Posts Tagged ‘entrepreneur’

The 5 laws of entrepreneurs

October 21st, 2009

The term ‘entre­pre­neur’ is entic­ing and to many peo­ple implies, ‘doer of any­thing that makes money’ and in a large sense is a cor­rect impli­ca­tion. How­ever, what is often miss­ing from the gen­eral under­stand­ing of the term ‘entre­pre­neur’ is that each endeavor of an ‘entre­pre­neur’ requires con­tin­ual focus, noth­ing is ever truly on ‘auto-pilot’. I have seen too many entre­pre­neurs fail because they tried to be every­thing to every­one; they tried blog­ging, then on to mar­ket­ing, then on to affil­i­ate sales .… all within a few months!

To be a suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neur, you have to apply laser focus to your ven­ture to get it off the ground, then you have to con­tin­u­ally apply over­sight to keep it in the air. As you progress and advance inen­tre­pre­neuri­al­ism you can explore out­sourc­ing and Vir­tual Assis­tant options to help you man­age but in the early-stages of a ven­ture, it is all about you and your per­sonal drive.

We could spend hours upon hours of our time and pages upon pages of text that all talk about the do’s & dont’s of entre­pre­neurs and mar­ket­ing. While all of that would be valu­able infor­ma­tion I think that being ‘straight and to the point’ is always an effec­tive mean of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In my own career I have come to find that if I adhere to the 5 laws of entre­pre­neurs I can assure my ven­ture the best pos­si­ble chance of success.

5 Laws of Entrepreneurs:

  • Law of Focus: In the early-stage devel­op­ment of your ven­ture, prod­uct or ser­vice you must remain focused and resist temp­ta­tions to become distracted.
    • Out­line spe­cific times dur­ing your day that you will ded­i­cate to work­ing on the ven­ture and noth­ing else.
    • Dur­ing the times you are work­ing with your ven­ture, turn off your phones, email, Twit­ter … etc. This is qual­ity time for you and your idea only.
  • Law of Goals: It is imper­a­tive that you doc­u­ment the goals and objec­tives of your ven­ture. You have to have some­thing to hold your­self account­able to.
    • If you do not have highly spe­cific goals and objec­tives you can eas­ily become dis­tracted and lose focus (a vio­la­tion of the first law!).
    • Hav­ing spe­cific goals allows you to mea­sure the pro­gres­sion of your ven­ture; with­out achiev­ing goals you have no way to deter­mine if your ven­ture is progressing.
  • Law of Moti­va­tion: In the early-stage of your ven­ture it is easy to stay moti­vated because of excite­ment and nov­elty. You must keep that enthu­si­asm because you can’t expect cus­tomers to be excited about your ven­ture if your not.
  • Law of Integrity: You must vow to never mis­rep­re­sent or over­state your venture’s value or ben­e­fit. Noth­ing will sink a ven­ture quicker than an over­state­ment or misrepresentation.
    • Do not ‘make’ your ven­ture fit into a mar­ket, find the mar­ket that fits your ven­ture by con­duct­ing focus groups and prod­uct research.
  • Law of Per­se­ver­ance: If suc­cess were easy then there wouldn’t be such a thing as fail­ure. Suc­cess is the 100th attempt of 99 failures.
    • You must com­mit to never giv­ing up on your ven­ture until you achieve your goals that you have out­lined. YOU CAN NEVER GIVE UP!

Being an entre­pre­neur is not easy, noth­ing worth hav­ing ever is. The dif­fer­ence between your venture’s suc­cess and being the next idea tossed to the way-side is you! You are the only respon­si­ble for your own suc­cess, so go make it hap­pen! Go be a success!

Comments Off »

Posted in Marketing Guides

Tags:

Busi­ness Sur­vival — 101 Fea­tur­ing Kris­ten Eckstein

October 7th, 2009

The Code­Tree has always been com­mit­ted to being an invalu­able resource for new and sea­soned online entre­pre­neurs. We con­stantly strive to pro­vide com­pelling, rel­e­vant con­tent as well as practical,‘how-to’ information.

In that spirit we decided to pro­duce a seg­ment that deals with the issues you face every­day as entre­pre­neurs and busi­ness own­ers. In this seg­ment you’ll hear from suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs explain­ing how they achieve suc­cess and what they do to, ‘keep the boat afloat’ in the cur­rent econ­omy.

How Kris­ten Eck­stein Does It …


kristen eckstein

Kris­ten Eckstein

Kris­ten Eck­stein, Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer of Imag­ine! Stu­dios (an arts and media pro­duc­tion com­pany) is a self-made suc­cess in the offline and online world. Kristen’s story started in 2004 when she had the fore­sight and where­withal to rec­og­nize an oppor­tu­nity to suc­ceed and the poten­tial to cap­i­tal­ize that oppor­tu­nity. Like many entre­pre­neurs, Kris­ten found a need in an indus­try that she is well versed in and then cre­ated prod­ucts and ser­vices to address that need.

