Sekolah atau belajar?
Sekolah memang tempat belajar tapi lucunya tidak semua orang yang bersekolah itu belajar. Ada yang pergi sekolah hanya untuk bertemu teman atau pacar, ada yang sampai di kelas tapi asik tertidur atau baca komik di jam pelajaran. Ada yang sudah dekat gerbang sekolah tapi memilih belok ke tongkrongan dan tidak masuk kelas hahaha itu mirip saya waktu sma!!
Disisi lain orang yang tidak sekolah belum tentu tidak belajar. Saya hanya sekolah sampai sma. Tingkat 2 kuliah saya memutuskan berhenti tapi saya tidak berhenti belajar. Perasaan 'merasa bodoh' begitu kuat sehingga saya tidak berhenti belajar. Buku-buku menjadi sekolah buat saya. Kawan-kawan menjadi guru buat saya. Dan lebih hebatnya lagi saya yang tidak bersekolah menjadi 'sekolah' buat kawan-kawan yang bersekolah formal.
Seorang mahasiswa ITB pernah mewawancarai saya untuk belajar ttg entrepreuneurship (dari saya si fotografer tidak sekolah) Berikut adalah hasil wawancaranya:
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Repot on Entrepreneur
Based on Interview with Muhammad Azmi (Photographer and Owner of FILE Photography)
Fida Farhana
FILE Photography, Where Hobby Makes Money
FILE Photography was built in 2007. At first, it was built Azmi and his two friends who have the same hobby. But in the late 2007, the two of FILE pioneer resigned, and started from that time, the ownership of FILE Photography belongs to Azmi. There are some freelance photographers who help his job in 2007 until 2009. In the middle of 2009, 45% of FILE Photography shares were sold to the investor named Tita Herliawati. Nowadays, there are three photographers and one makeup artist who work in FILE Photography.
The FILE Photography provides service for fashion and modeling photography, event and corporate photography, and also wedding photography. To attract people and make the customer loyal, FILE Photography always gives some promotion, for example special price, bonus, and another program. The development of information and technology makes it easier to advertise the promotion to people. Besides that, FILE Photography also sponsored some event which is suitable with FILE market targets.
“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary”
Donald M. Kendall, Co-founder, Former Chairman, and CEO of PepsiCo
The Donald M. Kendall’s quote above is best described Muhammad Azmi, a 25 years old entrepreneur, a photographer, and the owner of FILE Photography. Many things we can learn from his experience, especially his experience in reaching his dream, creating his own photography business, and becoming a young entrepreneur. As a Donald’s quotes, he works hard and focuses on his photography business so that he can be a successful photographer and also entrepreneur.
He was born in Bandung, 24th November 1984. He doesn’t come from a businessman family. His father has retired from one of the biggest bank in Indonesia, and his mother is still working as a civil worker. His childhood ideals were becoming an architect and also an entrepreneur. Yes, he started willing to be an entrepreneur while he was studying in elementary school. There was a subject called ‘Marketing Simulation’ in his elementary school, and in that subject he started learning how to sell something to people, and he felt interested in that subject. Started from that time, he wanted to own his own business so he could make money by himself.
His desire to be an entrepreneur became much bigger when he studied in Taruna Bakti Junior High School. Again, there was a subject at Taruna Bakti which is called ‘Basic Technology Education’, and on that subject, all students should make his own business and he made a compilation cassette business. He got some profit from that business, and it made him felt that being an entrepreneur who create and own his own business is a job that he would like to be.
In 2003, he finished his study in Taruna Bakti Senior High School. When he was in senior high school, he was the head of student organization (OSIS) and he learned much about being a leader. His experience while he was in senior high school helped him in running his business now. After he finished his study in senior high school, he has been studying in School of Management and Business Telkom (now it is known as IM Telkom) for a year, and the next year he studied in Padjadjaran University, majoring in Management. After studying for three semesters in Unpad, he decided to start being an entrepreneur instead of studying formally in college. From that time, he focused on being an entrepreneur and building his own photography business.
He started his photography business in 2004. It started from his hobby in photography and his desire to create a job and earn money from his hobby. When he first entered the photography business, he worked by himself and took some small photography projects. He also experienced in being the assistant of some senior photographers for two years. In 2007, he started building his own company called FILE Photography. Running his own business make him can manage his time more flexible. Then, the most important thing is ‘working’ in FILE is hobby based work, so it doesn’t feel like a real work. He also feels satisfied because being an entrepreneur can give opportunity for others to work. Meanwhile he can help other people to get the job and also get the money.
The Inspirational Story Based on the interview with Muhammad Azmi, there are some points that I learn about soft skill that the entrepreneur should have. Some of them are hard working, consistent, brave to face the challenge, don’t give up easily, and willing to learn a lot from the others.
Running business as a team of course is not easy. This is one of the challenges that an entrepreneur should face. It also happened to him when he started building FILE Photography.
The two pioneer of FILE resigned, and no one left, just himself. In that situation, he needed consistency and his motivation to run his own business, so he didn’t give up, and start rebuilt the company. And the result of his consistency is nowadays, he can see his company developed day by day.
Leading the team is not that easy because we should gather many different people with different character and social background. So what he does now is to keep up the solidarity between the team so all of them will develop together as the company develops too.
Another challenge in building and running his own business is he has to be ready for having unlimited working time. He said that the working time of the entrepreneur is totally different with the working time of the office workers. Entrepreneur sometimes doesn’t have fixed time for working. Sometimes he works until late at night, but sometimes he can have free day without working. He also can have a full day thinking and doing his business.
Thing that I learn from him is not only about the soft skill that entrepreneurs should have. I also told that by creating our own business we can open our opportunity to meet so many people from many different backgrounds. We can learn many things from the other, and we can also learn how to face people with different character. Knowing more people is also good for developing our business so it is important to have many colleagues.
During the interview, he also shared about his desires to grow together with Indonesian creative industry. He said that he wanted to be the photographer for the local brand advertisement, and make the local brand also grow because of the ads he made. That is also the mission of FILE Photography, to grow together with all Indonesian local brand creative industry.
In the end of my interview, me, as the future entrepreneur, ask him about what suggestion that he can give to those who want to start creating a job for other, for people who want to be entrepreneur, and here is his answer: “Do what you love doing and keep focus. Never give up, and don’t easily get panic when you face the problem while you are on progress to build your business. Never assume that the only payment is just money, because there’s much more precious ‘payment’ that we can get - experience, networking, new perspective, and the happiness for making other people happy and satisfied-. And the most important thing, do not forget to give some to those who need our help. Believe that miracle will come if we never forget to help each other. Just pretend that we are the ‘dumbest’ among the smart people, so we can learn from them and also be learnt by them.“
As I got from the lecture in class that “Thinking money first is a big mistake”, from his statement above it is so true that in business, even actually we all need money, we shouldn’t be thinking only about the money. More than that, we actually can get more precious thing and priceless thing from being an entrepreneur for example the experience, the lesson that we get from the other, and the relations with other.
Last but not least, we should not forget about the others who may be not as lucky as we are. We should believe that the more we give something to the other, the more we will get it back to us. Never think about making just ourselves rich, because the real success is when we can make the other people success too.
This report is made based on the interview with
Muhammad Azmi (Photographer and Owner of FILE Photography)
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