An Evening with Sidney Minassian
Sidney Minassian is the Founder & CEO of Contexti, a specialist Big Data Analytics Solutions and Training company serving the Australian market. More about his work can be found through this link: http://sidneyminassian.com/.
Our evening with Sidney Minassian was a great opportunity for members to rub shoulders with someone who had a lot of experience in taking risks, thinking outside of the box, and taking initiative with his innovative ideas. Sidney left us with a few inspiring lessons, that we can all take note of.
5 Lessons for entrepreneurship
Your job is to look for hair on fire and have your cheque book out (credit card out). Hair on fire means when you’re thinking about a business opportunity, you look for people that are in pain (there will be a sense of urgency). Your target audience is spending is money on solving that specific problem (think of insurance). In terms of validation: don’t talk to people you like, talk to people who aren’t your friends
Great product/service is not enough: As a future CEO/leader you need to think about the enter supply chain. Who are you competitors, how do you engage with employees. All these things will have a bigger impact on your success (there is a lot more that goes on in business). Tell everybody (people are worried of telling people about ideas).
Don’t worry about people stealing ideas: it requires you to articulate your business idea (how are you going to bring your service to the market). If you can’t articulate, you don’t have a chance.
Legacy matters: it’s important to consider how you make your money versus how much money you make. In terms of Contexti, Sidney identifies 5 key drivers (drives culture, the decision process). Value of character, goodness of heart is valuable. Second one is transparency (secrecy is cancer in relationships). Transparency in everything- profit numbers etc, completely open with direction, strategy, what they’re doing and why their doing it. Innovation; rethinking how we can take what we must make a faster and quality experience. Velocity (speed of business activities). Failure- core value, failure builds a person (ups and downs).
Drink coffee and have good thoughts: founders become their own enemies. Spent time with people. You are in the business of people- employees, customers ect.. Life of a CEO is always problems. It’s about solving problems.
Philosophy:
Mindset: gratitude is central. Look around the chaos around the world, look at the opportunities you have, start off with gratitude.
Self-awareness: around mindset, figure out what is you; strengths, weakenesses, ect. Society tends to condition us onto paths that do not make sense to us. Don’t listen to everyone advice. The world is full of contradictory advice. Listen to yourself. Create clarity around your own self-worth. Mindfulness is a muscle- positive language is important
Presence: it’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know. Your presence, your relationships, what you are doing, your direction. Building relationships with everyone, being open to connections, networking, coffee, meetups. Build a social profile: make sure you stand for something and make sure that its authentic (don’t copy other people’s personas).
Resilience: ups and downs are important. Don’t be suffocating on stress. There’s no overnight success. No one will tell you about this. Everything required work and determination. Throw yourself into the deep end. Do things that scare you.
For more, check out Sidney's channel: Show Innovation, a channel that showcases inspiring entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship.