I am now blogging after quite sometime. Off late, I have been reading a lot of literature on entrepreneurship and starting up. One thing I have discovered with my own experience in the last few months of running around for starting a business is amongst all parameters, one of the most understated and ignored topic is Influence. The last few months have made me realize the importance of Influence for one to succeed in starting up. The conventional literature covers a lot about the art of pitching, funding, mistakes to avoid, etc. While these are definitely important, another key ingredient will be the ability of the founders to influence.
In my understanding, influence spans across 2 entities – people and products. Its as much an art as it is a science. As its natural for influential persons to know when to play which card, to whom and most importantly, how. I am writing these words as a reflection of my understanding of Influence. However, I believe, this is a much larger subject than the scope that is addressed within this blog. The following factors could get a quick headsup, if you are treading the waters of entrepreneurship like me.
Influencing People
At all stages of business, across all stakeholders, you will realize time and again the importance of influencing people. The beauty of influence is its cascading effect and hence its pervasive. Look at the hypothetical flow of influence
a) A person gets influenced to be an entrepreneur
b) He/ she ideates. They then try to influence the initial set of people ( typically friends or co-founders) to have a buy-in
c) Together, they develop a first prototype which will influence the initial set of customers
d) The developed prototype along with its market traction will influence its first set of investors
and the sequence continues
So how do you become influential? Here’s my 2 step process that might help you some way
a) Mr/Miss Credibility
I believe our society is plagued with a notion of assuming that the more a person talks about a particular subject, the more he is an authority over the same. Again this principle is universal, from informal friends to a conscious business PR exercise, it works. In our group of friends, for example, one of my friend happens to keep talking about music and does not fail to express his keenness on this topic during our discussions. Although his music knowledge is considerably average, he is the opinion leader amongst us when it comes to music. This example can be extrapolated to any sphere. 37signals, is a classic example of a bunch of guys claiming their expertise over start ups and UI design and hence been treated as opinion leaders. However, in reality, they havent created a blockbuster business but still as they actively opine in most forums, people have a strong acceptance to what they say.
So establishing credibility is a matter of showing your interest explicitly. You may not necessarily be an expert, but you will see that people (atleast a majority of them) willing to buy what you have to say. Somehow, mathematically this can be expressed as
Credibility = f ( the amount of interest/ throughts/ knowlegde/ exhibited on a particular subject)
Credibility which is a factor of influence can also be due to authority and expertise of the person over the subject.
b) Personality
Have you ever seen two people infront of the audience ( lets assume both of them are unacquainted with the audience) talk about the same subject with a similar view point, have a completely different impact on the audience. The audience might generally choose to pay heed to one and disregard the other. I have seen this happen a lot during informal discussions as well. Within friends I have seen how the same idea talked by 2 different persons have different impact on the people. Assuming that the above factor of credibility doesn’t exist or plays equal between 2 persons, then the only distinguishing factor becomes personality. Somehow, I believe the personality of an individual has a lots to do with the influencing of other persons, be it known or unknown.
While its relatively easier to build credibility, working on building an influencing persona may be a tad bit tough. Having said that, both these factors play a pivotal role in making a person influential- be it during entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship
