I read a book some years back while in college. At the time I couldn’t understand why my professor ( Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer, Chemical Engineering) would ask us to read it and write a paper about it. It seemed very strange and unnecessary to say the least. Today, 3 years later, I am glad I read this brilliantly written book called “The World is Flat” by a certain Thomas Friedman. The book focuses on how the world’s work dynamic was changing and how companies were starting to seek/use the best talent from around the world rather than in their home state or country.

If you ever wondered why your HP customer service rep or Jet Blue customer rep (mistakenly) says “hello good morning” when it’s still 7p.m. your time and seems to have a rather exotic accent, it’s because the World is flat! Companies are starting to seek out people who are just as competent, if not more competent, to do the same task at a much cheaper rate. I mean come on, some guy says he’ll charge you $15/hour to be your assistant, while another steps up to the plate and offers to carry out the same services for $7/hour and do it just as well, won’t you be fascinated? even if you will probably never see this person? even if the only way you’ll send out tasks and receive answers is via email or skype?

I remember when I was looking to build a social networking site for my fellow chemical engineers around the country to keep in touch, I walked into a web services company office in Maryland where I was going to school at the time and pitched my idea. I am not a programmer, neither am I a designer who will deliver the results I was interested in. I am decent at best and that doesn’t cut it, so I needed someone else to do it for me. They told me it would cost $6,000. I thought they were taking the mickey out of me, but they weren’t pissing around. That’s how much they wanted. Then I checked out ODesk, having read about it on Techcrunch. To cut the long story short, I found a guy who did a good job for $1000. While the site did well, I had bigger dreams for it. I am working on making it more than just one major. I want a Biology major to sign on in UCLA and open his chat box on the site, find a fellow Biology major at the University of Maryland (who he has added, because they are the same major, or are in the same Sigma Alpha Lambda Frat) and ask him for help with a question he has about chromosomes. That’s what I want for the site. By the way, If you are interested in being a part of the (re)building process of this project, you are welcome to email me : tolu at genystartup dot com and we will see what we can do. Back to my story before I drifted, I basically saved $6k by outsourcing!

If you are a new Entrepreneur, you will have a hard time getting people to fund you, you will have a hard time convincing quality potential employees to come on board and make history with you, this is why you must outsource. I have a friend who owns his own small design company. He works out of his mom’s basement in Towson, MD. He makes about $9k every month and has two employees. He has never met any of them. Nirali is his personal asst./secretary/blogger/utility player, she’s based in Bangalore, India and according to him ” she kicks serious butt”. When he needs something done, he emails her the tasks, and when he’s up in the morning the completed tasks are waiting in his inbox…thanks to the big time difference between both countries. While he’s sleeping, it’s day time  for Nirali and she’s hard at work. How effective. His other employee, Jon, is a freelance web designer based in Shanghai, China. Whenever my mate has projects he can’t finish in the time allocated, he calls on Jon and together they complete the task. Both employees asked for $10/hour and do a great job. Sometimes I wonder that he’s taking advantage of them, but he mentioned how he never put a limit on their rate. He said he simply asked them what their rate was and they said $10/hour. The other good thing about outsourcing is you are not limiting your productivity or quality of results. You are not using the “best” talent in your home country of Australia (if you are Aussie) or England if that’s where you are from. You are looking for the best talent around the world and taking advantage of it. Crowdsourcing anyone?!

Starting out as an Entrepreneur could be rough, I experienced this first hand, you might have limited management experience, limited funds etc… Outsourcing is perhaps the way to go. It’s less expensive, less demanding and very productive if done right. Eventually as your company moves along and starts growing, you can start thinking of renting office space, hiring full time employees and expanding. But it’s a long hard journey before you get there, so in the meantime, Outsource!

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One of my favorite books of all time is 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen R. Convey. I read that book when I was 16 and ever since then I have tried to set some standards for myself to make me both effective and successful. At lunch yesterday I had just emailed Spencer Maughan back, the guy behind FightMalariaNow (which is a great cause by the way and I think everyone should give it some thought) when my mate asked me if I thought Spencer will be successful with this project. The truth is that many people have tried to come up with novel ways of helping people suffering from Malaria in Africa and other parts of the world, but yet there’s always still a ton of ground that could be covered. It got me thinking about success and entrepreneurs. Over the course of our meal, we went on and on about young entrepreneurs and what it takes to be successful in this day and age.

