I am hardly wealthy. I admit to the fact that I’m often
struggling to find my next meal and now that the Evil Teen has become an adult,
it’s been a challenge to make the pennies stretch.
However, while I’ve not made money, I’ve had my successes
and I attribute my successes to the privilege of being known by successful
people (I work on the adage that it’s the people who know me that count rather
than the people I know – because I know everybody). I’ve often mentioned that I’ve
had the good fortune to be guided by the likes of PN Balji, former CEO and
founding Editor of the Today newspaper and I’ve also had the good fortune to work
with the likes of former Saudi Ambassador to Singapore, Dr. Amin Kurdi and
Girija Pande, former Asia-Pacific CEO of Tata Consultancy Services, who once
told me, “Just make it happen, you’re as good as any of us.” (He was referring to
a host of Indian Institutes of Management Alumni who happened to have
exceedingly successful careers.)
So, while I am by no means wealthy and I do not have a “career”
in the conventional success, I can be deemed successful in as much as
successful people have been willing to associate with me. Success, as they say
is contagious. In every study of wealth and the wealthy, one common feature stands
out – successful people inevitably hang out with people who are equally so. Think
of today’s great genuine friendship between Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, who
come from different generations and very different industries (Buffet famously
did not invest in technology companies during the dot com boom of the early
2000s, while Gates built the technology industry making software rather than
hardware the focus.) Li-Ka Shing, Hong Kong’s famous “Superman” and for many
years, the richest person of Chinese descent, advised the up and coming to
spend money on lunch with someone more successful.
A while back, I once tried to list down the wealthiest
person I knew of every ethnic group to see if I could gain a greater insight
into what makes people of a certain wealth level what they are and whether
there were any particular industries that were good for making fortunes.
While, I can’t come up with any ground-breaking theories
that haven’t been bandied about before, I think one of the greatest factors is
the willingness to try new things and new places and to do things differently.
The examples I have are as follows:
Hans Hofer, the founder of Insight Guides. Mr. Hofer left
Germany in the 60s and moved to Bali. He fell in love with the island and felt
the urge to share the beauty of the island with the world. He convinced the General
Manager of the Intercontinental Hotel to back him up in producing a guide book
with coloured photos, something which until then didn’t exist. Insight Guides
grew into a publishing empire turning over some S$25 million a year and then
Mr. Hofer was bought out by Langenscheidt KG.
Mr. Hofer’s story is remarkable in the sense that it
combines the concept of being far away from home but also being close to home.
The place that gave him the seed for his money was Bali, many miles away from
his native Germany. Mr. Hofer’s success was built entirely in Asia.
Yet, at the same time, Mr. Hofer has never forgotten the
German community. I got to know this when I asked him who gave him his first
break. He made the point that the General Manager of the Intercontinental was a
German. You could say, the take away from Mr. Hofer’s story is that you should
be willing to travel the world and seek adventure beyond your home shores but never
forget your people so to speak.
I also think of Patrick Grove, the CEO of Catha Group. Mr.
Grove, who is one year my junior, went to work at Arthur Anderson in their
corporate finance division. He’s said that he needed to assure his parents that
he would get a proper job for at least two-years. Once that two-year period
ended, Mr. Grove went out, searching for bright ideas he could bring to this
part of the world and the success of Catha Group is based on the diversity of
industries like selling cars, selling entertainment and classified.
The take away from Mr. Grove would be thus – don’t be a
prisoner of your professional background or education. Use the skills you learn
from those experiences but don’t be afraid to look at other areas and how you
can do something in areas that aren’t officially yours.
The other story that’s worth mentioning is that of Arun
Jain, the founder of Intellect Design Arena Limited, and former Chairman of Polaris
Consulting, a company which he eventually sold to Virtusa Limited. Mr. Jain had
the good fortune to get a “US” Green card, where he could have worked as one of
the many middle-class Indians who have benefited from the outsourcing bug that
many companies caught in the 1990s. Yet, Mr. Jain decided that he could build
something out of India and gave up the prized Green Card. One of Mr. Jain’s
founding employees told me, “that man could dream and he could get things done.”
Instead of talking about trying to pay the mortgage and other middle-class
worries, Mr. Jain has the pleasure of focusing on how to bring technology to
benefit the masses, all because he was able to break out of the common mold
that working in the USA as a programmer would be his path to success, which is
what the Indian IT industry has been based on.
Not everyone with the entrepreneurial bug is successful but
as the three men I’ve mentioned earlier show, setting your mind free can be a
liberating and even financially rewarding experience.
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