Flush the Toilet: Young Entrepreneurs

Competition is real. Competition is going to be a factor as you build your business. Competition is what pushes us to perform at maximum capacity. Competition is good.

These things are true, but what I didn’t mention was that competition can either make or break an entrepreneur. When times get rough and you’re feeling despondent because all of a sudden there are a million-and-one competitors coming after your niche, then just close your eyes and remember how these 2 brilliant entrepreneurs pushed forward in some of the toughest periods of competition.

Howard Hughes didn’t back down to Pan Am & the US Government

The legendary Howard Hughes built an empire through his tool, research, and aircraft corporations, among many others. Hughes faced some strong competition from Pan American World Airlines after purchasing a majority share in TWA.

It was literally Hughes against the United States government and Pan Am. In a corrupt ploy to form a monopoly over the airlines, the CEO of Pan Am, Juan Trippe, and a greedy US senator hatched a plan to destroy Hughes. Talk about competition!

In the end, Hughes prevailed. Through his cunning rhetoric, curt honesty, and cleverness, he was able to successfully break through his opponents and destroy all chances for a monopoly. He never gave up, even in the darkest of times. Just kept on pushing and pushing.

Richard Branson didn’t let British Airways bully him

In an attempt to increase the routes of Virgin Atlantic, Richard Branson applied for additional routes that would dramatically increase the scope and power of his airline. In a desperate attempt to close the door on such an ambitious play, Lord King, head of British Airways began a campaign to destroy Branson’s reputation.

He told the press that Branson’s clubs were riddled with drugs; that his airline wasn’t financially stable to support such a move; he intentionally delayed the repairing of his planes that were parked in BA’s maintenance garages, and the list goes on….

Lord King did everything is his power to dissuade the committee in charge of Branson’s route application. He even went as far as setting up a secret team to undermine Branson’s entire airline.

Throughout this onslaught on Virgin Atlantic, Branson kept a steady head and fought through all of the obstacles. On many occasions he sat with the committee officials and cogently convinced them of the untruth of these accusations.

In the end, he transcended his opposition and won the routes he needed to expand his airline.

Stay focused and keep on fighting

With enough determination and will to succeed, you can accomplish anything. Sure, it’ll be tough at times, but this cliché sums it up: “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

Ever get one of those nasty emails from a client (or anyone) basically telling you how much you suck…how much they hate you and your service….how much they wish they never met you…. How much…ok you get the point.

We’re human, so naturally we’re going to become upset and angered at this person for basically taking off your head because something went wrong. But it’s all about the response. The response separates the good entrepreneurs from the great entrepreneurs.

It’s so easy to…

Respond with the same anger by writing an emotion-riddled email telling off your client why he or she is wrong and how they can take their problem and shove it up their ass. This type of response is neither rational or appropriate.

Not so easy to…

Take the time – from a few minutes to a few days depending on the urgency of the complaint – to clear your head and think of a way to respond without your emotions; with a logical business mind. You can’t fight fire with fire. You have to be smarter than that and understand that this assault on you and your business was emotionally driven.

It’s hard not to take it personal. But will yourself not to.

Respond Right

Do the right thing and don’t let your anger or emotions cloud your ability to respond to a complaint with a rational, calm, and well thought-out email or phone call. At the end of they day, everyone wins. Your clients will respect you for responding with such equanimity and composure and it’s more than likely that your business relationship will continue.

Remember

Don’t let emotions dictate your decisions. Emotions are produced from the fire in your belly. Rational decisions are produced from calm minds.

When you think about entrepreneurship the last thing you’re probably thinking about is art class. Would you believe me if I told you that actually drawing out your ideas is a major factor in successfully implementing your services, products, whatever it is that you’re thinking about creating.

There you are, sitting in the park with your girlfriend or boyfriend and not thinking about the sunny weather or the children playing in the swings, you’re thinking about taking over the world with your next big idea that’s swarming around in your head. So now what? Now what do you do with all these brilliant ideas that have been keeping you up at night and putting you to bed (daydreaming) in the day?

