My best friends, Kin and Kit are staying with me in the last few days.
Kit was a awarding winning teachers. She won numerous teaching awards in teaching Chinese in Australia and in Hong Kong. Kin just obtained his PhD. In fact they arrived immediately after the graduation ceremony.
Both Kin and Kit have just retired. Kin and I are working on an interesting project which will be revealed later when ready. Kit is working on a book project with the other award winning teacher Betty I mentioned some weeks back.
Our dinner conversation somehow wandered into asking what makes someone successful.
I always thought that it was failure because there is Chinese saying that "failure is the mother of success". Is that only a Chinese saying, any equivalent in other languages/cultures?
Kit said in her farewell speech delivered to her students a month back that in fact success is the mother of success. Small success gives us the motivation to continue to work and work harder, which leads to more success. The trick is to create small success to begin with and build on the sucesses.
It makes a lot of sense.
Many entrepreneur texts suggest people to think "big" and be pesistent. Venture capitalist wants the entrepreneur to stay focus and works on the single project whicih the capitalist supports. This last point I think is a bit selfish. While VC spreads their investment in multiple ventures, why do they want the entrepreneur to put all his eggs in a basket?
I think both of these suggestions are against the human nature. At least they are not the way I work.
I am motivated by success. It does not matter it is small or large. Success bleeds success.
I have been and still am working on multiple projects. Yes, I am spreading myself too thinly in some cases. However, many a time, the thinking that I put in one project produces new insight in other projects. I just need to have more time and more people helping me. Up to now, the major problem I have with my projects are that they are mostly solo projects. I changed that couple of years back and things are moving on nicely. There are still some projects I am still the sole owner. I need to clear them either by finishing them or by inviting people to join me to share the load and of course the fruit of success, if any. For the following two solo projects, I am now seeking interested partners:
www.snapsurvey.com - an online data collection platform, and
www.scormplayer.com - a CD-based mechanism for delivering SCORM-compliant courses.
Contact me offline if you are interested.
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