Tag Archives: planning

Raleigh Needs Experienced Dreamers

This week, I became aware of a very unique contest held in Pittsburgh that recently concluded. The Experienced Dreamers contest was born out of a survey taken by residents in 2009 that indicated that the city must rely on young residents to drive growth. The recommendation of the survey team was that, if the city could attract 1250 entrepreneurs who are 45 and over to move to the area and start a business, the economic impact over the next two decades would be $2.5 BILLION!

Here were the rules:

  1. The applicant must be 45 or older as of the date of application,
  2. The applicant may not have lived with 100 miles of the city for the past 10 years, and
  3. The applicant must be a U.S. citizen or permanent legal resident as of the application date.

The applicants were charged with locating a new business, philanthropy, or artistic endeavor in Pittsburgh upon award of $50,000 in cash and an additional $50,000 in charitable trust in the recipient’s name. This year’s winner is Tess Almendarez Lojacono, a 55-year-old artist who has been living in East Aurora, NY. Her proposal was to move and enlarge Fine Art Miracles, a five-year-old company she started that teaches fine art classes to residents of assisted living facilities and nursing homes. Lojacono has  a stated objective to provide intellectual stimulation for older people and to help them tap their creativity.

In her own words, “I like to show people that they’re still able to create.” “We’re offering something a little more intellectually challenging for them than painting between the lines, and a lot of them really like that. We have older gentlemen who sign up for our classes who wouldn’t do crafts.”

An article at http://www.SecondAct.com told a little more of her story:

She incorporates art history and a lot of visual aids into her classes. After showing participants reproductions of Georgia O’Keefe’s floral portraits, for example, she invites them to create their own versions on black art paper. She’ll provide as little or as much assistance as her students need.

“We find that even people in their eighties and nineties are interested in learning something new,” Lojacono says. “I’ve developed a lot of respect for their intellects.”

Part of her job is helping people who haven’t previously tried making art to get over their perception that it’s an activity only for a creative elite. “They’ll say, I can’t draw a line with a ruler,” she says. “I’ll say, ‘that’s great. I don’t want any straight lines in here.’ We start with a blank sheet of paper. What I find, though, is that when I help them to draw, pretty soon they’re sitting up straight and smiling.”

The amazing thing that occurs to me is “why aren’t more cities doing this?” Raleigh, North Carolina, where I live, is a top-rated city and part of the Research Triangle Park region, known to be a hotbed of entrepreneurship, but with little emphasis on attracting “boomerpreneurs.” Clearly, experience counts in running a business. Older start-up founders are seemingly more likely to have more capital than their younger counterparts. Since under-capitalization is the bane of many new businesses, an effort to attract entrepreneurs with greater net worth would make good sense as part of an economic development strategy.

Innovate Raleigh has identified a number of initiatives to foster greater cross-institutional cooperation for the betterment of the local economy. While we need to continue to foster business start-ups coming out of the education of our young students, we should also have a strategy for the bigger demographic of “Experienced Dreamers!”

 

Like Being in a Rut?

As a business owner, every day brings new challenges and issues that demand our attention. When 100% of our time is given to doing the business (marketing, selling, making, fixing, shipping, accounting, etc.), we’re stuck.  We’re in a rut that (often) leads to failure. Perhaps not failure in the sense of going out of business or having to take a day job, but a missed opportunity to see the business become what it could/should be.

It’s a common trap we can all fall into.  We have something the market wants.  Demand increases and the technical activity associated with getting and filling orders completely fills our schedules.  Forty hours per week becomes fifty and then sixty.  We start taking work home (it’s a sign when what we once enjoyed becomes work).  Everything becomes more mechanical.  We lose balance often at the same time our business is losing steam.

When we’re in the rut, the solution appears to be counter-intuitive and impossible to execute, but we must allocate a portion of our time to work on the business if we want our business to survive.  It’s not optional – it’s essential. You may have heard the admonition to not work in your business at the expense of working on it–the question, though, becomes “how?”

We need to continually infuse creativity into our business–if we want to stay out of the rut.  That won’t happen if we don’t:  1) purposefully allocate time for it and 2) utilize an agenda that maximizes the creative input in the time allocated. The best solution to infuse the most creativity in the shortest amount of time is setting aside 5 days per year with your executive leadership team and 90 minutes or less per week (5% to 6% of your total work hours), using specific agendas to extract creative input to prioritize, solve your issues, maintain focus and advance your company.

Applied faithfully, this regimen will move you and your company to a top performing level. Rather than rehashing worn out frustrations, being stymied in your rate of growth, or feeling like you have to come up with all the answers by yourself, you will find freedom, organization, and synergy flowing from your efforts. Dare to try it!

A special thanks to Don Tinney, who posted many of the concepts above in a blog entry this week at http://www.eosworldwide.com

Entrepreneur, Not CEO

Everybody (entrepreneur) calling himself or herself a CEO—listen up, this is for you: stop it. Calling yourself the CEO will label you as either an egoist or someone with confidence compensation issues. That will make people less willing to work with you or help you. Taking the top title in a company also suggests a limited vision of what your company can become. Ask yourself: would you still be CEO if it were a $100 billion business or would you require what’s euphemistically called “adult supervision?”

So stop pretending to have attained a title you didn’t earn and start doing what you need to do to get to where you want to be. Here’s how:

Attract Awesome People

Jobs had Wozniak and later, Markkula. Clark had Andreessen. McNeally had Bechtolsheim, Joy and Khosla. A remarkable CEO should be like the moon, illuminated by the reflected light of all the stars he or she has brought into orbit. Awesome people act as accelerants to whatever you’re doing. They push ideas forward, execute with aplomb and challenge you to new heights.

If you can hire, hire. If you can’t hire, bring them into your orbit as advisors, friends and fellow travelers. Get them to invest their creativity and energy. To get the true benefits of awesome people, focus on diversity. You want to have as many different perspectives on a problem as you possibly can, so bring on the best people from as wide array of backgrounds and from different generations. They’ll learn from each other and the confluence of their experiences will be the basis of company creativity for years to come.

Most importantly, attracting awesome people to your company precludes retreat. You carry too valuable a cargo of energy and confidence invested by others to turn back.

Build an Experience, Not a Product

Eric Ries has put the concept of the minimally viable product (MVP) front and center in the minds of Silicon Valley startups. But this focus is somewhat misguided. Products give you utility and then may be discarded. Products are the one-night stands of business. Experiences give you memories and good experiences will bring you back for more, it engenders a long-term relationship. The best CEOs know this instinctively and do all that they can to create and cultivate an attractive experience for their customers.

Once you’ve got a good experience, cement it with the bond of buying..That price tag is valuable to you too. It focuses the mind tremendously and forces you to deliver a unique and memorable experience of real value. When you offer a product for free, you aren’t forced to justify your existence to customers or show a useful benefit..

Learn Finance

If you wanted to be a rock star, you’d have to learn to read music and if you wanted to be an award-winning novelist, you’d have to learn basic grammar. It should not come as a surprise that if you want to be the CEO of a business you should learn finance. Yet we regularly see founders blowing off finance or outsourcing major financial decisions to hired guns..

For startups, there’s one important financial metric that matters more than any other: months left to live given your current burn rate. Real CEOs know this number and manage it religiously.

Define a Big Goal and Take Small Steps

Plenty of wannabe Silicon Valley CEOs have read Jim Collins and will tell you about their BHAG (That’s their Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal). They’ll tell you that they want to revolutionize the datacenter, or change the face of mobile payments, or create a new paradigm for social sharing, or something equally nebulous. That’s great. But it’s the ability to both set that goal and show how you’re going to achieve it that marks a real CEO.

Successful CEOs balance aspirations with operations. They focus on things that can be done today to secure customers and growth over time—not on the title they put on their business cards.

The quoted text above is from a post by Alexander Haislip that appeared on TechCrunch recently. Thanks to blogger Beverly J. Conquest for posting an excerpt on her blog, Accounting & Small Business|Beverly Shares.

A Very Nichey Girl

It’s an old adage, but a true one, that “you can’t be all things to all people” without losing a strong connection to someone specific. In the world of marketing professional services, those who choose not to build an intentional, focused relationship with clients in a niche market segment do so to their own detriment.

Responding to a Jolt

Sally was employed by an AmLaw Top 100 firm about 10-15 years ago when the large firms were targeting vertical markets.  Her firm had targeted the CPA industry and Sally, with prior stints inside CPA firms, was eager to help develop the market.  When her firm shifted priorities from the niche, she had a decision to make.

