Still one of my favorite startup videos all these years later.
A summary one of my students put together:
Guy presents on the top 10 pieces of advice when starting a business – The Art of the Start.
#1 – If you want to be successful the best reason to start a business is to make meaning, not make money. If you make meaning you will make money. If you just want to make money you’ll attract the wrong type of employees.
- Increase quality of life – be creative and productive
- Right a wrong – find something wrong and fix it so it is right
- Prevent the end of something good
2 – Make a mantra for your organization – mission statement.
- Mission statements should be something employees can repeat and understand.
- As an entrepreneur, create a mantra – three or four words describing what we stand for, why we work here, and why we exist.
3 – Get going – Most people first want to prove there is a market. Just get going!
- Think different – do things 10 times better than everyone else.
- Don’t be afraid of polarizing people. Great products polarize people.
- Find a few soul mates. The concept of a solo entrepreneur is overrated. You need people to balance you off – need marketing, operations, accounting, etc.
4 – Define a business model
- Be specific. Questions to ask yourself: who is my customer and how do I get my money out of her purse?
- Keep it simple. Do not innovate on business models.
- Ask women about your business model. Men want to kill things. They always say yes it’s a great idea!
5 – Weave a MAT (milestones, assumptions, tasks)
- A new company is a fresh start – pure, clear, a start from scratch. This makes it hard to prioritize.
- Come up with a handful of milestones such as finish the design, decide on the software, etc.
- Write down the assumptions of your company – customer ROI, cost to install software or product, etc. These change the business model. Important: write down and test.
- Do tasks.
6 – Niche thyself – need to know this about marketing
- Great value to customer but not doing something unique allows you to compete on price.
- No value, only person doing it (unique) makes you stupid
- No value, many other companies are doing this (not unique) makes you even more stupid.
- High value, unique product – want to be here!
7 – You must follow the 10/20/30 rule:
- You should have 10 slides in your powerpoint pitch – title, problem, solution, business model, underlying magic, marketing and sales, competition, team, projections, and status and timeline.
- These 10 slides should be able to be presented in 20 minutes.
- Smallest font you should use is 30. This forces you to actually know your presentation and just put the core of your presentation on the slide. Do not read your material! Find out who the oldest person is in the audience and divide his/her age by two and that is your optimal font size… unless you are pitching to young people!
8 – Hire infected people. Hire people who not only have work experience and an education, but also love your product. Most people only consider these two factors. You should look at if they love your product.
- Ignore the irrelevant. You can be successful just because you love the product.
- Hire better than yourself – need A players.
- Apply the shopping center test. Go to Stanford shopping center. You see the job candidate but he/she has not seen you. If you don’t have the first reaction of seeing the person and wanting to go meet him/her then do not hire the person!
9 – Lower the barriers to adoption:
- Flatten the learning curve
- Don’t ask people to do something that you yourself would not do
- Embrace your evangelists – people that carry the battle forward for you. Evangelist is based on the Greek word “bringing the good news .”
10 – Seed the clouds.
- Let a hundred flowers blossom. Let people use your products in different ways. Just take the money! Don’t let this bother you.
- Enable test drives to make sales. Let people take your product home to test it. You are telling them that they are smart for taking it home and testing it.
- Find the true influencers. The higher you go, the thinner the air. Focus on the people that do the work!
11 – Don’t let the bozos grind you down. You may be tempted to believe them but don’t!
Since the recent elections political pundits from the left and right have tried to label Obama’s health care legislation as a job killer or a job creator. While there is little argument that conservatives have successfully made the bill less popular, with 52% of Americans saying they don’t support it that is clearly not all there is to the storey.
On the left, they point out that some of the 52% don’t like the legislation because it didn’t go far enough…which can be translated to; they wanted a single payer system like Medicare. So too, when polled about individual parts of the bill such as no preexisting conditions clauses or kids on parents plans until 26 provided they are in college the approval goes way up.
I am not sure whether any of this matters or not. The House’s attempt at repeal is only to show their constituents that they did something about it…even if it was for naught. But was it for naught? In some ways since that exercise was announced the conversation has become deeper. The republicans have even offered up some counter legislation.
But to the question at hand. The claim is that health care will slow growth in jobs for small businesses because, if a business has 50 employees or more they will have to provide a health care plan or pay a fine. Therefore the assumption is that if a company is at say 49 employees and could really use another one or two or ten…they will not hire them because of the additional health care cost. This might be true in the short term but long term if the company wants to grow they will hire the employees and pass those costs on as much as they can to customers and in fact the employees themselves.
