Tag Archives: start up

The Entrepreneurship Track

Entrepreneurship can definitely become a way of life. I should know. I’ve been a life long entrepreneur, just as my father was before me.

I don’t know if it’s an addiction, the challenge, knowing you can bear the pain of the long climb, the exhilaration of success when, against long odds, you know you’ve created something that didn’t exist before. Maybe it’s a hidden gene, waiting to be discovered. Maybe it’s just that after entrepreneurship, nothing else seems so satisfying. But whatever it is, and the x factor is, author Rajesh Setty gets it, to my mind, just right in The Dance of Entrepreneurship:

“There are broadly three phases of entrepreneurship

1. The Beginning

2. The Journey

3. The New Beginning ( Yes, It’s Not the Destination )

rubber_meets_the_road

Now, the quick outline of the elements in each phase:

1. The Beginning

The five elements for the beginning phase are:

1. Purpose: Knowing why you are in this will help you keep going when the going gets tough

2. Passion: Doing what you love will make it feel like you are not working

3. People: Building together with the right people will make it look easy

4. Problem: Solving a real problem will help as people will pay to solve a real problem.

5. Plan: Having a plan even when you know that it’s going to change along the way

2. The Journey

The five elements of the journey

1. Patience: Everything takes longer and costs more. Patience is a MUST

2. Persistence: Sticking to the course of action even in the face of difficulty

3. Perseverance: Sticking to your beliefs even in the face of no successful outcome

4. Pain: Ability to handle the “pains” of entrepreneurship along the way

5. Politics: Knowing how to navigate in the sea of politics. You may not want to play politics but surely you should know how to survive and thrive in the politics that already exists

Last phase is what I call the “New Beginning.” I purposely did not call it the destination because rarely I see entrepreneurship “ends” with something – it’s usually a stepping stone to begin something new.

3. The New Beginning

So, here are the five elements of the new beginning

1. Pride: The satisfaction that comes with taking a concept to a completion

2. Profits: If executed well, there is money to be made. There are also profits in terms of personal growth and fulfillment.

3. Power: Since nine out of ten companies go out of business, if you are part of the one that succeeds, you automatically have more power.

4. Possibilities: New possibilities open up as you have more credibility

5. Philanthropy: You can make a bigger difference to the world as you have “extra” capacity

For those of you who are starting on this wonderful journey, wish you the very best.

Seth Godin’s 7 Tips for Startups in a Down Market

You know, I’m always looking for ways to do business better, faster and leaner. Well, I guess what all of that boils down to is doing business smarter. And two of the smartest people out there dishing out smart advice about doing business are Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin. For this interview I have to thank Andrew Warner Internet entrepreneur and founder of Mixergy. He interviews successful people to learn how they did it. Here’s his take from Seth Godin’s 7 Tips for Startups in a Down Market.

“Seth Godin, Squidoo’s founder, is the best-selling author of 10 books that have helped companies build remarkable products and promote them. He’s never written a book about how to grow in a down market, so I called him up and interviewed him about it for Mashable.

Here’s what he said:

1. Recognize that you’ll have less competition

You should know that this is the best thing that ever happened to you because it makes it easier to be the winner when so many people are dropping out.

The dip is closer and shallower then it would be if these were the boom times.

2. Focus on building value

The emphasis should not be on “how do I raise money and hire people.” The emphasis should be on “how do I build value today.”

Because, every day you’re doing this, you’re building value, connecting with people who find you irreplaceable, then you will become irreplaceable.

3. Expect your costs to go down

Understand that in a down economy, not only is there less money for people to spend on you, but you have to spend less money to make stuff that’s worthwhile.

4. Don’t hire like it’s 1999

It makes me sick to see organizations that race out to hire 50 people, because they think that get big fast matters. And then “it’s not their fault” when they lay off 20.

Well sure it is. It’s totally your fault Mr. entrepreneur, because you shouldn’t have hired 50 people to start with.

5. Focus on the irreplaceable

The goal is NOT how fast can you hire as many people as you can. The goal is how irreplaceable are your people. How much can you boil down the essence of what you’re building?

6. Get lean to beat the behemoths

When we look at the home runs online. They are not the Daily Beast with $18 million and hundreds and hundreds of people. They’re Twitter, with a tiny team of people who have a very fine focused, vision.

