EXECUTIVE-TO-ENTREPRENEUR {E2E} COACHING

When it Comes to Small Business, a Mastermind Group’s Brainpower can Help

Mitchell York — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:21:24 +0000

f you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur, you probably know the feeling of having strategic problems and not knowing where to turn for advice. A solution worth considering is joining a group (or forming one) of like-minded people who can support you in your business by offering their perspectives, and for whom you can do the same. These types of groups are often called Mastermind groups.

Sandi Webster of Consultants 2 Go, belongs to the Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO), a non-profit membership organization for women presidents of multimillion-dollar companies, which functions as her mastermind group. “I joined because I was looking for women who were at a particular level of business where I could share ideas, and better yet, get new ideas for my management consulting business,” Webster said. The cost is $1650 a year and includes monthly chapter meetings. Read more…

A Mega-Billionaire Seeks a Few More Mega-Billions

Mitchell York — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 13:46:35 +0000

Microsoft co-founder and uber-billionaire Paul Allen owns a ton of assets, most of which can fit on the head of a pin (with room to spare). His assets are mostly patents on technologies acquired over the years.

Now he is suing Google, Apple, AOL, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube for patent infringement. The suit relates to patents having to do with online navigation and viewing technology. Forgetting for a moment whether the suit has merit, I’m curious how business owners feel about Allen’s strategy and the larger issue of patent trollers who acquire rights to ideas so they can later sue and settle with companies that may have a similar concept. Read more…

BootyPop Founders Use Savvy Marketing & PR to Kickstart a Brand

Mitchell York — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 15:35:28 +0000

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…

I’m Mad As Hell, And I’m Gonna Deploy the Slide!

Mitchell York — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 02:43:37 +0000

If you were in hibernation during the last 24-hour news cycle, you may have missed the story about Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater, who was mad as hell and wasn’t gonna take it anymore. A passenger got up and opened the overhead bin before the plane had come to a complete stop and the seatbelt sign had been turned off. The attendant got up to get the passenger back in his seat, in the process getting clonked on the head by the passenger’s falling luggage. Many expletives ensued and the attendant did what anyone would have done. He grabbed a beer from the galley, got on the microphone and told the passengers what he thought of the dope who was out of his seat, unlocked the evacuation slide and took off feet first in one of the grandest exits ever made from a career. Read more...

Entrepreneurs’ Near-Business-Death Experiences

Mitchell York — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 19:18:55 +0000

Most entrepreneurs have survived a cliffhanger moment (or two): a period during which something happened that nearly put you out of business. Maybe it was when you had just a week’s operating cash (or less) in the bank before it was curtains. Or you had to coax people to work for free until the VC financing came through. Or you had a personal crisis that derailed you almost to the point of giving up your business. Entrepreneurship is about overcoming obstacles in extraordinary ways. Here are stories of entrepreneurs who peered over the abyss…but didn’t fall in.

Blasting is for Coal Mines, Not Influencing People

Mitchell York — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:47:04 +0000

Everytime you see one of those business publications or websites publish its annual list of “40 Under 40″ or “30 Under 30″ (but never, alas, “60 Under 60″) do you think to yourself: “I am going to put together an email drip-marketing campaign targeting those 40 people and hitting them every week with a message that will result in their getting in touch with me so they’ll buy my product”?

I coach business owners who have thought this very thing. I am not in favor of it. Those 40 people are the least susceptible to being dripped on, hit, blasted and otherwise marketed to. They are too busy, too sought after, and too successful to have many unmet needs that will be fulfilled through an email blast.

Yet, they are certainly worth reaching. So, how? Read more…

Advice for Baby Boomers Looking at Entrepreneurship

Mitchell York — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:31:26 +0000

Merrill Lynch has a great webcast called Reinventing Retirement: Second Acts, recorded in June 2010. It profiles over-age-55 people who are starting businesses. Every Baby Boomer should watch it. I coach corporate executives who want to start businesses as encore careers. This webcast illustrates many of the key points I coach potential entrepreneurs to consider.

One very important point the webcast addresses is that some people start businesses because they have been downsized and can’t find a job. That’s a predicament that’s hard for anyone to deal with and even worse for older people.Merrill Lynch has a great webcast called Reinventing Retirement: Second Acts, recorded in June 2010. It profiles over-age-55 people who are starting businesses. Every Baby Boomer should watch it. I coach corporate executives who want to start businesses as encore careers. This webcast illustrates many of the key points I coach potential entrepreneurs to consider.

Tips on Asking for the Order

Mitchell York — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:55:53 +0000

My company sponsored a special event of a local industrial association recently and we made some good contacts. We had a booth at which we were promoting our products, and we saw about a hundred people. Of those hundred, exactly one called me afterward as a potential client. She’s a commercial insurance rep.

Her phone call was brief, confident and effective. She said she’d like to get together with me to review my insurance and see if she can save me money. No long-winded build-up to asking for an appointment, no 20 questions to get to the moment of truth, no big speech about herself. Just a simple request for my time, which resulted in an upcoming appointment. I am happy with my current insurance, but some of that has to do with inertia and habit. The fact is, I haven’t reviewed it for potential cost savings in five years. So she’s got at least a 50 percent chance of gaining a new client. Read more…

Entrepreneurial Tips from My Barber, Nick

Mitchell York — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:38:11 +0000

I like a good haircut. Not just because I feel cooler in this ridiculously hot New York summer, but because I talk to my barber, Nick, about small business.

Nick’s about 35, lives in the same town as me, has a wife and two young children. In addition to cutting hair, he owns an Italian ice place in town that has been an institution for as long as anyone can remember. It’s a great business. The gross margin on ices is about 90 percent and he owns the roadside, freestanding building that’s open from May through September. I learned a few things from Nick. Read more...

Effective Use of Crowdsourcing for Small Businesses & Entrepreneurs

Mitchell York — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 01:12:07 +0000

If you are a small business and haven’t heard of crowdsourcing…well, the time has come.

How would you like to save hundreds or perhaps thousands of dollars on projects ranging from designing logos to writing business plans to designing websites finding language translation services?

There is a growing number of web resources available to help small businesses accomplish their goals by putting a description of their project online, along with the price they are willing to pay, and then letting the creativity that is abundant on the Internet have at it. Rather than single-sourcing your project to one vendor you may have heard of, you put it out to the virtual crowd. Here are some examples of how small business entrepreneurs are using crowdsourcing to save money and increase creativity.