Toastmasters Project 2

This is what I intended to talk for Toastmasters Project 2!
Though it turned out to be different ;-). But I enjoyed my speech thoroughly.

Would thank my Mentor Kartik, who helped me.
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Do we have enterpeneurs here or plan to be an enterpeneur in future?

Well, look at the hands thats going up. This shows the blooming enterpeneurship here in India.

Everything starts small, even business; and it should start STRONG. For being it strong, you need a good foundation and for this you need TOOLS to help you travel the long journey successfully.

Imagine, a simple home maker is knitting a shawl somewhere in the corner of the house for her livelihood. She also does paintings sometimes. There is a small computer and has access to net. Now, tell me what better place can she think off other than the HUGE WEB WORLD for her to grow her small business.

One Afternoon after her home chores, she was browsing the net and got so excited to find the DOMAIN name which she wanted (as anyone one of us would be) and registered the same with smallbusiness.

Did smallbusiness get your attention? Well, smallbusiness is nothing but a Yahoo! property which contributes significantly towards revenue generation of Yahoo! SmallBusiness has 99% permium users. SmallBusiness caters to the needs of the small and medium sized business.

A domain is successfully created by her. Now, she gets quite excited explores more and finds out about WebHosting Unlimited service which would help her to create her own web pages and would be the medium to publicise her products. This leads her to upgrade the service from Domains to WebHosting.

Now, how do we help this novice user build web pages because she knows no programming, no web knowledge. This is one of the key strength of Webhosting where it provides a mechanism to create web pages, in a very easy, intuitive manner for any novice user. There are inbuilt tools like SiteSolutions, SiteBuilder, etc. which help any user to build their sites within no time. The user is taken through an easy flow - choosing inbuilt templates, choosing different layouts, easily creating new pages, filling in contents, giving contact details (which would show the place in Yahoo! maps that is embedded in this contact page to provide driving directions), saving and publishing the site.

She was amazed to see the result of her effort for about 1 hour was a beautiful website with neat webpages which she has created just then. Obviously, any novice user would be surprised with the quality of web-page they create out of the tools provided by smallbusiness. Its simple yet elegant, outbeats many professional sites. She adds her content and contact details too.

Somedays passed-by. She realised that Webhosting was not sufficient to satisfy her INCREASING DEMAND for her products. She could not hanlde it any more as the calls started increasing exceeded than what she expected and she seeked for a better service.

She PONDERS what to do.

She casually goes to Smallbusiness Webhosting Control Panel and get to learn about Merchant Solutions where she understands that she can host her products online which end-user can see and choose to buy online itself. Thus, the direct interaction between her and the end-user gets minimised to great extent and can handle more sales with this.

Merchant Solutions starter offers user to host their own stores where the Yahoo! customer can host all their products in there. One of the highlights about MS service is that Yahoo! provides the customer with a mechanism where the customer can give the end-user options of choosing any payment method - could Credit Cards, Paypal, etc. and the payment method is highly secured.

The simple home maker business thrives. Now, she wants to expand, find out new options to market her products and she finds out that in an upgraded version of Merchant solutions called Merchant professional there are different ways to market and promote her product. Thus, she upgrades to Merchant Solutions Professional service. Gets Yahoo!'s help for SEO and the story continues to be big successful HIT.

Now, this lady has "X" customers who does "Y" transactions and guess what?? What?? Yahoo gets (1.5% * X * Y) - Yahoo! gets 1.5% from each and every transaction that happens. This is from 1 user. Imagine when the X & Y volumes are BIG and we help "Z" number of such simple home makers then, nobody would think of buying us ;-)

How smallbusiness became instrumental for this simple home maker to grow and become a very SUCCESSFUL enterpeneur.

Differentiation

What is the thin line that differentiates these?
Determined and Stubborn
Self-Respect and Ego
Confidence and Arrogance
Innocence and Ignorance

Wonderful statement

I borrow this liner ..........
"no need to offer a shoulder to someone..who does not care for it"

Wow! what a valid statement.

Where are we heading?

You know what, it is nice to have a space where you can just pour out your thoughts just the way they flow .... but everyone need not agree with this or might be no one agrees with what you think. How does that matter to you, it is just a place to post your free thoughts ..... Wow! what a feeling! Just being the true SELF - awesome :-). You would not be a hypocrite or have a mask in your words but being yourself there .....

Don't you think technology is actually creating voidness and also increasing the gap between two individuals - many reasons for it; like
- people have started interacting with virtual identities and feel more solace; as the anonymity help them to be themselves - be it good or bad!
- virtual interactions - like SMS, emails rather than a face to face talk; this leads to masking your real emotion and can always make up statements and fake things. Even if you convey true emotions, everyone need not understand the depth of it and some would not even understand.

And with much other influence, we actually lose our individuality without our realization! Relationships are so superficial and not deep enough to sustain and have no lasting relationships! Where are we heading to? Do all of us understand this?

My thought process

One example of my weird thought but a valid one for me!

I always thought I should get this, I should get that and I used to yearn for the same. When these expectations where not met, I used to feel real bad and ask myself "why this is happening to me?" and all such silly questions (but valid and really deep at that point of time).
Then, suddenly some thoughts made me think that there are other people too who might be thinking like me so why dont I do for others which is in my control, at least let them feel good and nice, instead of just expecting from others. Slowly started doing things for which I craved for myself to others and the amount of satisfaction I derive from that is uncomparable and I feel soooo good. I really cannot express how different and nice I feel.

This doesnot mean I have no expectations, probably my expectations have changed ;-)