I remember last July when I quit my 9 to 5 job to devote all of my time and energy towards my own business. I was only there for 4 months, but it was first official corporate job. If you’ve been following my articles for the past year you know that I was there for one reason: to raise some capital to put towards my business. But after 4 months of absolute bullshit and bureaucracy, I quit. By that time, Mind Petals was up and running and I was ready to push forward full-steam ahead. Chooo!!! Chooo!!
But there really wasn’t any solid plan in place. To be perfectly honest, I was scared after quitting. Sure, I felt liberated and free to push forward without having to worry about having a boss and crazy employees, but there was definitely fear and perhaps feeling a bit vulnerable.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do to continue supporting myself living here in NYC — which is extremely expensive, mind you. I had enough cash to last me a few months in the bank and I won’t lie — I always had the worst case scenario if I needed it: reaching out to Moms and Pops.
But to tell you the truth, I’ve always hated being supported from my parents. Why? Because it really goes counter to everything that I’m about and everything that I’m trying to do. I have the sort of parents that would support me — financially — anytime if I needed it. And though that may sound good, it’s really not (to me, at least).
Having to rely on financial support from someone else is poison to an entrepreneur — trust me. It’ll kill your hunger.
So there I was. Just quit my job. No solid plan. Few months of savings in the bank. And absolutely not willing to resort to Mom and Dad’s bank account. So what’s an entrepreneur to do?
Well, I stayed hungry and sought out people who I thought that I could help with their businesses. I spent my days and nights searching on Craisglist for people who needed to consult about their websites; people who needed to learn about “blogging, RSS, and Web 2.0” platforms.
For months I kept at it and was able to secure around 5 or 6 steady clients who I would build sites for, consult with over the phone for $50 per hour, and help with their marketing initiatives.
My hunger to stay afloat and raise capital so I could continue to live in NYC and work on my business without having to worry too much about my bills, kept me going.
And though I no longer seek out new clients to consult with because my time is 95% focused on Mind Petals, I still maintain a few clients on the side so I can make just enough cash to devote all my time into my baby — MP!
So what’s the lesson here? The lesson is that you don’t always need a plan. Don’t let “not” having a plan stop you from moving forward with something. Don’t feel that you shouldn’t quit your job, move forward with a new idea, or anything for matter because you don’t have a solid plan in place. Sometimes you need to push yourself into a corner and fight your way out. Sure, it’ll be uncomfortable and scary, but from those feelings…from those worries and unknowns…. You can push yourself to accomplish great things. Back an animal into a corner and believe me, it’s going to do everything possible to get past you.
There is a 10 million dollars cash in this suitcase.
What’s it for?
It’s for you! If you give me your company and sign a contract to never start another company, never push forward with another idea, and to basically be complacent and give up business altogether… I’ll give you this cash. What do you say?
Image that this really happened. Imagine that someone was willing to offer you millions and all you had to do was stop being an entrepreneur — forever. Would you do it? Would you be able to turn your back on all of your dreams — present and future? Would you be content knowing that never again will you be able to start a business or even be involved in one? How much money would it take for you to do this?
If what you are doing right now is all about making the big bucks, then sure, you’re probably going to take the cash and say good night to entrepreneurship. Buh bye! Just like that. ::cough:: sell out ::cough::
But if what you are doing is more than just making the dollars, more than just the material items, and more than fame and prestige… then you have just separated yourself from the pack. Your vision, mission, and aims transcend mere dollars and entrepreneurship is something that you’d never — ever, ever, ever — give up on. Regardless of how much money was thrown in your face. You love in too much. Entrepreneurship is your life — your baby.
I don’t think that it’s hard to make money — as silly as that may sound to some people. If you have a plan, have at least some brains, and are motivated to make it, then you can easily become a millionaire if you’re willing to keep at it. Sure, I’m not a millionaire so what do I know? But, I know plenty of young “business” dudes who are on their way to banking a million and guess what…what they are doing isn’t going to have a positive impact on this world. Never will. Their business has one purpose: to be used as a vehicle to make more money for themselves.
Their “end” is money and their business is a means to that end. True entrepreneurs have no end. They would rather die than throw in the towel for life and accept 10 mil’. Because it isn’t all about money. It’s about the larger picture: having an impact, affecting lives, and leaving your mark on society.
Last night was our debut Mind Petals Mixup here in the Big Apple, New York City baby! It was an amazing turnout of young and talented entrepreneurs not only from New York but as far as San Francisco and other areas.
Wine, unlimited gourmet cookies, brownies, cup cakes, amazing tea and a bunch of innovative, smart, and hungry entrepreneurs in a café downtown Manhattan — what more can you ask for?
The best part of my night was finally getting to meet so many of the entrepreneurs who I have been speaking to online and over the phone for the past year after they’ve found Mind Petals, and actually getting to meet or — “Mixup” — with them in person. Amazing.
That’s what it was about: mixing up various entrepreneurs and interacting, engaging, debating, and brainstorming with one another — this is how brilliance comes about and it was great to see this happening at our Mixup.
Once a month we’ll be throwing a Mind Petals Mixup here in NYC, so if you plan on visiting NYC this summer, definitely let me know — I’d love to have you there!
Here are some shots. You can also view all of ‘em here.
The Mixup totally rocked! Thanks so much Access Granted for sponsoring the event and Gramstand for supplying the awesome spot / yummy food. Hope to see some of you guys next month. Oh, and yes!, I am rockin’ a mohawk
When you are at an entrepreneurial gathering you are bound to meet plenty of new entrepreneurs. A myriad of names will be running through your head all night, so how will you remember them all? Well, of course you’ll have their business card, but that alone won’t imprint their names in your head. One trick is to associate each person’s name with an object, a certain thought, or any abstract thing that helps you to remember. For example, say you meet someone named “Tom Salvia”… in your head, associate “Tom Salvia” with a more familiar name to you such as “Tom Cruise.” Now what you are doing is building a neural connection in your brain between those two names and it’ll help you remember your new friend Tom.
Relax:
Science has proven that when you are relaxed and free of stress, your mind is better equipped to absorb memory. So relax, take a few deep breaths, and clear your mind.
Heck, even some good ol’ yoga can increase your memory:
Yogic exercises are also helpful in improving memory power and reduce forgetfulness. Practice the yogic exercises with the feeling that the memory power is improving and forgetfulness is reducing. (source)
Be passionate:
If you are truly passionate and enthusiastic about what you are learning it’ll be easier to remember. If you just met another entrepreneur who is explaining his theory on water molecules and you couldn’t give two sh*Ts about molecules, then I doubt that you’ll remember that conversation. However, if you meet someone that starts talking about his new web app and you, too, happen to be into web apps, then you’ll automatically retain more of that conversation — simply because you’re interested in the topic.
Create a list:
Write things down! Sure, sounds simple but it really works. When you write things down you are visually capturing them in your mind and reinforcing weak memory ties in your mind.
Drink some of this stuff:
Ginko biloba, green tea, and ginseng. These various herbs, supplements, and teas improve blood circulation to the brain and provide your brain with an abundant amount of powerful memory-enhancing antioxidants. *Please consult your physician before consuming any of the mentioned supplements.
