Snynet Solution Logo
MON - SUN: 10 AM - 6 PM
+60 11 5624 8319

Blog

How do you know when you're successful?

Image Description

If we knew what the world’s most successful people have in common, we’d bottle it and sell it. But we don’t. Instead, we write and read endless books and articles about them, desperately trying to get to the bottom of why on earth Jeff Bezos quit his whizzy New York hedge fund job to drive to Seattle and start a little company called Amazon. Or why Howard Schultz thought it would be a really good idea to rejoin a sinking Starbucks. 

World Changers: 25 Entrepreneurs Who Changed Business as We Knew It, by John Byrne, looks at the various things that unite the world’s business movers and shakers. He speaks to Herb Kelleher, co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines, who offers his dictum, “The business of business is people. In a lot of companies you have to surrender your personality when you show up for work. If you allow people to be themselves at work, they will enjoy what they are doing.” 

The inimitable Steve Jobs is also in there, of course: “Picasso had a saying: ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal.’ We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people who were working on it were musicians, poets, artists, historians, zoologists, who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.” 

So what does unite the entrepreneurs we revere? What do their personality traits say about how to make it big?

The checklist to measure success

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos on a black background

(Image credit: The Economic Times)

Be a perfectionist:
Steve Jobs is described as a lot of things but always revolutionary and always innovative. How did he do it? By being a perfectionist. The development of the Macintosh famously took more than three years because of his insistence and obsession over the smallest details. 

Apparently, in the 1980s, Jobs insisted that in adverts and on packages the Apple logo was printed in six colors, not four, which was considerably more expensive. He would also reportedly sit in a restaurant and send his food back three times, or arrive at hotel suites for interviews and then decide that the piano needed repositioning at the last minute.

Stay for the long haul:
Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors of the 20th century, is known for his ability to make very few investment decisions and stick with them until the bitter end. All his bets are for the long-term. In 1993 he said, “I believe every business school graduate should sign an unbreakable contract promising not to make more than 20 major decisions in a lifetime. In a 40-year career, you would make a decision every two years.”

Have courage:
It takes a lot of guts to turn your back on a degree from one of the world’s best universities in pursuit of a big dream. But the expensively educated Bill Gates abandoned his studies at Harvard in favor of setting up his own company, Microsoft. Which you might have heard, did pretty well. 

Similarly, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year to complete work on Facebook, rejecting offers from major corporations to buy his company for megabucks. In 1971, one year after enrolling, Steve Wozniak (Apple) withdrew from the University of California, Berkeley. He made the right decision.

Warren Buffet in a suit, against a blue backdrop

(Image credit: Inc. Magazine)

Make headlines:
Virgin boss Richard Branson never shies away from being at the forefront of his brand - hell, he is his brand. He’s a kitesurfing, kilt-lifting attention-lover who showed up nearly nude in Times Square to promote Virgin Mobile. He’s also posed as a Malay warrior, worn his own brand of cosmetics and ridden a camel to promote his flights to the Middle East. In short, Branson knows full well the power of personality as PR and uses every opportunity to exploit it fully.

Do the right thing:
Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page found themselves under immense pressure when they initially abided by Chinese requests to censor search results. But in 2010 they decided to end dealings with China. They did the right thing, and demonstrated to their already loyal following that they really were a brand fighting for the greater good.

See also Google’s attempts to eradicate global poverty and save the environment. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest transparently operated private foundation in the world, with an endowment of more than $36bn. The $800m that the foundation gives every year for global health is almost as much as the annual budget of the United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO).

Image of Steve Jobs holding the first iPhone

(Image credit: Apple)

“We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people who were working on it were musicians, poets, artists, historians, zoologists, who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world...”

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple

Create your market:
“If I’d asked the market what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses’,” Henry Ford famously said. He created the need for cars and also the wealth with which to buy the cars, while Jeff Bezos revolutionized the way the western world buys books when he left his cushy finance job to launch an online bookseller (with no advertising and no press), which has gone on to become the most successful internet retail site ever. In doing so, he created the territory that he is now king of.

Don't be afraid to fail:
Being resilient, it is said, actually has little to do with actions and more to do with reactions. How A person reacts to business failure says a lot about how they do business in the future. LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman co-founded his first company, SocialNet.com, in 1997, focusing on online dating and matching up people with similar interests, like golfers who were looking for partners in their neighborhood. Nobody was interested, but he wasn’t put off. LinkedIn is now the world’s largest business network.

Have faith:
James Dyson famously made more than 5,000 prototypes of his vacuum cleaner, getting himself into considerable debt. But he never gave up. He tried to sell his invention to the major manufacturers but nobody wanted to know. Still, he persevered. He encountered meeting after meeting with negative executives before deciding to manufacture them himself, testing them himself, ad nauseam. Though he has always claimed not to be a businessman, Dyson exhibits one of the most advantageous business entrepreneurial traits, that of complete and utter faith in his product.

Think differently:
Apart from the fact that it’s nearly the Apple slogan, you can pretty much bet that most of the entrepreneurs on John Byrne’s list at some point have ‘thought differently’, whether that’s been the organizing of small companies into large distribution networks or the niggling idea that people might like to compare two students as being ‘hot’ or ‘not’. As we’ve seen here, the ability to think differently and embrace change is usually the deciding factor between those who succeed and those who struggle.

