3. Do You Have Strong Opinions?
For most entrepreneurial ventures, there has never been a structure. Lot of decisions has to be made on a fly with no playbook and any sort of guidance. No management books yet can so specifically mention the step to make a business successful and therefore, in a situation as this, an entrepreneur needs to have his own strong opinion over things to make the best suited decision. Over and above, it is thereby wise to find a business in an industry where one is very familiar with or else it will be a tough task to survive the competition with the little knowledge about the field. He/ she should always strive to observe more about the prevailing behavior of the industry they are dealing in.

Instead of being the owner of your business, you continuously receive advice and inputs from others. While some of this advice will be valuable, others may contradict your idea. So, it is very necessary that before you get into any venture you have all the possible knowledge about the subject and developed a strong opinion helping you to confidently state your feelings on the matter.

4. Do you like all aspect of business and ready to take a financial risk?
A startup business owner is entirely responsible for keeping everything organized and running. Though the owner may wish to exploit the services of the professional for different departmental jobs, he/ she has to himself/ herself perform all the different roles (from an accountant to salesperson to book-keeper and etc) at the initial stage due to limited financial resource. It becomes very important that the founder of the business is equally proficient in all the aspects and loves to do them as well. He is often expected to handle everything from hiring employees to building products to writing marketing materials to billing customers. Some new entrepreneurs become annoyed at the fact that they are spending maximum of their time on administration when they had rather be focused on the part of the job he/ she enjoy. Moreover, it is essential that he/ she is ready to take financial risk – he should be prepared to accept the concept of bankruptcy is case of lose of his capital. An idol entrepreneur is known for being a kind of risk-blind because he/ she doesn’t think he could ever fail. Risk factor is a part and parcel of the business process. The relationship between the risk and profit is directly proportional; hence owner of business should be ready to accept coming challenges and financial risk.

Although being self employed and owning a business provides one with several financial and personal freedom, but these paybacks only kick in when the business you are running gets conventional and established. Starting your own business requires lot more than what one has always thought or heard of — to just get your business off the ground, you will find yourself probably spending more time than you had ever imagined or spent on anything else. This phase of the start-up business is very critical for it takes an entrepreneur through an assessment of his acumen and well positioned endurance. As we think that quitting a 9-5 life and starting own business is a relaxation, let me bring to the knowledge of all that it’s not uncommon for the new business owners to undergo compounded hardships while working to build a successful business.

Before you run out and decide to be your own boss, there are 5 questions to be answered for yourself. Although it would be tempting for one to lie to all these question, but it’s essential that you be brutally honest with yourself.

1.  Are You Self Motivated?
Starting your business means you act as your own boss and there is no one above you getting the things done on the right time. In such a case to do well as a small business owner it is necessary to be self driven to succeed. When so many people wish not to have a boss, there is a reason that most people do have one – it is just because they need someone in order to get work done. You may have a wonderful business concept, but that doesn’t ensure you of possessing the special mix of leadership, drive, persuasiveness and keen intuition needed to turn an idea to a lucrative business.

In order to be an entrepreneur of a successful business it takes years filled with setbacks, hardship and little reward. A startup has to face a lot of discouragements from repeated rejections from clients to potential customers not returning calls and obviously various business sours. There’s no other way striving over these problems until you become your own inspiration or a self motivated personality.

2.  Are you backed with strong communication skills and can get along with people well?

In most of the job, an employee has only to interact with a group of people. Hence it makes easy to work as one may adapt himself, over a period of time, to the specific personality. Conversely, an entrepreneur, who is a link between all the functions of a business, has to constantly work with groups of people that may see things differently than him/ her. From the company point of view the owner got to have a personality that facilitates him to get along with his co-workers well.

Having a view of a structural business from the perspective of its goal (i.e., revenue earning), nearly everything relies on selling capability of the entrepreneur.  It requires strong interpersonal skill to make people feel as strongly as you do towards your vision. When it comes to sell your idea to the investors, sell your mission and vision to your team members and ultimately selling your product/ service to the consumers; proper communicating tools play a deciding role. Therefore, it is necessary that you get along people easily to embrace infinite business prosperity.

There are 3 more questions yet to come, until then wait for my next post soon

Various stimulants and their impact on our health.

Coffee: Effect of caffeine in body will be as harmful as any drug in the long run. It’s an stimulant to the human brain and nervous system and stimulates the flow of gastric juices which weakens the ability of the system to secrete digestive juices. Tea: It contains tannic acid which is used in tanning of leather. This will tan the digestive tract and impair the normal secretion of digestive juices and their reaction on food leading to indigestion.

Cocoa: It contains theobromine which has been found to cause cardiac ailments, nervous disorders, chronic headache. Soft drinks: Aerated drinks should not be taken in excess as it creates acidity. These drinks are habitforming and can become an addiction if taken regularly causing much damage to our system in the long run. If they stop taking their daily dose, they tend to experience withdrawal symptoms like severe headache.

