I dragged myself groggily out of bed on a Saturday morning to go for a Chinese Information and Networking Association (CINA) event: How to Think, Work and Thrive like an Entrepreneur. The speaker was Ms Christine Comaford Lynch. I had read about her on her personal page, and was really eager to meet her in person.

It was a rewarding and refreshing experience indeed. At once dynamic, vibrant, quick-witted, and humorous, Christine was an extremely insightful and enthralling speaker. Throughout the entire time, Christine peppered her speech with entertaining and inspiring personal anecdotes.

At the age of 16, she had run away as she was tired of school. But that did not deter her from achieving many of the successes that she later achieved. To support herself, she became a lingerie model and a geisha trainee. She quipped, “Apparently they thought I was too ugly to be a lingerie model, and so I moved on!” She subsequently became a software engineer, and then later started her own businesses. Today, she is a venture capitalist with Mighty Ventures.

During her talk, she compared entrepreneurs to fire: people who are trail blazers with their spirit of innovation and risk-taking. Her tip for all of us who were present was summarized in the following acronym:

FIRE-UP! This stood for Christine’s personal code of values for entrepreneurs.

Find your unshakeable core: What is your brand? If you had to use 3 adjectives to describe yourself, what would they be?

Get your foot In the door: To get something that you want, you must seek out different avenues and keep seeking opportunities and trying. Perhaps sometimes you have to settle for something lesser than what you initially sought, but you can build upon what you have. Christine retold an account from her early days, when she wanted to get a software engineering job with Microsoft. However, she was refused that position due to the fact that she did not have a college degree. Unfazed by this rejection, Christine accepted being a contract tester first and worked her way up from there.

Risk is required: You just have to get yourself in the battlefield and pick everything up as you go along. Christine told an especially stirring story on how she started out as a contract tester in a company, but one day there arise a situation where somebody was needed to assume a leadership position and manage a team of people. Without hesitating, Christine immediately volunteered herself for the job. She managed to persuade 35 people to work under her. Literally overnight, she had risen from a contract tester to a CEO! Having no prior experience at managing people, the next thing she did was to call her dad for some advice and a crash course.

Expect to Innovate: Think like an owner, act like a customer. Keep attacking your own ideas and trying to find a better way of doing things.

There are Unlimited Ideas. Ideas are free and do not belong to anybody: Scarcity is a lie. If you keep your eyes and ears open, you will find that there will be ideas and opportunities wherever you go. Christine said that while waiting in line and talking to a person at Starbucks, she chanced upon an idea which she subsequently grew in to a multi-million dollar business. I have often heard from others, “Ideas are a dime a dozen.” And I think this is very true. I often find that many people are very keyed-up about finding the “right” idea, the most brlliant, mind-blowing idea. But more often than not, what is more important is how you execute your idea and grow it as you go along.

People: Life is about the people we meet and what we create together. I think this point is significant as it affects what one thinks about leadership. I have seen a lot of different leadership styles, and the leaders I admire most are the ones who view “the people aspect” as the most important of all. They understand what motivates their team members and they facilitate mutual trust, respect and support within the entire team.

Although I have substantially covered what Christine spoke about in her speech, nothing beats meeting and speaking with her in person. I therefore encourage you, dear readers, to find a chance to meet her and listen to her speak in person. It WILL be mind-blowing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 7:16 am and is filed under Events Coverage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.