Team members: Jay Nagdeo, Guarav Patil, José Ignacio Musso, Rocco Sciaraffa, 梁子杰

Who and what can we trust?

In a time where the phenomenon of fake news is growing and social media enables fake news to reach a larger audience, we will have to be more careful where we gain our information. Last week, I went to a seminar where fake news was the topic and the aim was to discuss what impact it can have and how it can be prevented. The seminar was at the company Narva which is a communications agency. The seminar was in a form of panel discussion where they had invited three persons: Jack Werner, Isobel Hadley-Kamptz and Jonas Nordling. All three are working with journalism in one way or another. Both Jack and Isobel is active on Twitter and it was through Twitter I knew about this seminar.

The first topic was to define what fake news is. As the term “fake news” has grown and it has been used for different kinds of news, the definition has started to become indistinct. However, the panel set the definition to be: fake news is journalism that consists of deliberate misinformation spread via the traditional print, broadcasting news media, or via Internet-based social media. Fake news is written and published with the intent to mislead in order to gain financially or politically attention. One example is where a letter to the editor was published where both the content and the writer were fake. With further investigation, it was discovered that the writer never existed in the city he/she mentioned to live in. This leads to the questions: who and what can we trust?

One of the main discussion point was whether the reader or the journalists and newspapers should be responsible for fact-checking the sources of an article. Should the reader be better on investigating the source and be more cautious on eye-catching headlines? Or should the news media have the responsible for doing the fact-checking. My opinion is that both sides carry this responsibility, however as a reader you carry the bigger responsibility for your own. One solution that was mentioned by Jack Werner was that you could include a basic journalism class in elementary school to make children aware in young age how content and information is created. This could increase the quality of the newspapers regarding fact-checking as the common reader have a better understanding of the creation of content.
This was only a small part of what was discussed in the seminar and it would not make sense to try to cover everything. What do you think – what responsibility do you have as a reader? Could we as entreprenurs create something to solve this problem?

I write this post to share with you the biggest problem of entrepreneurship (imo) and solutions which I’ve found to help to solve the problem.

Human beings just happen to be involved and engaged with the idea – but only until they feel they don’t like to be it anymore. That’s a problem when trying to make your own company. For sure there will be days you don’t feel like continuing, but the company never succeeds if the entrepreneur quits when feeling tired. Unlike day job, in your own business there rarely is anyone to kick your ass to get you up at morning and keep going even if you wouldn’t feel like it today.

When tired, learn to rest, not quit.

(Tired could be also read as “forgetting the original reason why we’re doing this”.)
I’ve found two very good solutions to this problem.

1. Mentorship: Get a mentor. If needed, give a small share of your company to the guy, who helps your shares to become valuable. As a mentor I’d recommend to get an experienced entrepreneur with whom you can enjoy spending time and who has likely done similar business before. If you’re doing direct sales / network marketing, you’re lucky guy, mentor should be included in your business automatically. If not, you have to find someone interested and experienced by yourself. Get on your feet, go out and network with people. Easier said than done. You should find someone who has already the experience, then maybe offering a lunch and finally convincing him about your business and motivating him to mentor and motivate you. Luckily there is some networking events, programs etc nowadays even especially designed to create mentorships.
   .
   And the lazy (read: “wise“) way I found very useful lately: In Stockholm there’s an app called “Lunchback”. There’s lots of people who are interested to be mentors. Their Linkedin-accounts are connected, so you can stalk them in advance. When found a great candidate with suitable skills, you can offer him/her a lunch. So it’s like Tinder for entrepreneurs (and other people who are networking). The point of the mentorship (for example) is, that there is someone just kicking your ass, setting goals with you and asking how have you proceeded with the goals. It’s better to give 5% of your company to the guy who kicks your ass to make it a $million-business, than having 100% of nothing by yourself.
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2. Self motivation: This is nice. My life turned upside down when I learned this. How to brainwash yourself?
   Basically the point is to realise how much personal feelings at the moment affect in working. Are you inspired or did someone just convince you that your idea is going to never work? After realising this, it’s (almost) just logic. Working is related to feelings, so it’s important to be able to be inspired and motivated as often as possible, so your working is as effective as possible. (Sidenote: I believe that burnout doesn’t come because you did too much what you like, as hobbies≈business. I believe burnout comes doing too much something you’re not really motivated to do.) So get motivated. Basically feelings can be affected more easily than one even normally thinks. The challenge here is that you have to figure out what is the thing  or ritual that gets you motivated. Again, if you’re doing network marketing, you should have this included in your business automatically. Maybe you have some kind of pre-designed system including audiobooks / meeting other friends weekly. But if not, you have to figure it out yourself. I would say try to find out something which you can do whenever wherever. As I like music very much, my ritual is just a few favourite songs from my earphones anywhere where I am. And then I’m on fire and ready to win the world. (You can try to check Youtube e.g. “entrepreneur motivational video”.)
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   Challenge: When feeling not inspired, you often don’t even feel wanting to get inspired. It’s like rat race. Because you don’t feel inspired, you don’t want to feel inspired. And this is how you’re not going to get inspired and get things done. So after finding your own ritual (e.g. top songs) or whatever, there is an important preparation to be done.
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   Solution: Do the preparation: The execution of your “ritual” should be as easy as possible. Optimize it to the very end. Have your earphones always with you and the playlist ready on the home screen. Because when feeling not-inspired, you’re potentially not going to start researching good songs. That point it have to be easy and idiot-proof.

