor is worth it. When most teenagers at the age of 14 when most other teenagers are pre-occupied with things like movies, music, friends and games, Suhas was more interested in investing his time learning about setting up an enterprise for the future. His parents had concerns and put pressure on him to revisit his decision but he pursued and eventually they relented after seeing his initial commitment and success.

They see visions of the future: This is one gift that all entrepreneurs are bestowed with. They can visualize the future and think about businesses that are ahead of their time. Suhas knew that the Internet was his vehicle to launch his business and that most future organizations will have biz models that are based on technologies related to the Internet. From having nothing to dreaming up of a business that would one day employ many can only be possible if you can visualize and dream of it.

They stay grounded and humble: This where many falter and fall, so many times we hear of stories of success going to a persons head and sooner or later the plunge happens. Entrepreneur who are in it for the long haul know that being humble and grounded is a virtue to have. Interestingly even after Suhas’s company made its first US $500,000 he continued taking pocket money from his father. He didn’t make any significant changes in his lifestyle but stayed grounded in his vision to build a sustainable business.

They most certainly have role models: Having mentors and role models is the key to successful entrepreneurship. It keeps them focused and they are a constant source of inspiration to keep going. For Suhas it was the story of Bill Gates founding Microsoft that inspired him. Having met Bill Gates in Bangalore was definitely a great milestone for him and he was bowled over by Bill’s simplicity and approachable attitude.

They know how to monetize an idea: All of us once in awhile get business ideas but most of us fizzle out when it comes to translating that idea into an opportunity. Good entrepreneurs know how to take their ideas to the next logical stage that is making it into a viable business model. When i was talking to Suhas i was asking myself how many times have i shot down good ideas that have crossed my head. :(

Being socially aware is a plus: Many entrepreneurs are beginning to see the benefit to pursue businesses that not only have a profit motive but can also address some underlining social issue. For Suhas one of his other motivations to start was to create a platform for the young dropouts and unemployed youth to develop their talents and give them employment opportunities in the technology sector. For him there is nothing more satisfying than having the ability to provide employment opportunities to young deserving people.

To end I would like to pick a sentence from his concluding remarks – “Be adventurous in life and be willing to take risks, take every opportunity to meet new people and learn to operate in new circumstances by getting out of your comfort zone”.

Close your eyes and picture this - you on the beautiful island and you are living out your dream life. You live in a house by the beach and your daily routine involves getting massages, getting a nice tan, alcohol at lunch, afternoon siesta’s, expensive dinners and partying with friends. And all this is possible because you have an endless source of income that comes from having a fantastic blog with many readers and a couple of popular twitter & facebook fan page accounts. You content is hot with readers and gets distributed in all big forums. Your followers wait with bated breath for your every update, so that they can hit the tweet and re-tweet button on your posted links. Companies are chasing you to write reviews for their products and tweet their new viral campaigns for a fee. Advertisers on your blog are hitting their payout cap everyday with all the high CTR’s you are generating. The cash is reigning into your bank and you are a social media ‘Rock Star’. Ok now slap yourself a couple of times till you come back to reality.

I know that there are lots of social media and affiliate experts telling people that they have this magic formula to success via social media but most of them are missing a big chunk of the truth. There are no free lunches in life and there are no shortcuts to amassing fortune and fame. First of all any revenue making engine requires a robust business model and then loads of hard work, and achieving this with a personal blog is really tough if not impossible. Pretty pictures and juicy content will only propel you along for awhile but it can’t sustain you for a lifetime. So what’s realistic and what’s not and how much of a career you can make out of blogging and social media.

Let’s start by asking ourselves some basic fundamental questions.

What’s the objective of your blog and social media updates?

Your answer to this question and how you establish yourself in the objective category you fit in, will determine how and to what extent you should monetize your blog. Many people start blogging and engage in social media with the objective to make money; it’s like putting the carriage before the horse. You decide on a content objective, establish yourself there and then work on monetization. Also unless you are solely pursuing an e-commerce activity, relying on blogging as your primary source of income is foolish. It has to be a supplementary or secondary income to whatever profession you’re into. There are some star bloggers but they are more of the exceptions than the rule and how long can they sustain their popularity and income from the blog is questionable.

Why would people read my content and updates?

Obliviously you can only make income when you have people visiting your blog, to achieve that your content needs to be compelling and sticky enough to the reader.

Your ability to make frequent and consistent quality updates.

Your blog can be a one post wonder or it can be a blog that people consistently keep coming back to. Not only is frequency of content refresh important but also the quality of it as well. Your ability to churn out consistently good content will determine your chances of attracting organizations, advertisers and affiliates to invest in your blog. Good content is a factor of many things such as below.

