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Business is like a tora - tora ride, where at one point of time, you will be on a high, and the very next moment you will find yourself at the lowest ebb. The moment an Entrepreneur starts reacting vigorously to every high and low, then that becomes the end of the story. I still remember the words of my last company’s CEO - “Externalize in Business”. This was his answer to the question of how he managed to succeed in business. But there is a very thin line separating externalization and complacency. In business, there is no room for complacency at any point of time.

Ask any busy business person - Do you get quality time to spend with your family? Majority will have a negative answer to this question. It is but an accepted norm, that when you are in the path of Entrepreneurship, the time that you get to spend with your family is not the same as it used be when you were not on this path. Now the big question arises - how to manage your personal and professional life?

I did a survey on what is that trait which makes a difference between a successful and unsuccessful leader. I got some very interesting responses, which I want to share with my blog readers:

It is a very well know fact that nobody reaches zenith of success by themselves. Dale Carnegie once said that, “There is no such thing as a self made man”. A person is known by the company he keeps. So whatever business you are in, surround yourself with a group of people who are themselves successful in their own way. One of the important factor, in deciding a team is to associate with people who can compensate for your weakness.

There are various valuation methods for a start up company, which are being enumerated below:

1. Valuation Method: $5 MM limit

Description: Never invest greater than $5 MM

Pros: Simple and provides necessary upside risk

Cons: Can be too high sometimes

2. Valuation Method: Berkus method

Description: Total value ranges from $1-$6 MM, starting with $200K and adding $1 MM each for a sound idea, a prototype, a quality board, or any roll-out sales, and adding $1-2MM for a quality management team

Forbes declared Warren Buffet as the richest man on earth, with an estimated worth of $62 billion. He is followed by Carlos Slim Helu with a net worth of $60 billion and Bill Gates with a net worth of $58 billon at 2^nd and 3^rd position respectively. US investment and finance Guru Warren Buffet overtook the software tycoon Bill Gates, with a net worth increase of $10 billion from $52 billion last year to $62 billion this year. This is the first time after 13 years that Bill Gates has been pushed to 3^rd position. Telecom giant from Mexica, Carlos Slim Helu, upped his worth from $49 billion last year o $60 billion.

Its official now! Mark Zuckerberg, aged 23, has been declared as the world’s youngest billionaire as per the latest release from the Forbes Magazine. Forbes ranked him 785 out of 1123 billionaires across the globe. Zuckerberg’s net worth is estimated to be $1.5 billion, considering five billion dollars valuation for Facebook and Zuckerberg’s 30 percent stake. Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of the world’s most famous and addictive social networking website Facebook. He is also credited with the reputation of being the youngest self-made billionaire, who built his business from scratch. Microsoft bought 1.6% stake in Facebook in October 2007 for $240 million, increasing the valuation of Facebook to a whopping $15 billion.

Let us first try to understand what a break even point is all about. Break even period is the time required to get profitable outputs from a business viz. the average returns from the investment is more than the amount invested in the business. There are two concepts behind the creak even concept - break even period and break even volume.

Calculating break-even is a theoretical algorithm and can only be used in a strict sense if all of the future business costs are known with certainty and the mix of sales for several products can again be predicted accurately.

Before venturing into writing a business plan, we should be very clear about the objective of creating a business plan, and what is the target audience. The Business Plan can primarily be used for two purpose – first to showcase the company’s credentials, for putting it forward to the investors ( banks, venture capitalists, angel investors, private equities ); second purpose is to use the business plan internally for providing orientation and direction to the company. So before venturing out to write the business plan, a decision has to be made regarding the target audience.

This is the article on how an ideal employee and employer should be:

An ideal employee should have following traits:

1. Work like an Entrepreneur: This may sound bit too misleading. But this is what makes the difference. What basically is meant here is that every employee should own their work, take complete ownership on whatever they do. You don’t need a title to be a leader. Employers love it when they find that somebody who can relieve them of their work pressure.