Vishal P. Rao
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Joined: 23 Jun 2005
Posts: 491
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# Posted: 3 Aug 2005 07:21 � Edited by: Vishal P. Rao
Many times home-based business owners and entrepreneurs are perceived to be entirely money-focused, with no real interest in the needs of humanity or no real interest in giving back to society. This is far from the truth, as evidenced by the following home-based business model and the entrepreneur that owns and runs this business.
We are exposed to many individuals throughout our own writing career, but none moved us as much, or made as much of an impression on us as the gentleman in this article. He is part entrepreneur, part scholar, and most of all, a great humanitarian, using his own home-based business to give back to a segment of society that needs it the most: sick children.
Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian is a heart surgeon from India, with a thriving practice. His medical specialization and focus has been children suffering from Congenital Heart Disease (CHD), and Dr. Mani has devoted his life to assisting these children and their families. Dr. Mani has a site devoted to fighting this dreaded disease in children: www.CHDinfo.com.
In addition, Dr. Mani uses his own successful Internet business to promote this worthy cause and routinely runs the "Heart Kids Blogathon" at http://www.EzineMarketingCenter.com/blog/. During this Blogathon, Dr. Mani updates his blog every thirty minutes, for twenty-four hours non-stop, as a fund raiser for CHD patients. The good doctor credits his Internet business with the ability to raise much needed funding for this very worthy cause!
During an interview with Dr. Mani, he also revealed more of his "business side" and did give background on the start up of his business, his methods of success, and the future of his business.
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WAHF:
What is your prior business background? Are you the first in your family to have your own business, or do you come from an entrepreneurial family background?
Dr. Mani:
None, I'm a "First Generation Entrepreneur". Indeed, most of my family doesn't know or understand, what exactly it is I do on the Internet. And I think they'd be pretty amazed and even shocked if they ever knew just how extensive my online business has now become!
WAHF:
Which academic degrees, if any, do you possess? Have these helped your business?
Dr. Mani:
I'm a medical doctor, a heart surgeon qualified as a specialist in pediatric cardiac surgery. The benefits to my business have been definite, but indirect. The driving purpose behind my online business is to raise funds to sponsor heart operations for kids from poor families, a direct consequence of my professional exposure to this burning problem. The organizational skills and management talent I acquired as a medical professional have also stood me in good stead while planning and developing my business.
WAHF:
How many businesses do you currently have online? Please name these.
Dr. Mani:
I run three related online businesses. One, the first, is the "Ezine Marketing Center", www.EzineMarketingCenter.com, which focuses on teaching entrepreneurs the correct, effective and profitable way to publish an e-mail newsletter and use it to market their business. The second is "Instant Niche Business", www.Instant-Niche-Business.com, a series of turnkey business systems built around popular niche markets. The last is a broad conglomeration of Affiliate Marketing projects where I promote products and services created by other businesses for a referral fee.
WAHF:
How many businesses did you own in the past? If these are no longer in business, why did you move on?
Dr. Mani:
The ones I own are all I had. They have been built and grown steadily over the past nine years, and are still enjoyable enough that I retain my interest in them.
WAHF:
Is your family supportive of your endeavors? If not, why not?
Dr. Mani:
My wife is a partner in my online businesses and in addition runs her own also. She is incredibly supportive of everything I do. None of my other family members really know or understand what is involved, so they are neither supportive nor negative about it. And I like keeping it that way!
WAHF:
What have been the greatest challenges you've faced in your business overall? The greatest challenges in the day to day operations?
Dr. Mani:
I had to learn everything from scratch. Fortunately, there was enough material online; but it was hard work sifting the chaff from the grain. My biggest challenge was testing everything and finding what worked well. It wasn't until much later that I could afford to pay for high quality training and at that point, things really took off.
Another big hurdle I faced early on were the technological limitations working on the Internet from India. In 1995, we had very slow, very uncertain dial-up access that made the simplest tasks time consuming and frustrating. Today, it is a whole lot better.
WAHF:
What have been the greatest rewards for you personally of your business?
Dr. Mani:
The ability to follow my dream. The satisfaction of seeing something that I barely thought possible, now turning into something practical and real. I first set out to try and make some money on the Internet, and use the money to fund a few heart operations for kids whose families could not afford it. Today, I'm in the fortunate position of being able to fund around forty to fifty surgical heart procedures every year. Better still, I've come to meet and know some amazing people who continue to help and sponsor even more operations on an ongoing basis. I simply cannot imagine being able to achieve all this without my business activities.
WAHF:
If you could do one thing differently in the beginning, what would it be?
Dr. Mani:
I would delegate more work and build a team to handle most non-critical elements of the business. I would also invest more into learning things from experts, rather than experiment and learn them myself, which wasted more of my time and money in the end.
WAHF:
What advice would you give to anyone starting an online business?
Dr. Mani:
Be patient. Be willing to learn. Keep working hard. Never give up!
WAHF:
Where do you see your business in the next year? In the next five years? In the next ten years?
Dr. Mani:
In the next year, I expect my business to double and enter a few areas with innovative product lines. I also expect to work less in the business, by automating and outsourcing non-critical components.
In five years, I expect the business to have grown a further five to ten times larger in terms of revenue generation, and run at even greater efficiency as the processes and systems I'm currently planning and implementing will starting kicking in.
In ten years, I may be in a position that allows me to sell off components of the business or completely delegate them to others, allowing me to focus on core areas that continue to excite and interest me. Given the nature of technology to change rapidly, I'm also willing to bet that business, as it exists today, will bear little resemblance to business of the future, just as what exists today have very little in common with where I started in 1995.
WAHF:
If you were offered a franchise type situation or someone wanted to purchase your business, would you do it?
Dr. Mani:
Personally, I would not, for two reasons. A franchisee that would want to run my business would find this difficult, as I have not designed it in this fashion. I now know that the smart way to run a business is "hands-free" without the owner's involvement. I am working on redesigning it now in such a direction.
I wouldn't like to run any other business as a franchisee, because I love to innovate and experiment in areas that excite me, and unless the business I'm considering franchising meets these very narrow areas, it likely will not interest me.
I am not the type of person that can invest time and energy on the boring, yet critical day to day chores of running a business, with the same passion I have for creating new products, trying out innovative marketing ideas, and engaging in constant evolvement. Of course, the key is to hire others that can provide this component of the business, and once I have such a team, maybe franchising other businesses would become an option.
WAHF:
If you had the financial resources, would you continue to provide what you do without compensation?
Dr. Mani:
Absolutely. I love what I do in my business, and if I don't I simply stop doing it, or replace it with something else I love to do. The financial scorecard helps me simply keep track of my progress, and helps fund the surgeries I sponsor, but apart from that, the financial reward alone means very little. It is far more exciting to see a new product take off and sell in the marketplace, or a marketing idea succeed, than it does for me to count my earnings at the end of each week.
WAHF;
Do you have a staff now?
Not yet. My wife does assist with a few chores, and I do have some partners for some projects who handle support activities, but for now, technology and Web site tools handle most of the functions a regular staff would perform.
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As you can see, Dr. Mani is a great humanitarian, as well as a great businessperson. He's overcome odds with his online business, and he's helping to assist others with tragedy in their own lives through his online business efforts. Giving back, does indeed, ensure that you will "get" within any type of business, online or offline!
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