Um, comparing “good” and “right” doesn’t make any sense…
You’re right. However, choosing between right and wrong is typical; it’s too obvious and a responsible entrepreneur should be able to identify the right things from the wrong things.
If you want to go from a good entrepreneur to a great one, you need to do beyond good things; you need to do the right things.
Good vs. right
In my webpreneurial journey, I often receive offers from many website owners to place their ads on my sites. Some of them are related to non-family friendly and questionable topics, such as gambling, adult and so on.
As an online entrepreneur, I know what’s good to do – selling ad spots to as many people as possible so that I can grow my web business well; so that I can serve more people with my sites. However, I should do the right things above all… firstly, such questionable topics are not relevant to my sites’ topics; secondly, such questionable topics are not the ones that can cater anybody.
Those being said, I want my Noobpreneur.com to be useful to a group of teenage readers, as well as to a 30-something group of readers – so I need to choose advertising clients that share the same aspiration with me. Displaying irrelevant ads on and linking out to irrelevant sites from your site won’t help with your search engine optimization, either.
Another example… if you are a social entrepreneur, you need capital to fund your projects; you are building a business startup that allows people to list their pets for adoption or to adopt pets. Will you accept funding from a business that allegedly uses animal testing methods for product development efforts? Getting funds to build your business and help more pets is good, but only accepting funding from those who share your vision is the right thing.
One more example… working hard is good, but it’s not necessarily right. What you and I should do as entrepreneurs is to leverage our time with other people’s money, time and even idea, and use the “excess” time to do what’s right to do: Get a life, build a relationship with your family, and focus on your wealth building efforts. To me, working hard is a good thing, but working smart is the right thing.
We need to be the right entrepreneurs!
I continuously try to do the right thing; I know what’s good, but I need to pursue and follow what’s right.
Our business world today is filled with too many greedy entrepreneurs whose only motive is to make a lot of money; nothing more. They may hide behind some “shields” – their business might look good in the society.
For example, a business is proclaiming that it is an eco-friendly business; the business owner knows that being eco-friendly will means more business with the eco-conscious market. So he pushes the campaign with “go green” as a marketing gimmick. The business seems a good, socially responsible business; however, it is clearly not doing the right thing.
As an entrepreneur, it’s your responsible to be a role model; to set examples to your staffs, clients and local community. Are you ready to be the right entrepreneurs?
Ivan Widjaya
Proverbs 21:3 – on becoming the right entrepreneur