Alternatively, I can only imagine the number of entrepreneurs who might have a spouse and kids that have not started a business because the cost of insurance is exorbitant. Under the new legislation the entrepreneur would qualify for subsidized insurance due to their drop in income from starting a business. And then, once successful, would pay the full premiums. Sounds like a job creator to me.
That said, there is lots to not like about the plan such as the asinine 1099 requirement designed to capture more income and therefore more taxes. But it goes too far when a small business owner who buys a laptop from say, Best Buy, would have to provide a 1099 to them because of that purchase. Word is that they are considering eliminating this part of the bill but sources say it would leave an 18 billion dollar hole in the legislation which would violate Pay Go rules of the new majority.
They say that a plan is just a dream until you write it down. That was the impitus for the creation of my last post but sharing it with you was to help keep me accountable. Cause now it’s out there. It’s a plan…not just a dream.
On the otherhand it’s January 7th and I have yet to implement any of it. I am questioning my resolve. I’m not sure I can make it.
For example one goal is to loose 1/2 a pound per week. So, I have been eating tuna kits for lunch and salads for dinner (and a few granola bars in between). Until yesterday… I had to get my car fixed. The check engine light came on and my appointment was for 11:00 and it was going to take a couple of hours to fix. So I rushed over to make my appointment and soon realized I had not eaten. So, I walked over to Quiznos for a Prime Rib sub and Doritos and a pop.
Then I had to drive to another town 100 miles away to teach a 4 hour class from 6-10 and of course the quick and cheep McDonalds drive through called me in for a McDouble and a small fry.
So there goes my half pound for this week. I wouldn’t be surprised if I gained a half pound. So now my goal for next week is one and a half pounds…discouraging. Not to mention the car repair ate up the money I had set aside for one of my other goals, extra car payments.
The worst though is that despite my excuses above I have only made small progress on my career goals. When I get free time, I open up my laptop and login to my websites and draw a blank. My chest feels heavy and my mind is blank. I’m afraid I’m just tired of it and I think it’s because it feels forced.
After 8 years of talking day in and day out about starting a business…I’m just burned out. So, I guess it’s time to get personal. Cause these self inflicted barriers are of my own making. I don’t have to write an 800 word article on my blog. In fact people don’t want to read that anyway. People want to read quick inspirational snippets that are of little value but make them feel better or more capable or more inspired.
But, for me my inspiration comes on quickly like the beginning of a forest fire…it burns so bright and rages up the hills and through the forest without regard for anything in it’s path. And then, just as quickly the flame burns out and there is nothing left but charred remains. Given enough time, the seedlings may begin to sprout and a new forest may begin but I am on to the next camp sight starting the next fire (metaphorically of course).
So it is with resolution that for 2011 I am sticking to the plan. SO WHAT that I took a day off and ate crap. It doesn’t mean I have to quit the plan. It’s time to get motivated and work day to day with resolve and purpose.
I’m a Dave Ramsey fan. For the last year or two I have been an avid listener of the Dave Ramsey podcast and I even went to a couple of simlucast events: The Total Money Makeover Live and his new one EntreLeadership…which I guess there is a new book coming out for the latter in 2011.
So, Dave’s big thing is “Debt is Dumb, Cash is King” and this translates well into business as well and personal finance. Now, I have not quite drunk the kool aid enough to lecture my clients when they come in looking for help with a bank loan…but it has changed my thinking. Now, I gently nudge them to find out, do they really need that loan? Or, do they need that much of a loan?
Anyway, during lunch the other day I was goofing around Googling random stuff and I came upon a pretty new blog about this very topic: http://www.debtfreestartups.com/
What and awesome idea! Putting together resources for starting a business without getting a loan. And, the opportunity to create a community of people who want to thrive in business on their own merritt and resources, bootstrapping their way to the top!
So, I contacted Nate over at the site and shared our free business planning software with him as a tool for helping entrepreneurs get started on a tight budget so now I am a part of that community too.
How about you? Are you ready to start your debt free startup? Well, head on over to http://www.debtfreestartups.com and get rocking…and don’t forget to come back to work on your business plan.
Since the recent elections political pundits from the left and right have tried to label Obama’s health care legislation as a job killer or a job creator. While there is little argument that conservatives have successfully made the bill less popular, with 52% of Americans saying they don’t support it that is clearly not all there is to the storey.
They say that a plan is just a dream until you write it down. That was the impitus for the creation of 
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