Instead of trying to take firm clients with her, Sally  opened her own firm, to focus on regional accounting firms in the area where she had attended law school.  This strategic choice was effective for two reasons:

  1. It avoided even the appearance of trying to compete with her former firm, and
  2. It gave her an entree’ to a target group of profitable prospects not being pursued by others

Learning Competitive Advantage

For several years she continued to develop and deliver specialized services offerings tailored to CPA firms, such as partner compensation consulting, strategic planning, partner retreats, organizational restructuring and profit enhancement.  By the 5 year anniversary of being in business for herself, Sally had identified the need to build a team around her with scalable infrastructure that would allow her to focus on client service rather than firm management. She joined a regional law firm with about $7 million in gross revenue and six partners that had begin to see the revenue and profit benefits of pursuing highly specialized niche practices.

For the past decade, Sally has led the firm’s niche practice for CPAs and seen the firm grow to over twice the size it was when she joined.  By getting to know finance executives, CPAs, firms and the industry, she has been able to create a value-added service that goes well beyond compliance into unique complementary offerings.  By choosing to specialize and establish herself as a subject matter expert, she has enjoyed great success.

Not content to only be a service provider, Sally has taken on the coveted roles of a.) trusted advisor and b.) referral source.  Some say she “knows every CPA in town.” Her strong relationships have been maximized to win considerable business for her firm.  While others attend chamber and other networking meetings, she introduces CPAs she knows to firm partners according to their industries and areas of specialty.  Her efforts have developed into a solid channel of business development and referrals for her partners and clients.

Value Proposition

The highly specific niche has permitted the firm to win against many of the area’s most respected law firms that offer the usual corporate business and estate services.  Certainly, the firm can–and does–provide these at the highest level.  But Sally and her colleagues have positioned themselves beautifully – a focused, reputable law firm that can provide the usual suite of legal services and, significantly, knows the industry and its unique challenges and nuances, offering the experience and expertise to help the client become more successful.

Ultimately, specialization is offering a value proposition rather than a reduced-price commodity.  Under Sally’s leadership, her firm has added a tremendous value to traditional legal services by customizing their offerings to keenly understood market segments.

 

5 Ways ‘treps Maximize Mentor Feedback

 

Asking a mentor for feedback is a critical step in turning an idea into a successful business. Noted members of the Young Entrepreneur Council share how they feel ‘treps should make the best use of mentors below–

Draft a Summary

Entrepreneurs’ ideas are often most easily “felt” through passion and an intuitive belief that great potential awaits. When expressed verbally, however, the vision can be easily misunderstood. Avoid this by taking some time to write a concise, one-page Executive Summary that you can share with mentors you respect. This will ensure they understand your idea and offer relevant and quality feedback.

Kent Healy, The Uncommon Life

Time Is Valuable

If you’re in a mentoring relationship with someone who is also an entrepreneur, there is one thing that you both know is ridiculously valuable: time. Regardless of whether your next business venture is the greatest or worst idea you’ve ever had, keep the call focused to keep mentors in your life. Have an agenda and stick to it. You can make small talk later. Time is money; spend it wisely.

Sydney Owen, 3Ring Media

No Hesitation

While preparation is important in pitching a business idea to anyone, the best tip for asking a mentor for feedback is not to hesitate about it. Your mentors are there for you to bounce ideas off. Most mentors are thrilled when you come to them with questions or feedback solicitations, so don’t pause in engaging them in your project. They — and you — will be glad if you don’t wait.

Doreen Bloch, Poshly Inc.

One Small Step

They’re busy and smart, so treat them as such. Don’t ask for a long term commitment up front and don’t waste their time. Start with a short email with options you’ve thought of to a problem you are facing. Ask them to simply reply with which option they think is the best. Implement, thank them, and show them how their advice got you results.

Josh Shipp, JSP, Inc.

Ask For Specific Feedback

If you’ve chosen the right mentor, they have a wide body of expertise and experiences to draw on. Too many entrepreneurs present a lot of information to mentors and then ask something akin to, “What do you think about all this?” That gets nowhere. Better to have structured information and ask for specific feedback: “Is this key assumption realistic?” or “Is this an appropriate place to start?”

Charlie Gilkey, Productive Flourishing