Get that Paper

Well, you walk over to your printer, pull out a few sheets of paper, grab your pencil of choice, and begin drawing. You don’t have to be Picasso or anything, but just go at it. Hold nothing back.

I’ll assume that you’re an internet entrepreneur thinking about the next hottest site that you want to create. Take that pencil and begin sketching your heart out. Forget about specifics and exact measurement, just draw babe! Just draw. Let your mind loose. Envision how you want the site to look, feel, and function.

Where should the navigation be? Where should the widget be placed? What should be focused in the header? Ask yourself these questions. Allow your mind to wander while you sketch and think about what people would want to see on the site, not only how “you” would want it to look.

Who’s the Entrepreneur, the designer?

A lot of entrepreneurs have these grand plans for the next big thing on the web, but when it comes to thinking about how said idea will actually look and function, they take a step back and leave all creative control to their designers and programmers.

Blah! Blah! That’s Rubbish.

You are the entrepreneur, not the designer. You are the visionary, not the designer. You are the one who needs to set the tone of how you want your idea to be presented to the market, not the designer. Sure, allow for people to do what they do best. But it’s imperative that you also communicate your personal ideas and visions of how you want the service to look and work.

Just draw, babe!

The entrepreneur must become an artist to some degree. Howard Hughes, one of America’s first billionaires (possibly the first) did just that: draw and sketch all day long. Whenever he had an idea, he laid it down on paper and went from there.

Have some fun. Make it a habit to sketch out your ideas. And start to see better results when it comes time to actually implementing those ideas into a real business.

Bees…ants…wasps… all of these insects have one thing in common: they are “social” insects. Each of them work together for common goals. Building intricate nests. Protecting their queens. And helping maintain their empires. Well did you ever think about young entrepreneurs as a “social” community working together for common goals?

I think that we can learn a lot from these social insects as we build our businesses. Sure, with one powerful idea and the determination to push forward to actually create something, the single entrepreneur can be a formidable creature. But what about a collaborative effort? What if we not only worked hard on creating success for ourselves, but also worked hard on helping others become successful and helping others with ideas, feedback, and support? Interesting concept, eh?

If we – young entrepreneurs – can form a community around building our own nests — businesses — while simultaneously helping others in the community build their own, we can become more than formidable – we can become deadly!

Heck, as far as I’m concerned, we’re all working on building the same nest. Each of us are simply carrying different pieces of rock and sand, but we’re all working within the same nest such as the ants and bees are working together to build their fortresses to protect their eggs, food, and queens.
Our nests are our businesses.

…the great success of social insects can be attributed to their sophisticated means of communicating with one another. In addition, by weight of numbers, a colony can overpower enemies and monopolize food sources. It can also perform many tasks simultaneously, and one set of workers can finish tasks that another set has left incomplete…

Just as the ants communicate to overpower their enemies and hunt for food, young entrepreneurs must organize to help one another fight as well. However, our enemies aren’t the same as the ants. Our enemies are of a different nature. We must fight through limits. Fight against the naysayers. Fight against the odds. Fight to push ourselves to surpass our highest expectations. Fight to change the world.

Our strength lies in our numbers. If we unite and work together, we can become a force that the business world has never seen before. We sure as hell have the brainpower and determination, but we still have a ways to go before we see more of us uniting and lending helping hands to one another.

Why do so many of us have this attitude of not reaching out to others? Why do we plot and scheme? Why do we turn our backs when people ask for advice or recommendations? Is this the type of attitude that you think will help you become a dominant player in this entrepreneurial game? I beg to differ.

…social insects may individually seem inefficient and even stupid, but the colony as a whole can achieve something that appears to be the result of planned, intelligent design. Working in the emerging field known as “swarm intelligence”, which owes much to observations of the way social insects do things, computer scientists have applied the principles of self-organization to running several types of complex systems required by human economic activity. These include telephone networks, Internet search systems, factory production lines….