When ques­tioned how a small busi­ness owner from North Car­olina achieves suc­cess in a sat­u­rated and cut-throat arts & media indus­try she sim­ply responds, “we cre­ate great art and enter­tain­ment that fires the imag­i­na­tion and makes a sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive influ­ence in the lives of peo­ple”.

Kris­ten describes her daily busi­ness activ­i­ties as; “a whirl­wind of activ­ity” between bal­anc­ing jobs, invoic­ing, cus­tomer ser­vice, meet­ings, prod­uct devel­op­ment and many other busi­ness tasks Kris­ten finds her­self wear­ing sev­eral dif­fer­ent hats. Today, Kris­ten remains involved with corporate-style graphic design, book design and book coach­ing as a self-employer with three inde­pen­dent contractors.

Sur­viv­ing eco­nomic challenges …

We wanted to know if and how the cur­rent US/World econ­omy has pre­sented any obsta­cles for Kris­ten and her busi­ness . She responds by stat­ing, “It has done noth­ing but make us more prof­itable. Not only are we in a busi­ness that oth­ers need to com­pete and stay in busi­ness, but we believe that though we live in this world, we have the abil­ity to tap into God’s econ­omy, and it is a lot more secure!”.

Every busi­ness owner is faced with the chal­lenge of cut­ting costs and expense wher­ever pos­si­ble; Kris­ten found that join­ing America’s Best Com­pa­nies proved to be a great cost-saver for legal and pro­fes­sional ser­vices. Addi­tion­ally, Kris­ten remains com­mit­ted that her com­pany only spend money in areas that will help grow the busi­ness or enrich the lives of others.

Objec­tives …

Call them goals, objec­tives, mile­stones … what­ever you call them, every busi­ness and busi­ness owner needs them. As a suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neur, you must be com­mit­ted to expand­ing your busi­ness. A busi­ness is designed to grow, if the busi­ness does not grow the busi­ness will wither. Among many ways to grow busi­ness, Kris­ten chooses to grow her busi­ness by con­tin­u­ally adding new prod­ucts and ser­vices that are inline with her indus­try such as her recently released Plat­inum Pub­lish­ing Pro­gram for book authors.

Cus­tomer ser­vice should be a pri­mary objec­tive for every entre­pre­neur; great cus­tomer ser­vice equals a great cus­tomer. Kris­ten is very pas­sion­ate about cus­tomer ser­vice, here is what Kris­ten had to say when asked to weigh in her opin­ion on cus­tomer service :

“My cus­tomer may not always be right (they may ask the impos­si­ble), but we take the time to explain every­thing thor­oughly. We have found that even if the cus­tomer isn’t right, good cus­tomer ser­vice takes time out to give the cus­tomer atten­tion, make them feel val­ued (as they should be), and explain sit­u­a­tions to them. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is key! Espe­cially if we can­not meet a dead­line, I will con­tact the cus­tomer and let them know right away. We have found that if we com­mu­ni­cate clearly, they are a lot more under­stand­ing than we may give them credit for.”

Some sage advice …

In order to be a suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neur you must be vig­i­lant, tri­umphant deter­mined and will­ing to do any­thing required in order to achieve your dream, includ­ing per­sonal sacrifice.

Kris­ten Eck­stein leaves us with some of her expert advice:

  • Are busi­ness ethics impor­tant? “Yes, if you have strong val­ues and put your cus­tomers first, they will notice and you will reap the reward of their con­tin­ued patron­age. If you always do things cheaply and do not take respon­si­bil­ity when some­thing goes wrong, your busi­ness will suf­fer immediately”.
  • What is the ‘first step’ that new entre­pre­neurs should take? “Come up with a name! Your busi­ness name will iden­tify you, clar­ify your vision, and give you focus”.
  • What are the ingre­di­ents to a good ‘suc­cess recipe’? “Equal parts Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Respect, and Hon­esty”.

Con­tact­ing Kris­ten Eckstein:

Kris­ten Eck­stein, Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer
Imag­ine! Stu­dios www.artsimagine.com
I am Pub­lished! Pro­gram www.iampublished.com
Twit­ter http://twitter.com/imaginestudios


The Code­Tree is proud to fea­ture expert advice from sea­soned pro­fes­sion­als like Kris­ten Eck­stein. To sub­mit your advice for pos­si­ble inclu­sion on The Code­Tree please down­load the inter­view ques­tion­naire and return it to submissions@mycodetree.com.

Comments Off »

Posted in Experts Corner

Tags:

Busi­ness Sur­vival — 101 Fea­tur­ing Dr. Daisy Sutherland

October 7th, 2009

The Code­Tree has always been com­mit­ted to being an invalu­able resource for new and sea­soned online entre­pre­neurs. We con­stantly strive to pro­vide com­pelling, rel­e­vant con­tent as well as practical,‘how-to’ information.

In that spirit we decided to pro­duce a seg­ment that deals with the issues you face every­day as entre­pre­neurs and busi­ness own­ers. In this seg­ment you’ll hear from suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs explain­ing how they achieve suc­cess and what they do to, ‘keep the boat afloat’ in the cur­rent econ­omy.

