From a frog to a prince or from an IT person to entrepreneurs
Most recently, I changed my status from an ordinary programmer to an entrepreneur. Exactly a year ago, I worked my last day working at a company (it was in Jordan), since then I have gone from a freelancer to a director of a small company.
I think my experience will be all the more useful because it is still very fresh in my head, which means it can also help someone to make a quantum leap in both lifestyle and income.
Until that moment when I decided that I would become a freelancer, and later a director of the company, I worked for two years in a Ukrainian-Slovenian company with embedded-systems, and later a half-year web-developer in a Jordanian company. Despite my ability and creativity, I was a fairly weak programmer, since 8 hours of daily work in one place demotivated me. My colleagues told me directly that I was not very similar to a programmer in my temperament. Then I was even a little upset about it.
')
Between jobs, I worked for the AIESEC youth organization, in which social projects are fairly well established in the form of business processes. There I got the first real experience of working in a team, planning and implementing projects, working in a critical situation. Working as a programmer, I did not come across this much.
Having gone on an IT internship (again from AIESEC) to Jordan, I not only lived half a year in a mysterious country, but also learned new technologies. Returning back to Ukraine, I still have Jordanian customers and new ones appeared. There were more and more orders, and I realized that I could find people, train them with technologies and already have some sort of business. Something like this happened, of course, not everything is as smooth as we would like.
Most recently, I hired another sales manager, and now I have a full-fledged and, as I would like to think, promising team. My immediate goal is to turn this business into passive income with minimal investment of time. This will allow to pay attention to strategic development and other types of businesses that are not related to the outsource.
Now I want to pay attention to the necessary things that helped me on the way. This may well be useful to anyone who will follow a similar path:
Leadership and management experience. At one training I heard: “Responsibility is equal to strength. The more responsibility we take, the stronger we become. ” Then it was strange and not clear to me. Now it is the most important principle on which my business and spiritual growth is based. Since then, I have been trying to answer for everything that I come across in life - from social projects - to the status of headman in Chinese courses. If you see that somewhere there is the possibility of something to direct or lead, from cleaning to organizing a corporate party, grab it. Try to be an example to others. This is very important both for the creation of your business and your progress in current work.
With whom you lead - that and stole up. You may have heard this proverb. Just as the parents did not want to see us in the street company with Gopnik, just as all the people around us have a strong influence on our behavior and attitudes. If you want to become an entrepreneur, then communicating exclusively with ordinary IT specialists - it will be very difficult for you to do this. Over the past year, my circle of contacts has changed greatly, and now I communicate mainly with businessmen as well. And not at all because I am conceited - we just have common views and a similar worldview.
Where to find entrepreneurs? In my city there is a club of entrepreneurs, there can enter, as well as the director of the plant, and just a very beginner student. Congresses and weekly meetings are also organized there.
You can watch business TV channels (in Ukraine it's UBC) and go to trainings for entrepreneurs. It helped me that I entered the business community as an independent IT consultant. I started advising new acquaintances to the entrepreneur - how they can use google-docs, CRM, project management systems - and they also helped with tips.
One of the well-known problems of IT-Schnick, this isolation from the basic business skills . In order to add business skills to IT skills - you need to learn from businessmen and / or stuff the bumps yourself. You should create a product or service for which you agree to pay.
Psychological background. Ideally, your company should have a balance of abilities, you need to look for a team of those who will compensate for your weaknesses. A classic IT person is great at doing business with a successful sales person or a research consultant.
Team recruitment. I found the whole team in different ways, but in all cases there was one thing - people like me (I spend a lot of time with them later), intelligent and reliable. I read on the Internet how to conduct an interview, recalled how I was going. If this is a developer position - you can give a test task to a house without a deadline - and watch how people will do it. For a non-developmental position - this task may be a motivation letter.
Choice of direction. The main thing is to work with people in business (employees and customers) to bring pleasure. I try to choose both clients and employees that I like. Similarly, the subject of business. You should choose a niche (it is desirable that it be fairly new - for example, social networks or applications for mobile devices), study all the books (if necessary, you can not regret it and buy fresh from Amazon).
In general, the success of an enterprise in the field of IT (as, perhaps, in another field), in my opinion, depends primarily on the “pumping” of the following skills:
• self-organization (your habits become the basis of the company: sometimes fortunately, sometimes unfortunately)
• ability to work with people (with customers and employees)
• leadership and management skills
• knowledge of technology (or have a number who understands)
• the right choice of niche (clients should be, but there are not so many performers, or they are somewhat inferior)
All skills, except the last, can be pumped both in the workplace (if allowed), and outside it (volunteer, cultural or other activities).
The most important thing that I understood, working on myself and on projects, is a long-known
the truth: “the road will be mastered by the one who goes.” To change something - you need to take risks and go out of your comfort zone.
I want to quote a classic (“How the steel was tempered”) as a conclusion:
The most precious thing for a person is life. She is given to him once, and it is necessary to live it so that it would not be excruciatingly painful for purposelessly lived years, so that he would not burn shame for his petty and petty past, so that when he was dying he could say: all life and all forces were given to the most beautiful in the world (....) And we must hurry to live. After all, a ridiculous disease or some kind of tragic accident can interrupt her ...