What is lost by tolerating a level of individual error is more than made up for by the robustness, flexibility, and economic efficiency of the system as a whole. In this way, we continue to learn from social insects in ways never imagined by earlier observers of these enthralling creatures.

Should we give away all our ideas and devote all of our time helping others? Absolutely not. Competition still exists and that’s what pushes us forward as a community. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t help one another as we each pursue our own interests.

Yes, we can be great alone. But if we unite, we can be more than great – we can be brilliant. None of us will ever be “perfect” businessmen. None of us will ever be perfect at anything. Is anything perfect? But with our “swarm intelligence” we can do things that no one man could ever do. That no one business can ever do.

I’m not telling you go out there are partner with every business person you see on the street. I’m not even encouraging you to expand your team with more partners or things of that nature.

What I am saying is that the entrepreneur needs to spend time interacting, helping, working out problems, listening, caring for, and showing appreciation with other entrepreneurs that are on the journey of building a successful business as well. This isn’t a zero-sum game, we can all win.

Find the ant within.

Excerpts from:

“Social Insects”. Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia. The Gale Group, Inc, 2005. Answers.com 28 Aug. 2006.

Whether a New York City stockbroker is closing a multi-million dollar deal for 50 tons of soybeans or an internet entrepreneur is closing a monthly sponsorship contract with ebay, it’s all the same – deals are being cut and deals are being closed.

I guess that many of us never really give it much thought when we sign-up new clients or get new sponsorship deals, but we are, in fact, closing deals. In order for the entrepreneur to be successful, he/she can not only build a useful service and call it a day, that service must be sold in the minds of others.

What’s the saying: “Always Be Closing” Well, that’s true. Entrepreneurs need to close deals just as badly as stockbrokers do on Wall Street.

Close ‘em Now

Maybe someone is thinking about using your product/service but isn’t quite sure if it’s the best solution for them…well, you better fire-up gmail or get on the phone and sell them.

Maybe someone is thinking about advertising on your site but isn’t sure if it’s targeted enough for them… well, you better know your service’s demographics like the back of your hand in order to sell that sponsor as to why they should go with your site.

Maybe someone is looking for a company such as yours to begin outsourcing extra projects they have lingering around… well, you better be searching around those craigslist listings looking to make your services known.

That’s what it’s all about: reaching out to people, letting them know how you can help them, and selling them on the idea that your business is the best possible solution to their problem. And believe me, it’s easier said that done… That’s exactly why you have to make it a part of your life and just do it!

Close all Day

Make it your goal every day to inform another person about your business; educate them on what you do and how your services can apply to what they are currently doing or looking for. The more you do this, the better you’ll become at closing someone. Because in the long-run, the more closing that you do as an entrepreneur, whether it’s through ads, services, or partnerships, the more doors you’ll be opening.

You see, closing really means opening. Never forget that.

You wake up every morning and work on your business

You’re calling those clients

You’re writing that code

You’re writing those business plans

Great…. Great…. Great… That’s all good and dandy, but what are you doing in your day to reach out to fellow entrepreneurs? That’s one of the most important questions that you should be asking yourself everyday. No, I’m serious – you really need to ask yourself every single day as an entrepreneur.

Sure, there is no doubt that the solo-entrepreneur exists; he or she may feel that they don’t need to reach out to other entrepreneurs to become successful and build a rockin’ business. To an extent, that may be true… but it’s a not a wise choice and isn’t a smart play for spreading your business.

Kick-START Your Networking Journey

Emails Dude!

Yup, that’s right. Fire up that Gmail and Yahoo account and start sending off emails to people who you simply want to talk with. They may be business owners, people you encounter on Myspace, or one of the other 1,233,894 social networking sites – doesn’t matter, just do it.

Make a Call

Nowadays, people are easily accessible through phone and won’t mind spending a few minutes talking with you. People love speaking about themselves and what they are doing with their lives. It’s a win-win situation: you get to listen and learn from someone else’s experiences and they feel absolutely great that someone actually cares to listen to their story.

