Entrepreneur Geek

If you are coming here after my talk at Prerna – Entrepreneurship Seminar at SFIMAR today, welcome to a budding entrepreneur! What follows is a collection of my best articles on entrepreneurship from last 4 years.

My Best Blogs Posts for Entrepreneurs and Startups

• How to pick a co-founder?
• Are you a ‘scale-first’ or ‘money-first’ entrepreneur?
• Entrepreneur’s Lesson: Be Frugal, Avoid Temptations
• 5 Things That Changed My Life, and Could Change Yours
• Avoid these customers – five warning signs to say no to customers, plus three signs to die for
• 8 Traits To Be Great
• What’s the formula for Genius?
• Apple’s Marketing Secrets
• Life is about personal leadership
• Startup School 2008: Key Takeaways, from OnStartups
• The Art of Speed
• 10 Resolutions to boost your business
• Seven ways to avoid the growth traps
• Personal Brand – steps in creating a powerful personal brand
• Deliver Authentic Leadership – Robin Sharma
• HP’s Rules of Garage

Remember, there is equal risk in jobs and business

You will be concerned about four things when you consider starting on your own:

• Entrepreneurship is too risky
• It takes too much time
• Business requires significant skills and confidence
• (and best of all) Starting your own business needs lot of money

Consider that first three concerns apply to doing a job as well. As for money, it’s really about cashflows – both for individuals and businesses. If you have an urge, don’t wait, start something of your own. You can do it over weekends, you can do it on a small scale, but just do it!

And yes, you don’t need to be the poster boy of entrepreneurs, you don’t need huge successes

Most people talk about dreaming big and huge successes and the glamor around entrepreneurship. The truth is, you don’t need to be hugely successful. What matters is whether you are happier being on your own and making more than what you would have made in a job. You don’t need to grow to be the biggest company. You just need to follow your passion.

Go out, start something!

If you are the guy who uses<div> tag for everything, this post is for you. It focuses on how you can write clean HTML code by using semantic markups and minimize the use of <div> tag. Have you ever edited someone’s templates, don’t those messy tags drive you crazy? Not only writing clean templates can benefit yourself, but your team as well. It will save you time when you have to debug and edit (particularly the large projects).

This post is a collection of some simple yet effective techniques. Read all tips over on Web Designer Wall.

Zig Ziglar is best known for his sales training programs and books. But I am loving this podcast of Inspiring Words of Encouragement from Zig Ziglar (iTunes).

I have listened to only 3 episodes so far, but they are full of practical wisdom and ideas you can implement right away. If you have read self-help books and heard other leaders, you will realize that not everything is new. Truth is that nobody can come up with something completely new on self-help anyway.

Here are some points that touched me.

• On dining table, talk only positive things from the day with your family
• Take small incremental steps regularly
• You are always in control of your life, your attitudes and your moods
• Smile when you meet someone, they will smile in return

If you listen to this podcast everyday, I can bet your confidence, relationships and performance will jump.

Ravi Malagi sent this to me and I found it worth sharing.

Don Miguel Ruiz‘s Four Agreements – code for life and personal development

Agreement 1: Be impeccable with your word

Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Agreement 2: Don’t take anything personally

Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering

Agreement 3: Don’t make assumptions

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life

Agreement 4: Always do your best

Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

Mint.com did a visual survey of 80 occupations in the US. CEOs earn only 2.2 times that of Computer Programmers on an average. Here are the stats:

Earning Power of Computer Programmer

Three bars are locations. top bar: lowest paying, middle: average and bottom: best paying location. Orange bars indicate the gap in the middle 80% of remunerations. Wider the gap, better the growth potential in earnings.

Earning Power of CEOs

It’s better to be a Computer Programmer in a typical US city, than to be a CEO in Eastern Montana! It’s significantly better to be a CEO in New York than to be a programmer anywhere else!

On an average Computer Programmers earn $65,610 while CEOs rake up $145,000 annually. That’s 2.2 times. Of course, you can go up to $1 million as a CEO, but are limited around $110,000 as a programmer.

You can see visual survey with all other occupations here.

What insights do you get from this? Post a comment and let others know.