Effects

Ulcer and gastric problems. Irregular heart beat leading to risk of heart disease. Raises the blood pressure. Creates hyper acidity. High blood sugar. Risk of cancer. May increase reproductive loss if taken in high levels by women. Rich and creamy coffee contains hydrogenated coconut oil which is bad for health. Kills appetite. Restlessness, nervousness, irritability and sleeplessness.

Substitute

The best stimulant for a sagging spirit is sufficient rest, proper mental make up and determination. A plain cup of cold water and a cold wash all over or at least the face and the head may give you the needed freshening up.

Yesterday evening we were obliged to attend the Startup Saturday- an event for entrepreneurs to discuss, present, network and learn from prospective customers, adopters, peers, partners and investors, organized by the Headstart Networks at Globsyn Business School, Salt Lake. For the reason that we departed little earlier than the event winded up, we missed the Startcamp Pitch but were lucky enough to witness the session by Dr. G. D. Gautama (Principal Secretary at Department of Power & Non-conventional Energy Sources, Govt. of West Bengal), a questionnaire round on IT Industry and a talk by Abhishek Rungta (CEO at Indus Net Acedemy) about his journey while his company expanded from Kolkata to Chennai to London. It was an enriching event not only for the startup businesses but also for the aspiring entrepreneurs in any industry.

Now what I’ll mention would definitely make you laugh because the happening has got so frequent with us that we always need to mention it for apologies? After moving from the Globsyn Business School, we found one of the tyres of our car was punctured and we unfortunately didn’t have the Stephaney (an extra tyre) again. This time neither Justdial nor Arihant Enterprise played a role in being a god-sent, but instead we have tons of gratitude to express to Shikha’s Uncle who got us an extra tyre at the spot. After this we moved out for a sumptuous dinner at Barbeque, Park Street and returned back home late at 12o’clock tasting the different flavors of ice-cream at Mammia Gelanto. It was a wonderful weekend that went so marvelously without much effort on planning. While we were returning, I became happy on a thought that the week hasn’t ended and actually Sunday is left! Thinking that I’ve got enough time and less work to do, I messaged my friends for a Lunch just to catch up with them after a long time. And Sunday has come finally. It’s just morning and I will have throughout the day.

Huh, between all this I forgot to mention one of my life’s most adventurous happening that occurred yesterday (I was praying god to give me another opportunity to travel after this one). While going to office I almost clanged outside the bus for half of the journey until I really got space to push myself inside the bus. I hung outside the bus with only one hand and a leg inside the bus. It was thrilling and scary at the same time. Well, as a fact, I’m unhappy with the current public transport systems at Kolkata- autos are not running for the short distances and the old buses have been removed. People have to wait for hours to get a bus which indeed takes you on a ‘lifetime rides’. It’s not far that we will find passengers climbing on the roof of the bus and hanging on the window’s until they reach their destination. Please Govt. of Bengal, from anywhere read the blog and listens to our request of good transportation facility!

As I am coming towards the end of what I am writing, there is a good news. While I was sad that WE are not meeting up this sunday and started expressing through my post, I learnt that we are meeting at 5o’clock in the evening at FOURDY SOLUTIONS to discuss further on our upcoming online photography contest- ADP (Amar Durga Puja) this Durga puja. Yupiiee, I am happy and glad to meet them all together :)

Follow our group- FOURDY and ADP updates page at Facebook and we will keep you informed about the minutest of the  detail.

What is ADP – Amar Durga Puja?

As we all know that Durga Puja is one of the most awaited festival in West Bengal but because of it’s geographical restriction people in the other part of the world can only read about it or view photos only once the event is over – it’s like watching the highlights of the World Cup Finals. We, at FOURDY WLOG, decided to take Durga Puja to the whole world. After a lot of thinking the only way we could do it was through the most powerful medium of today, the internet. This is when we decided to create ADP – www.amardurgapuja.com. ADP would be like a platform for the users to share their thoughts, videos, photo and more about Durga Puja.

The bigger plan was to create a live online streaming video for EACH location in Kolkata. The user who comes to the website would be able to choose the location for which he wants to view the video for and the live video plays. Many may ask: Almost all media channels and radio stations cover the event, how are they different? Well, the primary difference would be that the user gets to choose the location himself and can view each moment of any location rather than watching the puja for only the location where the media is present at that point of time.

Is it happening for Durga Puja 2009?

Unfortunately, No, we will not be rolling out this year due to the lack of sponsors and lack of time.

Then, why are we talking?

Well, because we are ready to make the first move this year. First Move: We will be organizing a photo submission competition this year.

I am excited, tell me more!