7. Be disciplined about what you’re building

One of the things the guys at 37signals say is, if you want to be on budget and on time, what you have to do is, the day you hit the budget, or the day you hit the deadline, you have to ship. And it’s a race.

So that’s how you do it. You don’t say how do I get more money to match the spec? You say, how can I get the spec out there for the money I have?

- HOW TO: Raise Money in a Down Economy
- Startup Hacks: An Early Stage Checklist
- Startup Hacks: Seven Ideas for Building Your Team
- Startup Hacks: 7 Questions VCs Will Ask You, What They Really Mean and How You Can Answer Them

A Viable Path To Bootstrap A Startup

I have bootstrapped a number of startups in different industries. If you’ve been following this blog, you know that bootstrapping consists of using your own brain, wiliness, sweat equity and resources, rather than have a bank or investor fund you. Which ….99 to 1…. they won’t anyway. So it’s a good thing you’re looking at bootstrapping

And in the current economic climate more people are looking at bootstrapping…. or freelancing as an entry into bootstrapping… than perhaps ever before.

There are a number of tried and true formulas, which will help you bootstrap, and we’ve shared some of those before. But the advice that follows stands out, in part, because the author, Evan Carmichael, YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager, takes some of it a step further. We always tell you to outsource. But Evan discusses how to stairstep your outsourcing from free labor to part time help, to hiring full time, which is exactly the smartest way to do it, I think.

Well, here’s Evan himself in YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog » 7 Steps To Build A Startup From Scratch With No Money.

“I recently did an interview about how to build a business up from scratch with little or no money and I used my own story as an example.

Here are the steps that I took.

This process helped me build my business with $0 in startup capital.

Hopefully you can learn from my experience and make it even better.

Step 1: Moonlight Until You Find Something That Works

I’m a big believer in not spending until I’m earning so I started my company while working at a venture capital firm in Toronto. I used my site to drive traffic, expose myself as an expert, and drive leads for the venture capital firm. I was driving thousands of people to my website and began to wonder if there was a way to monetize that traffic beyond lead generation for the venture capital company.

I found out about Google AdSense and put it up on the site as an additional revenue generator. In my first month (January 2005), I made $8.38 – not much to write home about.

Step 2: Tweak, Tweak, Tweak

Too many entrepreneurs jump full in with no plan and no proof that your idea will work. It’s always better to tweak the concept while you already have some sort of stability in your income. I wasn’t about to go full time making $8.38 a month.

My next step was to learn as much as I could about how to better optimize my ads and how to drive more traffic to my site. I read every ebook, blog, newspaper article, and website that I could get my hands on. There were a lot fewer resources than there are today. I learned as much as I could in the extra time I had and implemented the ideas I learned. Slowly I started making more and more money.

Step 3: Go Full Time

I looked at how much I was spending on my apartment, food, entertainment, etc and once I started to hit that revenue number with my website, I jumped ship and did my business full time. It wasn’t a lavish lifestyle by any stretch but I wouldn’t have to worry about paying my monthly bills. I knew that if I was able to build a site in my spare time that could support my entire lifestyle, then if I gave it a full go, I would be able to do much much more!

Step 4: Get Free Help

As your typical entrepreneur I wanted to grow very quickly and took on too many responsibilities. I was doing manual data entry when I should have been doing more value-add work. But that manual work still needed to get done. The solution? Get free interns. I started with foreign language interns. They were basically university students who came to Canada on a student visa for work experience but they couldn’t get paid for the work. I couldn’t give them too many communications projects because English was their second language but I was able to unload a lot of the work off of my plate.

The next free help I got was from high school students who were on a co-op term. I was able to give them more tasks where they were able to connect with partners and customers because they were fluent in English. They sounded very young on the phone so they usually stuck with email.

Step 5: Hire Part Time Help

At some point you’re going to need more skilled labor than the free interns. They were a stepping stone to help you grow and take some of the work off of your plate but you’ll eventually get to the stage where you need people who don’t need as much hand-holding. But you don’t have enough money coming in to support both you and them. The solution? Hire part time workers. The first guy I hired was for one hour per day to update my database. He worked for me for five hours per week which was much more easy to manage. I wasn’t going broke and I got a skilled worker to help me grow my business. It wasn’t as fast as I would have liked, but it was growing nonetheless.

