Entrepreneur: A Person of Independent Thought, Attitude, and Action

“Jadi, jangan berpikir mau jadi entrepreneur kalau Anda tidak bisa bebas merdeka, sesederhana itu! … Kebebasan adalah jantungnya sang wiraswasta; the heart of the entrepreneur.”
– Bob Sadino, Mereka Bilang Saya Gila!

On one occasion that I attended earlier this year, Ir. Ciputra mentioned that there are 3 common types of entrepreneur; entrepreneur by-nature (family background), entrepreneur by-accident, and entrepreneur by-learning. Within this writing, I am going to put focus on the last type since I consider lots of people around me (include myself) are grouped into the last one as we grew up within strong culture of conservative academic background (i.e. ITB, UI, ITS, etc.) yet have the very strong passion to start our own venture. We are type of persons who are changing or strengthening our ‘opportunity-seeking-value creating-DNA’ by exposing ourselves directly to entrepreneurial world.

It has been quite some times I gazed for an answer on what really thwart most people around me to start realizing their entrepreneurial dream. Lots of strong reasons have already been established by many successful Indonesian entrepreneurs, alas there are also counter-reacting reasons or boundaries come from within.

Taking lessons from the quote above, any person who would like to start their journey in entrepreneurial world will need to be a free-man, as independence is the heart of the entrepreneur. I need to get rid of the boundaries (batasan-batasan) that hinder me from start realizing my dream and expanding my comfort zone, so that I could really do the thing that I love (refer to: http://jakarespati-wiradisuria.blogspot.com/2009/04/do-something-that-you-love-or-love.html ).

Excessive Fear boundary (ketakutan yang berlebihan)
The first one, which is the most common, is the boundary that comes from the fear of failure. This will leads to the fear of making decisive action and bearing higher risk. If the fear is not being taken care thoroughly by now, I’ll definitely just say good bye to the passion of starting up my new venture. The objective of expanding our comfort zone to entrepreneurial world would be just a mere utopia in my head.

The excessive fear is also related with the perceived expectation from society/surroundings to college graduate that I am considered to be a successful alumnus if I have a steady paying career, work at huge Multi-National Company, etc; although it might not be 100% correct, but it did happen to my surroundings.

Excessive Hope boundary (harapan yang berlebihan)
Possessing hope is fundamental when it comes to achieving something that is far beyond my current comfort zone state. This is very true since without hope there will be no passion that drive me much further to reach our end-in-mind. However, contrary to common belief where people consider hope is everything, there is a flop of having a hope, especially when the hope is considered to be excessive or too high expectation on the result/return.

The excessive hope may give negative impact on early disappointment that could make the entire entrepreneurial dream vanish prematurely.

Main lesson of this point is that by wiping excessive hope out of my mind, I could make every step of my day by day journey feels lighter and full of pleasure and happiness.

Excessive Theoretical Considerations boundary (pertimbangan teoritis yang berlebihan)
The last boundary is the most interesting one, especially to those who gained or are getting their degrees in engineering. The beauty of having an engineering background is that I am being equipped with strong analytical skill and structured logical way of thinking. And the real beauty will shine when I am involving myself in solving any technical issue that we are expected or designed to solve.

On the other hand, that kind of beauty is actually considered to be a double-bladed knife since having too robust logical process will makes most engineer a “Mr. Know-it-all-narrow-minded person” with abundance of theoretical assumption and excessive calculated risk. At the end of the day, the beauty will fade and all we see is the old fagot with very restricted knowledge to make any significant progress in life, while other person having the luxurious of being open-minded and realizing what is really important to make progress in life.

With that particular way of thinking, I realize that I won’t be able to make any progress since all my next step will be hindered by excessive fears. Hence, “just-do-it” approach might be the only way to make me really did it… AND IT WORKED =D

“He who can not change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress.”
– Anwar El-Sadat

Change thyself. That is the main lesson learnt from the quote above which is utterly correlated with the need of acquiring independence of thought, attitude, and action. Without being open minded we won’t be able to change the way we perceived things, hence, will not be able to make any of our dream a reality.

Jakarespati Wiradisuria (00.2767)