10 advice to start your own venture in Nepal

I like the work of Entrepreneurs for Nepal. They are doing really great job. They have more than 1200 young, creative entrepreneurs, who have ideas and want to implement it in Nepal. They have successfully created a facebook group with 1888 members till date.

I would like to quote one of their resources which is called “10 advice to start your own venture in Nepal”

1. Success takes patience: Min Bahadur Gurung waited almost for a decade before he expanded his one-room cold storage shop to a small department store, which then went on to be today’s Bhat Bhateni Supermarkets at more than one location.
2. Know yourself: Karna Sakya has devised a test that helps you find out how you work, how you value time, and what your values are. His point is that unless you really know what you are good at, and how you function, you are not likely to be a success.
3. Know the strengths of others you are working with: You can’t do everything by yourself. Icchya Raj Tamang says that working well in a team is a function knowing and using the strengths of other
   team-mates toward your goals.
4. Aim for precision in communication: Jonas Lindholm says that bad communication lies at the heart of many business failures and misunderstandings. In Nepal, often, people say ‘yes’ too eagerly, without being aware of what they can do and what they cannot do. This can be a problem when things do not go right. Say what you mean, and mean what you say.
5. When choosing partners, do your homework well: Mahendra Man Shakya of Momo King says that most mistakes are made in Nepali businesses when people get into business partnerships without doing the necessary background research and without asking themselves some tough questions which need to be answered and understood upfront. There is no fun in quarreling with your business partners when things go wrong, which is likely to happen at some point in the business.
6. Honesty is the key: Min Bahadur Gurung says that long-term business success is anchored on honesty, and on mutually trustworthy relationships with your financial institutions, creditors, debtors, co-workers, employees and customers.
7. Analyze your mistakes to learn from them: Gyanendra Pradhan of HydroSolutions says that a good habit an entrepreneur needs to develop is an ability to reflect upon one’s mistakes, and learn from them without getting stuck in the past. This habit can be cultivated through conscious practice and reflective experiences.
8. Hard work is the only way to success: Ambika Shrestha of Dwarika’s Hotel attributes her success to her ability to work very hard when she was young. No work was beneath her, and she made many, many sales calls and visits to sell her hotel and travel agency’s offerings.
9. Persistence is important:Ajay Ghimire, CEO of Vibor Bank, says that he looks for a sense of persistence when dealing with entrepreneurs. Those who are persistent are likely to not get disappointed with failures and setbacks, and have the energy and willpo
10. Entrepreneurship is the art of selling: Ajay Ghimire believes that whatever an entrepreneur does, success comes from an ability to sell ideas, concepts, goods and services to others. This is why, an ability to sell what one knows and makes is a critical skill to have.

Click here to download their pdf version. If there is problem then click here

While globalization, innovation and communications technologies have created incredible opportunities, they also have made organizations much more complex, more exhausting, and more overloaded with meetings, emails, and presentations — often without the counterbalancing benefit of more productivity or satisfaction. And to make matters worse during the economic downturn, many organizations have cut their staffs and just expect the remaining people to do the same (or more) work. It’s not a pretty picture.

Unfortunately, if you’re waiting for someone else to initiate simplification and make your life better, you might as well buy a lottery ticket. So, don’t wait and make it happen.

Here are two simple steps that any manager, at any level, can take to start down the path of simplification:

1. Start with your own behavior. How many times have you gone to a meeting that lacked an agenda or a clear set of objects — and didn’t do anything about it? How often have you received unnecessary email or reports — but didn’t let the senders know that they were clogging up your inbox? How often have you sat through a presentation with too many slides, unclear points, and too much data — but didn’t provide any feedback to the presenter? And how often have you been the perpetrator of these complexity-causing behaviors without anyone pushing back on you?

We all allow these things to happen. Often, we’re guilty of doing them. But since most people dislike confrontation, we let things slide. It’s an unspoken conspiracy: “I won’t challenge you if you won’t challenge me.” The net result is that we unwittingly create a culture of complexity.

The first step towards simplification is to break out of this silent collusion. Challenge yourself and challenge others. Put a three-slide limit on presentations; insist that every meeting have an agenda; eliminate “reply all” emails to schedule meetings. Get simplification started in your own day-to-day life.

2. Enlist others in the cause. Just like you are often unconscious of how you cause complexity, your boss and your colleagues are probably unaware of how they are making life difficult for you and others. So after you’ve changed some of your own behaviors (and you need to do that first to have credibility), get some discussion started about other sources of complexity in the company. Don’t worry at first about making big changes — just get some dialogue going, either physically or virtually.

Encourage other people to experiment along with you, and to share what works and what does not. Look together at processes that cut across your functions, and how you might streamline handoffs and interactions. Talk about issues that you can’t tackle alone, but might be opportunities for group problem-solving. At a minimum, you can create a simplicity support group. But who knows, you might create a movement!

What’s your experience with making things simpler in your company?

Author: Ron Ashkenas

Here goes the complete article written by Kevin Boss:

5 Mistakes That Made Me A Better Freelancer

A few years ago I started offering web design services to those in need of a web site. Ever since, It’s been a constant learning experience. When I advanced from website coding to directly interacting with clients, I was taking a pretty big step. It was hard enough trying to understand this crazy markup language, and now I had to learn how to interact with clients? Sheesh. Thanks to trial and error, I’ve come to understand a few things about establishing and maintaining the best possible relationship with my clients.

My clients shared the same technical background: they had no idea how the Internet works, how websites work and what exactly it is I did. As far as they were concerned I waved my magical wand and poof, a site is born. Wouldn’t that be nice? Unfortunately that isn’t how it’s done (well for me at least). Because of my inexperience, I set myself up for a few nasty headaches. But I also learned a lot of valuable lessons.

