THE STRATEGY OF TURNING A BOWL UPSIDE DOWN

A powerful strategy to step the ladder in a business is a positive mental attitude. There are several strategies to keep a person a positive mental attitude. One of the strategies is turning a bowl upside down, which means seeing something negative from the positive side. For example, you go to college or to work by motorcycle, and suddenly you have a flat tire because the tire hits the nail so that you cannot continue going there or you can do so but you’ll get there too late, and then if you use such a strategy, you can still say “Fortunately, the tire of my bike hit the nail, or else I may be hit by a bus, or even there will be something worse that will happen to me”. With this strategy, you will be trained over time and will stay awake in a positive mental attitude.

Then, my assistant and I also once tried to make the best of everything when we planned to develop the building of our college, STMIK AMIKOM Yogyakarta Indonesia. At first, we intended to expand our land with an area of about 4000 square meters by purchasing the land with an area of about 1000 square meters, located next to our campus. When we were negotiating the purchasing of the land, the landowner stated that she would sign an agreement on price and payment. However, she denied doing so by stalling and raising prices, so my assistant got irritable and said “If he were a man, I would slap him” he said. I tried to assuage his anger, and then I said with a cheer “I got upset, too, but let’s try to find the ground again, and God may provide something better for our educational institution”. A week later, my assistant told me that there was other land with an area of 6000 square meters, located next to our campus, and the land was offered at the price of Rp 275,000 per square meter. “Well, God may show us what is the best for us” I said.

Furthermore, my colleague and I also once took a lesson from the happening in which he was told by the landlady to remove all the items in the room that he was renting because he could not afford to pay for the rent which was only Rp 25,000 per month for a room with the length of 8 meters and with the width of 4 meters. Then, my colleagues told me that he was told to move by the owner of the house and were only given a week’s time. “God willing, there are lessons” I replied with a consolation. Actually it was the only sentence I could say in that I had no other sentences. Apparently it was an early milestone of Primagama, our other educational institution. We were whipped to run faster to achieve success. My colleague and I finally decided to take advantage of a week’s time to give out brochures to all high schools in our city for the marketing of our educational institutions. The result was that we got Rp 50,000 and found a new house which was better than the old one. Taking a lesson from every negative event is a strategy of turning a bowl upside down, which constitutes one way to keep a positive mental attitude.

STARTING A BUSINESS WITHOUT ANY CAPITAL

You have a good idea of doing business but do not have any capital; however, you can still do so with capital cooperation. You have close friends whom you can count on, and then you can contact and convince them to get capital support. The advantage of this effort can be in accordance with the agreement. The more you involve them; the more they trust you, and it also means that you will be able to gain capital investment in your business. To do this strategy, at first you can convince your closest friends who trust you the most. Then, you can do so with your friends who relatively less trust you. Honesty is the most important thing in starting a business with capital cooperation. Openness and fairness must be upheld so that they trust you. The trust they give to you is regarded as the money they are saving. Naturally, they hope that the savings could get bigger in the long-run. Similarly, the more savings they gain; the more they trust you.

When I met a close friend of mine, a sales representative of Metrodata Corporate, he immediately offered me to become a dealer of Epson computers. “Do you want to sell Epson computers, Med?” My friend asked. Med was my nickname when I was in high school I in Madiun, Indonesia. “I have no capital” I replied. “It does not need any capital. You simply display Epson computers. Then, you will not pay for each of the computers until it has been sold. I give two-month grace period “my friend said. “All right. I’ll try to sell Epson computers” I agreed. Why did my friend trust me? Because he and I went to the same high school and always sat beside me in the classroom. When going to school, I rode him on the back of our bicycle, and when returning home from school, he did the same. We always shared our pocket money. When I had money, I treated him to meals and soft drinks, and when he had money, it was his turn to do so. When I was sick, I lay down on the bed in his house while he went to school himself. I often ate in his house and learned together, entertained his brother with conjuring tricks, and talked with his parents. I sometimes borrowed money from him to pay my tuition fee, and I repaid the loans in accordance with my promise. I am very fortunate to have a close friend who has trusted me up to now. His name is Agus Widodo Honggo, and now he is a Director of Metrodata Corporate. You can also try to start a business with capital cooperation by means of your closest friends.

