Bagaimana Kita Memilih Mitra Membangun Usaha

Kutipan Tulisan :
Nukman Lutfie Bisa saja seseorang membangun bisnisnya dari awal sendirian. Tapi, bisa juga memilih bermitra saat membangun usaha dengan berbagai alasan rasional, terutama karena keterbatasan sumber daya yang dimiliki (misalnya modal, pengetahuan, jaringan) serta untuk berbagi risiko. Saya juga termasuk yang lebih nyaman membangun usaha bersama orang lain.
Namun memilih mitra tidaklah mudah. Mendapat mitra yang salah akan memperburuk kinerja bisnis, bahkan bisa membangkrutkan usaha. Saya termasuk yang pernah bangkrut di salah satu usaha (antara lain) karena mitra bisnis keluar dengan membawa seluruh modal dan uang kas yang ada. Untungnya, pengalaman itu hanya sekali, selanjutnya bisa mendapatkan mitra yang lebih bagus.

Pengalaman teman juga mirip. Mendapat mitra yang hanya memasukkan uang sebagai modal, lalu diam saja, namun di saat usaha berhasil, tiba-tiba meminta banyak posisi manajerial, termasuk direktur keuangan, dan perlahan-lahan mengambil alih perusahaan yang sudah jadi tersebut. Namun tak sedikit yang berhasil mendapatkan mitra bisnis bagus, kemudian usahanya berkembang. Dari pengalaman gagal dan berhasil itulah, juga pengalaman pengusaha lain, inilah tips pendek memilih mitra membangun usaha: 1. Pilih mitra bisnis yg punyai value, visi, dan semangat wirausaha yang sejalan dengan kita. Soal value misalnya, saya tidak ingin mengaliri darah karyawan (termasuk anak istrinya) dengan uang haram, maka saya mencari mitra bisnis yang anti korupsi. Mitra ini yang menarik saya keluar saat saya akan terjebak ke tender-tender yang harus dengan uang sogok. Soal visi, jika visi kita ingin menjadi pengusaha kelas nasional, mitra terbaik adalah yg visinya lebih tinggi, sekurang-kurangnya selevel dengan kita. Bukan mitra yang ingin jadi pengusaha kelas daerah.

2. Pilih mitra bisnis yang kompetensi yang berbeda dengan kita dan mengisi kekurangan kita. Audit diri sendiri, apa kekurangan kita untuk membangun usaha. Nah kekurangan itulah yang seharusnya diisi mitra kita. Kalau kita jago di marketing dan lemah di finance, cari mitra bisnis yang jago finance. Mitra yang kompetensinya sama dengan kita hanyalah akan mempersubur pertengkaran dan perbedaan pendapat yang seringkali kurang produktif.

3. Pilih mitra bisnis yg rekam jejak pribadi dan bisnisnya positif. Rekam jejak pribadinya yang tidak positif itu misalnya: suka menindas istri, kurang baik dengan tetangga, sering pinjam uang tak kembali, suka terlambat meeting dengan berbagai alasan, dan lainnya. Rekam jejak bisnis yang kurang positif itu misalnya: ngemplang uang mitra bisnisnya, mengkhianati mitra bisnisnya. Rekam jejak positif itu termasuk memiliki pengalaman bisnis yang baik (bukan hanya pengalaman gagal tapi juga pengalaman berhasil di bisnis). Untuk memulai usaha, sebaiknya hindari yang mitra yang hanya punya pengalaman gagal.

4. Pilih mitra yang kondisi keuangannya sudah stabil. Mitra yang mapan finansial, tidak akan mengganggu keuangan perusahaan. Bisa memisahkan uang perusahaan dan kebutuhan pribadi. Ingat lho, banyak pengusaha pemula yang sulit memisahkan uang pribadi dan bisnis. Selain itu, jika mitra bisnis kita mapan finansial, mereka tidak akan terburu-buru meminta deviden. Dengan demikian, laba usaha bisa lebih maksimal digunakan untuk pengembangan usaha.

Sesuatu Yang Menggetarkan dari Steve Jobs

Tulisan dari Pak Nukman

Kalau suka menonton film animasi seperti Toy Story, a Bugs Life, Finding Nemo, Monster Inc, dan The Incredible, kemungkinan besar Anda tahu Pixar — perusahaan animasi yang membidani film-film animasi tersebut. Kalau suka dengan dunia desain dan pengguna Mac, Anda pasti kenal Steve Jobs, sang perintis Apple Macintosh, yang kini merajalela dengan iPod-nya.

Steve Jobs merupakan fenomena entrepenuer dunia, yang mengalami perjalanan bisnis dan hidup yang luar biasa. Ia mendirikan Apple Computer, namun kemudian ditendang dari kursi CEO oleh Dewan Direksi. Sungguh pahit rasanya jika kita melahirkan sesuatu kemudian kita dipisahkan darinya. Namun ia bangkit dan membalikkan situasi. Ia membangun NEXT, yang kemudian disusul dengan perusahaan lain yakni Pixar yang melahirkan film animasi komputer pertama di dunia. Ia akhirnya berhasil kembali ke Apple melalui melalui proses akuisisi Apple terhadap Next. Kini, di tangannya kembali, Apple menggegerkan dunia dengan inovasi iPod yang mengalahkan kepoluleran Walkman Sony.

