Entrepreneurship

Sell tomatoes, earn crores

Online business gurus are misleading people

Nick Huber, a bootstrapper suggested that one can earn millions in six months with the help of ten tomato plants. Social media is full of people teaching to build businesses, grow businesses or earn money with little investment.

Tall claims

Marketing workshops and strategy sessions for small businesses attract business owners. Vivek Bindra runs Bada Business. His entrepreneurship program claims that it will help SMEs do big business or become a big business (Bada Business). Check out his video of starting your own pre-school within INR 75000. Or a passive business, which gets you money while you sleep. Rahul Jain teaches how to double the profits. Amol Mourya shares the secret of starting a business with zero money. Sandeep Maheshwari explains marketing to a make up artist. And, the guru of gurus Tony Robbins teaching how to sell anything. Nick Huber suggests that anyone can multiply $50 worth of tomato plants to earn INR 32 crores. Dev Gadhvi asks his viewers to grow the business ten times.

Realty check

Marketer Samuel Brealey helps small businesses.

He tweeted, “And then there is the persona workshop… or the one day strategy session. It’s ridiculous, asking business owners to just “invent” their market in their own minds. Not teaching them how to research. Then asking them to come up with a whole strategy, in a day. Totally useless.”

All above examples put onus on business owners to make strategies and execute. They do not explain the process, which business owners can act upon. There should be a playbook for building a one kitchen business, a local gym, handmade cosmetics etc.

Odd one out

Ravi Handa achieved overnight success after the hard work of 13 years. He is the only one, who is not dishing out imaginary business ideas. After he sold his bootstrapped business to Unacademy, he did an AMA ( ask my anything) on Reddit. People asked him the secrets.

He shared:

Don’t do it. Forget the MVP, focus all your energy, time, money, resources on finding the right cofounders / team.

You can build thousand products / MVPs if you have the right people around you. I do not want to be rude or dismissive or discouraging but in fintech — if you do not have a senior tech guy — I am sorry, no one is going to take you seriously.

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