Food Time…. Yum Yum

Would you image that some of the best business deals and partnerships are formed over a good ol’ meal. Bill Gates formed many of the original ideas of Microsoft while eating fast food and brainstorming on how to enter the market.

It’s as simple and taking the time to reach out to entrepreneurs in your area – Craigslist – and offering to get some coffee. You’ll eat, talk about business, and have a great time. If nothing amounts from the meeting, then at least you’ll have met someone new; someone that is now aware of your company that wasn’t a week ago. You never know what this new relationship could grow into.

Nothing to Lose

At the end of the day, you have absolutely nothing to lose and the world to gain when you take some time to reach out to fellow entrepreneurs. You’ll be broadening your horizons and making your life much more fulfilling. It’s a great feeling meeting new people and learning from what others have to share.

I’ll leave you with some images of when I met with Michael Simmons and Josiah Mackenzie last week at Starbucks in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. It was an amazing time and a fruitful meeting.

Feel free to shoot me an email if you’re ever in the NYC area – always looking to meet other entrepreneurs.

Rock on!

It’s been a long day working on the business. Just a few weeks back you quit your job and that steady paycheck is gone. Buh bye! For countless hours each day, you’ve been doing everything that you can in order to live out your dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur and also make enough cash to pay for rent, food, fun, and all those things that you need to…. you know… ahh… live!

Being an entrepreneur is not only rough on your mind but it can also be very, very rough on your pocket. It isn’t easy starting a business and trying to survive at the same time. When there’s no cash coming in and the bills are stacking up, the stress begins to load up and consumes your every thought.

Many people looking from the outside in will think that you’re making cash, life is so easy, and everything is dandy because you’re an entrepreneur running your own business. Blah… Blah… Blah… Boy, oh boy, how wrong they are. They have no idea how hard our lives can be trying to turn nothing into something – it’s a constant struggle being a young entrepreneur.

Sure there will be moments when we are on top of the world and everything seems to be going just perfect – those days are great! But there will be many more days when the lack of stability will start to chip away at your ambitions.

There have been many, many nights when I have gone to bed literally scared. Scared about my future, scared about whether or not I can close that deal, and scared about all the time, money, and effort that I have invested in myself and my business… thinking about the return on investment. Will there be a return?

It’s OK to be Scared

We’re human, not superheroes. Being an entrepreneur is definitely not for everyone. It really takes a special type of person who can endure the ups and downs of this lifestyle – a very cyclical lifestyle. Thick skin is a prerequisite for this game.

So What Keeps us Going?

In this game, only the strong will survive. In order for someone to put themselves through such drama, stress, and heartache, in order to fulfill their dreams and visions must be strong. If you lack the necessary strength to keep at it and to NEVER give up, you are bound to fall apart and revert back to the “safe” life you once lived.

You have to dig deep! Entrepreneurs need to really muster up that fire, that passion, and that love for what they are doing. If you don’t have that burning flame in your heart, then forget about it. The passion must be maintained – through good and bad times — in order to achieve success.

At the End of the Day

If you fight and push through all the stress, the empty pockets, and anxiety, you can really transcend and becoming as successful as you’d like. It’s all beings with your attitude and mindset. Just keep on reminding yourself of why you are doing this – we each have our own reasons – and never let go of that thought. Locate it. Mark it. And lock into that ball of fire and never let it go.

Rock on!

I recently heard an excellent presentation on Effective Negotiations which has inspired me to share some of the concepts that I learned and a few of my own that I have encountered over the past few years as a young entrepreneur.

Seek the WIN-WIN

• Always try to negotiate on a level that each party can walk away feeling confident and happy about the deal
• Don’t throw around ridiculous numbers that completely undermine the ability for someone to make a profit – we all need to make money, not just one person.
• This isn’t a zero-sum game, so always strive for the best possible situation for yourself and the person that you’re negotiating with – that’s the balance you’re looking for.

