Reinventing the Wheel

“In business, you have to reinvent the wheel every day; once you stop doing that, you are finished” said an acquaintance of mine. Considering that he started from scratch and now owns 18 golf courses, there must be some truth to it.

Fundamentals in business schools are just generalisations of the real thing. An entrepreneur is required to learn, evolve and customise business processes, often learning important lessons on the way.

The above mentioned gentleman was a regular at my brother’s hotel. His insights into business were marvellous. I often used to share a bottle of wine with him, during which we would discuss a business opportunity and how to go about it, scribbling on a piece of paper while doing so. I would have to say that those pieces of paper have given me more insights in running a business than I have learnt in the past one year at Alliance.

We would also come up with a plan to do some cost cutting or utilise some resource more efficiently in our respective businesses. Something as trivial as getting a better deal on the disposable cups for the coffee machines or getting slot machines were discussed at length often scouring the yellow pages and doing phone calls, justified by saying “Every penny counts”.

Lessons lie in the rough, obscured by the annals of banality. Understanding it and implementing it requires skill and fortitude.