So start now and work on improving your memory while you are young. An article from Psychology Today teaches us that our memories begin to cluster when we are younger:
Memories tend to cluster in the years between ages 10 and 30, says David Rubin, Ph.D. He offers several possible explanations. Perhaps we recall events from our teens and twenties because so many of them were “firsts,” and their novelty made them memorable. It may be that the emotion and excitement that accompanied these events vividly I imprinted them on our minds. Or perhaps our early attempts to establish stability provide a sort of template for adulthood. Possibly, it is nothing about the memories themselves that make them better remembered, but how they are stored in the brain. We’re at our sharpest mentally when we’re young, and so have more mental resources to efficiently encode information. That, in turn, makes them easier to retrieve–and reminisce over–later on.
In mathematics, computing, linguistics, and related disciplines, an algorithm is a finite list of well-defined instructions for accomplishing some task that, given an initial state, will terminate in a defined end-state. (wikipedia)
Most innovative and successful entrepreneurs, whether they know it or not, think algorithmically when attempting to solve a problem in the cleanest, easiest, and most efficient manner.
When you think algorithmically, you think in steps — not in large blocks. Thinking this way isn’t a pragmatic process, it’s one of defining small and concise steps (re: instructions) that all work together to solve a problem and produce the end result that you are seeking.
Let’s use a super simple example to demonstrate this concept. Say that you are a web designer and you are getting ready to jump into a new project. Now, there are two ways to approach a project, the sloppy way and the efficient / clean way.
The sloppy way goes something like this:
Find the client
Briefly discuss the project to get a “general” idea of the direction
Jump into the project without breaking it down into tasks
Complete the job
Present to client
Correct and revise
Present to client
Correct and revise
Present to client
Correct and revise – get the idea?
This is a very sloppy and inefficient manner to approach a problem. Your time is being wasted. The client’s time is being wasted. There is a lot of noise between you and the client. Confusion arises. Concepts become nebulous. And it’s just a downright dirty way of doing business.
Now when you think algorithmically, you approach problems much differently. You’d approach the job like this:
Evaluate the needs of the client and gain an intuitive understanding of what needs to get done. You’d meet with the client with a pen and paper in your hand and start outlining exactly what will be needed to accomplish the task.
Reduce, subtract, and simplify: You now take the general concept and break it down into smaller, fine-tuned, tasks. These tasks would be assessed in detail and broken down into milestones. At this point, you’d also assign your team responsibility and state who needs to do what. The idea, here, is to break things down and keep the steps simple as possible.
Get to work: now it’s time to build the site and get the design rockin’. You would begin with mocks, present them to client, and then move on from there. Minor tweaking and adjusting will take place in this stage, but it shouldn’t be anything serious if you’ve followed steps 1 and 2 and kept the lines of communication open with your client.
Complete design and review again with client. The site should be 99% complete and a small widow of time should be kept open for final adjustments and revisions.
You see what happened here? You broke things down into small steps and your time was spent in the most efficient manner as possible. You saved time, there were 85% less corrections because you and your client were on the same page throughout the process. Responsibilities were delegated. The job was completed smoothly and everyone was happy.
Of course this was a super simple example and thinking algorithmically goes way deeper than web design, i.e., building large-scale web platforms and dynamic applications that resolve large amounts of data. Think google, digg, etc…
The point: Break things down! Don’t approach problems in large and sloppy blocks and ignore the little steps in between. You’ll lose time and work inefficiently. Don’t work hard, work smart.
What are you doing with your time? Are you using it wisely? There are a million and one things that need to get done throughout the day, but are the things you’re doing going to help you make money? It is a fact, no matter who we are, we all get the same 24 hours in a day. It is what we do with that time that sets us apart from the next person.
Have you ever met a person that works all the time, maybe even too hard, but never seems to get anything done? How does that even happen? The better question is, how can we prevent that from happening? The answer: time management!
Times are changing and at the speed of a mouse click. According to Hyrum W. Smith in his book, The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management , “the daily treadmill is accelerating, and we have to run faster and faster just to stay in place.” The fact is that not everything that needs to get done today for your business will actually result in profit today. But I’ll bet that you can change some things that will benefit your business.
If your peak hours for making sales are from 4 to 9, then don’t spend it surfing the net for equipment or for that new program that you need; Go make a sale! Save preparing mailers, doing research, updating your website, and things of that nature for when you don’t have the opportunity to be out growing your business. Why would you interview someone during your peak selling hours? Interview them later! If you don’t have time to send out those thank you cards at a later time, then simply get up earlier. This isn’t rocket science!
Webster’s definition of budget is to plan or provide for the use of in detail. If you can learn to master time-budgeting, then I guarantee you will have a much larger number to work with for your financial budget.
Here are 6 steps to help ensure that you are PROactive rather than being active with your time. By following these simple steps you will ensure that you are being PROactive with your time and in taking your sales and your career to the next level.
Take inventory of your time; recognize what is good and bad
A mentor of mine suggested that I keep a log of everything that I did, minute by minute, for an entire day. If you do this and you will see how your time is being spent. This will also help you realize how much time you really are wasting! Also by keeping track of your activity during the day, you will be able to see where PROactive activities can be added! Let’s say you must commute for 45 minutes a day, why not start listening to books on tape? If you listen to 45 minutes per day for a week, you’ll have listened to 3-5 books in a week. Imagine how that could affect your sales!
Decide what to cut out of your day
Once you have taken inventory of how you spend your time, you then can figure out what you should eliminate. Some things can be cut completely while other activities should have a limited amount of time that you can spend on it. One option, to better your time, is to make your day longer; try getting up an extra half hour earlier at the beginning of the day and going to bed a half hour later at the end of the day to prepare and reflect. If you look at your schedule and see those blank areas and you have no idea what happened in that time, I’m sure you’ll be able to locate time-wasting activities to cut.
Decide what you should add
What things could you add to make your day more productive? You should ask yourself: What am I not already accomplishing in my day? What would I like to accomplish in my day? What am I doing now that I should devote even more time to? For instance, if my goal was to make better sales, I could call an extra 3 people a day. Three phone calls will take less than 15 minutes from your day, but in 1 month it would amount to an extra 72 calls! That’s almost like adding on an extra day of work into my month, using time that I would have otherwise wasted!
Set the priority
How you spend your time should reflect what is most important. I bet you knew that, but do you follow that rule? Sometimes there is just not enough time to get everything done in one day, if there was then what would you do for the rest of the week? Put your tasks in order of importance so that you don’t end up spending your time on all of the wrong things. They say that ‘time is money,’ so if that’s true, let’s invest it in the right place.
Schedule a time to review
The most important step in a PROactive process is to review and reflect at the beginning and end of each day. If you do this, even on days where you’ve wasted time, you can at least reflect back on the day and learn from it. Then apply what you’ve learned and make changes. I like to reflect and plan my days the night before, and then in the morning, all I need to do is review what I’m going to do that day over my cup of coffee. Don’t be discouraged if you find more and more black holes in your day that seem to eat away your time, because the more that you can find and fix, the more proactive you will be in the future.
Put it in action now!
Now! Get to it! Don’t waste time! Action without planning is fatal, but so is planning without action! Because if you don’t take action, then reading this was just another time-vampire in your day.
HOT or NOT, as I’m sure that you can guess, is that site that allows you to rate people by their hotness. It’s simple: if someone is hot, you rate them high and if they are butt ugly, you give ‘em a low rating.
