Alas, all that came to nought. Or maybe.

As they say, Experience, simply put is just a matter of knowing what works and what doesn’t. As I progressed in my career, I was helped through various mentors to understand the business – in its truest sense; accelerating my understanding of the business fundamentals. I would like to share a few -

1) Finance is very simple. All the corporate finance, M&A strategies come to nought if your product doesn’t sell for a profit. Make a product at $1, sell it at $5 with expenses of $3 or less. Essentially, a profit margin of 20% on every piece and you’ll be rich. That’s all the finance you need to know.

2) Don’t try to please all the people all the time – Customer experience definitely is the key to success. But that doesn’t mean you need to please all the people all the time. Know your market, make them extremely happy. Better to have 20% of your market extremely happy than 50% of your market okishly happy/not satisfied.

3) Know what you want and the rest will follow – (I found this awfully strategic to understand. Some people find it sooner rather than later).

4) If it doesn’t generate money, it is not a good business – (This was in response to some Web 2.0 idea that I had thought of). Nowadays, this is better known by the jargon ‘monetize your transactions’. (So simple, yet incredibly hard to deal with. Consider the case of SAAB of GM which had been generating losses for 19 out of 20 years of its operation. Now, who was managing GM again?)

5) Surround yourself with ‘knowledgeable’ people – Now, ‘knowledgeable’ is definitely relative, and hence controversial. But you get the point – its only a positive spiral.

6) The last but the most important – Be ethical and operate with a smile. Ethical courses in B-schools do not solve the problem nor do communication skills courses. The fulfillment of this important aspect can only happen through the person himself.