Entries tagged with “entrepreneurship”.
Did you find what you wanted?
Posted by Mitchell York under Small Business Management
The New York Times has a sad story on seven small businesses that shut their doors in 2009. The owners were brave enough to talk about what went wrong and offer up valuable lessons for all small business owners:
- A 12-year-old concierge service that peaked at $2.5 million in revenue fell to $80,000 in 2009 and closed its doors. The owner reflected that she should have sold the company when it was flying high, and in fact had interest from buyers.The lesson: When you’re in a business that is dependent on the economic cycle and not recession-resistant, look to sell when times are flush, or diversify. Read more…
Posted by Mitchell York under Small Business Management
To the tens of thousands of potential entrepreneurs interested in starting an online business, there are lessons aplenty to be learned from Paperlesspost.com.
The roughly one-year-old New York-based company allows consumers to send elegantly designed virtual invitations and greeting cards through email and keep track of responses. In itself, that doesn’t sound so gee-whiz. And it’s not. The barriers to entry in this market are almost non-existent and the competition is considerable. Aside from Evite, the granddaddy of online invitations (and acting its age), there are online companies like Smilebox.com, MyPunchBowl.com and Socializr.com that are in the online invitations business, not counting the greeting card companies that have online tools for virtual card-sending.
Paperlesspost.com, whose customers sent about 1 million email cards in the company’s first year from November 2008 to November 2009, sent another million in the single month after that, according to James Hirschfeld, 23, who co-founded the company with his sister, Alexa, 25. That’s a hockey stick growth chart to be reckoned with. The company gives consumers 25 free “stamps” when they open an account, then charges them from $5 for 40 stamps to $25 for 500 stamps. The company is private and doesn’t reveal its revenues, but if it mailed 1 million e-cards in a month, it could have seen revenue for the month of $50,000+.
So what are some of the tips you should pay attention to about this blossoming company? Read more…
Posted by Mitchell York under Small Business Management
As you prepare your business for the next year, how do you make sure it isn’t a rerun of the past year? Even if this year was a great one for you, there’s no reason to do things the same way, and you’ll probably want to take your small business in some new directions. Maybe you’ll fix some nagging problems, or finally seize on an opportunity that’s been there for a while but you haven’t gotten around to tackling. Read more…
Posted by Mitchell York under Small Business Management
Which demographic group has a lock on entrepreneurship? Is it the Gen-Y/Millennials, which has grown up with social media, group dating and an ability to leverage technology and get products launched fast? Or it the Baby Boomers, who are graduating for corporate life and taking the lessons of decades as they invest their equity in themselves? The answer is “Yes.”
The New York Times today checked in on Ernie and Maggie Doud, a middle-aged Missouri couple it had profile about two years ago. A decade ago, the Douds started a company to cure dog breath (in dogs, not people) so they could live more happily with their own mutt. They came up with a kind of doggie Altoid called “Greenies” (maybe Major League Baseball could be a customer?) and sold it to Mars Inc. in 2006 for “a small fortune.” Since then they’ve started 12 other companies. Judging from the photo of them in the Times, I’d say they’re in their mid-60s. And they look very, very happy. Read more….
Posted by Mitchell York under Small Business Management
When it comes to research on entrepreneurship, few organizations do more of it than the Kauffman Foundation. For a just-released study called Making a Successful Entrepreneur, Kauffman surveyed 549 company founders of successful businesses in high-growth industries to determine the factors that influence the success or failure of startups. The key success factors, it turns out, are “prior work experience, learning from previous successes and failures, a strong management team and good fortune.” Read more….
Should young people in their Thirties or even Twenties buy franchises?
The Wall Street Journal reported recently that franchisors are targeting young franchisees to replace the old fogeys Baby Boomers who are nearing retirement age. The thinking is that younger franchise buyers, if they can raise the capital, will have have more energy and a fresh vantage point from which to attack a business plan. The naysayers include franchise experts like The Franchise King of Ohio, a franchise broker, who says to the youngsters:
“You just don”t have enough business management experience under your belt, yet. You have not enough stress yet. You have not experienced enough in the business world. It’s nothing personal.”
Wow! What’s that about? My feeling is: bring ‘em on! I think young entrepreneurs are amazing. In my own franchise network, there are “kids” like Claudia and Rodney, a wonderful couple in their Twenties, who are tearing it up selling smoothies and leaving no stone unturned looking for new business. In my coaching practice, I have thirty-and-younger clients who are smarter, more aggressive, and more resilient than you’d think given their years. When I was a bit younger, at 42, I was president of a company whose CEO was around 28. He sold the company for $750 million a few years later. I worked for another 20-something who’s promotional products company is now doing $25 million+ a year in sales. And have you read the Crains NY Business Top Entrepreneurs list? Look at those pictures–some of those guys (and gals) don’t look like they shave yet. And remember Bill Gates and Michael Dell–both started their businesses in their dorm rooms.
Whether a young man or woman starts a franchise business or some other type of business isn’t the point. Younger people (I’m 52 now, so I think I can say this with some authority) have a view of the world that is entirely different from the Boomer generation. They are less patient, more collaborative, less hierarchical, as a rule less materialistic, more environmentally conscious and in many other ways a breed apart. So sorry fellow old timers, you can no longer credibly say that the youngins can’t do it bigger, better, faster and cheaper than wise old you.
Posted by Mitchell York under Interviews
Aliza Sherman is one of the true pioneers of Web marketing and journalism. She launched one of the very first Internet services companies, Cybergrrl, Inc., in the 1990s, and founded Webgrrls International, the first women’s Internet networking group that grew to over 100 chapters worldwide in its first year. Since then she has launched products and communities, written books, been a prolific public speaker and adviser in the worlds of politics, media, health care and more. She graciously took the time to answer my questions about entrepreneurship. Read more…
For people thinking of starting a business but hesitating because of the recession, you’re out of excuses: a new study by the Kauffman Foundation finds that about half the Fortune 500 and Inc. fastest-growing companies were founded during recessions.
The study has three main findings:
1. Recessions and bear markets, while they bring pain and often lead to short-term declines in business formation, do not appear to have a significantly negative impact on the formation and survival of new businesses.
2. Well over half of the companies on the 2009 Fortune 500 list and just under half of the 2008 Inc. 500 list began during a recession or bear market.
3. Job creation from startups is much less volatile and sensitive to downturns than job creation in the entire economy.
While the Inc. list is dominated by tech-oriented startups, the study notes there will be service innovations in fields as old-school as retail and food service. I can attest to that: read Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities blog for a mind-bending look at what entrepreneurs are coming up with every day of the week in industries as traditional as house cleaning and deck-building.
Need more inspiration? Read Leah Grant’s blog (The New Business Mentor) and sign up for her newsletter. Check out Pam Slim’s recent book, Escape from Cubicle Nation. And if you’re considering a franchise, there’s a very good new book on that subject here.
Posted by Mitchell York under Small Business Management
Entrepreneur Magazine has a great article on the top five fears of entrepreneurs. They are:
1. Fear of Failure: “Without a doubt, an entrepreneur’s biggest fear is failing–understandably, because 95 percent of all businesses fail within the first five years. When you’re starting with those kinds of odds, it’s OK to be a little freaked out.”
2. Economic Uncertainty: “Five years ago, the economy may not have been of forefront concern for a startup entrepreneur. But today, businesses big and small, young and old, are worried about what the declining economy means for them.”
3. Being your own Boss: “As a small business, especially during the startup stages, there’s very little stability and security. Unlike traditional employment, you probably don’t have an office, employees, benefits or a paycheck. And what you definitely don’t have is a boss, someone guiding you along.”
4: Consuming Your Life: “The idea of not having any time for yourself, neglecting your family and giving up your social life can be terrifying.”
5. Staying Afloat: “You need money to start up; you need money to operate; and you need money to grow. Throw the dismal economy into the equation–when people are spending less and it’s taking longer for small businesses to get paid–and money is even harder to come by.”
Why stop at five? Here are five more.
6. High-Wire with No Net: When you have been in your own small business and survived the early years that weed out most startups, you have the fear that you can never turn back to “the devil you knew” (i.e. traditional employment). The struggles of entrepreneurship make you forget why you left corporate America in the first place and your memories become revised to dwell on how easy and happy it all was “back then.”