Its simple as that, ‘content is king’.

Other aesthetic and miscellaneous considerations

In summary don’t get carried away but the million dollar claims of Blogs and Tweets. Be grounded and stick to the basics of quality, consistent and compelling content and connect it with a sound biz model and you will do well.

Over a period of time ‘Sponsored Content’ has been one of the tactics or shall I say an experiment that many marketers have indulged in within their overall Social Media strategy. With the growing maturity of social media marketing and with more marketers jumping onto the social media bandwagon, what has been the verdict on Sponsored content so far?

Well it seems like marketers are a bit divided on to this, with some having extreme points of view for and against. Some feel it’s just like any commercial opportunity for both content providers and marketers, but for some it crosses the boundaries of expected ethical standards within the social media world. From my perspective I believe that Sponsored content is like a delicate dance, if done well it captures the hearts and minds of the audience, if not then it has repercussions that can be damaging to your brand and after which making a comeback is steep climb.

But first of all let’s understand the difference between sponsored content and a regular PR exercise, as many people may confuse the two. In interest of making it simple any content that is written by a blogger for any brand/ person or organization in exchange of money or products is ‘Sponsored Content’. In other words online sponsored content is just like any advertorial that you may see in the print world. On the other hand a regular social media PR exercise is where you typically invite well established bloggers to a launch/ product event and provide them information and content kits from which they write their own independent stories on it. It’s very much like the regular press events where the journalist and members of the media are invited to get information via presentations and press kits.

Then one may ask what about people who get paid to distribute and post links on their social media profiles, is that sponsored? I tend to think not, as I believe they are getting paid for their follower database and not necessarily any content generation or endorsements. But exceptions can be there where celebrity accounts can be used for endorsements. They may also fall into the criteria of spamming if all the person does is spam people with affiliate links.

So now that we have got the difference out of the door let’s focus on Sponsored Content. I personally believe that there is a time and place for it and it can’t be overused or done inappropriately. So what are things that marketers should look at when considering sponsored content.

Next post I will talk about – Can bloggers make a career out of sponsored content and ad placements on their blogs?

Most large to mid size companies that market and sell their products through channel/ dealers would maintain a dealer/ channel meet calendar. It could vary in frequency depending on size of their business contribution and number of channel partners attending as well. Having channel events can have strategic objectives that impact business.

Some of the objectives could be as follows

- It helps the company to get to know their dealers more personally and foster closer relationships.

- It gives them a chance to pamper their partners and make them feel special.

- It’s a platform to give them strategic direction and vision for your business as well as their business.

- It’s a great opportunity to get feedback from key channel representatives on what’s working and what’s not from a product and marketing stand point of view.

- Last but not the least an opportunity to train them on your products or services that they intend to carry.

Though these objectives may seem pretty clear, if you have been long enough in channel sales or channel marketing then you will be aware that achieving a good balance of all these objectives at the channel event is sometimes difficult to pull off. The important question to ask is what proportion of it should be a fun & bonding exercise and how much of it should be preparing them to sell and strategize for the future collectively. The sales managers will always say that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy but the top management and finance department may think otherwise, either case there are no straight answers to this. Let’s see some of the variables that are important to look at while making that decision.

This is an important question as various industries have varying levels of complexity to their products and services. Needless to say the more technical and complicated the more focus on training sessions. Training sessions should be benefit based and not feature based and should have role play and interaction as well. Sometimes getting external trainers can help getting a more unbiased perspective and bring genuine learning to the partners. Training could also include business management topics like cash flow management, retaining talent, marketing innovation etc.

Channel meets can be a perfect time to introduce new products and rev up the partners behind a new initiative or strategic goal. It can be a great opportunity to get them ready with all the ammunition they need to go and ramp sales or reach new markets or make new customers.

Some multi-national companies may have financial regulations that prohibit more than a certain proportion of spends to be made on fun/ recreational activities within the event. The other considerations could also be that in an economically depressed environment, extravagance may be construed by customers and outsiders as being insensitive and making a bad use of money.

Another consideration point would be who from your dealer organization you are inviting for the event. Is it the business owner or top management or the managerial/ sales staff? If you are inviting business owners then having more strategic discussions and fun activities may make sense. You may have various categories of your partners as well that would determine what benefits they are entitled to at the event.

In Summary here are some quick indicators to look at for level of proportion of affinity and training.

More Proportion of Affinity: Biz owners/ senior management, products less complex/ technical, high contribution to biz, highest tier partners, better economic environment.