LEARNING FROM FAILURES IN BUSINESS

A failure is a label that often we associate with an action that did not work when the action was taken, and the label makes us say that someone who has failed is considered incapable, and of course, such a consideration decreases his or her enthusiasm to become a successful person. when we were children, failure had no meaning, as we know we did not have the concept of failure, and if we had had such a concept, now we would not be able to speak, to write, and to walk because we too much failed to do so by then, or in other words, the frequency of the failures was countless. We can also mimic our failures in childhood and learn from them in the business world; Coca Cola Company, and Matsushita, for example. Coca Cola failed in the first year sales which were conducted by placing its products in the beverage in the pharmacy, and the company spent 73.96 dollars on ads through banners and coupons. Such a failure made Coca Cola aware of rightly choosing another media which was more powerful to advertise Coca Cola with the atmosphere of joy. Like Coca Cola, Matsushita also failed in the first time sales of his products, plug adapters. It took Matsushita and four colleagues of his four months to create the products. At first, he offered the adapters to his previous employers but he did not receive a response. Then, he tried to sell the products to the public, but nobody bought them.

In 1993, Compaq company, which was the leader of the PC sales market at the time, put through a price cut to compete with Dell Company. As a result, Dell Company lost 65 million dollars in the first six months and was almost bankrupt. Then, Dell Company learned from this failure; tried to find other ways to sell computers; and made a very fundamental change called re-engineering in process of business with the introduction of E-commerce. In 1999, by means of E-commerce , Dell Company could sell its computers with the value of 1.7 million dollars per day through its website. The shares of Dell Company rose 2000 percent in two years, and it could compete with world class companies such as IBM, Compaq, HP, and Bell-Nec. Even the market shares and the profits of Dell Company continued to rise, and eventually it became the largest PC seller in the world.

THE MARKET OF A DREAM IN BUSINESS

Written by Prof. Dr. M. Suyanto
Translated by Drs. Tahajudin Sudibyo, M.A

Eight of the ten under-40-year-old people who are the richest in the world make use of a market called the Internet, and there are several reasons why the companies target it as a market. Firs, the television audiences began to migrate to the Internet, and since they have moved, the advertising media must be followed with the assumption that any marketer’s goal is to reach his or her target effectively and efficiently. Marketers recognize that they must make adjustments to their marketing plans to pursue the increasing number of people who continuously spend their time in front of online media after leaving and other media. Second, to target a market, the marketers make use of the Internet for the ads that can be updated at any time with minimal cost so that their ads always look new. Third, as a market, the Internet can reach potential buyers in a very large number in the global count. Fourth, online advertising is sometimes less expensive than television, newspaper, or radio advertising. The advertising cost of the latter media is getting higher because it is determined by the space that will be used; how long ads will be put; on how many television stations or in how many newspapers or magazines ads will be put; and whether the television stations, newspapers or magazines are local or national. Fifth, advertising on the internet can efficiently use the convergence of text, audio, graphics, and animation. Sixth, the Internet itself is growing rapidly. Seventh, you can create an interactive advertising aimed at specific groups and / or individuals. Based on the research conducted in the fall of 1996, three-quarters of users of personal computers would leave the television and spend their time in front of their computers. The television displacement, the number of which was very large, seemed to be very impressive. In addition, Internet users are educated people and have very high incomes, so it is logical that Internet explorers are targets envisioned by the marketers.

Since 1998, this characteristic has convinced a large company that produces everything needed for consumers to start shifting advertising budgets from traditional media to Internet advertising. What Toyota did was a real example that the Internet is very powerful. Saatchi and Saatchi, a leading advertising agency, developed Web sites for Toyota (www.toyota.com) and placed banner ads on very interesting popular sites, such as www.espn.com. Within one year, the site could keep up with the sales done by 800 other Toyota sale sources.

THE STRATEGY TO PURSUIT A DREAM IN BUSINESS

In order to manage your dream in business, you can do by creating it, and then try to catch up with it. Then, how is the strategy to pursue it?. According to Hammel and Prahalad, the strategy concept to pursue a dream or a vision is called Strategic Intent.

The strategy formulation of pursuing a dream or a vision is developed gradually and consistently. Based on this strategy, you should have a vision to reach in the duration of at least ten years to come. To dominate the market, Sony, Wal-Mart, Chrysler, Microsoft, General Electric, Cola-Cola and other admirable companies make use of Strategic Intent.