I hired people to create code for my website, write articles, do marketing projects, edit content, sell advertising… almost anything you can think of. But they were all part time to start. I had an entire organization running with people working only a couple of hours per day. The good thing was that they worked every day… so every day we made progress forward. I found people using elance as well as hired friends and family who wanted to help as well as make an extra pay check. At one point I had eight part time people working for me.

Step 6: Hire Full Time Help

Just like you eventually outgrow your interns, you will also eventually outgrow your part time help. At some point you’ll realize that it’s too much work to co-ordinate all the various part time staff and you need more from them. Some may be able to step into full time roles while others will not be able to commit to more hours because of the other jobs they have. You’ll likely end up having less workers but will get more work done. For example, when I hired my marketing manager, he was originally one of the guys working for me on a part time basis. By hiring him I ended up not needing four other people who were working with me in marketing related positions part time.

Step 7: Figure Out Your Job Description

This is where I’m at now. What is it that I love to do and who do I need to hire to take over the jobs that I don’t want to do anymore? In January I brought on two new full time people to free up more of my time. When you’re first starting a business you end up wearing all the hats but as you grow I believe the whole point of entrepreneurship is to do something you love doing. If you have the opportunity to design the perfect job, why not go for it?

I would love to hear your thoughts on how you’ve built your business up or how you plan to do it if you had a $0 budget.”

For more pearls of wisdom on entrepreneuring, from Evan and others like him, go to YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog

And if you have any thoughts yourself on bootstrapping or entrepreneuring, and you’d like to share them, we’d love to hear them

The Most Essential Characteristic Of A Successful Entrepreneur

Yesterday, Thursday Bram, a freelance journalist, posted 5 Key Characteristics of a Successful Entrepreneur. But I can tell you that only on of them is really crucial.

Just to give you a heads up, let me tell you what Bram’s five are:

Discipline: … To build an idea into a business, you have to have the discipline to spend time slogging through the least fun parts of running a business (like the bookkeeping), rather than taking that time to do something fun.
Calm: ..A good entrepreneur must have the ability to keep his cool in an emergency or crisis. It may not make the problem easier to solve, but it certainly won’t make it harder. If an entrepreneur can handle failure without frustration or anger, he can move past it to find success.
Attention to Detail: Restricting your attention to the big picture can be even more problematic than ’sweating the small stuff.’ It’s attention to detail that can make a small business successful when it has competition and it’s attention to detail that can keep costs down.
Risk Tolerance: No entrepreneur has a sure thing, no matter how much money he stands to earn on a given product. An entrepreneur has to be willing to accept pretty big risks, with some level of comfort.
Balance: Just as an entrepreneur doesn’t have a boss to keep him at work when necessary, he doesn’t have one to send him home when he’s done. If you are working for yourself, you have to decide how to balance your work and home life — and if you have a day job to add into the equation, balance just gets more complicated.

I would not quarrel with author Bram that these characteristics are all good to have, in one degree or another. But in my personal experience…and I have a lot of it…. all of these are not necessarily the characteristics of a successful entrepreneur.

First, let me define “successful entrepreneur.” I think of a successful entrepreneur as one who develops a successful business. And what I’ve seen…. or experienced…is this:

Entrepreneurs don’t have so much discipline as drive. They are so determined to do this they will plow through a brick wall or over, under or around it, until they find a way past it.

Entrepreneurs may or may not be the calmest people. Often not. Because entrepreneurs are fixated on their goal and deeply invested in it, emotionally as well as monetarily, they may well have a tantrum or two when things go wrong, but will not skip a beat before plowing forward anyway.

Detail? Not so much. To the extent that one particular thing generates or costs money, entrepreneurs can be the most focused people in the world. There are some who are in lines of work where mastery of detail is an absolute requirement, and they are temperamentally attuned to it. But for many entrepreneurs, and as far as what most people consider detail, entrepreneurs generally don’t care if the waste basket is on fire, if it doesn’t affect their bottom line. Someone else can fetch the water pail.

Balance? Never met an entrepreneur with a lot of balance. Most are workaholics or restrained/recovering workaholics. Some may be more balanced now, probably after a relationship or two has headed South. They work with themselves constantly to try not to let their newest venture overtake their entire life. But their latest venture is always somewhat of an obsession so it’s a challenging juggling act.