I have succeeded in a number of my projects and also failed on a couple, I think most young entrepreneurs will fall in this same category. The brightest business people will tell you that they encounter just as much heartache as they do success…why? because they take risks? because it’s the norm in this industry to encounter both failure and success? because even the brightest business people are not so bright afterall? Frankly, I doubt you can keep yourself from failing, or atleast experience set-backs (if like me, you do not like that word ‘failure’) if you are an entrepreneur. You just have to take it in your stride, deal with it and come back stronger. That’s what makes a successful entrepreneur. Here are some habits I have penciled down and tend to relate to successful gen y entrepreneurs.

1. They terribly dislike working hard, they prefer working smart. Even in the corporate workforce today, the gen y guys are the ones who frown at the idea of coming in earlier and staying behind later the most. This generation was never brought up to believe in rolling up their sleeves and breaking sweat for 10 straight hours in the name of work. They believe in doing things their way, out of the box, to make their money. Successful Gen Y entrepreneurs prefer to come up with software, smart-manpower that will do something easily in 2 hours and take the rest of the day off, than spend 8hrs in a shirt and tie because it’s the ‘working culture norm’. In summary, they come up with smarter ways to solve problems. I personally however still believe in the importance of strong work ethic. That you choose to work smarter is no reason to be lazy, it should only afford you the opportunity to achieve more than you would have normally in a period of time.
2. They love to connect! And they’ll rather do it socially than officially. The younger generation love social networks, they love it so much that they built several. From Facebook to Brazen Careerist, from twitter to myspace… all are concepts born from the quest to connect by the millennial generation. Successful Gen Y entrepreneurs are constantly all over the social networks and media, learning and getting help from each other, marketing their start-ups, meeting potential partners and investors e.t.c. The earlier you start taking advantage of social media, the better for you.
3. They won’t do ‘it’ just because ‘it’ is what everyone else is doing. This generation prefer to do things because it’s what they believe will work best for them and not because it’s what has been working well in the past. They like to understand what they are doing before they indulge. Successful young entrepreneurs always look to build their own channel to success, they constantly look to come up with novel ideas and novel ways of achieving success.
4. They are strongly motivated toward achievement. When I talk to young entrepreneurs today, the urge and desire to succeed is obvious right from when they open their mouth. They want to succeed and get rich before they are 30 so they can retire and live that dream life. Who can blame them? you turn your computer on and the first thing you see on your homepage is “Google acquires company X  by 23yr old for $100million…” Everyone wants to make it to that point and they see no reason why not. They are motivated and won’t stop till they get what they want. That’s what differentiates the successful ones from the others…not giving up, no matter how tough it gets.
5. They are money savvy. There are several books that are published these days advising people on what to invest in and so forth. I knew all about taxes, 401K and all that good stuff when I was very very young. When Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad came out, you know I, like several other teenagers were on that ‘work of art’. There are loads of resources these days teaching the younger generation about finance and money…hence making them more business, money savvy. This is never a bad thing, infact the smarter you are with money the more likely you are to succeed as an entrepreneur.
6. Courage is their middle name: Successful Gen Y entrepreneurs are not afraid to stand up to anyone or talk about anything. They take risks, calculated risks. If you know how to ask people for help, then you are on your way to being able to secure funds, if you know how to get people to buy your stuff…you are on your way to being a good marketer. Aren’t these what makes a good entrepreneur anyway?
7. They don’t know when enough is enough. Successful entrepreneurs never believe they have had enough success ever. That doesn’t even cross their minds. They keep going, building new ventures, doing new things to achieve more levels of glory. Richard Branson could have closed shop after the success of Virgin Records. But no, he started Virgin Atlantic and then a slew on other successful businesses. Richard might not be in this age range, but I just feel this number 7 in particular is typical of any successful entrepreneur in general.

Right, so i came up with this not so novice idea of starting a social network for gen y entrepreneurs. My idea for it is to bring every gen y with the entrepreneurship spirit together in one place, so we can all meet each other, learn from each other and recognize the success of people.

