What’s Next: Tony’s Top 10 Tips for Entrepreneurs
By Goh Thean Eu October 2, 2015
- Shared his lessons learnt on branding and marketing
- It’s people who will deliver your ideas
LOVE him or hate him, you can’t just ignore AirAsia cofounder Tony Fernandes, who rocked the house earlier this week as the closing speaker for Digital News Asia’s (DNA) inaugural What’s Next business technology conference in Cyberjaya.
With his trademark biting wit and expected insights into the business world, he had the floor in stitches at times, or furiously taking down notes at others.
The What’s Next: The Business Impact of Disruptive Technology conference (#WhatsNextDNA) was organised by Digital News Asia (DNA).
It was sponsored by Malaysia’s national ICT custodian Multimedia Development Corp (MDeC), which oversees the MSC Malaysia and Digital Malaysia national programmes, and big data analytics company Fusionex International.
Now a true-blooded tycoon after having disrupted the global aviation industry, it’s easy to forget that Fernandes trod the same entrepreneurs’ path that many DNA readers are treading now, and that he faced his own challenges in bringing a crazy idea – that everyone can fly – to fruition.
No surprise then that he had some tips for today’s entrepreneurs and startups. Below is a compilation of the 10 tips he shared during the conference, in his own words:
1) You don’t need to know everything
I came from the music business. I knew nothing about planes. To all the entrepreneurs out there, you don’t need to know everything about what you want to do. It’s all about the idea, it’s about passion, it’s about implementing it.
2) Just do it!
Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it. You’ve got one life, so you can’t press the rewind button and say ‘I wished I had done that.’
So I recommend to all of you out there, just do it. Live your life to the utmost, be positive. If you fail, at least you have tried.
I have failed miserably at Formula One, but I have no regrets because I got to stand with the greats from Ferrari, McLaren, and others.
3) Passion is a key problem-solver
Dreams do come true. Don’t worry about failure. You have one life, make the most out of it. Nine times out of 10, if you have the passion, you will find a way to work through it.
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