The founders of this company have scaled it to a level where they are pulling 4 million + a year in revenue; not bad for such a simple site that, believe it or not, many people have never even heard of.
I was reading James Hong’s blog, one of the founders, and have focused in on a couple key points that may inspire you as an entrepreneur.
1.)
This doesn’t directly relate to the founder, but his friend, Albert did something that most entrepreneurs wouldn’t do in a lifetime. He sold his company, bubbleshare, and gave the proceeds to his parents so he would stay hungry.
Albert mentioned that he gave most of the money he made from selling his first company to his parents.. A noble thing to do, but then he surprised me by adding “I gave them the money because it was of course enough for me to never work again, but you know.. i wanted to stay hungry”.
Now that takes balls! Talk about staying hungry. This just goes to show you that not all entrepreneurs are in it for the money. The rush! The rush is what’s really exciting and keeps most of us in the game.
2.)
It’s going to take more than money to get motivated people to be devoted to your business. You have to provide a company culture that is really going to entice and keep your team enthusiastic about the company.
It never works. At least not here in Silicon Valley. Engineers at HOTorNOT last year were making 2-3x normal salaries, yet they were not happy… and we really couldn’t expect them to be. After all, the only people we trusted with our baby were people like us.. and god knows I wouldn’t have stayed here for a high salary. At their age (23), I wanted risk and potential reward, not a steady job. I make a big deal of telling people that when I finished my MBA at 25, I turned down a job that was gonna pay me about $180k in the first year.. despite the fact that I was $50k in debt.. to instead earn no paycheck and give entrepreneurship a go. These are the type of people you trust to continue running your site in “high profit margin” mode. Big company types won’t do.
Bottom line, if you have entrepreneurial-minded people working for your company, they aren’t going to be satisfied with the traditional “paycheck to paycheck.” They’ll need more than that to stick around. Offering them a piece of the pie — a stake in the company — is usually the best route.
3.)
Ok, so maybe your company is making some money. Sit back and relax now, right? Wrong! Never get complacent just because you “feel” secure with the current status of your company. You MUST continue to innovate, improve, modify, and perfect. Don’t let money make you lazy. Do whatever you have to do in order to keep that drive to excel. These guys took some serious measures to ensure that they wouldn’t get lazy:
The downside of running a cashcow is that you don’t want to do anything substantially different to make it better. The idea is that you milk the cow until it is dead, and hopefully invest that money into new things. Changing anything could screw the money machine up, so you tend not to take any risks. But it almost physically hurts to see the thing you worked so hard on be put into this mode, because you know that in this mode, death is inevitable. Nothing last forever without changing with the times. (Actually, nothing last forever, period. But doing nothing surely accelerates that process.)
So late last year, Jim and I took a look at our situation:
Converted the company from an S corporation to a C corporation. This is not reversible any time in the near future, and changes the dynamics of how willing we are to spend the money we are making.
We stopped all dividending of profits. This money is now better used being reinvested into the company. What this basically means is that my income for the year just dropped from “x million” to “ZERO”. Talk about taking a paycut! Additionally, since I am working here again, I took a salary of $24 a year. (I wanted it to be $1, but apparently that created a problem for our payroll vendor, so it became $1 per pay period)
We created a stock option plan and have started giving options to employees.. to make THEM hungry too. As part of this, our engineers took a paycut back to market rates. The fascinating thing about this is that THEY ASKED FOR THE PAY CUT. They understood that in order to deserve the reward, and in order for them to feel the need to work smarter/harder, they needed to take some risk. For guys that just turned 23, I found this to be incredibly mature.
I admire the actions that these founders are taking to ensure a future for their company. They are continuing to take risks, improve the business model, and implementing ways to turn employees into partners. These initiatives are things that all entrepreneurs should take into consideration when running a company. Stay hungry, and keep the ball rolling!
For some people the forces of the Earth tell you its time to be an entrepreneur. Maybe a hobby of yours has caught on with the public, maybe you were noticed for a particular gift, or maybe its time for you to take the family business in your own direction. For most people it is not that simple. Upon college graduation there is a certain expectation to find that first position, the launching pad; a situation where you can compare your salary and bonus with your friends and rest easy that you have health insurance, paid sick days, and other benefits. Some people thrive on that.
However, there are others that cannot accept the thought of defining themselves by their bonus or doing a job just to get it done. The idea of being satisfied with getting out of work at 5 so you can start your life is unacceptable to some people. Those people are entrepreneurs. They are the people who want to be defined by their work and wake up as though each day was an opportunity to offer something fresh to the world. However, being an entrepreneur doesn’t always mean you have to be on your own.
The problem is that it is very hard to find the intersection of these two contrasting ideals. It is important to walk the accepted path for some time and gain an understanding of the opportunities out there. On the other hand, that can be very confining and restricting. If the goal is to be an entrepreneur it can be very hard to sit behind a desk working on someone else’s dream, or worse, just making ends meet.
At what point do you say it is time for me to fulfill my own dreams? That’s a very hard question to answer. Mark Burnett’s book Jump In does a good job of encouraging the reader to do just that, but at the end of the day it is up to you. For some reason many people do not do what brings them joy, even if it isn’t illegal or harmful to others. All those pressures from yourself, your peers, your parents, and everywhere else to earn a living or show some visible progress can be very damaging to the entrepreneurial spirit, or even to ones happiness. So when should you say its time to jump in?
Life is very interesting because you never really know what is coming next until you get there. I guess you could say it is like riding a roller coaster for the first time. However, in life you can’t just get back on line to do it again. You only get one chance to make your life meaningful. While some people see meaning as being a good son or daughter, having a significant relationship, or raising a child of their own I have always been looking for more.
It’s hard to say exactly what that more is but I truly believe I am certain it has to do with greatness. I want to make a mark, not just on my immediate family and friends, but on everyone. I want to leave the Earth and have people know that I made a difference. For years now I have known that the best opportunity for me to be in a position to set a positive example, make peoples lives better, and offer assistance is through entrepreneurship.
In my estimation, many professionals, such as lawyers, doctors, and accountants have a ceiling. Of course there are standouts in every field but for the most part you can only make so much money or wield so much influence. The level that a successful entrepreneur can reach is unparalleled. There are no bounds to the impact that one industrious man can make as a successful businessperson, the whole word could be at your fingertips.
It is that drive that has propelled me to achieve what I already have and pushes me to continue on my journey. It is both good and bad because while I am very proud of my accomplishments, often times I am not satisfied. I can certainly savor a victory but then I am immediately on to the next challenge. Greatness is extraordinary because it is hard to come by. That’s what makes it so special. While is easy to be discouraged and the world can knock you down, it’s important to remember that if it were easy, everyone would achieve it.
I can’t put my finger on it. I’m not really sure what it is. You know, that little “something” inside of people like you and me who want more out of life. That feeling inside your body that says “bust your ass…stay dedicated…stay motivated…strive for something more…something greater…don’t be content with what’s in front of you… make things happen at any expense!”
Seriously, do you know what I mean? Do you know that little “something” that particular people — not everyone, of course — have in their body and minds? That killer instinct to breakout of the societal molds we’ve been so tightly cemented in.
It’s something inexplicable. It’s not something theoretical that can be proven or torn asunder or even used to justify something. It’s more of a paradigm; a certain wave that only certain people are tuned into.