More Proportion of Training: Mid manager/ Sales, Products and service more complex, mid tier partners, larger number of attendees with more representation from one partner.

Everyone who is associated with Internet marketing probably is aware of the buzz created last year when Porn sites seemed to have lost it's # 1 status to Social networking sites on the Internet. A while back, Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, announced in his book, "Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters", that porn was no longer the #1 activity on the Internet.  According to Bill, porn has been replaced by social networking, but a year later, could the data read a bit different, because i am getting the feeling (i have no data to back it) that Porn is actually making a comeback ironically via Social Networking. And now it's back in an even more dangerous form where it can go undetected and barriers of entry for woman and men who are in economically desperate situations are even lower. If you spend a fair bit of time on the popular social networking sites you will see the mass proliferation of Porn profiles that probably never existed before. And what's even more concerning is that many of the profiles are not large scale aggregators but private individual profiles and sites which could be a one person operation. The last one year of economic meltdown has i think propelled many first timers to experiment with this form of income. For example Twitter, If anyone has an open networking policy on Twitter and use third party tools like auto follow will know that Porn profiles on Twitter seem to have benefited by this, where someone auto follows them without checking them out first. If an open networking strategy is right or wrong is a discussion for another post but it most definitely makes you aware that the Porn industry has learned to improvise their biz model and jump on the social media bandwagon. The Twitter example is just one of them and i am sure there are many more that needs further study and analysis. I believe with this new trend parents will have to be even more vigilant about their kids social networking profiles and check on the friends that their kids are following and interacting with. It would be interesting to see the statistics on how much of Porn related traffic is actually now coming from social media and what size of the social networking profiles are porn related. Any thoughts?

I happened to have the weekend all by myself so i decided to go over to the video store and get a movie that i could watch at home. I had heard from friends that the movie 'He is not that into you' was really good so i decided to buy it. For those who aren't familiar with the movie; this is a romantic comedy that follows the love lives of a dozen or so characters with its lead character, a young women who attempts to understand the mixed signals she gets from the men she's dating and she gets advice from a bar owner who prides himself on understanding the ins and outs of the dating scene.

So when i open the CD pack to watch the movie to my surprise i find the business card of this local Singapore based organisation called 'Lunch Actually' which is essentially in the business of setting up dates over lunch for its clients. And i think to myself what a brilliant way of reaching out to their target audience. The demographics of the kind of people that would find this movie interesting would be just the right fit for the services they offer. Great thinking at their end. 

It’s common knowledge and backed by research that people don’t leave organizations but people leave managers. Extensive research of exit interviews across organizations cite different reasons for a person leaving, but when you dig deeper, most often than not it has been related to a bad experience with a manager. Of course it would be completely wrong to put the blame on the plate of the managers, but it does help to take some pointers on what issues can potentially raise conflict with your staff. The list below is just some of my personal learning’s after talking to various people in the industry over the years on expectations from their boss. Most often than not most of the cribs I have heard from people center around the points below. 

An interesting article in the current print edition of ‘Marketing’ piqued my interest this evening. The article was covering a marketing round table discussion between ad agencies, clients and a media owner. The topic of discussion was ‘Are advertisers more inclined to establish direct working relationships with media owners and should media owners by pass agencies in the process? Controversial but interesting topic isn’t it? Of course one can immediately sense a slight conflict of interest in this way of working which in the recent past has gained momentum and with the onset of the online media growth, the partnership between the media owners and clients has even grown stronger. In my personal opinion having been there on the client side i understand why media owners would try and establish relationships with clients. Many media owners are afraid that agencies may not properly understand and represent their value proposition well to the clients. This occur due to various reasons and it could span from a genuine lack of knowledge of the media to special deals they may have with other rival media owners. So the media owners feel the need to properly represent themselves and their products to the client. But no one should have the illusion that media owners can take the place of agencies and completely bypass them. As long as the agency guarantees results for the campaign most of the clients will not question media choice beyond a certain point. Also another point to note is that most campaigns have multiple media vehicles and putting the media plan all together is best done by agencies especially when clients lacks those expertise. More dialogue and transparency between media owners and agencies will make things smoother, where in they both complement each other rather than competing with each other. A good practice would be if media owners could give an heads up to he agencies when they meeting and pitching to their clients that would go a long way in creating an atmosphere of trust and collaboration.        

If you have teenagers or young adults in your family or friend circle then it’s time you sat up and paid attention to their Internet surfing habits. Teenagers and young adults are considered as heavy users of the Internet who spend hours every week surfing the Internet, doing their home assignments, playing online games and socializing with their friends.