The Manager of Sony Company, Akito Morita, noted that young people like listening to music wherever they go. Morita draw conclusions from the facts without the need for research but only by thinking far ahead without being known by a community, and then he decided to create the Walkman. A Brilliant market design is not a coincidence. Morita and Sony has achieved their success by means of the findings for the market in the future, not the current market, that is by describing what he called “pioneering spirit”. Morita said, “Sony is a pioneer and is never intended to follow the others. Through progress, Sony wants to serve the whole world. Sony will always be the inventor of the unknown “. Furthermore, Wal-Mart pursued a dream with discounts, Chrysler with mini vans, and Microsoft with Windows.

Strategic Intent is formulated in stages, and it will be more challenging if there are challengers. Salt challenged Suzuki and Honda, and Marriot Hotel challanged Hilton and so forth. In pursuing the strategy of this dream, the future is not only conceivable, but it must be built. So, the architect who creates the necessary things that have not been created should be able to play a combined role of a leader and an implementer. The implementation of strategies based on this dream requires Strategic Architecture, which is a combination of the future of knowledge (information architecture), behavior, values and structures (social architecture) and financial architecture. Strategic Architecture constitutes the blueprint for the spread of the high level of new functionality, the acquisition of new competencies, or the migration of existing competencies, and the reconstruction of an intermediary with the customer.

In Strategic Intent, the dream must have an obsession to succeed and should be achieved gradually. Implementing this strategy requires to pursue the dream of the strategic architecture, which is a combination of the future of knowledge (information architecture), behavior, values and structures (social architecture) and financial architecture.

HOW TO MANAGE DREAMS AND IMAGINATIONS IN BUSINESS

A dream constitutes the image of an event, or anything that appears in your sleep. Having a dream is to see something in your sleep or to fantasize something unattainable. In a real life, a dream is, however, to fantasize what might be achieved in spite of the fact that there is no picture on how to achieve it, or although it is very difficult to achieve. Then, an imagination is a delusion or a fantasy. Basically, dreams and imaginations are imaginary.

According to Gary Hammel, both the dream and the imagination are energy sources to drive an organizational strength. In the management literature, dreams and imaginations are called visions. Motorola dreamed of creating a wireless world, and wireless or mobile phones. Bill Gates dreamed of creating a computer on every desk in every home, and running Microsoft device. Then, Bill Gates made MS-DOS operating system, and created Windows that has caused Bill Gates to be the richest entrepreneur in the world.

Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon.com, which is the best store on the Internet in 2002 according to the version of Yahoo magazine. “Why I name my company Amazon was due to the fact that the Amazon is the largest river in the world” said Jeff Bezos. What about the Nile?. The Nile is the longest river in the world. The Amazon contains 20% water of the world, and Jeff Bezos dreamed of his company that would be able to control 20% of the world market. Amazon.com, which opened its E-commerce site in July 1995, could sell 15.7 million dollars in 1996 and jumped to 600 million dollars in 1998. From November 1st to December 23rd, 2002, Amazon.com consumers in the world made orders 56 million items.

When my friends and I founded STMIK Amikom, Yogyakarta, I dreamed that it should be the best Computer College in Indonesia within 10 years. Perhaps those who saw the building of the College did not think that it was a college but a house because it was true that the building we rented was a home, and then a number of people laughed at us sarcastically. But after the College had 4219 students and owned grand air-conditioned buildings, and after the Department of Diploma III Information Management was accredited “A”, which was the first time in Indonesia, those who used to laugh at us was no longer cynical, and most of them laughed because they were astonished. It is true that the dreams and the imaginations of an entrepreneur are sometimes ridiculed by other people, because of weirdness, but as a matter of fact dreams and imaginations are prayers. The best way to manage your dreams and imaginations is to create the dreams and the imaginations themselves.

WALT DISNEY'S STORY OF STARTING A BUSINESS

Walt Elias Disney was born on December 5th, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois. He started to love drawing and arranging his art work when he was 7 years old.Besides, he was also very interested in photography. When he was a teenager, he went to school in the afternoon and went to the Academy of Art at night. When World War I broke out, he tried to join the army, but he was still too young, so he was employed in the Red Cross. Then, he was sent abroad by riding the ambulance which was decorated with cartoon characters. When the war was over, he ventured into Hollywood with the ability to draw and with an amount of money at $ 40. He started a business with his brother by making an animated film and quickly became famous in Hollywood. In 1920, Disney moved to Kansas City and worked as an animator at a company. Furthermore, the company where he worked, Laugh O Gramhe, went bankrupt. In 1923, he left Kansas City for Los Angeles to find a job in the movie business. At first, he was unsuccessful but remained determined to stay in Los Angeles. Then, he rent a camera, built an animation stand and made a studio in his uncle's garage. He started the business with his brother Roy. His first film, Alice, did not make the company look up, so did his second film, Oswald the Rabbit, which was launched in 1927. The failure turned into success after he made the mouse by listening to his wife's advice.