I was speaking to a fellow young entrepreneur about this today and he agreed with me by saying that “it’s something that you either have or your don’t… something that people will either understand or be completely lost.”
So true. People, society, our parents, family, and friends can look at us and think to themselves: “what does Dave think that he’s doing? He doesn’t have a job (9 to 5), he’s wasting his time following a vision, he’s spending so much time and energy into something that will amount to nothing. I just can’t understand that.”
I’m telling you, when someone steps outside of the herd and goes off on an path to achieve something great — something that is not perfectly aligned with the status quo — people begin to fear you.
They try with all their might to pull you back into the herd. It’s like “ok..ok.. enough of this silly business… come on back into the herd and be a good sheep…. Be smart and get a job and work hard for the next 40 years of your life. Don’t disrupt the status quo, embrace it!”
You know what I say to that? Yeah-fu*king-Right! No thank you. And guess what? I don’t expect you to understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. I don’t expect you to comprehend the nature of the entrepreneur because you have been conditioned and trained and rewarded “never” to understand and to “never” accept what we entrepreneurs are trying to do.
So while you’re busy on your linear path to making your boss happy and being a good sheep in the herd. I’ll continue to be that lone wolf disrupting the hell out of that herd, that dogmatic philosophy that you so badly want me to adhere to. Woof! Woof!
Remember when you were 5 years old and you have a million and one questions for your mom every 5 seconds? You asked her everything: What’s God? What’s sex? How are babies made? Why is the sky blue? How is water made? Why is grass green? And so on and so on and so on…
When you were 5 years old you were all about finding out the unknown, learning the answers to your questions, and not settling for being left in the dark without answers. You simply had to know! And even if it gave your mom a heart attack, you wouldn’t let up and just kept on asking and asking.
If you remember being that 5 year old and asking all those questions, great! But what about today? Are you still asking questions? Do you still have an appetite to know everything that you possibly can? Do you still hate being in the unknown?
I hope so, because continuing to ask questions and seek answers is what’s going to make you a great entrepreneur. Questions, I believe, have a lot to do with your success.
When I was young I wondered if I could become a successful entrepreneur one day. I asked myself if I could ever change the world? If I could ever have a million dollars in my bank account? If I could ever make a difference in my life and the lives of others?
Later on, I asked questions such as: can I unite young entrepreneurs? What would happen if I reached out to as many young entrepreneurs as I possibly could? What if I created a magazine specifically for entrepreneurs?
You see, asking yourself questions and actually trying to figure out the answers to these mysteries is the cornerstone of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is like driving your car towards a cliff and once you reach the end of the cliff, you have reached everything that you already know… all of your questions have been answered…all of your goals have been accomplished.
But here’s the thing, if you reach the end of that cliff, you are going to drive off of it, fall, crash, and die. The goal is to never reach the end of that cliff. To continue learning, to continue seeking the answers to your questions, to continue making things happen and allowing yourself and your business to continue to evolve.
Never be satisfied. Continue to seek answers. Don’t settle for being in the dark about something. Don’t let go of that 5 year old within you.
When I’m driving (re: speeding) I’m constantly checking the rearview mirror to see if there are any cops behind me or nearby. I haven’t been pulled over in 3+ years, so I’m pretty happy about that. I also check the rearview when crossing lanes, so I don’t crash. Sometimes, I just check it for no particular reason — to be a responsible driver, right?
But what about with your company. Running a company is similar to driving a car in that you are the person manning the vehicle (re: your company) and you have to constantly look behind you to see if cops (re: pitfalls and potential mistakes) are behind you and also checking it when crossing the lane (re: launching a new product of service) to make sure that you don’t crash — or, in our case, make a wrong move with your business.
As an entrepreneur you have to constantly check your rearview mirror to make sure that you are heading in the right direction with your business and that you are making the right moves.
If you continue to drive — with your head looking straight forward — you are bound to crash sooner or later. For instance, say you launch a new product or service and you are so confident that your badass idea rocks that you don’t even feel the need to look back — at your clients — and see how they are responding, see if they are hating or loving it, or to see if the idea is losing you money.
You can only see these things when you take a chance to peep through your company’s rearview mirror and spend some time assessing your current position. Complacency will kill the entrepreneur. Maybe your company is leaving money on the table by not properly utilizing your existing customer-base with the right services; services that can increase your bottom-line and add value to your clients.
Again, you’ll only be able to see such mistakes by looking “back” not only “forward” and seeing what’s going on behind you; behind the scenes.
You are a visionary. You are a forward-thinker. You are an innovator. Yes, you are the founder. Right on! BUT, a leader and an innovator does not neglect what’s behind them. They don’t forget to check up on their creations by spending some time and effort to take a look into the background.
In the latest installment of MP Radio I interview young entrepreneur Ben Casnocha of Comcate. Ben is one of the most insightful and inspirational entrepreneurs that I have spoken to. His down to Earth outlook on entrepreneurship and no-bullshit approach on life is absolutely refreshing — this is the sort of entrepreneur that isn’t afraid to tell it like he sees it. And I respect that as a fellow entrepreneur.
Here are some discussed topics:
The motivating factors for starting a business
How reading books affect the entrepreneur’s life
The relationship between chess and business
Being a young entrepreneur in San Francisco
Finding value within yourself
Not following other peoples’ plans, but setting your own
Last night I heard about a company called I-Doser. I was watching the news and all of a sudden a young dude, possibly 15 years-old, comes on and happily confesses that he’s been getting high on cocaine and pot just by “listening to the I-Doser tracks.”
Let me just say this: If this company can actually trick and convince people into believing that they can get high solely by listening to their music, then you can create a business around ANYTHING in the world. This just goes to show that there will ALWAYS be some sort of following for your businesses ideas, not matter how esoteric, wacky, or out-of-this-world they may appear to be.
Now I’m not a scientist — not even close — but I have done some personal studying of the brain and neurotransmitters n’ such in the past. I believe that, theoretically, music can stimulate the sensation of being on drugs. However, there must already be a neural net, a preexisting connection somewhere in the brain (perhaps, of a previous drug experience while listening to that exact music), in order for such a firing of neurons to be triggered; hence, creating the drug experience without taking the actual drug. Well, those are just my two cents — what do I know? Thanks for listening to my scientific tangent, now let’s get back to entrepreneurship.
When I turned on the news and saw, literally, a crowd of teenagers raving about how “cool” and “awesome” these CDs were, I couldn’t help but think about The Tipping Point and how it only takes a small group of people to become evangelized about a product for it to tip and pass that threshold into a success.
And it’s funny, because for the most part, this product is bullshit. But guess what? It doesn’t matter whether or not I — or you — think that the product is bullshit. What matters? The only thing that matters is that there are people who believe in the product; people who do, in fact, believe that they are doing pot, cocaine, and shrooms when listening to these tracks.
The point is: that just because you or even the general public think that a product isn’t legitimate or doesn’t have any merit or reason for existing, all of that is irrelevant. As long as there is a spark, a fire can be made. As long as there is a drop of water, a seed can germinate. As long as there is Mind Petals, someone can start a business (ok, so the last example was a shameless plug, hah). But you get the idea… as long as there is, at least, a small following, an idea can flourish and expand.
If you can code PHP / MySQL (LAMP) in your sleep, absolutely love developing social networking platforms and… even better…. are a young entrepreneur interested in being a part of something evolutionary, you can be who we are looking for — our long lost coder If you live in the NYC or San Francisco area and are looking for such an opportunity, contact us at:
One of the biggest issues that I come across with young entrepreneurs is the extreme frustration when trying to sell your vision to people. I think that we’ve all experienced this at some point throughout our journey.
Here’s a typical scenario:
Mindy: I have this great idea. I know that it’s going to blowup. But I can’t make it happen.
Peter: Why, what’s the problem?
Mindy: I can’t convince anyone to help me out with the business. I don’t have the capital to dish out a lot of money. I need a programmer and designer to be a part of the team — on an equity basis — to make it happen.
Peter: So if you can’t get people to be a part of your team, then what? You aren’t going to push forward?
Mindy: Exactly. I can’t go through with it. Sucks!!
Unfortunately, the above scenario is quite common among us young entrepreneurs. I have personal experience with such situations of selling your idea to people and not being able to find the right person to come onboard.
But let me tell you something: no matter how many people turn you down, no matter how many people refuse to work with your company on an equity basis for whatever reason (need to pay bills, food, family, etc.), and no matter how many people say that your business idea is garbage and they wouldn’t want to be a part of it…. you MUST keep on searching.
There are people out there who will believe in your idea. People who will want to be a part of your vision and dreams. People who will unconditionally believe in your plan and want to see it succeed more than anything. You just need to bust your ass trying to find ‘em.
So if you’re sitting there with a plan and no team to implement it, don’t let the refusal of other people dictate the future of your idea. You have to keep on moving no matter what. If you become stagnant, you’re dead. If you become too stressed out and despondent about not having the necessary people to help you make it happen, then guess what, it’s not going to happen. Keep your spirits high and never stop searching.
Sooner or later, you’ll find the right people and your plan will have finally launched into the stratosphere.
What an awesome book. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is one of those reads that you feel extremely enlightened after completing. It’s a book exploring the phenomena behind word of mouth and how it can turn something small and seemingly unnoticed, into something huge and abundant — turning it into an epidemic once the “tipping point” has been reached.
Gladwell brilliantly explores various case studies and real events that intimately uncover this concept of an idea reaching a certain threshold and suddenly — as if it happened out of nowhere — the idea spreads like an airborne virus, infecting everyone in it’s path.
One of the best case studies in the book was the exploration of New York City crime in the 80’s and early 90’s. During this time period, NYC was a breeding ground for thugs, rapist, murderers, and graffiti artist who vandalized the subways.
For years, crime continued to rise and escalate to new heights. The police didn’t seem to have a grasp on the crime and it infected the entire city with a sense of fear, disgust, and anxiety.
But, all of a sudden, crime started to drastically recede. Something had happened. What was it? It was something as small as cleaning up the streets and subways from the graffiti that canvassed the walls and trains.
This small adjustment created a virus throughout the city. It sent a message that NYC would no longer tolerate crime and permit their property to be ruined. In conjunction with the graffiti cleanup, NYC also increased the arrests of people who jumped over the dividers to get to the trains, effectively stealing $1 in fare. As the arrests for these minor things increased, the major crime drastically decreased and NYC was restored.
This is just one example that Gladwell dove into. Throughout this book, he takes you on a journey explaining the tipping points of Hush Puppies, AIDS, various marketing campaigns, Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues, suicides, and teen smoking.
All of these stories and case studies can be placed in the context of your business. You will learn that the little adjustments that you make with your business can have astronomical impacts. You will understand that small groups of people called Mavens, Salesmen, and Connectors are the heart of your business and without them, your business would cease to grow.
I left this book with a ton of new ideas on how to reach that critical mass, that threshold, that tipping point. If you think you understood human nature well, think again. The Tipping Point will have you thinking on an entirely new level and your business will benefit.
School is out and it’s time to party! Whoo.. hoo!! It’s time to take it easy. Go out every night and get blasted. Hit the strip and go bar hopping. Throw some crazy house parties. Visit other countries. Spend cash like you’re a millionaire. And, of course, wine and dine the ladies. Rock on!
Ok, so let’s all agree that we’ll be partaking in some of the above activities, no doubt. With warm weather comes more fun and more events, gatherings, etc..
But, just because it’s summer and we’re having fun… it doesn’t mean that we should become complacent and put our businesses on the back burner. No way.
For some entrepreneurs, the summer will be the time of year when they get most of their business; for others, it’ll be a time when things slow down. Regardless of your business growth rate over the summer, you should be using the warm weather to your advantage.
With summer comes bbq’s, parties, events, and all that good stuff. While at these gathering you should always keep your business in mind and how you can offer your services to all the new people that you meet this summer.
I know.. I know… if you’re at a baseball game or a birthday party, it may not be the most convenient time to be pushing your business. Well, guess what, you’re an entrepreneur… not just some Joe Smoe… so, for you, it’ll make sense!
Entrepreneurs sleep, breathe, and eat their businesses all day long. So make sure to keep up that intensity level this summer. Make those deals happen. Push for those extra clients. And, of course, have a blast at the same time.
Online research. Search engine. Looking up a name. Researching a company. Researching a book. Looking for links to a person. Book report. Hard to find facts. Online articles.
What’s your answer _______________
What’s the point? The point is that I am so confident that I already know your answer that I don’t even have to mention them. Why? Because both of these companies don’t push their products — that’s not how we have come to love and trust in them. They push their concepts.
And therein lies their power — when you think of these companies, you aren’t thinking about a sole product that they provide, you are thinking about their general concepts. And those same concepts embody a plethora of useful and helpful products and services that we have come to depend on.
Think of if this way: say you own a stationary store and someone calls you up asking for business cards. What’s the first thing that you are going to say (if you do, in fact, sell business cards)? You are going to say sure! Yes, we do sell business cards.
Ok… ok… that’s good and well. Whoo hooo!! You made a sale — cool! BUT… what has happened? You have positioned your company as a supplier of business cards, not a full-blown stationary that offers a wide array of products to help your business grow.
That client that you sold the business cards to is going to sell your company to her friends as a place to buy business cards, and that’s it! That’s not what you want to happen. You have to do more than just sell business cards, you have to sell your concept.
So the next time someone calls asking for business cards, you say “yes, we provide business cards… but we also offer a wide variety of “solutions” for your business. Are you currently getting your folders from another supplier? Are you currently getting your staples from another store? Are you happy with your current letterheads? Who do you use for your auto-mailers? Do you have branded envelopes?
Now you drop the bomb:“What if I could provide all of these services to you and you can deal with just one company and save a ton of money instead of having to pay all sorts of prices from a thousand vendors that you are currently using… how would that sound to you?”
Now, what just happened? Someone called you for business cards only, and they not only got their business cards, but an assortment of business solutions that they had no idea you could provide them with.
Congratulations, you just sold your concept… not just one of your products. This is extremely powerful, because your company is now positioned as something that provides business solutions, not just business cards.
Remember: sell your concept, not your products. Do that, and watch your business grow and dominate the niche that you are carving out.
It is not often that a book under 60 pages has a lot to say, but that is exactly the case with Bo Peabody’s Lucky or Smart?While thin, the book proves to be an amazing asset for the young entrepreneur. Mr. Peabody, founded Tripod in the early days of the 90’s and sold it to Lycos at the height of the bubble for $58 million in stock. He agreed to a “lockup,” which meant that he could not sell for 2 years, during which time the stock went up tenfold. This inspiring series of events all occurred before Mr. Peabody’s 28th birthday, forcing him to forever answer answer the question: Where you lucky or smart?
With this book he is determined to answer that question through a series of anecdotes and a great deal of advice. As evidenced by the size of Lucky or Smart?, Mr. Peabody does not have a large ego, but he explains how he used his young, rebellious image to his advantage as he grew Tripod. His book is written in a very disarming style and he has an affable manner. His tale is couched within the idea that “A” students, managers, and “B” students, entrepreneurs, must work together symbiotically to achieve a successful business.
His techniques are not exactly what you would learn in business school, but then again he seems to believe that entrepreneurs are born, not made. He explains how “B” students are innovative, risk takers with short attention spans (i.e. the 60 page book). However, the “A” students are focused and more likely to be grounded. This explanation is quite intriguing and opens the door for some great conversation. The same gifts that make Mr. Peabody a successful entrepreneur also make his book great: attention to detail, an eye for quality, and an outside the box mentality.
I strongly recommend this book if for no other reason than there isn’t a better way to spend an hour of reading. Mr. Peabody understands the circumstances that caused his success and because of this he is able to give the reader a great deal of perspective. We may not all be able to make $500 million by the time we are 27, but we can definitely try and, this book is a great place to start.
It’s time I come clean: I skipped my classes on March 30.
I feel better already. Like a great weight has been lifted off my chest.
It was a Friday and I missed CSE15 and Calc21. The yearning for deeper knowledge of both arrays and derivatives was not enough to stop me from completing a task that I considered infinitely more important: the procurement of tickets to see indie rockers Arcade Fire play in New York City in May.
For weeks, the ‘Concerts Page’ over at the Merge Records website (Merge is an independent record label based out of North Carolina whose artists include Arcade Fire, Buzzcocks, and Neutral Milk Hotel), listed the venues for the New York shows on May 7, 8, and 9 as “to-be-determined.” I checked back diligently, sometimes three times a day, waiting for confirmation of the shows and notification of when the tickets would be going on sale.
Finally, one day in mid-March, the details surfaced. The band would be playing the first two nights at The United Palace Theatre in Harlem and the final night at Radio City Music Hall. Tickets were to go on sale through Ticketmaster on March 30 at 10AM.
I woke promptly at 9:45 AM the morning of March 30 and situated my drowsy self squarely in front of my PC. My browser was pointed at the Ticketmaster page at 9:59. As soon as the clock struck 10, the page was instantly updated and, with a grandiose flourish, I hit the ‘Search for Tickets’ button.
After fifteen seconds of searching the system, Ticketmaster kindly informed me that the tickets I requested weren’t available.
To say the least, I was furious. I’m not an angry person by nature, but let’s just say there were quite a few furnishings in my room, including a speaker set, desk lamp, and wireless router, that were very close to meeting a shattered demise.
I checked back throughout the day for tickets. While my anger did slowly subside, no tickets became available. I did manage to stumble upon the website of an online ticket scalper, Ticket Liquidator, with tickets upwards of $300 to the shows, a mere four hours after they went on sale to the public. This brought about a renewed feeling of outrage.
So, I did what every red-blooded and pissed-off American consumer should do when he feels cheated by a big corporation.
I wrote an angry letter. I Googled the band’s email address, the email contacts for its manager, agent, record label, and whoever else I could find. And I speedily sent it off
The email began:
To Whom It May Concern, I’m writing to convey my great dismay with regards to the New York City Arcade Fire concerts (May 7-9). The choice to go with venues that use TicketMaster is an absolute travesty. For a band as indie as Arcade Fire, with a label as similarly-minded as Merge, it makes no sense to use TM, a company as crooked as Richard Nixon.
I went on to relay my story (which I’ve already outlined thoroughly for you). If you ask me now why I sent the email, I couldn’t tell you. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I didn’t really expect to hear back from anyone. If anything, it was just an outlet to vent my frustration, but I did truly hope that someone important did get to read it and recognize the opinion of one fan.
That night, to my great surprise, I received back a lengthy reply from someone who works directly with the band; we’ll call him “Roger.” Roger apologized for my experience with Ticketmaster and noted that it’s a common issue. He went on to describe how unjust the current ticket distribution methods are, what alternatives exist, and what can be done to solve the problem.
Finally, at the end of the email, Roger provided me with one happy final surprise:
Please email me directly one week prior to the concerts. We have kept back some tickets for each show until our production requirements are finalized. I expect we will have some additional tickets to put on sale prior to the show and I will make sure you get access to a pair for one of the shows.
I was ecstatic. Not only had I made my point to a person in power, I was getting into the concert!
Roger and I communicated back and forth via email for several days afterwards, outlining again some of the shortcomings of the existing ticket purchasing systems and what it would take to shake things. I informed him that I was an entrepreneur and, after my experience, planned on creating an alternative service that would aim to put Ticketmaster out of business.
So, after reading all that, you’re probably left wondering just what this has to do with you and your own entrepreneurial endeavors. I walked away from this whole experience with a number of lessons that I think are important for both consumers and businessfolk alike.
1.
The Stones were wrong: You can always get what you want: Or at least you can work your ass off trying, which can sometimes be ultimately almost as rewarding. I would have been more than happy hearing back from anyone knowing that someone out there was listening to a customer’s grievances. But don’t settle for anything until you get what you want out of a situation. Never take ‘no’ for an answer.
This leads nicely into the second point…
2.
Put businesses in their place: As a consumer, you must always remember that the business exists to serve your needs. Stand up to the business and remind it who really holds the power. This is an important message to remember as a business owner, too. The happiness of your customer comes above all else, so make sure he knows that you’re listening and make sure you meet his needs.
3.
Let’s get rid of Ticketmaster: Here’s a fun fact! Ticketmaster marks-up each ticket it sells around 33% with a ridiculous number of absurdly named fees. Bands, venues, and managers don’t particularly like them. Nor do consumers. In the music business, they’re right up there with the RIAA on the likeability scale.
There are a number of alternative ticket vendors out there already, but none have yet to gain considerable traction and none show any chance of threatening Ticketmaster’s dominance. It’s a challenge I hope to take on one day.
4.
Write a letter (or email) of complaint: Seriously, you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s your duty as a consumer. Just do it.
You might be as surprised by the outcome as I was.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a concert to get to.
Some people are just so damn creative. They can come up with brilliant concepts, figure out such elegant and simple solutions to the weirdest problems, and brainstorming with them is analogous to sitting down with Jobs, Branson, and Gates….well, at least it feels that way.
Now on the other side of the coin, some people are so damn sharp when it comes to business and making money. They may not be the most creative people, but they sure know how to do the math, run the figures, and get the money flowing into the business. These people are fighters, not big thinkers.
I am convinced that each startup needs minds from both of these types of people: the creative thinkers and the business thinkers. When you put someone who is brilliant at coming up with ideas in a room with someone who is amazing at making money and refining businesses models, you have a rockstar team.
Let’s be real, many of us young entrepreneur are super — duper duper — creative. In fact, many of us are downright brilliant, if I may say. BUT… in many cases, our brilliance isn’t matched with business acumen.
Sure, I have no doubt that many us of can hold our own or even be brilliant at making money as well… but the founding entrepreneur — the visionary — is the big idea person who is the creative fuel behind the startup, NOT the financial wizard coming up with all the magnificent marketing, perusing balance sheets, and creating spreadsheets of the financials.
Bottom-line: make sure that your business isn’t only focused on being creative and innovative. At the end of the day, you want to make money with your business as well, right? If so, find someone to focus on the money and you focus on maintaining your brilliance and creativity.
One of the best things about being an entrepreneur is learning new things. Sometimes you may think that you know so much, but after to speaking and learning from someone else, with different perspectives, you begin to see just how much you really don’t know. And that’s a good thing. Because the more you don’t know, the more you will teach yourself and learn from others. If you think that you know everything, then you’ll never grow as a person… as an entrepreneur.
I just got off the phone with a great mentor and he said something that really made me think: “Put your business ahead of you and it’ll take care of you if you put in the work.”
Basically, he was saying that if you treat your business like a real person, like a baby that you are taking care of, and you put it ahead of yourself, you’ll be able to see more results and you’ll be better off in the end… even if it doesn’t seem so in the present.
When you’re spending 16 hours a day working on your business and you’re exhausted, stressed, and feel drained… those are just some of the things you have to go through when you put your business ahead of yourself. Sure, you may feel tired, but the extra work that you put into your business — the extra drops of sweat — will make that much of a difference.
For many of us, myself included, our businesses aren’t brining in much revenue. And let’s be honest, it’s hard to stay afloat and work with the same level of intensity when you have to worry about paying bills, food, social life, etc…
And if you’re like me, you’re business if your baby and you’ll do anything to see it grow up, prosper, and turn into something great. But you have to be steadfast in your commitment and devotion even when you aren’t making money, aren’t getting as many clients as you want or expected, and even when things look gloomy at times.
You have to continue to nurture, protect, and love your business — always keeping it ahead of your personal emotions, difficulties, and daily drama. You have to isolate your business from certain emotions that can force you into making the wrong decisions…that can lead to you giving up on something.
Keep your business two steps ahead of yourself, stay committed to seeing your objectives through, and your business will reward you with the dividends of prosperity, fame, wealth, or anything else that you are seeking in life.
Don’t give up on your business and it’ll never give up on you. You guys should be best friends. Partners for life.
After meeting the founders of Amie Street last month, I just knew that I had to get them on MP Radio. So a few days ago Elias Roman and I linked up for the debut show of MP Radio. It was a very exciting show because it was the first time Elias got a chance to speak about Amie Street (podcast) — an indy music site that allows artist to sell their songs starting for free — and the first time I did an official radio show here on Mind Petals.
Here’s an outline of the topics discussed:
How Amie Street got started
Starting a business in college
Working with a team
Running a business from home
Viral marketing
Getting funding for your startup
How to package yourself to people
Amie Street is a company that is definitely going places. They have a strong team, positive attitude, and know the music industry just as much — or better — than an record label out there. Keep up the awesome work Amie Street!
MP Radio will be back every Friday with new shows, speaking to young entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship is filled with adventures, ups, downs, rights, and lefts. Entrepreneurship opens up doors, sparks the mind, and fills your life with amazing concepts and brilliant people. It’s fun. It can be scary. It’s stressful. It’s amazing. It’s all of these things and that’s why we love it. It’s our ever-changing and growing song and we sing it everyday of our lives. We make new music everyday we wakeup and run our businesses. We’re creating. Now on the other end of the spectrum, you have corporate America. In corporate America there’s only one song. You wakeup and sing the same song everyday. And guess what, you didn’t even compose that song… your employer did. Everyday he just hits the play button and rewinds the same song at the end of the day just to play again for you.
Maxine Clark, founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Bear, has come a long way since that first Build-A-Bear opened at The Saint Louis Galleria in 1997. Today her company boasts more than 200 stores worldwide. In her book, The Bear Necessities of Business: Building a Company with Heart, Ms. Clark sets out to share her secrets to success with anyone interested in building a business. While her guidelines are couched within her own story of rising through the ranks of Payless Shoe Source and leaving to start Build-A-Bear, anyone looking for a strict business profile will be disappointed.
The Bear Necessities of Business should be viewed as a text book for any business owner, large or small. The book is structured into 7 parts, which are then broken down into subsections:
Getting Started
Being a Great Boss
Connecting with Your Customers
Creating an Incredible Experience
Using Essential Marketing Strategies
Growing Your Business
Giving Back
Each Chapter is littered with what Maxine calls Bearisms, which are inspirational quotes. The tone of the book can be a little hokey at times, as Ms. Clark is an extremely positive person with a child-like persona.
However, anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit would be well served to pick up a copy of her book to understand how she has come so far. Ms. Clark has great respect and admiration for other child-centric business and advertising campaigns such as Disney World® and The Happy Meal™. One of the most inspiring elements of the book comes in the form of her explanation of answering every email that is sent to her and encouraging others to do the same. This book is filled with the great anecdotes, lessons, and examples that every aspiring entrepreneur loves to hear.
In addition, 100 percent of the proceeds from the book will be donated to Build-A-Bear Workshop® Bear Hugs Foundation, which supports meaningful philanthropic efforts for children and families through financial and in-kind support for health and wellness programs and educational and literacy programs. Basically, you are doing a good deed by going out and purchasing this book!
Although this book is a great read and does offer a lot of insight to people of all ages I was hoping for less of a textbook and more of an in-depth perspective on how Build-A-Bear became such a huge phenomenon. With that said, I recommend this book as a strong read for a great deal of practical business advice.
Today I was invited to speak to the honors students at Marta Valle Secondary School, located on the Lower East Side section of Manhattan. Fellow college buddy, now teacher, Josh Fifer asked me to come speak to his students and teach them that they can do anything with their lives.
I absolutely love speaking to students, especially the ones who think that they have no options in life because there is no one around to motivate them and set an example. It breaks my heart when I see young children who think that they can’t accomplish something in life because it’s “too hard” or “they aren’t smart enough.”
Today I was given the opportunity to speak to an amazing group of students who all had a good head on their shoulders (well, most). Most of these students were ambitious and just needed a little extra boost of confidence — so that’s where I came in and really reinforced what their teacher has been stressing all semester — fight for your passions, don’t be scared, and stay motivated and dedicated to your dreams.
Here are some shots:
I was truly impressed by the dreams that these students had. Such as: becoming a doctor, teacher, model, software engineer, musician, fragrance designer, dancer, professional baseball player, etc. It put a big smile on my face to learn that these kids were thinking BIG. They are the next generation of young entrepreneurs to go off and change the world. My aim today was to keep them thinking big and to push them in the right direction. Hopefully, I’ve accomplished that.
Here’s a few minutes of the end of the speech (taken with a digital camera…)
Ok, so you have the idea. You’ve started working on the product or service. You have your team in place. And you are pouring your heart into your startup. Now ask yourself this question: Is my business incorporated? If you said yes, then pat yourself on the shoulder and say “Rock on!” If you said no, then punch yourself in the face, just like Ed Norton in Fight Club, and say “bad boy!” I kid… I kid… don’t punch yourself in the face (unless you really want to), just make a move and incorporate your business once and for all.