Risk. This is the key. Study after study has shown that entrepreneurs come in all different shapes and sizes with all different types of characteristics. Some plan in exquisite detail; others fly by the seat of their pants. Some are disciplined; others are wildly undisciplined ( although they may have teamed up with a disciplined partner who will compensate for that.) But the one characteristic that all successful entrepreneurs have is the willingness to take risks. We all agree, as Bram says:”Even if a product tests well, the market can change, the warehouse can burn down and a whole slew of other misfortune can befall a small business. It’s absolutely risky to run a business of your own.”

Well, yes, we know that. But a true entrepreneur develops an ability to focus like an Indian fire walker. It is not so much calm in the face of crisis, as the ability to focus on eventual success and therefore on the next step and how to get through the immediate firestorm. An entrepreneur plays the odds, like a poker player. He or she knows that if she has a good concept, does a few things, but the right things well, she will likely win in the end. With that inner confidence, the entrepreneur holds the possibility of failure at bay, views crises as minor bumps in the road and puts in all her chips, betting on the final outcome.

It’s that ability to take risks that is the hallmark of an entrepreneur,

Rorschach Test For Entrepreneurs : If You See Opportunity, Start A Company

I have built start-ups throughout my life and also have been fortunate enough to be surrounded by successful entrepreneurs throughout my life. And I can tell you one thing: They may be fazed and affected, like everyone else, but they are unstoppable and undaunted by droughts, depressions, recessions, and natural or man-made disasters. Entrepreneurs and steely businessmen or women don’t stop, don’t look back, don’t complain, they just keep on powering through, whatever the tough times are. The key is these people know they are in it for life, good times or bad, and they may have to adjust their strategy but the game remains the same and they’re in it to win it. They just keep on going, like the famed energizer bunny.

I got onto the Net, riding the wave of the Netscape browser, surfing on the crest of an Internet boom, then weathered the dot com bust, really not so much the worse for wear, just with a little belt tightening, as I have learned to be a lean, mean operator, which I recommend to you as well, at least when you’re starting out. See Start Your Own Small Business Using More Ingenuity, Less Cash.

In 10 Reasons This is the Best Time to Build a Startup, NewsCred Blog gives it’s reasons why it’s a great time to start:

“I’m not a blind optimist, but I think the best suggestion in this situation is simple: forget the depressing “reality” painted by the so-called pundits, and just get on with it. Why? Because I really believe the naysayers are full of it, and it really is a great time to be building a startup. Here’s why:

10) You can’t dwell on what you cannot control and change, so this is the perfect opportunity to concentrate on the present and focus on delighting your customers TODAY. I don’t practice Buddhism, but I think Buddha got it spot on: “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future – concentrate your mind on the present moment.”

9) Capital efficiency is your friend (thanks Fred). You always wanted to do it, but now you have no excuse. Optimize spending, optimize investing, optimize hiring, optimize everything. This one is Buddha version 2.0: “Yesterday is a canceled check. Tomorrow is a promissory note. What we have today is ready cash – so spend it wisely.”

All your competitors with million dollar burn-rates are in trouble.

7) The current crop of startup winners were all created right after the Dot-Com bubble burst. Naysayers were out in droves in 2001 as well. Look at what happened to some of the entrepreneurs who chose to ignore the doom and gloom and just got on with it. $$$.

6) There are fewer distractions. All the hype surrounding web startups and the Web 2.0 bubble will disappear. Rather than worry about flipping your company or XYZ buying ABC for $100 million dollars, you can focus on your product.

5) Yes, product. In times like these, let your product speak louder than anything else. If you build something people want and need, all you need to do is make sure you can continue providing it. If you stop today, it’s going to be pretty hard for people to get to your product. Don’t disappoint them.

4) Build a great team, and don’t worry about paying them boatloads of money. You don’t have money, they don’t expect money, so its a pretty decent ZOPA (zone of probable agreement). There’ll be plenty of talent available. If said talent comes with high salary requirements, slap them across the face. Then tell them “thanks, but no thanks.”

3) Necessity is a big … mother (of invention). You’re brain synapses should be firing on all cylinders and creative juices flowing non-stop. A little creativity will go a long way, and no one will dismiss your crazy ideas if it can a) save money or b) extend your runway or c) get you sales. Also guerrilla marketing is fun.

2) Remember that business model you’ve been putting away for a while? Well, dust it off and starting focusing on it now. During the good times, things like business models often seem like perks or bonuses. Bad times are a blessing in disguise – you can bring back the biz model and put it front and center. God help you if you don’t have one.

