Archive | Entrepreneurs

4 Early Mistakes You Must Avoid When Starting a Company

By • September 11, 2012 • Entrepreneurs, Start-ups • Leave a comment

Making mistakes is easy –we’ve all done it.  But for young entrepreneurs - the mistakes made early in your start-up will have a drastic effect on the future of your start-up. The choices you make now will determine your future success and the profitability of your company. Avoiding these four simple mistakes will assure you greater success and a chance at profitability.

1. Lack of True Vision

Many people go into business without a vision, but it winds up costing them lots of wasted time and money in the long run. Start your company from day one with a vision. Your vision should be the “ideal end result” –the company of your future. Where do you want your company to be in three to five years?  How many hours are you willing to put in?  What kind of culture do you want to have?  What must you accomplish to get there?  A clear vision of your future gives you greater direction, and with greater direction you’ll reach your destination much faster.

2. Failing to Understand the Business Side of a Start-up

As a young entrepreneur, you must educate yourself and learn to operate your company like a business from day one. Gain an understanding of things like cash flow, overhead, personnel management, ROI,  marketing and customer service. If you really want to be successful, you should dedicate time for working on your company, not just working in your company. Set aside time every week to work on your business, making it a real business.

3. Focusing on the Product, not Relationships

It’s not all about your product, it’s mostly about relationships. Young entrepreneurs are sometimes so focused on building their product that they forget about forming a true, trusting relationship with every employee, customer and investor. Your company will be more successful if you focus on your relationships as much as you focus on the product.

4. Failing to Set Goals and Monitoring the Results

Goals and Milestones represent the incremental steps to the company of your dreams. Goals give you direction and a target to aim for. Setting and achieving both personal and professional goals is one of the best ways to measure the progress of your life and your company. Include your team in your goal setting and share the rewards and wins with them when you reach a milestone. Always monitor your results because numbers don’t lie.

Avoiding these common mistakes and pitfalls will not only make you a better leader, but will also help your start-up become the successful company it can be.

Building a Fire is like Building a Start-up

By • April 25, 2012 • Entrepreneurs, Start-ups • Leave a comment

This past weekend I had to work in the yard cutting out branches and big, thorny limbs. Rather than haul the limbs to the dump or pull them out by the trashcan, I asked my neighbor if he wanted them to us as kindling in his fire pit.

They weren’t really large branches and they couldn’t keep a fire going for a very long time, but they were the perfect size for starting the fire.

Building a startup is a lot like building a fire, and you need kindling along with a few other items.

With a fire you need a match, some paper, kindling (small sticks and twigs) and a few large logs to keep it burning. In a startup you need an idea (match), dedicated people (some paper) to ignite the MVP (kindling) and a final product (big logs) to create revenue and keeps the company growing.

Without any of the four components – you are toast!

You can’t build a fire with just big logs. You can’t start a fire without a match, and kindling won’t keep your fire going for very long.

You can’t start a company with just an idea or only an awesome product. It’s takes all the components to really get it right and build something that will last.

Just like building a fire, make sure you gather all the components you need before building your next start-up. A bunch of matches and big logs won’t do it. You’ll need the right people and an MVP too.

 

 

 

4 Rules for Start-ups

By • April 12, 2012 • Entrepreneurs • 2 Comments

This is a great definition of Entrepreneurship! “Entrepreneurship is the art of finding profitable solutions to problems.” It really is that simple, but just don’t discount the hard work involved because doing a start-up is harder than most people think.

1. Find a Need and Fill It, Find a Problem and Solve It
The opportunities for start-ups and success are unlimited because needs, wants and problems are everywhere.  Wherever there are unsolved customer problems or  processes that takes too many steps, there is an opportunity for you to start and build a successful business.

Once upon a time, before photocopies, the only way to type multiple copies of a letter was with carbon paper places between sheets of stationary. But a single mistake would require the typist to go through and erase the mistakes on every single copy.Then a secretary working for small company in Minneapolis began mixing flour with nail varnish in order to white out the mistake she was making in her typing. Soon, people in other offices began asking for it. The demand became so great that she quit her job and began working full-time manufacturing what she called “Liquid Paper.” A few years later, the Gillette Corporation came along and bought her out for $47 million cash.

