May 14th, 2008 Yashar
I got an email today from the Engineering Alumni Affair and they released Jim’s PowerPoint presentation on 10 Secrets of Success (click the link to download the file) that he used.
I’ve also written the points out for an easy read below:
- There is no order
- You need to do them all
- Different situations require a different skill
- Rule 1 - There isn’t any secret - it’s all the little things
- Rule 2 - Fail Often. Fail Fast. Fail Cheap.
- Rule 3 - Know Yourself. What is your Unique Strength. (He touched about this idea of “Unique Strength throughout answering the questions asked of him. He said find out what you’re good at and get someone else to do the other things. Obviously not for everything though.)
- Rule 4 - Manage Your Risk
- Inventory buy backs (He said when he started his computer distribution business he would buy from the manufacturer with the condition that he would be able to return the goods if not sold)
- Marketing $ (He said if you ever see a Synnex ad you’ll also so an “HP” or “Sony” logo below it which is because they are paying for advertisement)
- R & D
- Some deals I do not do
- Rule 5 - Set a pace you can maintain forever
- Business is a marathon
- Stephen Covey - sharpen the saw
- Rule 6 - Be Frugal
- Function vs. Show
- I spend my profit
- Throw pennies around like manhole covers
- Rule 7 - Be Growth Oriented
- Growth allows painless efficiency
- Growth motivates
- Rule 8 - Welcome and Embrace Change
- Change is opportunity
- Create change
- Rule 9 - Nurture a Network
- Give freely to people
- Keep in touch
- Organize it
- Be Deliberate
- Rule 10 - Be a Time Management Fanatic
- Use tricks
- Study it
- Time is your friend and enemy
- Speed/sense of urgency wins
- Slow and Steady Wins the Business Race
- My Mantr: “Sense of Urgency Wins”
And be sure to check out Jim Estill’s very one blog, which I very much enjoy reading at http://www.jimestill.com
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Posted in Entrepreneurship, Knowledge, Quotes, Uncategorized | No Comments »
May 13th, 2008 Yashar
I just came back from a presentation by Jim Estill the CEO of Synnex Canada. He was a graduate of the Systems Design Engineering program at Waterloo in 1980 and became the CEO of Synnex Canada managing $3 billion of annual sales after his computer distribution company was acquired by them.
What I liked most about Jim and his presentation was his causal and down to earth persona. He didn’t try to impress anybody on stage nor did he respond to questions asked by the audience in an arrogant manner.
He started his presentation with a very short PowerPoint presentation on the “10 Secrets of Success”. Being a strong advocate of time management and having created programs and literature on the subject you can tell he hadn’t bothered spending much time on his PowerPoint slides. He simply stated his 10 points on 10 slides (which did contain simple grammatical errors) and allowed the reminder of the time for us to ask questions.
He was moving too fast to write down the 10 points he mentioned but they were all trivial and intuitive. The two most important things from the presentation that I walked away with were:
- “Worst thing, first thing”. Meaning that by accomplishing what he least wanted to do during the day first thing in the morning he has tremendously increased his productivity and sense of accomplishment.
- Invest time in a speed reading program. He believes that taking a speed reading class has greatly increased his efficiency and productivity. This reminded me of the comment Bill Gates made when asked if he was a superhero which super power would he most want, to which he replied “the abililty to read faster”. Warren Buffet (who reads thousands of annual reports a year agreed with him)
P.S. For University of Waterloo students this event was actually pretty interesting and I encourage you to attend other ones. There was plenty of food, BEER, wine, soft drinks to go around. Plus my friend and many other won a book and some other things. This specific event was sponsored by the Laurel Centre (www.laurelcentre.ca) (Hmm… they use the American spelling of “center” but with a .ca domain :P)
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May 10th, 2008 Yashar
Finally I was able to enroll in some courses I have a profound interest in. The first of which is ECON 220 “Principles of Entrepreneurship“. Here are some interesting points from the lecturers first set of slides about reasons against having a business plan:
- Inc 500 founders surveyed
- 40% wrote a business plan
- Of these 40%, 65% significantly changed their original plan
- Thus, writing a plan can take alot of time and energy
- During this time the window of opportunity may close
- Businesses not seeking capital may not need to be committed to a plan, giving them more flexibility
But,
- Raising capital requires a plan
- Can be used as a selling document
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