How Dr. Daisy Suther­land Does It …


Dr. Daisy Sutherland

Dr. Daisy Sutherland

Like many entre­pre­neurs and inde­pen­dent busi­ness own­ers, Dr. Daisy Suther­land of Dr. Mommy, LLC is the sole pro­pri­etor of her busi­ness where she offers writ­ing, speak­ing and parenting-health/wellness coach­ing ser­vices. Dr. Suther­land has always felt the desire to help oth­ers which lead her into her doc­to­r­ial pro­fes­sion; she expanded her reach expo­nen­tially once she started her online busi­ness in 2007.

When asked about her ‘typ­i­cal day at the office’, Dr. Suther­land is quick to respond in jovial spirit by say­ing, “My days are far from typ­i­cal — I man­age our Chi­ro­prac­tic office as well as home-school our chil­dren (4 out of 5) and man­age my online busi­ness which con­sists of writ­ing and edit­ing. ” Dr. Suther­land also works with her coach­ing clients in the evening after her day’s busi­ness has subsided.

The Econ­omy …

We asked Dr. Suther­land if and how the cur­rent state of the US/World econ­omy has changed her busi­ness activ­i­ties and not unlike many online entre­pre­neurs, she states that she has seen an increase in her busi­ness. Dur­ing peri­ods of eco­nomic weak­ness the entre­pre­neur­ial spirit in peo­ple tends to sur­face and there is gen­er­ally an ‘across the board’ increase in sole pro­pri­etor­ship and busi­ness start-ups. Exist­ing online entre­pre­neurs like Dr. Suther­land that offer writ­ing, site man­age­ment, speak­ing engage­ment and other busi­ness sup­port ser­vices are able to ben­e­fit from these peri­ods due to increases in demands for their prod­ucts and services.

Despite hav­ing a thriv­ing busi­ness in a weak­ened econ­omy, Dr. Suther­land remains focused and hum­bled, real­iz­ing that suc­cess would be short-lived if she did not remain mind­ful of busi­ness expense (a hall­mark of any entre­pre­neur). One of her meth­ods for con­trol­ing costs is out­sourc­ing tasks that need to be com­pleted but are not inline with her core busi­ness objec­tives; allow­ing her to remain focused on dri­ving her busi­ness for­ward. Remem­ber, out­sourc­ing doesn’t have to mean ship­ping work off the shores of your coun­try, it could actu­ally be as sim­ple as hav­ing your neigh­bor design your com­pany logo.

Core Objec­tives …

Entre­pre­neurs are very focused on two core objec­tives; mon­e­tiz­ing a brand and adding rev­enue streams to a brand.  Cus­tomer ser­vice is absolutely the best most prac­ti­cal and eco­nom­i­cal way to mon­e­tize a brand; the hap­pier that you can make a cus­tomer the more likely that cus­tomer will return and tell oth­ers about the great expe­ri­ence they had with your brand (all it really costs you to make a cus­tomer happy is time and effort). Adding rev­enue streams to a brand is some­thing that you need to be vig­i­lant about; estab­lished rev­enue streams may dimin­ish as times and trends change.

Dr. Suther­land meets both core objec­tives; striv­ing to meet her customer’s expec­ta­tions by lis­ten­ing closely to their feed­back and by cre­at­ing time­less (a prod­uct or ser­vice that is as desir­able two years from now as it is the day it was cre­ated) prod­ucts and ser­vices such as; coach­ing, writ­ing and speak­ing engage­ment services.

Expert Advice …

Being an entre­pre­neur can be very chal­leng­ing but can also be equally lucra­tive. Like most deci­sions, becom­ing an entre­pre­neur is a basic risk/benefit analy­sis. What is my risk of becom­ing an entre­pre­neur and does the ben­e­fit of me becom­ing an entre­pre­neur out­weigh that poten­tial risk? Only you can answer that ques­tion for yourself.

Dr. Suther­land offers some sound advice for all entrepreneurs:

  • Are busi­ness ethics impor­tant? “One must have strong moral val­ues and ethics to suc­ceed in busi­ness and in my type of busi­ness it is essen­tial since our main goal is to Help others.”
  • What is the ‘first step’ that new entre­pre­neurs should take? “Research is very impor­tant, but of course putting their fear aside is also important.”
  • What are the ingre­di­ents to a good ‘suc­cess recipe’? “The ingre­di­ents to my suc­cess recipe would include: patience, per­se­ver­ance, and courage.  With those 3 main ingre­di­ents all else will follow.”

Con­tact­ing Dr. Daisy Sutherland:

Dr. Daisy Suther­land, Founder/CEO of Dr. Mommy, LLC
Help­ing you to help your fam­ily.
http://drmommyllc.com
http://twitter.com/DrMommy


The Code­Tree is proud to fea­ture expert advice from sea­soned pro­fes­sion­als like Dr. Daisy Suther­land. To sub­mit your advice for pos­si­ble inclu­sion on The Code­Tree please down­load the inter­view ques­tion­naire and return it to submissions@mycodetree.com.

Comments Off »

Posted in Experts Corner

Tags: