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Posted by Mitchell York under Uncategorized
If you’re going to start a company, it would be a great idea to name it BootyPop. Except that name is already taken.
About two years ago, former college friends and now entrepreneurs Lisa Reisler and Susan Bloomstone launched BootyPop, which sells panties that make your booty pop. They claim to have sold just under a million units since then. Read more…
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Posted by Mitchell York under Uncategorized
Yay startups!
The Kauffman Foundation reported today that startup companies drive employment growth while established companies eliminate more jobs than they create. “On average and for all but seven years between 1977 and 2005, existing firms are net job destroyers, losing 1 million jobs net combined per year. By contrast, in their first year, new firms add an average of 3 million jobs,” the study reports. Read more…
05
Posted by Mitchell York under Uncategorized
A common thread runs through many conversations I have with solo-entrepreneurs of service or consulting businesses. Many are making strategic choices — which markets to focus on, how to position themselves and their products — based on which choice offers the best potential financial payoff. So, what’s wrong with that? It’s a rational thing to do, right? Read more…
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Posted by Mitchell York under Uncategorized
Great story on the Today Show this morning. (I watched it as my coffee was brewing so forgive me if I get one or two details wrong, but the gist of the following is accurate.) A guy (let’s call him Al) in his fifties, who was in a corporate sales career and hating it, walks into a marine store one day to get some boat supplies and hears another guy talking about his alpaca. So he goes home and asks his wife (let’s call her Alison) what an alcapa is, and presto (not quite) they are alpaca ranchers in Oregon and loving it. Alison still works full-time as a technical writer working from home while she does her other full-time job with her husband. The sunset view from the porch is amazing. Read more…
08
Posted by Mitchell York under Uncategorized
A fascinating article in the New York Times provides a perfect object lesson for young entrepreneurs on the subject of Executive Foot in Mouth (FIM) Disease.
The background: There’s a very cool program in Boston, Inner City Entrepreneurs, that helps small business owners who are new to entrepreneurship figure out how to grow their businesses. The group of 25 entrepreneurs meets like an MBA class and has lectures, projects, and sharing of ideas. Read more…
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Posted by Mitchell York under Franchising, Uncategorized
As many of you know, I own a franchised business in addition to being a coach for people who are considering franchises or other business startups. My franchisor refers people to me regularly for what are known as “validation” calls. Prospective franchisees call around to existing franchisees to do research on the franchise and learn what it’s like to be in the system. If they ask good questions, they can come out of the process with a much clearer decision path (pro or con). The trouble is, 90% of the people who call me ask the wrong questions! Read more…
05
Posted by Mitchell York under Uncategorized
In Summer 2009, I will publish Franchise-Freedom or Fantasy? How to Know if a Franchise is Right for You After Your Corporate Career. The book is based on my seven years of experience as as a successful franchise owner and coach for entrepreneurs.
In my coaching practice, I work with executives who are considering entrepreneurship–which often includes an evaluation of buying a franchise. In the book, I lay out for the experienced business person a process for understanding whether franchising is a potentially viable alternative and, if it is, how to move forward. The book includes critical information including:
If you’d like to be notified when the book becomes available, please email me with BOOK in the subject line, and I will let you know.
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Posted by Mitchell York under Small Business Management, Uncategorized
Recently I blogged about the shift that’s occurring in the outlook of New Entrepreneurs–and by New, I mean entrepreneurs who have started ventures in the post-Bubble economy of the past six-12 months. (We need a name for this new world order. Any suggestions?) I reached out to my network to find examples of what’s changing, and got a wide and interesting response. One of my old colleagues from CMP Media got in touch and we had a fascinating conversation. Seth Nichols has been vice president of digital media for Questex Media Group Inc., a business-to-business media and information provider, headquartered in Newton, MA. The company, which is an outgrowth of Advanstar, has more than 100 print and digital media publications, conferences and events as well as other information products. Earlier this month, Seth completed the purchase of one of Questex’s properties, Cadalyst.com, which is a publication and website for computer-aided design professionals, and launched his new company, Longitude Media.
To understand why this is interesting, you need to appreciate the dynamics of the business-to-business media industry today. It is in a shambles. Companies are downsizing, eliminating products and laying off employees more than ever before. The market for advertising of all kinds is under severe pressure. And amidst all this, Seth buys into the market. When I asked him to explain his reasoning, he talked about how things used to be when he and I were at CMP in the go-go days of Internet media. The outlook of media executives at that time and well after–call it the period roughly from1996-2008–was toward transactions. In the ’90s it was about positioning for IPOs; in the early 2000s it was about positioning for private-equity M&A. For a very long time the conversation has not been about creating value in the core asset.
The core asset in the media business? What is it?
It’s the audience you serve. Seth noted that traditional media companies, Questex included, may have hundreds of content-oriented websites but barely any (and sometimes no) people who spend their time on web analytics, web search, and online audience development. Finance and legal departments have outweighted and outspent the functions that create asset value. Resources aren’t allocated toward mining and increasing the value of the core asset, the audience of readers for whom a particular content site exists. Seth’s approach? To focus his effort on audience aggregation using the most sophisticated tools and human resources available so that advertisers can get the maximum benefit of that aggregation. This is what media circulation departments used to do when I was growing up in publishing in the ’80s and ’90s. It’s not that Seth’s idea is new…it’s just that his idea has been forgotten in the age of transactional media. Now, everything old is going to be new again. And that’s a very good thing.
How about your industry? What are you doing that will redefine the entrepreneurial rules for the new age in which we find ourselves?
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Posted by Mitchell York under Small Business Management, Uncategorized
Some of you may know the blogger of Escape from Cubicle Nation, and now author of the book by the same name, Pamela Slim. I’ve been a follower of Pam’s writing and inspiring ideas for entrepreneurs for several years and she’s required reading for any entrepreneur-in-training. You can order her book starting today–and get this: Pam says, “the first 500 people who pre-order the book and send me your confirmed order number will get another, spanking new, personally signed copy of the book as soon as it rolls off the assembly line.” You can order from Amazon or any other online or physical bookstore and send your order confirmation to escapefromcubiclenation@gmail.com. Read the first chapter free right now.
14
Posted by Mitchell York under Career Coaching, Uncategorized
The PETA people aren’t going to like this.
The Times reports today that the growing armies of the unemployed are sick and tired of sending out resumes and are starting their own businesses in droves. One laid-off biologist is making–and taking orders for, thank you very much– $25,000 jelly fish tanks. An entrepreneurship professor at the University of San Francisco coined this phenomenon “forced entrepreneurship.” It’s what you do when you can’t find a job and you have to pay the bills.
What I like about the forced entrepreneurs is that they tend to do things on the cheap, which is exactly the right way to get going. When I launched a new service to my catering business, I didn’t buy any equipment or product before I’d made my first sale. The equipment paid for itself after two jobs. Starting up with less definitely helps focus the mind.
Many forced entrepreneurs would be happier if they could only get another job in their field after a layoff. But most of them use poor methods for finding a job so they conclude they have no choice but to start a business. The typical mistakes of job hunters include not having prioritized, multiple targets for their job search; spending the majority of their time answering Internet job listings, which account for perhaps 15% of available jobs; not targeting enough positions (not jobs, but positions that are currently filled but which they’d be eligible for); and falsely believing that their job-search objective is to get a job, rather than to get dozens of meetings. For people who really would like a job rather than forced entrepreneurship, I recommend you visit The Five O’Clock Club. It has the best process for job search I have ever come across. Not that you shouldn’t do your entrepreneurial thing if that’s really your passion. Just be careful–those jellyfish stings are wicked.
How to Know if a Franchise is Right for You After Your Corporate Career.
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