What we plan to do is create a website which would be available for the public at www.amardurgapuja.com. On the website, each user can upload photos of puja happening at various places in Kolkata. All the uploaded photos can be view by the general users visitng the website and will have following features:

• Comment on the photo
• Rate the photo
• Search photos (by location)

What happens next?

Next, we plan to give away prizes to:

• Best Rated Photo
• Most Visited Photo

What about publicizing the website, is it too late to start?

No, we believe it’s the best time to start. We would be using 1 Radio Partner, 1 TV Partner, weblink exchanges and Social Network to promote the event.

Are you interested in contributing?

If yes, please feel free to contact us at http://web.thefourdy.com/contact/

With this though, I (as a web designer,) decided to optimize the size of all graphics that I use to build my webpages. For doing so, I came across many ways to do it and many tools which help you do it. I am listing the 6 excellent tools to do so.

Non-techie people can also use it while mailing/uploading photos taken from Digital Camera – which are generally huge in size!

Yahoo Smush.it

Smush.it uses optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files.

http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/smushit/

Radical Image Optimization Tool

RIOT is free program designed to efficiently optimize images for the Web

http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/

PNGOUT

PNGOUT is a tool which can optimize PNG files created by other programs.

http://www.advsys.net/ken/util/pngout.htm

Online Image Optimizer- GIF, JPG, and PNG

Image Optimizer lets you easily optimize your gifs, animated gifs, jpgs, and pngs, so they load as fast as possible on your site.

http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/

PNGGauntlet

PNGGauntlet is a .NET program that uses Ken Silverman’s PNGOUT to optimize PNG files.
http://brh.numbera.com/software/pnggauntlet/

SuperPNG

SuperPNG is a free Adobe Photoshop plug-in for using PNG (“ping”) files.

http://www.fnordware.com/superpng/

I hope that you find the above tools useful. Even if you don’t, Adobe Photoshop has “Save for Web” for you – stay with it!

Fundamentally, both of these formats compress an image to make it web worthy. Any file with a .jpeg or.gif extension is recognized as an image file by a browser. Only when a site loads quickly into a browser we tend to declare it good in spite of the best functionalities operating otherwise. Agreed? Therefore, it is necessary that the file size of the web page remains small.

Here are stated few points that one needs to know about JPEG & GIF: (a subtle reminder for those tech people who know it )

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)

• JPEG uses a glossy compression scheme. This signifies that some data will be lost during the process of compression. The quality is inversely affected as more and more compression is done.
• When compared to GIF; browser takes a longer time to display JPEG file.

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)

• Image is compressed using LZW compression scheme through GIF. Confused? Even I was when I first came across it. It means that the quality of the image does not degrade when it is compressed.
• GIF89a format incorporates transparency. Isn’t it great? Especially when graphic has to be blended in with the background.
• GIF allows simple animation except the more advanced Flash movies.

When to use what:

One of the worst mistakes that anyone can make is to choose the wrong format for a particular type of image since each of the formats (viz., JPEG & GIF) has its own particular advantage over the other.

GIF files support a maximum of 256 colors. This makes it practical for almost all graphics except photographic images. The GIF format is excellent at compressing images with no gradations and relatively lesser colors in it. While GIF’s may win out with the non-dithering and fewer color images, JPEG with its support for 16.7 million colors is king for dithered continuous tone images (Example:  Photographs). Hopefully, by now you must have determined the difference between JPEG and GIF usage.

NOTE: While using JPEG format, be sure to save the original file because once you lower the quality of an image and save it, the extra data cannot be regained.

Technology is at our disposal and the smartest web graphics can be obtained by complete knowledge and selective usage of the prior. So get going to harness tech understanding for spectacular results

From where did the term “FOURDY” evolved from?

FOURDY, as most of you might know, is not a dictionary term. So when and from where and did it come?

The word was drafted by me in 2005 inspired from the term “4th Dimension”. We all are aware of the 3 dimensions (represented by x,y and z axis) but there is also a concept of the 4th dimension – which is representation of the 3 dimensions at a different point of time. For example, if there is a cube we could all define it’s position in terms of x,y and z axis but with the concept of time, where would that cube be (may be a couple of seconds later?) How do you define that? Well, it’s the 4th Dimension.

Impressed by the word 4th Dimension, I decided that I would name my firm as 4D (abbreviation for 4th Dimension.) Not too late, I realized that the term and the concept was too common. But, until then, I had fallen in love with the expression, 4D and this is when the term FOURDY was coined because when you pronounce 4D; it would be spelled as FOURDY

And what’s with “WLOG”?

Some of you have also asked me why is it Wlog and not Blog, did I mis-spelled it? No, I didn’t. For understanding the concept of Wlog you would have to go back to the time when the word Blog was first used. Blog has been derived from 2 prime words “Web Log.” Hence, the actual word is “B log,” where the “B” has been borrowed from the word “web.”