2. Unlimited Opportunities, Unlimited Problems
Look around. Problems everywhere. It’s your job to find a problem and solve it better than it has been solved before. Find a problem that someone has and see if you can’t come up with a better solution for it. Find a way to supply a product or service better, faster, or simpler. Start out by looking for easy problems to solve. How often have you thought to yourself – man that was easy, why didn’t I think of that? It’s your turn to start looking for an simple problem and an easy solution to that problem. Don’t wait, I’m sure you can find 3-5 problems today – just start looking for them.

3. Bootstrap Your Way to Success
Once you have come up with a problem or idea, it’s time to invest your time, talent, and energy instead of your money to get things started. Most of the great products come from ideas rather than big bankrolls. If your idea or solution is good, money will find you.  Focus on making a good product that people actually want rather than need. Focus on a simple solution without too many features. My favorite quote for start-up success is “Develop a Painkiller, not an Aspirin” – remember it cost about the same.

4. Focus on the Customer Development
The key to success in any business is to focus on your customers. Honestly, product development is the easy and fun part. Customer development is a whole lot harder – time consuming and more frustrating because you can’t control the customer. Become obsessed with your customer. Look at things from your customer’s perspective. What do they need? How much will they pay? What’s another way you could solve their problem?  Focus on your customer’s “wants”, not necessarily just their “needs”. Try to think different and look at the solution from a different perspective.

 

Abundance Is Our Future (Video)

By • March 8, 2012 • Entrepreneurs, Lifestyle • Leave a comment

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the current “Gloom and Doom” on the internet, in the news and all around us, but as we uncover the solutions – we have the power to change our lives and make the World a better place – each of us are significant.

Do you choose to react with fear and scarcity? Or do you choose to see the opportunity to create change and abundance to help millions of people Worldwide?

Hopefully, Peter’s presentation will change your view of solving the World’s problems today!

Abundance Is Our Future

 

Mental Attitude

By • March 5, 2012 • Entrepreneurs, Start-ups • Leave a comment

Thomas Jefferson said, “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude form achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

I’m not saying that you have to wake up every morning with a big smile and talk to yourself in the mirror (although it may not hurt), but  first and foremost, you have to be in control of your attitude and your thinking.  You must become mindful of your thoughts and words that you are using everyday.

Our thoughts, words and expectations have tremendous power and influence over everything we do. Often times, all it takes to bring about a drastic change in your company (or in your life) is to just change the way you are thinking and doing.

What are you allowing your mind to dwell on today? Are you focused on problems, or on the solutions to those problems? Are you paying attention to what you can’t do, or what you can do? Are you focus on what skills your team doesn’t have or what skills they’ve already got? Are you thinking small, or are you thinking big?

The story of Roger Bannister is a perfect example of the power of changing your thinking. For hundreds of years, people thought it was impossible for a human to run a 4-minute mile.

The experts declared, “A human can’t run that fast in that length of time.”

Then a man named Roger Bannister broke the record and performed a “Miracle”.

People soon changed their thinking, and it wasn’t long until many others started breaking the 4-minute milestone. Roger Bannister changed the way people thought about the 4-minute-mile, and within ten years 336 other runners had broken the 4-minute-mile.

What happened? People changed their thinking, and they stopped listening to the experts. Roger Bannister had done it. It was no longer the impossible and many others followed.

If you want create a Successful Start-up, you must begin with the right mental attitude and the right “thinking”.

What you think determines how you feel, and the way you feel determines how you act; and the way you act determines how you motivate employees, how you relate to your customers, how you communicate with your partners, how you deal with problems at the office, and ultimately how successful your start-up will be.

 

Entrepreneurs Are Really Cool

By • January 5, 2012 • Entrepreneurs, Lifestyle, Start-ups • Leave a comment

People involved with start-ups and those investing in new ideas are really cool. Many are young, passionate and using their innovative ideas to build a better World.

When I first got involved with my Venture Capital Group and began hanging around the Indianapolis start-up community, I absolutely fell in love with people and friendships. I look forward to every VC meeting month meeting  and I don’t think I’ve missed a VERGE INDY event since I attended my first one in 2010.

Honestly, it wouldn’t bother me if my first few investments ever made money because the relationships I have built and the connections I’ve made over the last two years alone were worth it. Being a dentist and owing your own company can be lonely at times, if you haven’t emerged yourself into your local start-up community – you should try it. I really enjoy hanging out with other entrepreneurial people, developers, investors and start-up junkies. They’re just cool people.