"I hope I will never forget that all of this began with a mouse", said Walt Disney in the late years of his life. Once upon a time in his early career, Disney was acquainted with a mouse family in his office. The mice that often appeared on the drawing board produced an inspiration about an impressive story. In fact, the mouse in question started its life as Mortimer Mouse. Walt Disney's wife, Lilly, did not agree with that name, and she asked him to name it Micky. He listened to his wife and decided to choose Micky for the mouse 's name. Nobody knew whether he wanted to please his wife by doing so or whether in his opinion Micky was a ideal name for launching his business. In this respect, it is true that Micky itself is a name which is more friendly and more informal, and which has a relationship with ordinary people.

In 1928, Mickey Mouse was created and performed in the cartoon world where voice was applied for the first time. On December 21st, 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, animated by the first special music, was introduced in Los Angeles, and the film cost him over one million dollars, which was a great amount of money by then. Over five years later, Walt Disney produced animated classics such as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi.

STARTING A BUSINESS WITH YOUR SKILLS

You can start a business with the skills you have, such as Soichiro Honda. Starting from his expertise as a mechanic, Honda eventually succeeded in his business . After leaving school, he found his first job at Tokyo auto service in 1922 . He only studied at school only for eight years. Being a 15-year-old child who was from a small town, he was proud of being able to repair about 10 cars a day particularly when he had a lot of customers to serve. He was appointed as an assistant mechanic, but he more often baby-sat the son of the owner of the shop. Honda dreamed to become a real, car mechanic but had never got the chance to do so. Being frustrated, he then packed his bags and quited his job and left the big city. Six months later, his former employer required him, and he was called to be a true car mechanic whose work was to repair the car, and it was an opportunity for him to realize his dream.

Like other countries, Japan was hit by a large depression in the 1930s. In 1938, Soichiro Honda was a student when he started to open the workshop and developed the concept of ring-shaped piston. He planed to offer the idea to Toyota. He worked day and night and often slept in the garage. He always believed that he could refine the design and produced a more useful product. Then, to start a business, he used stood capital in the form of jewelry that belonged to his wife. When the the design of the piston was made as the sample offered to Toyota, it did not meet the standard. The technicians laughed at his design. Despite the failure, he remained firm to his standpoint. After keeping improving his product for about two years, eventually he won a contract from Toyota. Then, Honda built a factory to meet demand for Toyota, but the factory was bombed twice during the war until it became messy. He remained determined to fulfill his dream to build a factory, but no sooner was it rebuilt than it was destroyed by an earthquake.

After the war was over, there was a fuel shortage forcing people to walk or use bicycles. Honda made small engines that could be installed on bikes, but the engine material was so difficult to find that it did not meet the demand. Honda wrote a letter to 18,000 bicycle shop owner, but the result was that he just got a little money. However, with this makeshift money, he made small engines for bicycles. The first model he made required a more spacious place in order to work properly; therefore, he developed and adapted it constantly to the place where it was installed until he could produce a smaller engine, namely 'The Super Cub', which came true and became successful. Having succeeded in Japan, Honda began exporting his products to Europe and America.

In the 1970s, fuel scarcity happened everywhere, so in the United States large vehicles that consumed more gas were shifted to smaller ones. Honda quickly captured this trend. Then, Honda Corporation, which had more than 100,000 staff members in the United States and Japan, and had 43 businesses in 28 countries, was one of the largest vehicle businesses in the world and became a business ranking 26 of the most amazing in the world in 2003.

BOOSTING A BUSINESS BY DOING NOBLE

Many entrepreneurs or companies, when they are in a state of recession or in trouble, dismiss their employees, and even a state-owned property that serves a government to provide jobs as the responsibility for implementation of the Constitution, such as Indonesian Aerospace Corporate, prefer dismissing their employees to maintaining them. Such a dismissal is, however, was not done by the famous clothing company Levi Strauss.