7. Losing Ground to the Jones’s: Even though your business may be getting more profitable every year, you look at your old car in the driveway and the Jones’s new Lexus and feel that if only you’d stuck to being a corporate (fill in the blank) you’d have new toys, too.
8. The Merry-Go-Round Stopping: Your business is cooking, but you worry that somehow, someday, and soon, the phones will go silent and no one will want what you sell anymore.
9. Stuck in Third Gear: You know how to cruise at 40 MPH but you need and want to do 90 (this is metaphorical). You fear you will never break through the wall of your business being merely “okay”.
10. Emperor Has No Clothes: And the big-daddy of all entrepreneurial nightmares–you dream that you’re walking down the street and suddenly you discover that you forgot to put your shorts on. Perhaps if you act natural no one will notice. Lots of entrepreneurs think everyone else is smarter than they are and live in fear of the world finding out their secret.
I could go on. So could you, so let’s have it: five more entrepreneurial fears from the front lines.
Oh, you were waiting for some advice on how to cure yourself of all these? How’s this: You can’t! Not completely, anyway. And I don’t think you’d want to. Fear is a great motivator. Ask anyone who owns a business if fear helps them get up in the morning and do what has to be done.
Posted by Mitchell York under Small Business Management
In my
book that’s coming out next month I talk quite a bit about how executives who want to become entrepreneurs need to change their
relationship with money because, when you’re in business for yourself, it doesn’t flow quite as easily as when you’re working for the man.
That got me thinking about the stupid sh*t I squandered money on in my pre-entrepreneurial days. Figuring that if you’re about to take the entrepreneurial plunge you can learn from my spending mistakes and save your money to help fund your survival in business, here’s a list of some of the dumb things I have spent money on. I wasted the money so you don’t have to!
I’m not saying you shouldn’t spend your own money on these particular things: your wasteful spending may be different from mine. But you’ll get the point.
- MONEY PIT #1. We put in a pool when we moved here seven years ago. It’s not a fancy pool: 16-x-32, semi in-ground with a deck around half of it. Total cost with deck around $25,000. Add to that the annual cost of having the pool guy open and close it, and chemicals, and we’re up at around $32,000 (not including forsaken risk-free appreciation I could have had in a CD). In seven year I estimate we have used the pool 70 times for a total of 35 hours. Let’s see, what else can I buy for $900+ an hour! (Eliot Spitzer, any suggestions?)
- MONEY PIT #2 and #3. When I was younger, I kept thinking that if only I had a bigger house, like the other senior executives in the company, then I’d be happy. My wife was happy with our 1200-foot, three-bedroom house on a fifth-acre. Had we stayed there (my wife always described it as her dream house) the mortgage would have been paid off about 10 years ago. But no, I kept wanting more. Soon it was a 4,000-foot house in the same town, then a bigger house in another town. I never felt so stupid as the day I closed on that house and had to write an unexpected check to New York State for $10,000–a “millionaire’s tax” for buying a house that cost over $1 million. We hated the new town and moved back to our old town less than two years later, around the time I started self-employment. Our house (and this is the last one!) is half the size, half the cost, easier to clean. (Still paying off the mortgage, though.)
- MONEY PIT #4. Like any exercise equipment, my treadmill was totally useless all the years I had it! One thousand dollars wasted. How about eating less and walking more? My happiest day was when the basement flooded and I finally got to drag that thing to the curb. Forget treadmills, forget health clubs. Tie some $10 weights to your ankles and get your butt outside!
- MONEY PIT #5+ I long ago gave up buying pens that cost more than $2; suits from anywhere except Men’s Wearhouse; any kind of collectible, like Playboy magazines from the Fifties and Sixties (for the articles, of course), which lost value faster than a Zimbabwean dollar. And so on.
So, now that I have thoroughly embarrassed myself, I ask you, entrepreneurs-in-training: what are your dumbest money-wasting activities you plan to give up when you start your business? Or if you’re well under way with your business, what changed in your spending habits. Don’t leave me hanging here…admit you’ve been as dumb as me.