Know the DETAILS

• You better be prepared when you set off to negotiate with a vendor or client
• Make sure you know the ins and outs of the business and what goes for what
• If you get caught with your pants down not knowing what you’re talking about, kiss any advantage that you once had goodbye

Be prepared to WALK

• Never be afraid to turn your back and simply walk away if the negotiations have reached a dead end
• In fact, in many cases you will call bluffs by walking away only to receive a “Ok..ok… hold on one moment… we can work this out…”
• Walking away shows that you aren’t in the business of getting screwed over.

Negotiating is more of an art than anything else. If you keep your goals and expectations clear while always thinking about creating a win-win situation, then great things can happen.

Have you read the July 2006 edition on Business 2.0? If you haven’t, you should because it’s an amazing business magazine – perfectly suited for young entrepreneurs such as ourselves. Ok, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of this post, or should I say the tofu and carrots for all you vegetarians (like me)?

After reading the article titled The Gray Entrepreneur on page 34, I was left feeling a bit confused as to the purportedly “correct” statement in the article that stated: “ The 55- to 64-year-old demographic is most likely to start a company.”

Hmm… if that’s the case, then I must really be lost. From the life that I am living in, the majority of people that I see starting businesses are not
55+ years-old, but more like 18 – 34 year-olds.

In my mind 55+ year-olds are less likely to start a business than, say, a 24 year-old who has much, much less to lose. Heck, at the age of 24 you barely graduated from college and you still have your whole life ahead of you. At 55, you’re half-dead ( I kid… I kid…) and have much more to lose if your business fails… which it’s very likely to do.

I guess the question is….

What Does it Mean to Start a Business?

• If you form an llc or inc. tomorrow by filing a few papers, then does that mean you have started a business?
• If you get a few of your friends together and start selling T-Shirts around the neighborhood, have you then started a business?
• Or what about simply having a plan on paper and a million ideas that you plan on implementing?

Well if it’s just a matter of filing some papers in order to become a business owner, then yeah… I wouldn’t doubt that the 55+ year-olds are trumping the young entrepreneurs in starting businesses.

But what about all the young entrepreneurs who haven’t filed their papers and who are out there everyday making money, building a list of clients, and networking up a storm? Those people are just as much business owners as anyone else out there albeit they haven’t “officially” started a business (and possibly not paying their taxes). Nonetheless, they are entrepreneurs in my mind….but maybe not business owners in your mind. Can that be the fundamental difference?

From what I see happening, there are a lot more young entrepreneurs starting businesses than older people. So what if they haven’t declared a corporation yet or don’t have a business bank account.

Sure, those are necessary components of building a business, but they are not pre-requisites to “starting” a business. Furthermore, a piece of paper can never decide whether you are an entrepreneur or not. Entrepreneurship is a state of mind, not a list of credentials and documents.

What do you see happening?

One of the most valuable assets of an entrepreneur is the ability to effectively communicate through their words. If you can master the art of conveying your ideas, pitching your visions, and influencing people to do something, then you will become a powerful communicator in the business world.

How do I become a powerful speaker?

Practice. Practice. Practice. And…. Practice some more!

• Join up with a local Toastmasters group and begin talking about your passions
• Register for public speaking classes at your school
• Start pitching your business ideas to your friends and ask for honest feedback
• Sign up for impromptu speeches to practice you ability to speak on the fly with no preparation
• Read public speaking books? Maybe…. But it’s best to just do it!

Why become a powerful speaker?

• If you haven’t noticed, please tend to judge you based upon the words that come out of your mouth and how effectively they were used
• You can gain the ability to persuade people to believe in your vision (hint…hint… partnerships)
• People are always interested in listening to someone that has something intelligent to say – people that usually end up asking for your business card after your speech (hint…hint… networking)

Always remember the principle of likeability:

SAY – 7%
SOUND – 38%
LOOK – 55%

(source: the power of the pitch)

Bottom line: It isn’t so important of what actually comes out of your mouth, but how it comes out. If you can speak well and have something important or interesting to say, then you are one deadly entrepreneur.

Go KILL ‘em!