The Never-Ending Design
“Hi Kevin, you know i see where that link is and well, can you make it blue instead of black?” Sounds innocent enough right? When you have a backseat designer who is continually revising the design, it can be a little frustrating. Especially when they liked your markups, then had a change of heart after you already coded everything. Getting calls a dozen times a day is also pretty tiring. You’d think your client would have the common sense to not call this often. Think again. When you don’t set guidelines and establish a clear work-flow, you’re just asking for trouble. Have your client sign off on the final mockup before moving to the next step. Define how you want to go back and forth regarding revisions.
The Midnight Caller
“How’s development going on the site? What? Of course I’m awake why wouldn’t I be? You were sleeping?” We don’t all keep the same schedule, and this is especially true if you’re dealing with someone that lives in another part of the world. Then again even when my clients lived 10 minutes away I was still getting calls at the strangest hours. Your client is paying you to get something done, and if you don’t state otherwise, expect them to need to talk to you at the most inconvenient times. If you give out your contact info, make sure you explicitly state how to contact you, and what time(s) are acceptable.

The Chatty Sally
“Hi Kevin, how are you doing? How’s the weather? Are you wearing shorts? I called to ask a quick question about the site and I’ll keep you on the phone for a while talking about general stuff not relating to the project at all” Having a good relationship with your client is important, but remember to keep it professional. Your working on their website, not becoming their new best friend. Socializing with a client isn’t bad, but it can become an issue if you don’t set clear ground rules. When you’re socializing, you’re either not working or at the least, distracted. If you have a time-sensitive project this can become a major issue. Make sure you clearly establish the purpose of your communications, and keep them on track. I’m not suggesting that clients and developers should avoid a social and professional relationship. I’m saying if you don’t set some ground rules it can get out of hand.
The Project that Doesn’t End
“The site looks great, but can you add an image gallery to it? I forgot that I wanted that before” Clients are notorious for wanting more work done than originally anticipated. I can’t remember a single project where the client didn’t want something new added as the project came to a conclusion. It’s natural – if something rattles around in your brain it’ll eventually spit out some new ideas. Since I agreed to make the client a website, I guess I agreed to add whatever they wanted right? Wrong. I failed to outline a specific scope, and as a result got stuck in a loop of additional work. Clearly define the scope of the project and what requirements need to be satisfied to complete the project. If they want to add more work after the fact, simply tell them that it’s not in the contract. Offer them the option of revising the project with added labor and a later completion date.
Hosting Woes
“Help the site is down!!! You suck at hosting!!!” I used to host my clients and charge them a few bucks for it. I figured hey why drive business elsewhere when I can offer a complete solution? Well that worked out well until my host started flaking. The site would be down once every week or so, and the people who I hosted weren’t too happy with it. I couldn’t blame them. I was angry at my host too. I’d constantly get calls about the site being down, call my host, and either get a machine or no answer at all. Now the obvious problem here is that my host sucked, but for a few dollars a month I was also being held responsible for something not in my control. I decided the profit wasn’t worth my reputation. I did explain that the hosting problems were beyond my control, but that didn’t make their site magically work. If you host your clients make sure you’re ready to accept the responsibility when something goes wrong. I do think hosts, for the most part, are more reliable now than 3 years ago. They are also cheaper now too. I refer my clients to the web host I use. I think it’s mutually beneficial that my clients deal with their host directly.

I never completed a project for a client without doing everything I could to completely satisfy them, but I sure did have some tough situations. Most of my work comes from word of mouth, so I place a lot of value on each individual client I have. These aren’t all my adverse situations, but they are my most memorable. Do you have any of your own? I’d love to read about them.

Oh, and not every single client can be satisfied – some people are just unhappy. There are other ways of dealing with them

Thanks Kavin for sharing your experience and suggesting the solutions.

Enjoy reading

- Sakin

The unusual condition is wealth. This is what changes things. We should ask, “What are the causes of wealth” and try to recreate and reproduce them. When you ask the wrong question, “What causes poverty,” you end up with wrong answers. People fall into the trap of thinking that the wealth of some causes the poverty in others; as if there were fixed amounts of wealth in the world and that rich people had seized too large a share of it.

In fact wealth is created, and it is only during the last 250 years or so that we have found how to do this on a grand scale. Wealth is created by production and enterprise, by the specialization of labour, and most of all it is created by exchange. Instead of trying to take wealth away from rich people and redistribute it, we should be seeking to implement the conditions in which as many people as possible can join in the wealth-creating process for themselves.

Poor countries will not become wealthier because we give them some of our riches. They will climb out of poverty the same way we did, by producing and selling goods and services and by creating wealth in the process.

Edited by Sakin and Written by Dr Madsen Pirie

Then
Hard Work
H+A+R+D+W+O+R+K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

Knowledge
K+N+O+W+L+E+D+G+E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

Love
L+O+V+E
12+15+22+5 = 54%

Luck
L+U+C+K
12+21+3+11 = 47% ( don’t most of us think this is the most important ??? )

Then what makes 100% ?

Is it Money ? … NO ! ! !
M+O+N+E+Y
13+15+14+5+25 = 72%

Leadership ? … NO ! ! !
L+E+A+D+E+R+S+H+I+P
12+5+1+4+5+18+19+9+16 = 89%

Every problem has a solution, only if we perhaps change our attitude. To go to the top, to that 100%, what we really need to go further… a bit more…

That is
ATTITUDE
A+T+T+I+T+U+D+E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

It is OUR ATTITUDE towards Life and Work that makes OUR Life 100% ! ! !

Change Your Attitude … And You Change Your Life ! ! !

A Small Truthe to Make Life Happy 100%

- Sakin