I think my experience will be all the more useful because it is still very fresh in my head, which means it can also help someone to make a quantum leap in both lifestyle and income.
Until that moment when I decided that I would become a freelancer, and later a director of the company, I worked for two years in a Ukrainian-Slovenian company with embedded-systems, and later a half-year web-developer in a Jordanian company. Despite my ability and creativity, I was a fairly weak programmer, since 8 hours of daily work in one place demotivated me. My colleagues told me directly that I was not very similar to a programmer in my temperament. Then I was even a little upset about it.
')
Between jobs, I worked for the AIESEC youth organization, in which social projects are fairly well established in the form of business processes. There I got the first real experience of working in a team, planning and implementing projects, working in a critical situation. Working as a programmer, I did not come across this much.
Having gone on an IT internship (again from AIESEC) to Jordan, I not only lived half a year in a mysterious country, but also learned new technologies. Returning back to Ukraine, I still have Jordanian customers and new ones appeared. There were more and more orders, and I realized that I could find people, train them with technologies and already have some sort of business. Something like this happened, of course, not everything is as smooth as we would like.
Most recently, I hired another sales manager, and now I have a full-fledged and, as I would like to think, promising team. My immediate goal is to turn this business into passive income with minimal investment of time. This will allow to pay attention to strategic development and other types of businesses that are not related to the outsource.
Now I want to pay attention to the necessary things that helped me on the way. This may well be useful to anyone who will follow a similar path:
Leadership and management experience. At one training I heard: “Responsibility is equal to strength. The more responsibility we take, the stronger we become. ” Then it was strange and not clear to me. Now it is the most important principle on which my business and spiritual growth is based. Since then, I have been trying to answer for everything that I come across in life - from social projects - to the status of headman in Chinese courses. If you see that somewhere there is the possibility of something to direct or lead, from cleaning to organizing a corporate party, grab it. Try to be an example to others. This is very important both for the creation of your business and your progress in current work.
With whom you lead - that and stole up. You may have heard this proverb. Just as the parents did not want to see us in the street company with Gopnik, just as all the people around us have a strong influence on our behavior and attitudes. If you want to become an entrepreneur, then communicating exclusively with ordinary IT specialists - it will be very difficult for you to do this. Over the past year, my circle of contacts has changed greatly, and now I communicate mainly with businessmen as well. And not at all because I am conceited - we just have common views and a similar worldview.
Where to find entrepreneurs? In my city there is a club of entrepreneurs, there can enter, as well as the director of the plant, and just a very beginner student. Congresses and weekly meetings are also organized there.
You can watch business TV channels (in Ukraine it's UBC) and go to trainings for entrepreneurs. It helped me that I entered the business community as an independent IT consultant. I started advising new acquaintances to the entrepreneur - how they can use google-docs, CRM, project management systems - and they also helped with tips.
One of the well-known problems of IT-Schnick, this isolation from the basic business skills . In order to add business skills to IT skills - you need to learn from businessmen and / or stuff the bumps yourself. You should create a product or service for which you agree to pay.
Psychological background. Ideally, your company should have a balance of abilities, you need to look for a team of those who will compensate for your weaknesses. A classic IT person is great at doing business with a successful sales person or a research consultant.
Team recruitment. I found the whole team in different ways, but in all cases there was one thing - people like me (I spend a lot of time with them later), intelligent and reliable. I read on the Internet how to conduct an interview, recalled how I was going. If this is a developer position - you can give a test task to a house without a deadline - and watch how people will do it. For a non-developmental position - this task may be a motivation letter.
Choice of direction. The main thing is to work with people in business (employees and customers) to bring pleasure. I try to choose both clients and employees that I like. Similarly, the subject of business. You should choose a niche (it is desirable that it be fairly new - for example, social networks or applications for mobile devices), study all the books (if necessary, you can not regret it and buy fresh from Amazon).
In general, the success of an enterprise in the field of IT (as, perhaps, in another field), in my opinion, depends primarily on the “pumping” of the following skills:
• self-organization (your habits become the basis of the company: sometimes fortunately, sometimes unfortunately)
• ability to work with people (with customers and employees)
• leadership and management skills
• knowledge of technology (or have a number who understands)
• the right choice of niche (clients should be, but there are not so many performers, or they are somewhat inferior)
All skills, except the last, can be pumped both in the workplace (if allowed), and outside it (volunteer, cultural or other activities).
The most important thing that I understood, working on myself and on projects, is a long-known
the truth: “the road will be mastered by the one who goes.” To change something - you need to take risks and go out of your comfort zone.
I want to quote a classic (“How the steel was tempered”) as a conclusion:
The most precious thing for a person is life. She is given to him once, and it is necessary to live it so that it would not be excruciatingly painful for purposelessly lived years, so that he would not burn shame for his petty and petty past, so that when he was dying he could say: all life and all forces were given to the most beautiful in the world (....) And we must hurry to live. After all, a ridiculous disease or some kind of tragic accident can interrupt her ...
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/108593/
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