When I came up with the idea of having a common blog, I didn’t had any specific topic in mind to blog on and treated it as a genrenal (or without specific) blog. And this is when I decided that I would name it Wlog (actually, abbreviation of Web log) as it would also support my idea of being general as WLOG also stands for “Without loss of Generality”

So now you know where “FOURDY” and “WLOG” comes from, please do not ask me again

How to get the most out of your time?
From my last month’s experience I will recommend you to leverage and audit your time. NO, it definitely doesn’t mean spending more time to manage time!

The first step in doing so is to keep a log of duration spent on performing various activities in a day. This one-week ‘Time Management Assessment’ will give you a snapshot of how you have been actually spending your time. Keeping track of your hours for a week is not difficult I guess (it is only when a systematic method of doing it is not followed). After a week time I promise results will be surprising.

I will lead you into a systematic way to feed your time record for next 7 days. Rather than covering all your activities, you could conduct an audit of the tasks that are most important for you. To record time spent at work, make a chart — list the days of the week down the rows and across the top column pen down the major categories that you spend time on. You can also review your personal time as well to get the complete picture. At the end of the day and at the end of the week, add the total hour spent on each category. After a week of such practice, ask yourself — Is this how you want to spend your time? Are you apparently busy? Or, do you have no time to complete your unfinished work?

Keeping a time log does nothing other than helping you figure out how you have been ‘using or wasting’ your time. Even though till now you must have been complaining every alternative person in your life about shortage of time and pending works, but after such an assessment I assure you had known the solutions them.

Time Management is very important and it makes every moment of your life count! Are you still not managing your precious time?

Lord Ganesha

Ganesh Chaturti (or Ganapati), is celebrated as the birthday of Lord Ganesha who is popularly known for his wisdom, power and auspiciousness in Hinduism.  On such an occasion, big idols of the elephant-faced Hindu God is decorated and worshiped. The festival is celebrated all over the country, but more enthusiastically amongst the Marathi Indians. They celebrate the festival continuously for 10 days making it the biggest, most opulent & a highly popular festival of the state Maharashtra. The festival ends on Ananta Chaturdasi Day (this year suppose to be September 2, 2009) when people in a huge procession carry the idols of Lord Ganesha and immerse it into the nearest water source invoking for his blessings.

This year’s Ganesh Chaturti date is August 23, 2009 (Yes, the Ganeshotsav celebration has already commenced and people are out of their home since early morning to pick up Ganapati idols ). And as you would join in the celebration, you will observe 2 major themes depicted through paintings, decorations, mannequins and tableaux across the pandals – 26/11 terrorist attack and swine flu.

This Ganeshotsav, the puja pandals in the city (here I’m basically talking about Mumbai) are all set to bring to the fore some of the recent occurrence that has left an indelible mark on the mind of the masses. Lately Pune has been reeling under the grip of swine flu cases and about a year back Mumbai city was scarred by the 26/11 terror attacks when all over the world people were facing difficult times in business due to the economic downturn. Apart from such highly hyped topics; the insufficient rain and the situation arising out of it have also managed to find a place amongst numbers of theme registered for this year’s celebrations.

Having discussed so much about Ganesh Chaturti and the celebration that accompanies the festival,  I had wish to draw your attention to a fact that a large section of the society is unaware or conveniently forget to think about — the pollution and environmental damage that plaster of paris idols and chemical paints cause due to immersing of the same into the water body. Before anyone opposes me on this idea, I had another mention to make. Widespread campaigns for eco-friendly Ganeshotsav is already on and some large Ganesha Pandal Committees have gone an extra mile (besides just pondering on the themes) to make this year’s celebration a memorable one with a demand of more Eco-friendly idols and statues. WE appreciate the organizers of the Ganesh Chaturti 2009. Great effort and appreciated by all humans throughout for giving a special thought for ‘OUR Environment’ which is another issue of concern for the coming generation (will be discussing about it in details in the coming posts ).

Is swine flu panic marring Ganapati celebrations?

Although government is taking stringent measures to contain the swine flu and the health authorities are optimistic about the happenings, still swine flu is successful to an extent in dampening the spirit of the festival. By the end of the last week, on Saturday, the toll number from swine flu climbed to 34 from the state Maharashtra alone (including the toll amount to 20 from Pune itself). Even when people are excited about the celebrations in this festive mood, they are apprehensive to participate in it as enthusiastically as they ever do. Somewhere down the line panic has become the story of the day yet there are few people who are optimistic and brave enough to celebrate the festival.

Considering Ganeshotsav as a youth festival, are youngsters planning to stay back home on this splendid festival? Or will they be brave enough to rejoice it flamboyantly? What’s your say?