1) You’re an entrepreneur. Your whole purpose of being is so that you can take scarce resources, optimize like hell and get maximum output from the least input. This is your time to shine.

The most important thing to remember is if you quit, there’s a 0% chance of success. Life’s too short to worry, so just go out there and have fun. Build a kick-a.. product that’ll delight your customers.

And don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.”

Now, I happen to wholeheartedly agree. And I can say, looking back, even in the middle of the dot com bust, I said: “Are they kidding? Not even 10% of the world is on the Net yet. The Net is only beginning. This is a blip on the map.” And this is only a blip on the map as well. Work now and you’ll be better positioned for when the economy roars back as it inevitably will

Large Ambitions, Goals – Small Methodical Steps To Achieve Them

Gretchen Glasscock

In order to become successful in the workplace, you must think large, envisioning yourself as ready to step into the CEO slot on a moment’s notice. At the same time, when addressing your work tasks, you must think small. No matter how grand the task or crucial the outcome, you must approach it methodically in bite size chunks. In fact, one executive primer, when advising how to approach an overwhelming task asks: “How do you eat an elephant?” Answer: “One bite at a time.” If we are able to envision large projects as made up of small, manageable pieces, they are not so daunting and we realize we can readily achieve them.

It is also possible to break down your career goals into manageable pieces. Before Carly Fiorina became the president, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Fortune 500 Hewlett-Packard, then adviser to Repubican presidential candidate John McCain, she had worked as a secretary, a receptionist and taught English in Italy. Ultimately she went on to get a BA from Stanford, and an MBA from the University of Maryland and, then she realized, like a camel passing through the eye of a needle, in order to reach the top slot, she would need one more credential and she went out and got it: a Master of Science in management from the MIT Sloan School of Mangement. When she joined AT&T, created the powerful eye-catching red circular splash of color that was to be Lucent logo, then directed the company’s strategy and orchestrated its initial public offering (IPO), the most successful IPO in U.S. history up to that point in time, Fiorina beame a star with amazing firepower.

In corporate America continuing to increase your skills, experience and credentials are one sure route to the top. In the world of small business, entrepreneurs often get to the top by their sheer grit and tenacity, by feverishly attacking every task in a business, working long and grueling hours and gaining hard won business insight and savvy along the way.

Ruth Fertel, founder of Ruth’s Chris Steak House, launched an $300 million restaurant chain throughout the U.S. Mexico, Puerto Rico and Taiwan by realizing she needed more money to send her kids to school and taking a flyer on a restaurant listed for sale in her local newspaper. She worked sixteen hours a day, learned to butcher, cook, do the books, mix drinks, wait tables and seat people. No doubt she had an abundance of stamina, perseverance and charisma to carry her on to success.

When you are an entrepreneur, launching a small business, the distance from the bottom to the top is not so great, and you are not only calling the shots as but proving yourself by your ultimate success . You are the CEO, as well as the chief bottle washer, from Day 1, so that is how you envision yourself and how others accept you.

In corporate America, it’s harder to envision oneself as CEO, because you don’t see many women in the CEO slot. It’s easier to think of yourself as reaching a pinnacle as executive vice president, or possibly chief financial officer. But you should never sell yourself short. Low expectations can be a self fulfilling prophecy.
By setting your own goals, it is possible, in corporate America, to replicate the kind of training Ruth Fertel and other entrepreneurs have, gaining experience in every part of the corporation – marketing, sales and operations – “by remaining open to cross-training and working with cross-functional teams”. When a women diversifies her work experience, she prepares herself to handle any task she’s assigned, an invaluable professional asset.

“According to Sandra Woods, vice president and chief environmental, health and safety office at Coors Brewing Company, the best way for women to promote themselves” is to accept challenges enthusiastically and not have a limited view of what they can do. They need to build a really broad base within the corporation” Woods advises. “Business today is saying Get out of your silos. See the way you interconnect.”
And remember the importance of being able to think big and small at the same time: Big ambitions, goals and capabilities – small, methodical steps to accomplish each goal, however large. And, like Carly Fiorina, learn to project self confidence, radiate authority and dominate whatever stage you’re on. As you succeed, your stage will get larger.

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Tag Archives: start up

The Entrepreneurship Track

1. The Beginning

2. The Journey

3. The New Beginning

Seth Godin’s 7 Tips for Startups in a Down Market