If you have something to add or
if you have found an other strategy to stay motivated,
please share even a short comment, I would appreciate!

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The writer is an exchange student from Aalto university, Helsinki, where he studies Information Networks. Practically it means really focusing on nothing specific, but studying a lot of subjects other engineers usually don’t; business, communication, networking, design, philosophy, etc. Meanwhile living dream life as serial entrepreneur and investor, with around five different businesses (and counting), but non of them as big as should be…yet. Trying to graduate as fast as possible to be able to put full effort in the business & investing. Basically he is “the lazy guy” who is very busy trying to be able to do nothing (≈ definition of an entrepreneur) and planning to retire at 40’s. Loves entrepreneurship because of the chance to define he’s own rules; especially making money “without working”. Hobbies include travelling only (but often) if it makes him money. 

Warning! This blog-post contains spoilers!

Recently, two of my friends came over to visit me in Stockholm. Since our day of city exploring was spoiled by the harsh April snow, we changed our plans for the evening and decided to hit the cinema. The movie we picked was “The Founder”, which tells the interesting story of the entrepreneur Ray Kroc, who transformed McDonald’s into the most successful fast food operation in the world.

Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc in “The Founder”

It all started in 1955, when Ray Kroc got an order for 8 of his 5-arm multimixer milkshake machines, which he was selling at that time for a living. Wondering who would ever need to simultaneously produce 40 milkshakes, Ray drives to San Bernardino where he meets the brothers Mac and Dick McDonald and their booming restaurant. Amazed by Mac’s “Speedee Service System”, able to make a burger in 30 seconds, Ray offers the brother’s to help them turn their restaurant into a successful franchise. After some negotiations, a contract is signed under the conditions that the McDonald brothers retain full control of every decision made concerning the franchise. From this moment, the movie becomes interesting from an entrepreneurial view as you follow Ray and his Kroc Style of doing business, which is far from pretty.

The first problem Ray faced was that it was hard to keep control over the franchisees and maintain the same levels of quality in the restaurants. To solve this problem, Ray contracted hard working middle-class people as franchisees instead of rich people who didn’t really care about the restaurant. In addition, he provided training and gave a strict set of rules so every burger would taste the same. More restaurants were opened throughout the country, but Ray was barely able to cover all his expenses. This was because of the contract he initially signed, giving him only 1.4% of the revenues of McDonalds. Besides that, it was nearly impossible to change anything in the franchise as the McDonald brothers had to approve it first, and they didn’t like change.

Then Ray meets Harry Sonneborn, who shows Ray that he is actually not in the hamburger selling business, but in the real-estate business. With the help of Harry, Ray starts the Franchise Realty Corporation, which buys the land where a McDonald’s restaurant would be located, and then rent it to the franchisee for a monthly fee. However, Ray is still held back by his contract and decides to buy out the McDonalds brothers and take complete ownership of the restaurant. In 1961, they make a deal for $2.7million, leaving the brothers with $1million each after taxes and, to Ray’s frustration, their first restaurant in San Bernardino. Additionally, the brothers asked for an annual royalty of 1%, confirmed by a handshake. Since they lost ownership of the McDonald’s franchise, Ray forces the brothers to change the name of their restaurant and treats them as competitors: “If I saw a competitor drowning, I’d shove a hose down his throat”. He does this by opening a McDonald’s on the same block, making the brothers go out of business. Besides that, they never received their annual royalties since they could not prove it on paper.

This all fits in the greed driven, Kroc Style of doing business, shown throughout the movie. It portrays a different kind of entrepreneurship, not based on talent or education, but on good old persistence and determination. After watching the movie, I really disliked Ray Kroc and his McDonald’s, but barely a week later I found myself in a McDonalds again, munching on a Big Mac.