Ketika lahir, ibunya memutuskan untuk menyerahkannya ke orang lain. Ia tak pernah lulus kuliah. Ia pun pernah divonis mati karena kanker pankreas. Namun ia bisa melewati semua itu dengan baik.

(update Kamis, 6 Oktober 2011: kemarin, 5 Oktober 2011, Steve Jobs, kelahiran 24 Februari 1955, akhirnya meninggal karena kanker)

Ketika diundang ke Universitas Stanford, Steve Jobs memberikan pidato yang sangat luar biasa mengenai tiga hal. Dengan bahasa yang indah, lembut, terstruktur, penuh dengan kedalaman filosofi namun mencuatkan semangat hidup, ia menginspirasi banyak mahasiswa di sana.

Saya takut menterjemahkannya dalam bahasa Indonesia karena sangat berpotensi mengerdilkan suasana batin Steve Jobs saat menulis ini.

Berikut ini saya kutipkan penuh pidatonya dua setengah tahun lalu.

Semoga bermanfaat.

Steve Jobs’ Convocation Speech (Stanford)
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.

That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5? deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky ? I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me ? I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.

And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry – Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Jika ingin menyaksikan pidatonya, silahkan mainkan video Youtube di bawah ini:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA]

Alamat Palsu Fahri Hamzah

Ayu Ting Ting/
Sumber (Kompas.com)
Sebuah media online menyebutkan bahwa trending topics untuk hari ini adalah Ayu Ting Ting , penyanyi dangdut yang melantunkan dendang “Alamat Palsu†dan Fahri Hamzah, anggota dewan dari PKS, penghuni Komisi III DPR , yang menghendaki pembubaran KPK. Apakah ada hubungan antara si Ayu yang penyanyi dangdut dengan Fahri yang anggota dewan terhormat. Tetapi bukan berarti menjadi penyanyi dangdut itu kurang terhormat, demikian juga sebaliknya bukan berarti setiap anggota dewan layak untuk mendapat penghormatan dari rakyat yang diwakilinya. Beberapa waktu yang lalu ada anggota dewan yang menikah dengan penyanyi dangdut Kristina walau pada akhirnya rumah tangga itu kandas di tengah jalan, dan si anggota dewan yang terhormat itu tertangkap oleh KPK karena diduga menerima suap.

KEMANA KEMANA KEMANA
KUHARUS MENCARI KEMANA
KEKASIH TERCINTA TAK TAHU RIMBANYA
LAMA TAK DATANG KE RUMAH

hot.detik.comSebagai anggota dewan dari PKS harus diakui Fahri paling pintar mencuri perhatian. Maka dengan penuh kesengajaan dia melemparkan bom “news†dengan ucapan “Bubarkan KPKâ€, ketika semua mata dan telinga masyarakat dan media sedang mengarah ke pertemuan konsultasi DPR-KPK. Maka ia dengan penuh perencanaan membuat kegaduhan dengan tujuan namanya terpampang di media secara nasional. Dalam benaknya sebentar lagi saya pasti diundang tampil di televisi, lumayan disamping menerima uang saku sebagai nara sumber, namanya kembali diperbincangkan lagi oleh publik secara luas. Cerdas sekaligus licin.

DIMANA DIMANA DIMANA
TINGGALNYA SEKARANG
DIMANA

Gugatan pembubaran KPK itu dapat dibaca cuma sebagai gertakan, agar KPK tidak menyentuh koleganya, Tamsil Linrung, yang sedang dipanggil dan diperiksa. Bisa juga ketakutan yang sangat, suatu saat ia akan dipanggil dan diperiksa KPK untuk suatu kasus yang menyeret namanya. Maka sebelum itu terjadi ia harus melontarkan gagasan pembubaran KPK. Karena KPK mempunyai kewenangan untuk menyadap, bukan tidak mungkin suatu saat KPK menyadap pembicaraanya yang bisa dijadikan pintu masuk bagi KPK untuk menelanjangi dirinya. Karena menjadi sesuatu yang ganjil dan suatu keanehan, jika seseorang yang tidak pernah dan tidak mau melakukan praktek korupsi, justru menghendaki pembubaran sebuah lembaga negara yang dibentuk untuk memberantas praktek-praktek korupsi.

