A Dozen Don’ts for Entrepreneurs
Most advice to entrepreneurs focuses on what they should do: build a great product, assemble a great team, provide great service. All are “duhisms.” Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs don’t realize that there are things they should specifically avoid doing too. These are also duhisms, but somehow no one ever talks about them. Here is my list of the twelve most important things that entrepreneurs should not do.
Don’t worry, be crappy. Perfectionism, first of all, is an illusion. Nothing is perfect. Even worse, perfection stands in the way of revenue and truly learning what customers think because nothing is in their hands yet. When your product is “good enough” (but not “perfect”), ship it, and see what happens.
Don’t give out lofty titles. Just because a roommate was there during the drunken weekend when you came up with the idea for your company, doesn’t mean he should be CTO. Someday, you’ll need to hand out titles like director, vice-president, and chief whatever officer, so keep them in reserve. Until then refer to each other as “co-founders” and describe the area of responsibility: for example, “programming.” If your roommates aren’t cool with this, they’re doing you a favor by showing their colors now.
Don’t hire your family. The probability that your spouse or relative is the best person you can get for a job is 0%. The probability that people will hate working at company with spouses and relatives is 100%. The probability that one of you will have to go someday is also 100%. Never hire out of expediency. Always hire the best person you can get. This usually means not hiring your family unless you’re Jack or Suzy Welch.
Don’t ask people to do something you wouldn’t do. This is the Golden Rule of business. If you wouldn’t fill out ten fields of information and provide a credit card number for a free password, don’t expect your customers to. If you wouldn’t work on weekends stuffing envelopes, don’t expect your employees to. If you wouldn’t invest in your company, don’t expect venture capitalists to.
Read all twelve at openforum.com
I Just Made $250K From App Store In Two Months
Steve Demeter developed the iPhone puzzle game Trism as a side project, but now he’s quitting his day job. Why? Because he says he’s generated $250,000 in profits since he started selling the $4.99 game on iTunes this summer. That’s after Apple (AAPL) has taken its 30% cut of total sales, and after subtracting his initial investment of about $5,000.
He says, he’s so pleased with Apple, that he’s going to work exclusively with them, and will pass on the chance to work on other platforms, like Google’s Android.
“Do I want to be spending 6 months to write the game, and another 6 months making it compatible? If I had Trism available for Android, and there are 50 Android devices and every time one of them crashes (the users) contact me, do I want that?”
So if he’s not expanding to the other mobile platforms, what is Steve going to do with his newfound wealth? He says he’s actively looking to hire more people – engineers and artists specifically. While he started off on his own, he now has four more people working for him in San Francisco, working on 5 more iPhone games.
Inventors seek pot of gold through TeleBrands
You’ve probably never heard of Rachel Taylor. But it won’t be long before you can turn on the TV and hear hard-sell pitches — again and again — to buy the one-size-fits-all hair clip she invented.
Taylor is a rare winner in a world of inventors bedeviled by losers. She recently earned a much-sought-after chance to strike it rich, thanks to a demonstration she gave for the right set of eyes.
During a long day at TeleBrands‘ headquarters in this suburban office park, the competition is intense. Each inventor has but a few moments in front of Khubani to land the sale of a lifetime. On the line: the potential to leap from inventor wannabe to serious player in the $170 billion direct-response industry. A nod from TeleBrands means a negotiated share of sales through royalties that can make an inventor wealthy.
Taylor coolly demonstrates — on an assistant and on several other women, including Khubani’s wife, Poonam, — how her Clever Clip works on hair of any length or thickness. As she drove back to Baltimore, several hours after her pitch, her cellphone rang with Khubani’s thumbs-up call.
TeleBrands has a knack for finding quirky $9.99 products you never knew you needed, selling them on TV, then getting them into retail outlets, where sales can really rocket. The company is one of the biggest players in an industry that spent $2.6 billion in advertising last year. TeleBrands spent $300 million of that, the most in the industry, to air its hard-sell 30-second- to two-minute ads, estimates direct-response tracker Infomercial Monitoring Service. While most direct-response companies are privately held and don’t report earnings, TeleBrands has one of the most consistent records of hits.
Smart small business tips for success
Creativity is the key to keeping a small business flourishing in tight economic times. And while creativity will make your business grow stronger, there are also other free tools and opportunities small businesses should use to their advantage.
Make your small business appear big.
You might not have a huge warehouse or more than a dozen employees, but you can still give your business the professional appearance of one 10 times your size. First impressions are important. A business web site is a must.
Get free help.
Organizations like the Small Business Administration and SCORE “Counselors to America’s Small Business” exist to provide assistance. They can give you help specifically tailored to your business.
Focus on your X Factor.
Recognize what you do and why you do it, and then research your competition. When you discover the factor that makes your business better and different from the competition, learn how to focus and multiply that “X Factor” to achieve success.
Mom entrepreneurs conceive, give birth to some fascinating businesses
Who would have ever thought that making a plaster cast of an expectant mother’s belly could be turned into a work of art, let alone a business?
Original Belly Works was born out of a desire to make my own contribution to the family budget while being a stay-at-home mom. I also wanted to create something tangible that would forever keep me connected to that special time in my life.
Tisha DeShields of Atlanta is one of 200 working mothers who have built successful businesses that topped the voting in StartupNation’s 2009 “Top 200 Leading Moms in Business” competition. “Original Belly Works” is one of 16 mom-owned ventures from the Carolinas (four in the Triangle) and Georgia that cracked the list. Belly Works came in at 126, but it’s the favorite of The Skinny.
Hiring The Right Person
Hiring is more of a headache than ever, so say many companies who receive HR services from my firm. This might come as a surprise considering that there’s no longer an overheated talent market in which companies desperately compete for top talent. But instead, business owners are facing a down economy in which scores of job seekers clamber over each other in order to land scarce positions. The influx of new candidates into the marketplace makes it even more difficult for executives and hiring managers to find the perfect people for open, high-impact positions.
And yet, hiring the right person is more important than ever. A single bad hire can cost between $60,000 and $120,000–that’s not exactly the way you want to spend precious dollars in a difficult market.
There’s no question this is a great time to hire people. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it’ll be easier. The exceptional hires are out there, but just as in the old days, you may need to do some detective work and actively seek out the people who will make your company great.
Quit Using Email to Train Your Leads to Ignore You
We all get email marketing messages. The ones that really irritate me are the offers that get sent repeatedly with the exact same messaging. If it doesn’t catch my eye the first time, why would they think I want to see the same thing 5 more times in two days?
At this point, I unsubscribe. Or ignore them because I know I’ll get ten more for that webinar that I’m not sure I want to commit to now, so why bother? They aren’t likely to let me forget about it.
Don’t you consider this spam when it’s done to you? That your tolerance is being taken advantage of? Why do it to anyone else? It’s that “do unto others” rule. There’s absolutely no urgency or need to click through right now when I know I’m going to get more of the exact same message. You’re training your leads to ignore you.