Let’s go over some reason why you should take the next step and incorporate your business:
Limited Liability: This is probably the biggest reason as to why you should incorporate. As a sole proprietor anyone that feels like suing your company — for whatever reason — is essentially suing you as a person. So, if you accidentally forget to cite a paragraph that you used from a magazine and placed it on your blog and get sued for it, you’ll be the one in the hot seat, not just your company. But, on the other hand, if you had a corporation, your company would be treated as a person — it’s own entity — and the liability would be shared between the both of you. You would only be liable for the amount of money that you have personally invested in the company. Essentially, your company would be sued, not you. And, guess what, that’s a good thing.
Taxes: Don’t you just love taxes? I do! Actually, no I don’t. Ok, back to taxes. Now, when you have a corporation you are able to take advantage of the tax perks that the government offers you. This is your present for being a brave entrepreneur, increasing worldwide capital, improving the economy, and creating jobs. You will now be eligible for small business tax deductions. You will be able to get multiple write-offs on almost anything that you purchase for your company, i.e., phone bills, notebooks, fax machine, books, and even food! (these are tax deductible).
You’ll be Official: After you incorporate, your company will be the sh&T! Well, maybe it won’t be, but it’ll be official. When people see an Inc, or LLC after your company name, they’ll automatically feel more comfortable doing business with you. They’ll say to themselves: “ok, well at least these kids have an official corporation and it’s not just some strung together startup like we originally thought.” You’re likely to get more business with a corporation under your belt.
Investors: Investors will feel much more confident in investing in your company if they know that you’ve taken measures to protect yourself, and, in effect, decrease their liability as well. Only a corporation can offer this sort of protection, not a sole proprietorship.
Live Longer: If you want your company to continue to grow when you are gone (re: dead or sell the company), then incorporate. Corporations can strive on when you are dead, sole proprietorships can’t (unless you plan on rising from the dead and running the company as a ghost). If you want to build an empire, go this route.
Transfer: If you have a corporation, you can simply transfer ownership by selling your stock in the company.
Shared Responsibility: Corporations usually have formal hierarchies that spread the voting and decision-making process amongst a variety of people. This is good because it ensures that your entire company won’t sink if one idiot makes a stupid decision that can take down the entire company.
So now what? Now you’ll either want to hire an attorney to get the wheels rolling on starting your company (you can find an attorney at legal match) or use a company such as Biz Filings and do it yourself (you’ll save money this way, but be sure that you know what you’re doing). Be smart and incorporate, the advantages to having a corporation are so great and it’s really not worth the trouble “not” to incorporate.
There are so many young entrepreneurs out there, still in college, who haven’t started their business yet. Many of you know that you want to start a business, but just aren’t sure what you want to do, exactly. Some of you have fears. Some of you have doubts. And some of you are constantly pressured from your parents to go the corporate America route.
I’m sure there’s a lot on your mind. Well, how about a roadtrip! Seriously, grab a bunch of your buddies, hop in a car, and travel the country for some time and have some fun. Summer is coming up and school’s ending for the semester. This is a perfect time to let loose, relax, and spend some quality time to really think about what you want to do with your life.
I recently found roadtrip nation, which is a company that sends students on roadtrips around the country to explore, find themselves, and become enlightened. It’s a way to really contemplate what your life is all about and where you are heading.
“ It all started with four friends and one dilemma: “what do I want to do with my life?” Fresh out of college and unsure about the career paths in front of them, they were determined to expose themselves to more than just the traditional life roads. They hopped in an old RV, painted it green, and hit the road to talk with inspiring people from all walks of life to find out how they came to do what they love for a living.”
They basically pack you and a bunch of other students in a RV and send you around the country on a roadtrip to explore different paths of life. The founders started this service during a time when they were uncertain about what they wanted to do with their own lives:
“Nathan (founder) was a business major who thought he wanted to become an entrepreneur. Why? Both of my parents were entrepreneurs, and I was exposed to that path at an early age. But at college I was told that most business majors usually become consultants. However, a consultant’s lifestyle wearing a suit and working for a big firm was nowhere near what I envisioned formy future. I was more interested in art and design. What was I doing in business?
Meanwhile, the other one of us (Mike) was all set to walk down the road of medicine. Most people in my family were in the medical field, so when it came time to pick a major I chose biology as a logical path to medical school. It was easy to go with the family flow. One tiny problem: I hate hospitals, the lab, and any type of sterile environment. Minor details? Yeah, right. It’s only the rest of my life!
Neither of us liked the roads we were being shoved down. So why did we have to go to work at a consulting firm or in a hospital? After all, these weren’t our roads. They were someone else’s.
The problem was that we didn’t know what else to do. We didn’t know what else was out there. All that college, media, and society had exposed us to were the typical career paths of lawyer, doctor, accountant, and consultant. These weren’t bad roads; they just didn’t fit who we were as individuals.”
So whether you plan on going with roadtrip nation or setting up your own adventure with your college buddies, definitely try and explore the world sometime soon. Especially if you are uncertain about where you are headed in life with your business, career, or whatever it may be. Go clear your head, have some fun, and everything will work itself out in the end.
If you have enjoyed this post, please show your support and subscribe to our RSS feed to stay up to date with your daily “petals.” And don’t forget about your Mind Petals magazine subscription
If you’re a small business owner, chances are that your marketing budget lies somewhere between slim and none. But fear not, because today a number of totally free advertising methods exist that can be surprisingly effective. Here are the top five that I have personally used, and they are absolutely free…
As a small business owner, it’s easy to get caught up in the daily activities that leave you wondering “What did I get done today?” But the most successful business owners that I know spend 80% of their time on one task: bringing in new customers.
Their time is too valuable to spend tinkering with the website, calling suppliers, and interviewing employees. Yours should be too. If you aren’t bringing in new business, then nothing else matters.
Of course, if you’re like most small business owners, then you’re on a tight budget, and traditional advertising methods might not be an option. Don’t despair! Today a number of totally free advertising methods exist that can be surprisingly effective.
Here are the top five ways I’ve seen small business owners dramatically increase their sales without spending a dime, and I’ve used every single one of them myself.
#1 - Post Regularly on Craigslist.com
Craigslist, in it’s simplest form, is a free online classified website. It started out in Silicon Valley (California) and has slowly spread to the rest of the world, becoming one of the top ten most popular websites on the internet. Every day, thousands of people in your city are using this website to find real estate, computers, romance, and jobs. Chances are, they are also looking for whatever you sell.
Find an appropriate category on their site and make a free post. Create a catchy headline, include a photo if applicable, and list the main benefits of your service. Highlight a free trial, special deal, or free re
What an awesome book. 
by Malcolm Gladwell is one of those reads that you feel extremely enlightened after completing. It’s a book exploring the phenomena behind word of mouth and how it can turn something small and seemingly unnoticed, into something huge and abundant — turning it into an epidemic once the “tipping point” has been reached.
There are so many young entrepreneurs out there, still in college, who haven’t started their business yet. Many of you know that you want to start a business, but just aren’t sure what you want to do, exactly. Some of you have fears. Some of you have doubts. And some of you are constantly pressured from your parents to go the corporate America route.