Levi Strauss came from Bavaria. He arrived in New York in 1847 and collaborated with his stepbrother in the business of dried goods. In 1853, Strauss went to San Francisco to build his own business. The opportunity came when one of his customers, Jacob Davis, a tailor who came from Nevada, showed an idea of changing his trousers. According to Davis, the trousers which are strong and durable are suitable to wear when he or she is a gold miner or a farmer. In 1873, Strauss and Davis patented the pants called “waist-high overalls” by then. The patented design cost $ 68. The company was getting more and more prosperous, and when Strauss died, it had a wealth of $ 6 million.

The greatest challenge facing the company occurred in 1906 when there was an earthquake followed by a fire that destroyed the company headquarters and two factories. Then, the action that Strauss took was to give credit to his customers so that they could maintain their businesses. The company continued paying its employees, and a temporary office with its showroom was open to give them something to do while a headquarter and a factory were being built. At the time of the great depression, the CEO Walter Haas Sr. went on hiring employees by having them build a new floor at the company factory on Valencia Street in San Francisco, and he did not dismiss them. In Haas's opinion, the workers who are authorized and the people who share the values and aspirations are similar to the company such as a manager and an owner and will make it the market leader. “You cannot make people excited or get their support unless the organization has a soul.” Haas said. Besides, he also provided equal opportunity for African-Americans to work in the factory plant in the 1950s and 1960s when they expanded their business into the southern states. In line with their business development, the community of people embraced their tradition of growing together. Strauss was then getting 40 percent of the profits from international businesses and plant products in more than 50 countries around the world. A quarter of employees worked outside the United States. Strauss chose to do the noble effort to keep driving up hiring employees when the company was in trouble. God probably helps people do noble. We hope Indonesian Aerospace Corporate could do the same.

STARTING A BUSINESS WITHOUT ANY CASH

In addition to opening a business without cash payments at the back, you can also open a business with payments in advance. The combination of the payments at the back and of the payments in advance is the most ideal to start a business. Office buildings, advertisements, and brochures can be obtained by payments at the back while our customers' payments can be gained in advance. Businesses of vocational-education institutions and even higher-education institutions can be done with prepayment strategy.

On opening a branch of the Central Computer and Management Education at 20 Abubakar Ali street, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and after advertising it in KR, a local daily, which could be paid at the back, we finally got 35 students, which were then given a public lecture that contained an explanation on the material that would be taught for the following year. Starting from the material on Achievement Motivation Training, suddenly the students asked “Where are the computers? And why don't we have any computers Sir?”. “Look at what is said in the ad?”, I replied. “Computers equipped with Practical Management Education and Entrepreneurship,” they said. “You are right. In this first month you will not have computer classes until you have completed classes of Practical Management Education and Entrepreneurship.“ I answered, saying to myself "But you also have to pay for your tuition fee.“ After one month they were satisfied, and eventually they paid for their tuition fee, which later could be made use of buying 12 PCs by installment. “Those are the computers.” I said. They were surprised, saying “We have already computers Sir!”. I smiled, saying to myself “that is actually due to your money”. In conclusion, we can operate a business with advance payments, that is to say, payments from our customers.

Even when I, with my friends from Totalwin Institute of Management in cooperation with Warnbrough University, England, opened MBA program (when it was not banned), I just provided a five-star hotel that could be paid at the rear, and then the students paid their tuition fee in advance. At first, prospective students were collected at a one-star hotel and were given an explanation of the MBA program from Warnbrough University, including an explanation on how much it would have cost if they were to have majored in the same program in the UK and in their country, Indonesia. When the prospective students, most of whom were not good at English, decided to study the MBA program in their country, the language used in the course of their lectures was Indonesian. Only his or her thesis was written in English and it was in the supervision of Warnbrough University by means of its representative in Australia. Having finished a public lecture, those who were interested in the MBA program could provide a down payment at Rp 1.000.000, which later could be used to rent the room along with other equipment, so we did not spend money. After there had been at least 15 students who enrolled, the college immediately began. Thus, hotels and other facilities could be met with advance payments from students. Then, the results of the MBA program could eventually be used to establish MM Program in Surabaya, Indonesia. The MM Program was likely to be  the best-selling in Indonesia because it had about 1000 students.