KESANA KEMARI MEMBAWA ALAMAT
NAMUN YANG KUTEMUI BUKAN DIRINYA
SAYANG YANG KUTERIMA ALAMAT PALSU

Seorang Fahri Hamzah berangkat ke dunia politik berbekal sebagai mantan aktifis mahasiswa yang getol menghajar dan menggulingkan kekuasaan pak Harto yang dianggap korup dan penuh Kolusi, Korupsi dan Nepotisme (KKN). Kemudian ia bergabung dengan sebuah partai Islam yang mempunyai jargon “Bersih dan Peduliâ€. Sebuah partai Islam, partai da’wah yang digadang-gadang oleh banyak pihak untuk membawa perubahan Indonesia ke arah negeri yang bersih dari korupsi dan peduli dengan nasib rakyat yang selama ini kurang diperhatikan oleh pemerintah. Sebagian besar kadernya ketika berunjuk rasa menggunakan baju warna putih, seakan sebagai simbol bahwa PKS merupakan partai yang bersih dari KKN. Dan jangan lupa PKS banyak mendapatkan simpati dari rakyat, dikarenakan citra partai yang mengusung kejujuran, amanah dan kesederhanaan.

KU TANYA SAMA TEMAN-TEMAN SEMUA
TETAPI MEREKA BILANG TIDAK TAHU
SAYANG MUNGKIN DIRIKU SUDAH TERTIPU
MEMBUAT AKU FRUSTASI DIBUATNYA

Kalau boleh berterus terang, saya merupakan salah satu dari jutaan rakyat yang memilih partainya, PKS, karena melihat kader dan sepak terjang para tokohnya yang relatif bersih dan amanah. Itu duluuu. Sebuah partai yang menampilkan kesederhanaan dan kejujuran para pemimpinnya. Ditambah sedemikian banyak kader-kader partainya yang menjadi khatib-khatib di mesjid-mesjid perkantoran yang senantiasa mendengungkan perjuangan akan kejujuran, amanah dan ketaatan di jalan Tuhan. Tetapi rupanya jalan politik lebih banyak mengotori jalan da’wah. Jalan politik tak selurus jalan da’wah. Sehingga jati diri sebagai partai da’wah kian terkikis, maka tak mengejutkan jika pada akhirnya PKS-pun tak berbeda dengan partai sekuler yang lain. Ditambah lagi dengan ucapan kader mudanya, sdr. Fahri Hamzah, yang ingin membubarkan KPK. Habis sudah harapan saya akan partai da’wah yang diharapkan menjadi lokomotif perubahan dan perbaikan negeri ini.

Kini nasib saya tak beda jauh dengan Ayu Ting Ting yang merasa tertipu oleh kekasih hatinya, karena alamat palsu. Saya juga merasa tertipu oleh partai yang pernah saya dukung dan saya pilih dalam dua kali masa pemilu, karena partai itu kini banyak dihuni kader palsu, memalsukan perjuangan dan tujuan partai itu sendiri.
Jakarta, 04 Oktober 2011

Apakah Rooney Mara Akan Menjadi Aktris Utama Di Film Remake OLDBOY?

Remake film fenomenal asal Korea berjudul OLDBOY saat ini masih menjadi salah satu remake yang paling diantisipasi di Hollywood. Tentu saja karena versi aslinya yang disutradarai oleh Sutradara kenamaan Korea Park Chan Wook telah sukses tidak hanya di negara asalnya Korrea, tetapi juga di perfilman International, termasuk kemenangannya di Cannes Film Festival 2004. Film ini bahkan juga dinobatkan sebagai 'film dengan twist ending terbaik dan paling mengejutkan sepanjang masa".

Spike Lee telah terpilih menjadi untuk menjadi Sutradara versi remakenya. Aktor yang akan memerankan tokoh utama pun telah terpilih yaitu Josh Brolin. Setelah Brolin yang akan memerankan karakter yang sebelumnya diperankan oleh Aktor Choi Min Sik, mulai banyak muncul nama-nama bintang lain yang akan mengisi karakter utama lain. Christian Bale dirumorkan akan memerankan villain di film ini. Kini yang terbaru, Rooney Mara, Aktris yang langsung terkenal namanya setelah terpilih oleh David Fincher menjadi pemeran utama di film remake THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO dikabarkan menjadi kandidat utama untuk bergabung di remake OLDBOY.

Twitch memberitakan bahwa Rooney Mara telah 'difavoritkan' untuk memerankan tokoh bernama Marie, yang akan menjadi gadis yang akan menjalin cinta dan membantu tokoh Josh Brolin dalam mengungkap misteri yang membuatnya dipenjarakan selama 15 tahun tanpa sebab. Kelak 'pasangan' ini akan menemui kenyataan getir yang belum pernah mereka bayangkan sebelumnya.
Jika melihat sepintas akting Rooney Mara di THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO melalui trailernya yang sudah dirilis beberapa saat lalu, sepertinya Mara memang adalah salah satu pilihan sempurna untuk memerankan karakter utama wanita di OLDBOY. Seorang gadis innocent yang fragile dan menyimpan masa lalu yang kelam dan misterius.
Kita tunggu saja MOOviers, semoga remakenya satu ini akan sebagus versi Koreanya yang memang sangat brilian tersebut.

Source : Filmoo