Date

30 Oct 2021

Sources


Share


Other Blog

  • Optus loses NBN download-speed crown in surprise upset

    Optus has typically been the top performer in the Australian consumer watchdog’s broadband reporting, but its latest study shows that Optus has been beaten by a surprise internet provider.

    The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) latest report shows that Exetel has overtaken Optus in the average download speed measurement, beating its advertised plan speeds by 3.3% during the peak busy hours, and 4.5% across all times.

    Optus still performed well though, and it wasn’t too far behind Exetel. Its NBN plans reached 100% of its rated average download speed during the peak usage period, and exceeded it by 0.8% during all times.

    With a smaller ISP such as Exetel beating out the heavy hitters such as Telstra, Optus and TPG, it serves as another reminder that size often doesn’t matter when it comes to NBN providers.

    Exetel currently has discounts available across all of its plans, with savings of up to AU$240 on offer if you sign up for one of its NBN 1000 or NBN 250 plans. If you want a more standard NBN 50 or NBN 25 plan, you can save up to AU$120 by signing up now.

    Fibre to the Nope

    As has consistently been shown in the consumer advocate’s reporting, fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) services continue to perform significantly below that of other connection types for NBN 50 and NBN 100 plans.

    During the reporting period, FTTN users on an NBN 100 plan received an average download speed that was around 16Mbps lower than other connection types. Overall, these households reached 85.9% of their plan’s rated speed on average across all hours.

    FTTN users on an NBN 50 plan that were monitored for the report fared a little better, with average download speeds measuring around 6Mbps lower than other technologies. These FTTN users were able to reach 93.2% of their NBN 50 plan’s advertised speed during all hours, but that is still substantially below other NBN 50 users with other connection types.

    If you are one of the millions of Australians stuck with a FTTN connection and have an underperforming NBN 100 plan, your best bet is to move down to a slower, more affordable NBN 50 plan.

    Good news for NBN Fixed Wireless

    The ACCC’s latest report brings good news for regional and rural Australians with an NBN Fixed Wireless connection: results from December 2021 found that on average, users were able to reach 79.8% of their plan’s rated speed during the crucial busy hours of 7-11pm, and 93.4% across all hours.

    These findings are a significant improvement from when the ACCC first started monitoring Fixed Wireless performance in December 2020. At the time, these users were achieving 68.4% of their plan’s advertised speed during peak usage hours, and 78.5% on average across all hours.

    As indicated by the consumer watchdog’s report, this increase in download speeds can be credited to NBN Co, which began to allow a 15% overprovisioning allowance in July 2021. That’s led some internet providers to pass on the benefit to their customers.

    Households are typically connected to NBN Fixed Wireless when they're in regional or remote areas – they access the NBN from a transmission tower through an antenna installed on their roof, as opposed to fibre or copper wiring direct to their premise. We have a guide to the best wireless broadband plans in Australia if you want to compare what’s on offer.

    Read More
  • This Enigmatic Russian CPU is taking a controversial path that Intel and AMD struggled with

    Can the Russian processor trump the CPU giants with a crowdfunded motherboard?

    Read More
  • Nvidia RTX 3060 full specs confirmed ahead of the GPU’s imminent launch

    We already know the recommended pricing, but the reality is price tags will likely be hiked considerably given demand.

    Read More
  • Windows 11 finally catches up with macOS to improve Bluetooth

    Windows 11 is improving how Bluetooth devices are displayed on the Taskbar, with a new interactive overview of battery life and options to connect to these devices in an upcoming update.

    Since Windows XP in 2001, there's been a constant Bluetooth icon in the Taskbar that would show you options such as available devices, as well as a link to the Bluetooth Settings in the Control Panel.

    But with wireless devices more common than ever before in 2022, Microsoft has decided to make the process simpler by replacing this 20-year method with an overview of the devices that are paired to your PC, without having to leave the app or the desktop.

    This is yet another example of the company making processes easier for users in Windows 11, but there's still more work to do in this area, with features that macOS users have had for years.


    Analysis: From three clicks to one

    Windows 11 old Bluetooth settings

    (Image credit: TechRadar)

    Connecting to wireless devices has never been as straightforward as connecting to a Wi-Fi network in Windows. Simply adding a Bluetooth section in Settings or the Control Panel felt unnecessary, especially with smartphones and Macs reducing the process to two steps.

    The Taskbar in Windows 11 has had a Quick Settings feature since its launch in October 2021, so you can directly access 'Focus' mode, audio settings, and more without leaving the app you were currently in.

    With Bluetooth being available in this panel as well, it will be very handy to those who have multiple devices connected to their PCs. This is rolling out to users who are on Windows Insider build 2567 and above. If you've not signed up to be a Windows Insider to help test early versions of Windows 11, this new and improved Bluetooth functionality will hopefully arrive later this year.

    It should be worth the wait, especially if you have multiple game controllers or headphones, it can help alleviate the confusion to be given a quick overview of what's not connected, and quickly resolve that.

    Having a battery status for each device will be a great help too in reminding users to charge them when needed.

    Quick settings for Bluetooth in macOS

    (Image credit: TechRadar)

    However, there's still more that can be done in this area. Other features such as switching between noise-canceling and equalizer modes for headphones could be a great help, similar to what Apple users have had on their Macs for a few years.

    But it's still a great step in the right direction to start with, and a much-needed feature in a time when many of us use Bluetooth devices almost every day for our PCs.

    Via WindowsLatest

    Read More

Find Out More About Us

Want to hire best people for your project? Look no further you came to the right place!

Contact Us