I know the name is quite parochial but oh well: Generation Y Rockstar

Everyone has read tales about how rich a lot of entrepreneurs are striking it these days so as you will expect many people are joining the bandwagon. Everyone wants to build a web 2.0 company or the next 1-800-flowers. I like your thirst and yearn for success and financial security, however not everyone is cut out for it. Not everyone is designed to be an entrepreneur because there are certain traits you must possess to succeed doing this. If you lack one or two of those, you might be wasting a lot of time and money.

Certain qualities will set you aside, so not to doubt anyone or put anyone off, you should ask yourself if these are qualities you believe you possess. They always come in handy.

An entrepreneur is a leader: Marc Andreessen of Netscape once pointed out that an entrepreneur is one who makes things happen. ” If you don’t assign people and tell them what to do, it won’t get done.” An entrepreneur must be one who can take charge and make decisions, if you lack these qualities then it is hard to see how you will succeed in this industry.

Are you a visionary? The most successful entrepreneurs and those that find the most luck with investors are those that see beyond others and know where “the ball will arrive at even before the pass is made, the destination of the game”. Popular investor Chris Sacca said in an interview that he was always looking to put money into ventures but he only wants ventures that are born out of vision, solving problems that affect millions on a daily basis that have yet to be pointed out. A true entrepreneur can see an opportunity and take it.

Are you a trooper or ‘give-upper’: It is in our nature as humans to get frustrated whenever things are not going our way so I am not going to sit here and say if you get frustrated then you will succeed or fail. I get frustrated a lot, but I keep going. If you are one to give up after a set back or two then you should start questioning your career path. As an entrepreneur you will receive a lot of NO! No from potential employees, no from investors, no from potential customers even before you get any yes. If in all of this you know how to tough it out and press on then thumbs up to you. Thomas Edison failed with the lightbulb 1,000 times and on the 1,001th try it lit up. When he was asked, he said he didn’t fail, he just discovered 1,000 times not to invent a light bulb. Always view your challenges in a similar light, don’t consider you setbacks as failures, instead look at them as lessons and please DO learn!

Really, are you lazy? No BS, are you? Ask yourself this question before you try to start anything. If you are lazy, you may need to change your habits and become more useful to yourself and hardworking too. I can tell you that I have had more all-nighters since being an entrepreneur than I did when I was in college. And trust me I did have a lot in school. I was a chemical engineering major, go figure. You must possess the zest and fight to want everything to work because the business is yours, if it fails you fail. Unlike in the corporate world where your coworker can pick up your slack and cover for you, it is not the case here…if you drop the ball, no one else can call the shots so your venture is shattered. If your goods need to ship by 7am and your team is not done packaging by 1am, you don’t leave until they are done. It is up to you to make what you want to make of your business.

Teach yourself some discipline mate: If you will rather go drinking/clubbing with your buddies on Thursday-college night or thirsty Tuesday while remixing your version of Asher Roth’s I love college than finish coding your iphone app, then discipline is top of your worries. I am not saying I don’t have a remix to that Asher Roth’s hit record, infact I have 3 but I write, record and sell them to myself in the shower or in the car. I have set priorities for myself and my business is first on that list. You must teach yourself to focus on the things that matter, if you want to be an entrepreneur then act like one. Prioritize and know when it’s time for work to take precedence.

Confidence: Confidence is key when building a startup. No investor will invest in you if you don’t seem confident in what you are offering. These investors have seen hundreds of people come in asking for money and they have learned to immediately tell those who are confident and those who aren’t. It’s just like a guy going up to an absolutely stunning lady and shivering in his spine at the sight of her utter beauty. When he starts to speak, a girl can tell if he’s confident or not, if he thinks he’s good enough or not and this is what typically triggers the first stage of attraction. It’s not any different with investors, believe in what you are selling then they can believe in you.

Set goals early on and fight to achieve them: If you are able to set goals and fight tooth and nail to bring your dreams to reality, this is what you are made for. Goals usually change a bit during the pursuit but ultimately your dreams are in the same path. If you are prepared to go all the way to succeed then you can beat your chest and be proud.

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